Honeymoon Day 3 - Stranded in Silverton

Remember in my last post when I said we were excited for an EPIC day....well, it was actually TOO EPIC! With 30 inches of snow piling up overnight, the mountains rumbled and the avalanches starting sliding everywhere. A huge 15-footer closed the road to mountain, so Plan A was kaput. For Plan B, we thought it would be fun to drive 20 miles south to Purgatory Mountain near Durango. Except that there were also tons of slides on Red Mountain and Molas/Colebank Pass, so all the roads out of town were closed. Strike two.

It appeared we were stranded in Silverton, with the snow coming down hard and the winds blowing even harder, but no place to strap on our sticks and cruise the powder. Until Plan C arrived...the local hill, Kendall Recreation Area with one lift, one trail and about 200 feet of vertical, was planning to open at 11am. Hallelujah!

After digging out the cars for an hour, we suited up with semi-smiles on our faces, knowing that we were going to get some fun out of this storm, even if it was linking 3 turns on a 20 degree slope. Our predictions were just about true, and we got in about 8-10 runs of powder skiing before the place was tracked out. That would be all for us in the snow on Sunday, so grabbed some sodas (and Mike splurged on two corn dogs) and headed back to hotel for another afternoon of NFL playoffs. This time we got to see the Big Blue, our New York Football Giants, beat the Bucs and advance to the second weekend of the playoffs for the first time since 2000 and a divisional-round matchup against the NFC East archrival Dallas Cowboys on Sunday afternoon.


As I write this at 8:30 pm local time, the snow is (surprise!) still falling and the winds are blowing, and the forecast for tomorrow is even more snow. We were supposed to be headed to Durango in the morning for some cat-skiing, but the latest rumors were that the roads would likely be closed until the snow stopped Monday night. If we are stranded, we're hopeful that maybe we can do some hiking and backcountry skiing with some local patrollers. Enough drama in the first 3 days of our honeymoon?? I think we're almost ready for a Hallmark movie special.