TheBanyanTree: Snow is bloody marvellous!!

[Red Pepper]

Snow!!  I know it must be a pain to have to deal with it every winter, 
but guys - it's fantastic!  We never have snow in Melbourne, bar the 
very occasional weather anomaly. Some of the outer-lying regions do from 
time to time, and even then it usually melts before it hits the ground, 
but not us. Just rain and wind in winter.

My partner and I just spent 3 weeks in beautiful, stunning, grandiose, 
BIG Colorado and we loved it. We took his daughter on a 
frequent-flier-point fueled ski holiday as a celebration for 
successfully finishing her secondary school ("VCE" they call it here). 
We also learned just before we left that she was accepted into her first 
choice for university, an Arts/Law double-degree at Latrobe in Bendigo, 
so it was a double celebration.

We skied primarily at Breckenridge, which is a couple of hours by road 
out of Denver. How refreshing to drive on a highway right to the 
doorstep of a ski field. In Victoria, we have to drive up 30 km of 
precipitous winding mountain to get to the snow, and it's not unusual 
for the road to be closed (especially when some pig-headed person in a 
two-wheel drive car with no snow chains slides off the road). But it's 
worth it.

Seeing Colorado from the air was truly awesome - the canyons and 
mountains sitting by the vast tracts of flat, flat desert. The highest 
point in Australia, Mt Kosciusko, is about 2228 metres (I'm sure Mr 
Macinnis will correct me if I'm wrong??). The Breckenridge town is about 
3000 metres elevation. The highest point on the mountain (thanks to the 
new Imperial chair, "the highest ski lift in North America") is 3914 
metres.  So the altitude effects were interesting - constant panting 
when going up anything or going too fast, strange and vivid dreams, some 
initial confusion (I kept forgetting words), waking up in the middle of 
the night because my heart was racing and I was convinced I was having a 
heart attack. Actually I was breathing through my nose and obviously not 
getting sufficient oxygen - so I breathed through my mouth at night and 
woke up with a mouth that tasted like the proverbial cocky had sh*t in it.

But I loved it all. Skiing of course was fun, and I was on holidays and 
remote from any news about home, so all I had to do was ski, eat, sleep, 
read, and walk into town from time to time. It was extremely cold some 
days, much colder than I've ever experienced before in my life. Well 
into the minus degrees celsius. It was a few days before we found the 
conversion formula for Farenheit to Celsius but we know we definitely 
had a couple of days where we were in -15 degrees Celsius territory.

The novelty of getting rugged up and trying not to break a leg on ice on 
the footpaths was, believe it or not, very enjoyable. Ah - stripping off 
the wind-proof shell and the polar-fleece jacket and the beanie and the 
gloves to sit and have a coffee or a beer - wonderful!  You really feel 
like you've earned it. I even got used to wearing thermals all the time 
under jeans because, frankly, I didn't have any casual wear for apres 
ski that was suitable for the environment. Where would I use it in 
Australia??

We had to buy face masks for skiing, making us look like Hannibal 
Lecter's distant relatives, to avoid the extremely painful face freezing 
on cold days with wind chill. I got very used to having a warm face 
after that and even wore it on the not-so-cold days. Who cares what I 
looked like! I was toasty - and it saved me the hassle of remembering to 
use sunscreen.

I know it must be annoying to shovel the drive, watch the news every 
morning to find out what's closed, avoid idiots on the icy roads, 
constantly wash the road-muck off the car, try not to end up in traction 
on a shopping trip, wash tonnes of heavy clothes and try to dry them - 
but guys, the fact that you have cold and snow means you have the 
opportunity for very different sorts of experiences!  I know it was the 
romance of an enjoyable holiday that made me think "I could live here! 
and write in winter while tucked away in my mountain shack..." but gee 
it was fantastic.

Point of note: we noticed that the ski fields in Colorado have robust 
"adaptive ski" programs for disabled skiers including the blind - very 
impressive. This is just starting in Australia, my partner is an 
accredited ski guide for it, but there is no manufacture of equipment 
here and no funding or formal programs - it's run on the smell of an 
oily rag and the tremendous efforts of the volunteers. Good to see the 
wealthy housewives in Vail etc are putting their efforts and contacts 
into such a worthy pursuit. At the Breckenridge adaptive outdoor 
education centre, they also had a group of Louisiana kids up for a day 
skiing - kids who were affected by Katrina and had probably never seen 
snow in their lives. They had a ball.

Point of fashion: I was gratified to see very little 80s fluoro ski-wear 
while we were over there. However the one place I noticed it was Vail, 
which surprised me. But it was always combined with a Miami tan, 
well-coiffed silver hair that didn't move one inch in the breeze, and 
just the slightest bit of "work" on the face, darling. And that was just 
the men. Totally appropriate there. Lots of New Yorkers there after the 
Presidents Day long weekend - do New Yorkers ALWAYS jump queues????

Anita
xxxx