Its silent and cold. I see a white light and wonder “am I dead?” I think for a minute and realize I’m not dead but my goggles are covered with snow. I wipe them off and look up. I see a ski lift full of people going down the mountain and quickly realize that they aren’t going down, they are going up and I happen to be upside down lying in the snow.

While I was off on my own skiing for a few runs I decided to hit a couple blues (more advanced) slopes. On my last run before I was going to meet back up with Jen, I picked up the pace a little. As I’m zipping down some slopes I start thinking to myself, “Hey I’m pretty good I haven’t fallen on the trip yet.” As you can expect, I jinxed myself. I’m cruising down this run to the last vertical slope of the run when I realize I can’t see over the edge. Its almost STRAIGHT DOWN. Keep in mind I’m already going pretty quickly and by the time I realize what kind of slope I’m looking at its too late, I’m over the edge. My Picaboo Street-ness kicks in and I’m bounding down this run with ease, or at least I thought I was.

One turn too sharp and my skis turn back uphill. Not good. As my skis go up hill my body goes down hill and out from under me they go. Feet and skis in the air, I start sliding down this mountain head first. I’m gripping and clawing the snow in hopes to stop but with no luck, the more I try to hang on the farther I down I go. By the time I stop, I realize I’ve slid 20 yards down the mountain and my poles didn’t come with me.

All I can do is laugh. I’m laying upside down on this near vertical slope where I have slid head first down the mountain without my poles and people above me are looking down and I’m sure they are laughing at this orange blob laying upside down on the slope. Some nice guy comes skiing behind me and graciously kicks me my poles. I turn and get myself oriented and just lay there for a minute and chuckle. The classic jinx. Its like the announcer on TV talking about a kicker who doesn’t miss or a shooting guard whose on fire and as soon as that announcer speaks every fan cringes, we know whats gonna happen. I jinxed myself and I deserve to take a nose dive, its all in good fun.

Other than that one incident, the skiing was relatively smooth sailing. Ok I’m lying. I ate it again (and Jen took a pic ). This time I was just goofing off. It was our last run down this 3.5 mile long trail and I though I would make it interesting and salomn through the trees. I saw some 8 year old do it earlier, how hard can it be? Little did I know that the width of the first 15 yards of the trail was only wide enough for an 8 year old! I realized this and bailed out attempting to avoid those 2 huge trees in front of me in the picture. Again, all I could do was laugh. I did get back up and finished the run through the trees without any issues.

Keep Reading if you are interested in the rest of the trip.

Our second anniversary trip was to Park City, Utah. Unfortunately, not until 4 days into the trip did we realize that this was our second anniversary trip to a cold weather place (last year was London in March) and vowed to make next years’ a much warmer climate. hmmm Costa Rica anyone? Anyway, we were excited to get to Utah and were immediately surrounded by gorgeous white capped mountains. It is some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen, the pictures just don’t do it justice. Park City is a gorgeous little small town surrounded by beautiful mountains covered with amazing ski slopes.

Our first day there we spent walking around and getting acquainted with the free bus system but on the second day we headed straight to Deer Valley to hit the slopes. We had planned on getting Jen a lesson but didn’t think enough to call ahead a day before and reserve a spot for the morning session. We did get her in for the afternoon session and thought we could make do until then. We hit the lift and headed for a supposedly easy green run called Success. Keep in mind that this was Jen’s third time skiing and had only had two previous ski outings 3 weeks prior in the NC mountains (Sugar and Beech). So we ride to the top of this green run and immediately Jen is nervous and understandably so. It’s quite intimidating starring down this huge snow covered mountain. She braved up and attempted to make it down. She struggled from the get go and I felt terrible for dragging her up this slope for the first time. I had no idea it was going to be this difficult. To make a long story short, she made it down eventually and in one piece. Although, I think for a good hour or two she hated me and I feared I had ruined our trip b/c she’d not want to ski anymore. Boy was I wrong.

She waited around for the morning until her lesson and was lucky enough to end up with a private lesson with Alice Drake of Deer Valley. Alice was awesome and spent two solid hours working with Jen and making her feel confident again. By the end of the lesson, Alice took Jen back up Success. As I watched from another trail, I was amazed at what I saw. Jen was dominating the very same slope that I feared would haunt her forever. She did so well and only once did she even stumbled and I happend to get a video of it. Keep in mind she didn’t fall and made a nice recovery. . I was so proud of her. Not only did she get back on the skis but she kicked ass too. After the lesson was over, Alice told me what run to take her on and it started from the very top of one of the Deer Valley mountains. 9,500ft of altitude we hit the top and began making our decent. Thanks to Alice Jen was confident and capable. She cruised down Ontario and when we took a fork to the Trump slope (which was mighty steep), she cruised right down it w/o thinking twice. This is her at the bottom celebrating

We did this slope a few more times before we had to go and I was able to snap this short video of her finishing the end of the slope

After all that, skiing was smooth sailing. She was able to ski the Park City Mountain and Deer Valley Mountain with no issues and she got better each time. To do what she did after only 1 lesson and 4 times skiing, I am truly amazed, it was awesome. Although everyone at Deer Valley was extremely friendly, a huge thanks goes to Alice Drake, she’s was the perfect instructor for Jen.

For the rest of the trip, we skied a ton and ate a ton and also sat in the outdoor hot tub a lot . We actually even go to experience some of that famous Utah powder that everyone talks about. All day Monday the weather people were predicting a huge rain storm on Tuesday but the weather was actually pretty grand. It started snowing Tuesday night and kept snowing most of the day Wednesday and picked back up Wed. night. All in all, I think Park City got a good 6-10inches of fresh snow which made the skiing all the more exciting and gave us the full Utah ski experience. The snow was truly amazing, it was so light and fluffy, almost like it was baking flour.

All in all we had a great time, got some fresh snow, ate a lot, did some great skiing and had a wonderful vacation. We are glad to be back with all our limbs and nothing wrong but sore muscles. Next time, we’ll go explore some of the other 12 mountain resorts in the area because we heard rave reviews from all of them. Oops, I forgot to mention that each day warm cookies and hot chocolate were delivered to our room, you can’t beat that!

I’m sure I left some stuff out but maybe Jen will post her thoughts when she has a minute but in the meantime feel free to browse our trip photos here.