SKIING TRIPS - 2005

2005 was a great winter for us. We undertook four downhill skiing trips and did most skiing in one season ever. This combination of vacations and business trips took us to Vail, Steamboat Springs, Lake Tahoe (Marek only) and Park City.

Vail, Colorado (4.2. - 11.2.)
Vail is one of the best skiing resorts in the world and Vital Images (Marek's company) was sponsoring a week-long conference there which ended up being a great skiing opportunity. Jitka joined Marek for a weekend.

Jitka on the slopes

Skiing among trees was fun.

Lake Tahoe, California (14.2.)
In February a business trip took Marek to San Francisco, where he hooked up with old college friend Pavel and couple of his friends. They went for a one day skiing trip to Lake Tahoe.

View of lake Tahoe and surrounding mountains.

Looking down to the other side of the mountain range, one can see the dessert of Nevada, right bellow the mountains.

Getting back to the car is not as easy as one would hope. We still managed.

Steamboat Springs, Colorado (18.2. - 27.2.)
Our major winter vacation was in Steamboat Springs. We spent a week there in 2003 and liked the place so much that we decided to come back this year. We drove all the way from Minneapolis, which took us about 15 hours. We had pretty good weather and enough snow. We did both cross-country and downhill skiing.

Our freshly tracked trail in a backcountry, close to Steamboat Lake.

Fresh, untouched snow at Steamboat Lake.

Pristine scenery around Steamboat Lake.

A volcano towering above Steamboat Lake.

Yes, there were about 3 feet (or 1 meter) of snow!

Gorgeous views down into the valley from the top of ski lifts at the Steamboat Springs resort.

Badlands

On our way back to Minneapolis, we drove through South Dakota and visited Badlands National Park - first time in winter.

Park City, Utah (17.3. - 22.3.)
We gratefully accepted an invitation from Jen Hoglin, Marek's former co-worker from Vital Images, and spent a long weekend at her house in Park City. We had two days of deep, fresh powder and one day of amazingly beautiful sky. In four skiing days we visited three resorts around Salt Lake City - Alta Mountain, Deer Valey and Snowbasin. We liked Snowbasin the most and went there twice. It is a great mountain, with lots of new services added for the Olympics in 2002 and it is still undiscovered by the crowds from Salt Lake City.

View from Jen Hoglin's house, where we were staying.