Colorado Skiing and "The Shining"

     Back in the 80's I setup a ski trip to Colorado staying in a rented a condo in Breckenridge that had accommodations for 10 (Jim and Mimi, Bud and Rose, Tom and Ann, John and Debbie, Bill and Brenda).  The owner of the condo stayed in a small log cabin behind the condo.  We planned to ski both Breckenridge and Arapahoe (A-Basin) which was near by.

     On our trip out we used CB radios to caravan to the ski resort, which worked well and helped pass the time until we ran into a blizzard coming out of Eisenhower tunnel.   It was very difficult to see so all we could do was follow the tail lights of the car in front of us.  Risky but as long as he didn't drive off the mountain we were safe.  The CB radios turned dead silent at this time and everyone was on the edge of their seats but we made it without any mishaps.

     One day we were skiing A-Basin which is the highest elevation for a skiing in Colorado.  By the time you arrive at the top of the mountain you are above the tree line.  I convinced Mimi, Ann, Tom, Bud and Rose to make one last run from the top. so we took the lift to the top but we ran into a white out on top of Arapahoe (A-Basin) mountain.  Sorry I didn't know.  We couldn't see 3 feet in front of us so I said go slow and point your skis downhill, gravity would do the rest.  Lot of cursing and trash talk going on.  Once we made it to the tree line visibility got better and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

     Each night we were pretty exhausted from skiing all day so we decided to relax by watching the Steven King movie "The Shinning" with Jack Nicholson, Shelly Duvall and Scatman Crothers in the the chalet we rented.  Not at all relaxing.  What the hell were we thinking?  If that wasn't bad enough the next night we watched the Steven King movie "Christine" about the possessed car.  Scared the crap out of us, two nights in a row.  After the end of the Christine movie my sister Rose left the room and we decided it would be fun to shine flashlights at her when she returned to mimic the movie to freak her out which it did. Sweet!

     Bill was a first time skier but he didn't have any fear which I guess we can attribute to him being a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and getting shot down 3 times.  So skiing seemed pretty mild to Bill and it was no surprise when Bill followed Tom and I skiing through the trees.  Bill came out with a bloody nose and big smile.  For first time skier Bill was a daredevil, I remember a few of us were on the slope about half way down when we saw Bill riding the lift up yelling to us "Wait up,  I'll be right there".  We laughed a bit because it seemed highly unlikely that Bill would catch up to us before we reached the bottom.  Boy it wasn't long before I found out I was wrong, I heard someone yelling "Watch out for the crazy guy" but we soon found out the crazy guy was Bill and he did catch up.

     John was also another new skier in the group and he was a big muscular guy but when he saw the expert ski runs on A-Basin from the bottom, he refused to go even though we explained that we were going to come down the beginner/intermediate slope on the left.

     Late one night we were all sleeping soundly when the smoke alarm went off for no reason.  The alarm gave off a piercing sound and we found it was located at the highest part of the ceiling (20 foot).  We had no ladder and the owner was in his log cabin behind unable to help, so Bud threw a boot at it and miraculously knocked it down.  Amazingly accurate (lucky) shot.

     All in all it was a great ski trip that provided us with some interesting  stories and fun memories now.