Unbeknownst to us at the time, last October 15th my girlfriend and I set out to ski every month for a year. We didn't even realize that was what we were trying to do until almost July and the guidelines changed as we went along. But, ultimately, Sept 30 marked twelve consecutive months of skiing in the Colorado "backcountry" for Betsy, and I (and most importantly our two pups). In retrospect much of last year wasn't great, but for every day that wasn't great we had five that were unbelievable. Here are our last twelve months in pictures.
Even in October and November we had no shortage of soft snow at Rollins and Berthoud Passes.
December was slow on the snowfall front ... but when it snowed we took advantage.
January didn't fare much better ... but Aspen is always fun and Diesel has a nose for the soft snow at Berthoud Pass.
Come February we found ourselves in Chamonix in the middle of one of their best winters ever.
But March was when real Winter started in Colorado. Beginning a stretch of three months of all time conditions.
April came, and as closing day parties approached at the resorts the snow was piling up in the backcountry and the skiing was the best it had been in 24 months.
May yielded us less closing day parties (because there was no where left to close...) but far more beautiful backcountry powder.
June granted us the seasons final closing day at Arapahoe Basin, and a gradual transition from powder to big lines. But still some powder.
In July the powder relented, but the big lines hung around despite record heat.
After record heat through the first month of summer late August turns were more for sport than for skiing's sake.
And with 3 hours left in September we got on Loveland's snowmaking patch to round out the year.
Not bad for a "bad" winter! Without even realizing it we're at 14 months now, and it's becoming easy to see how
this guy is at 365 months and counting.
