Bluebird Spring Ski Day at Winter Park

So first, let’s start with the boring disclaimer: I’m so sorry to not be posting as much lately; things have just been so busy! New projects at work (i.e., new clients), new projects at home (i.e., contemplating building this pizza oven… any bets on whether I will blow up my new house in the process?), and of course, new activities that I sign myself up for and then later bemoan how busy I am (but seriously, any locals want to join my team for Boulder Skeeball League?).

One of the activities I recently took on at work is a position as the Connectivity Chair for our Rockies Advisory Staff Council. While it’s a lot of extra work that isn’t billable, it’s also incredibly rewarding. Yesterday, I organized a day ski trip for all Advisory staff to go to Winter Park, and we had a blast! I was really worried about a lot of the logistics, especially the snow, but Winter Park got six inches of fresh powder on Wednesday, and it was still great conditions yesterday when we went. Definitely not fluffy powder, but it was still nice and smooth so you didn’t get that annoying chhhhhhh scraping as you descend (as has been the case with most of the skiing I’ve done this year). It was foggy first thing in the morning, but by 11am the sun was starting to come out, and after lunch, it was just perfect.

Skiing is a really great way to network – it’s fun to mix it up on the chairlift and sit with lots of different people. A few years ago, I went to a ski trip in Park City where the CEO of my company came, and I ended up riding the chairlift with him a bunch of times. As a lowly senior associate, I thought it was so neat that I got to hang out with the CEO! In this case, we didn’t have anyone quite that senior on the trip, but I was psyched to get to know a partner in the Denver office with whom I’m currently working on a proposal, but whom I hadn’t gotten to know at all outside of work before.

By the end of the trip, I felt like I knew all the attendees pretty well, and I’m looking forward to planning more similar events in the future and building our Advisory community. In Denver, more of us travel on a weekly basis than did in the New York office (where there were tons of people in financial services and healthcare who just worked locally all the time). Plus, in Denver we also have a higher population of staff with spouses/kids, so it can be challenging to get people to come to the office on Fridays or attend social events when they’d much rather spend their precious hours in the state with their family. Not that I blame anyone at all for that, but I’m looking forward to organizing more events like this (and also events that include people’s families?) so that our Advisory community here starts to feel like a second family 🙂 This was a great step in the right direction!

Also in the “great” category is how at the end of the day, I did four single black diamond runs in a row: two that were made of pretty big moguls (apparently the Mary Jane side of Winter Park is known for those), one that was fairly flat but pretty steep, and finally, a fast run down the steep racing course in order to get back to the base as fast as possible and not make the bus wait for us to head back to Denver. I fell on the second run of moguls (and it took me forever to hoist myself back up), but I felt pretty good that at least I was starting to get the technique for moguls and not take forever. Meanwhile, on the two steep runs, I felt fantastic! My legs were really taking a pounding (so much foam rolling after I got home last night, even just from those few runs) and my heart rate was high, but it was incredibly exhilarating. Those were my favorite runs of the whole season this year.

…though perhaps that will change? I’m headed up to Eldora today and possibly Breckenridge tomorrow to try to get a few more ski days in before the end of the season. While most of the mountains in Colorado are open till the end of April, this season has been such a crappy one for snow that I don’t trust there will be enough for me to make it worth my while to go later. Plus, I’m going to be away in Arizona visiting Adam for the next two weekends – I can’t wait! But that means it’s definitely time to get all my skiing in now… and then turn my attention back to running and hiking and biking and all the other awesome spring/summer/fall Colorado outdoors pursuits.

Happy Saturday, y’all 🙂