The mini ski group

Every year we have a big gathering with a bunch of skiing friends, but this year it was different. Our friends the Kahn's have moved to Australia. Anne Schick had a sore hip, so she and Tom didn't come. Sherrie Smith couldn't come and Katie and Cameron were in school. For a while, it looked like the whole group would be John Walker.

In the end, it worked out OK. We had John, Mark Nickels and Bill Hogan come to ski with us. These three were the creators of this ski group, years before Julie and I joined in.



Our first day of skiing was on about 8 inches of fresh snow over at Park City Mountain Resort. It was a splendid day of effortless skiing with a wonderful lunch at the Silver Star Cafe. If you ski Park City, you really should grab a lunch down there. It's at the bottom of the Silver Star lift.

Our next day was at Deer Valley. Sunny and warm but a bit windy.



We met up with John for lunch at Goldener Hirsch, one of John's favorites. He would have been skiing with us, but he ripped the tongue out of his custom ski boot liner. Fortunately, when you buy stuff at Sure Foot, you get repairs for free. I don't think any of us had ever heard of ripping out a chunk of boot liner.



Bill (left) and Mark riding up the gondola from the bottom of Deer Crest at Deer Valley. We still can't get Bill to buy a helmet. He is the last of our 14 skiers without a helmet.



Day 3 of skiing was back at PCMR. We skied down into town for lunch at the Bridge. Another fine choice. After skiing we hit the new High West Distillery. They had a good band, but the sound system wasn't doing them any favors. That's JohnQ up front, listening to figure out what was wrong. On their break he went up to give them some feedback. The rest of us were just checking the door to make sure we could leave quickly if it came to that.



Bill had almost perfect camouflage to hide in this sign.



John and boots weren't doing well together. After killing his ski boot, he discovered that the soles of his hiking boots were peeling off as though he had walked through acid. If you look carefully, you can see little chunks of shoe on the wood floor. This happened even thought we were just sitting at a table.

Bad boot karma.



When grocery shopping, John and Mark managed to come home with a box of Easter Peeps. This one suffered a violent death.



The skiing has definitely become something to do between eating and drinking. Days off. Half days of skiing. Long lunches. Watching Olympics on TV. I think it was very relaxing for everyone, but we may have to rename "our ski group".