Driving Home

 Day 1: Eastern Colorado and all of Kansas. Kansas is a long State. Ended up in Bates City Missouri. No surprises. All good!

It was 20 degrees when I got started and 78 at the end of the day. 

Leaving Colorado:

Kansas:

Day 2: Made it to Burbank Ohio. 3-4 hours of rain with some heavy rain and hale which caused me to pause for a half hour. Indianapolis was miserable. Lots of traffic and construction and rain. Much more traffic and cities than day 1 so fairly stressful.

Missouri AM:

Day 3: Made it home. A long drive and glad the driving is done.

Trip summary:

This was primarily a ski trip and I got very lucky. Probably the best season out West I will ever see. Utah resorts broke snow records since they started keeping records. Too much snow at Alta and Snowbird since Little Cottonwood Canyon was closed often while I was there. Luckily no issues at Park City where I was. Three big powder days of the five days I skied there. Colorado was also great and April was winter and great snow. Really got a chance to explore Breckenridge which has vast areas of skiing up high. 

Other highlights were visiting Katherine and Chris in Colorado Springs. X country skiing at Bryce. Hiking in summit county. Exploring the Grand Junction area.

This year all of April was great for skiing but in a normal year it may make sense to not plan on skiing beyond 4/15. Areas start to close and could easily be late Spring snow.

All campgrounds and hotels were good. No complaints and could stay at any of these places again. 

Driving: What can be said? A necessary evil that you just need to push through. Trip total miles: 7800. Van amazingly had no issues. Very thankful for that. Was able to use electric heater at two campgrounds. That makes a big difference when it is below freezing.

Six weeks was a good trip duration. Last years ten week trip was great but that duration was a little long for this type of high energy trip.

Breckenridge - Fantastic!

 This is the last ski day for this trip. A great way to end it. 4-6 inches of new snow last night. Some clouds in the morning and then sun. Temperatures stayed below freezing which kept the snow great all day. Always surprising how quickly it clears here after a storm. A great day and a great ski season this year!

Statistics for the season. 

Hiking and Skiing

 Hiking: Mohawk Lakes trailhead in Breckenridge. Spruce Creek Trail.

X-country skiing: Willowbrook Trail in Silverthorne.

The plan was to x-country ski today. At the first stop I decided to hike rather than ski because the trail appeared to be steep and narrow. This was probably a good call but lots of the trail was skiable and walking in the snow was hard. This trail has mining remnants, waterfalls, and lakes. Of course everything is frozen and covered in ten feet of snow. The first mile was trail then it turned into areas where you could tell people had walked a few snow storms ago and then it was just no trail. At this point I was 50% lost half the time! I did manage to find the frozen waterfall and a mining cabin and one of the lakes. Nice hike! 

Next I went to the Willowbrook Trail. I had seen ski tracks coming from this trail when I passed it while hiking the Mesa Cortina trail last week. This is a fine trail for skiing. Spring snow since it warmed up in the afternoon. Also got cloudy so the views in the AM were a lot better.

Old mining cabin

Next three photos are waterfall. 

Not easy to get in as no one shoveled the walkway!

Outdoor railway museum I stumbled onto leaving Breckenridge.

X-country skiing. Willowbrook Trail.