Raible Designs

A Not-So-Fond Farewell to the 2025-26 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Mon, 25 May 2026 13:42:59 -0600

The 2025-26 ski season was a dud. It teased us with a promising start when Trish and Abbie spent Thanksgiving weekend in Winter Park.

We didn't get enough snow at our house for backyard cross-country skiing until early December. When I skied the Fraser River Trail on December 15, there was plenty of frozen dirt mixed in. It was cold enough that it didn't stick to my skis, but it was still an ominous preview of the winter ahead.

My stats for the year: 5 cross-country outings and 14 downhill days. Trish may have logged even more downhill days, which is a great sign that her ankle has recovered nicely!

We celebrated Mary Jane's 50th birthday on January 10. Honestly, it felt like the mountain opened that day because it had to show up for its own party.

By January 11, I had logged six downhill days. There still hadn't been a powder day, but it was early enough to stay optimistic. We squeezed in a few more turns at the end of January, then rented our Ski Chalet to friends for all of February.

Trish and I kicked off a month of travel by golfing in Cabo San Lucas with Cletus and Sarah.

After that, we spent a week with Trish's parents in Florida, and I joined my family in Arizona for MLB Spring Training.

We returned to Winter Park in early March and again in early April.

Conditions were so thin this year that we never even skied Trestle, one of our favorite runs at Mary Jane.

One bright spot: we joined the Rendezvous Mountain Club for the first time. Membership lets us keep our skis and poles on the mountain for a reasonable price, and Matt and Andy, the brothers who run the place, make the whole thing even better.

Just like last year, we wrapped up the season with a moose sighting near our condo.

Jack didn't make it onto the slopes this year because of an injury, but we did get plenty of ski time with Abbie. DU Hockey also won its 11th national championship!

The reduced snowpack means rafting season will be underwhelming too. We're trying not to dwell on that, so we've been distracting ourselves with other adventures: New Orleans Jazz Fest, Mother's Day in Montana, and a road trip to Moab for Syncro Solstice.

Now summer is right around the corner, the Nuggets are out, the Avs are on the ropes, and the golf courses are calling.

For more ski season photos, see my 2025-26 Ski Season album on Flickr.

Farewell to the 2024-2025 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 09:47:22 -0600

The 2024-25 ski season was a bit delayed due to Trish's injuries and a lack of snow. I didn't even get a cross-country day in until mid-January, shortly after we returned from Puerto Rico. My stats for the year: 10 days of cross-country and only seven days downhill.

My first day on the slopes wasn't until February 8th, when I skied with my good friend The Fesser.

In March, our nephew James visited for his spring break. We had a beautiful afternoon on the Fraser River Trail before hitting the slopes the next day.

James inspired Trish to try skiing for the first time since she broke her ankle and wrist in October. She found it didn't hurt at all, except for the $200/day price tag, because she pushed her pass to next year. We had a lot of fun times with friends in March and April. These are typically our best months for snow in Colorado, and this year didn't disappoint. We experienced many powder days at Winter Park and Mary Jane.

We traveled up to Winter Park for our last weekend of ski season a week ago. On the way up, I had quite the experience. I wrote about it on Facebook the next morning:

I'd like to thank Stout the Syncro for saving my life last night. As I was leaving Idaho Springs, the roads were dry and I had it in 2WD.

A mile before I turned off for the Winter Park exit our rear wheels started to slip and all of a sudden we're drifting at 70 mph on I-70.

First to the left, then to the right, and eventually sideways.

As we were heading towards the guard rail, I thought, "Oh my, this is going to hurt!"

That's when we hit ice again and the back end flipped around. We went down into the ditch backwards and landed with no harm done. The dogs barely noticed.

A tow truck stopped to help us out as we had just passed him. He wasn't necessary.

I put it in 4WD and drove out. Yeehaw! 😁 ❤️

The corduroy that morning was epic!

Trish and I both had our Nuggets gear on that day for their first playoff game. We thoroughly enjoyed their victory that afternoon!

The highlight of the weekend was seeing a couple of moose walk by while we were hot tubbing. Click on the image below to watch a video of the event.

This was the first season that we didn't ski with Abbie and Jack. I guess they're finally all grown up. 🥹

For more ski season photos, see my 2024-25 Ski Season album on Flickr.

Farewell to the 2023-2024 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 09:30:45 -0600

This year's ski season was delightful! This was largely due to our acquisition of a new condo in the mountains, lots of free time to ski, and some epic powder days with friends. I achieved 30 days of skiing, with 19 being alpine and 11 being cross-country. The season started for me on October 30 when we got enough snow to go cross-country skiing in our backyard.

We didn't make it up to the mountains for downhill skiing until mid-December. That's when we closed on our condo, nicely coinciding with Trish's birthday weekend.

Happy Birthday to my winter-loving Wonder Woman, @TrishPhoto! 🎉❤️ pic.twitter.com/1Ec60gLlN4
— Matt Raible (@mraible) December 17, 2023

I started my Funemployment experience on February 1st and spent the following week in Winter Park, skiing with glee and my newfound freedom. I skied nine days in February, mostly during the week.

In March, I flew to Vermont and went skiing at Sugarbush for a friend's birthday.

We frolicked in Winter Park and Steamboat during Spring Break.

I threatened to not purchase the kids' ski passes for next year if they didn't ski four days. They both fulfilled that obligation in April and we had some fun family weekends on the slopes.

I did a marvelous road trip to the Utah JUG, hitting Copper, Snowbird, Alta, and Steamboat along the way.

We celebrated our final weekend of skiing with a tailgate in the parking lot at Mary Jane on Saturday and a bluebird day on Sunday.

Now we're in the dawn of summer and I'm excited for car show, mountain biking, golf, and rafting season. Hefe looked smashing at the VWs on the Green car show in May!

It's showtime at VWs on The Green! 😃 #vwotg #vwbus #HefeTheBus pic.twitter.com/VG0QcEgvYF
— Matt Raible (@mraible) May 19, 2024

I especially like this photo I captured that afternoon.

We went rafting a few times on the Upper Colorado in June. On Father's Day weekend, the CFS was above 5300!

The mountain biking has been excellent in the high country and the views are magnificent.

I ❤️ Colorado! For more ski season photos, see my 2023-24 Ski Season album on Flickr.

My Marvelous Road Trip to the Utah JUG

Matt Raible — Wed, 22 May 2024 09:35:09 -0600

I have many fond memories from speaking at the Utah JUG over the years. I fell in love with Utah when I worked at Overstock in 2011 and experienced the greatest snow on earth. It's wild to reminisce about 2018 too. I spoke at the Denver JUG on Wednesday, then woke up early on Thursday and drove eight hours (through multiple snow storms) and made it 15 minutes before my talk. I lost a windshield wiper in the process and didn't have time to replace it, so it permanently etched a line in the vehicle's windshield. In February 2020, I did a Rocky Mountain JUG tour with Ray Tsang. That's when I learned that Ray is really good at pool.

Because of these experiences, I always jump at the opportunity when I'm invited back. This year, I decided to take my time and do a road trip in my trusty VW Vanagon (Stout) to Utah. I planned to mountain bike in Fruita and Moab along the way, then ski at a couple Utah resorts before returning home.

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a storm coming the night before my departure on April 16th. I quickly altered my plans and fell into an 18" powder day at Copper Mountain on Tuesday morning.

That afternoon, I drove to Fruita and went for a mountain bike ride on 18 Road. There are not many places where it's possible to have an epic powder day and do an awesome mountain bike ride in the same day. I love Colorado!

I camped in Stout that night and woke up to a beautiful desert morning. After some coffee and oatmeal with raspberries and walnuts, I headed for Moab.

I stopped at Klondike Bluffs for a 16.2 mile ride that took me 3½ hours. I was gassed at the top but thoroughly enjoyed the views.

I finished driving to Salt Lake City on Wednesday afternoon. I'm always impressed with how close, and gorgeous, the mountains are to the city.

On Thursday morning, I released a new version of the Micronaut blueprint for JHipster, then hit the slopes at Snowbird. The weather was fantastic for spring skiing.

I made sure to get some runs in at Alta too.

I dressed up as an old-fashioned Java developer on Thursday evening and headed to the Utah JUG meetup at Lucid's Global HQ. I was pleasantly surprised to see a full room of Java enthusiasts. Before my talk, Jason Porter announced that it was his last meeting as President of UJUG. He served in this role for 11.5 years and was amazing at it. Congratulations on your retirement, Jason!

I spoke about Micro Frontends for Java Microservices and used JHipster to demonstrate how it all worked.

Kudos to all the fabulous developers who attended the @UtahJava meetup tonight and listened to me ramble on about micro frontends and @jhipster. You can find my slides on @speakerdeck:

🏔️? https://t.co/Kp19jjOG8E #microfrontends #jhipster #react #modulefederation pic.twitter.com/W7tF7pUxpt
— Matt Raible (@mraible) April 19, 2024

My slide deck was similar to the one I delivered at Devnexus the previous week, with minor enhancements.

I received a lot of positive feedback on LinkedIn after my talk, particularly from college students that Jason had invited from his alma mater. This put a smile of satisfaction on my face well into the evening.

On Friday, I woke up early to get a start on my road trip home. I was originally planning to ski another mountain in Utah, but realized I could make it to Steamboat by noon, and chose that route instead. Stout's red-blinky-light alerted me that something was wrong when I stopped at the gas station. Two quarts of oil fixed things and I was on my way. The open road with minimal traffic was wonderful.

I arrived at Steamboat around noon, just in time for spring skiing in a t-shirt.

After Steamboat, I headed to our Ski Chalet in Winter Park for the weekend. Friends joined us for an end-of-ski-season celebration in Mary Jane's Challenger lot on Saturday morning.

Sunday was a sunny, bluebird day. The kids and I ended our ski season with a final run down Trestle and a stop at the treehouse.

More photos on Flickr → Road Trip to Utah JUG 2024

I arrived home late Sunday night. I'm proud of Stout for successfully completing the trip. Now I have even more fond memories of speaking at the Utah JUG. Thanks to Jason Porter, Don Bogardus, and Jonathan Bronson for the opportunity! 😊

Farewell to the 2022-2023 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Fri, 7 Jul 2023 08:26:24 -0600

You can tell your Spring is a whirlwind when you don't have time to write your end-of-ski-season post until July!

My ski season started way back in October, on Halloween at A-Basin, to be precise. It ended with an Okta + Gradle Developer Ski Day on April 13th. I'm proud to say I achieved 39 days of skiing, with 15 being alpine skiing and the rest being cross-country skiing. A lot of the cross-country skiing was done in our backyard, on the neighborhood bridal trails. We got lucky this year because it snowed in early January and stuck around until February. That's rare in our neck of the woods.

The highlight of the ski season was celebrating Trish's 50th birthday at A-Basin. We rented a few spots on the beach, invited a bunch of friends, and had a blast.

The onesies were Trish's idea. 😅 You can buy your own from Tipsy Elves.

Other big moments include skiing with the Morse family and friends in Winter Park, cross-country skiing in Crested Butte during Winter Tech Forum, and skiing with Jack in Steamboat during his Spring Break.

I partnered with my friend, Brian Demers (now at Gradle), for a Developer Ski Day at A-Basin. He was in town speaking at the Boulder and Denver JUGs, and we're thankful our management approved the event!

After we put away our skis for the season, Jack celebrated his last prom with friends, I took the kids to a Denver Nuggets playoff game, and we got Hefe ready for show season.

We visited my parents in Montana for Mother's Day.

Recharging in the backwoods of Montana with family. Started the day with coffee, mimosas, and huckleberry pancakes. ☕️🥂😋

Happy Mother's Day to all the incredible moms out there! ❤️? pic.twitter.com/sjmChuzNpo
— Matt Raible (@mraible) May 14, 2023

And we celebrated Jack's High School Graduation at the end of May. Congratulations, son!

We celebrated our son Jack's high school graduation this week and had a fabulous time with family and friends. Here are a few of my favorite photos.

See the full album on Flickr with Julie and Trish's awesome photos: https://t.co/XSoUZnjOSk

Congratulations, Jack! 🥳 pic.twitter.com/1Ea1LZrFML
— Matt Raible (@mraible) May 27, 2023

June was fun too. We traded in Trish's Tesla Model X for a Chevy Suburban because the latter is a much better tow vehicle for our whitewater rafts.

Jack and I got to go to NBA Finals Game 2. We had a great time, even though it was the only loss by the Nuggets in the Finals.

We were afforded this luxury because we bought Nuggets half-season tickets this year. What a year to start being a season ticket holder! The Denver Nuggets won the NBA Championship on June 12th. I may have gotten misty-eyed a few times after they won. 🥹

Now that it's summertime, we're getting back on the river, polishing our VWs for shows, and excited that both Abbie and Jack are going to CU Boulder in the fall. Next ski season, we're looking to get a place in the mountains again. I can't wait to see what the future holds!

For more ski season photos, see my 2022-23 Ski Season album on Flickr.

Farewell to the 2021-2022 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Tue, 24 May 2022 11:10:55 -0600

I had a lot of fun this ski season, but I didn't make it to the mountains as much as I thought I would. I bought both the Epic and Ikon passes with high hopes at the beginning of the season. The rest of the family had Ikon. The ski season started for me on Nov 24, 2020 with a backyard cross-country ski. It took me another month until I ventured up to the high country. A-Basin didn't have a whole lot of snow on Dec 23.

I got to ski with the Makofsky family at Copper on New Years Eve.

The next day, Trish and I enjoyed a fresh blanket of snow to ring in the new year. 🎊

There was a boys trip to Jackson Hole in late January.

And more nordic skiing with our pups, Daisy and Kai.

We skied with the Morse Family and played with the Snyders in Steamboat.

And closed out the year with a day off the internet at Mary Jane.

My stats for the season:

15 days downhill
11 days cross-country

26 days combined is a far cry from last year's 51! It makes a big difference when you rent a place in the mountains like we did last year.

There weren't that many ski days with Abbie and Jack this year. Abbie ended up skiing a lot with friends from CU Boulder. Jack is looking as handsome as ever. Here's his prom photo with friends.

Trish was the fantastic photographer for the big night.

Hefe the Bus is ready for summer, as are we.

We're traveling to Alaska with my folks for their 50th anniversary, Trish just rented an RV for adventuring to Montana, and we have a week-long rafting trip starting at the Gates of Lodore. I hope you get a chance to opt outside in the next few months too. Giddyup and get out there! 🤠

Farewell to the 2020-21 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Wed, 2 Jun 2021 13:31:07 -0600

This ski season was interesting to say the least. Because of COVID-19, most Colorado ski resorts required reservations in order to ski. This wasn't too painful because we did most of our skiing during the week.

We recognized that social distancing might be an issue on weekends, so we rented a condo in Winter Park for the season. This allowed us to ski weekdays while working remotely. We didn't have it the whole season, just a week every month.

The ski season started for me on November 24, 2020, with some backyard cross-country skiing.

I was super pumped when I drove our Syncro Westy to the condo and discovered it fit in the garage! My first day on the slopes was Friday, December 4th.

The Fraser River Trail was just across the road from our condo, so it was easy to get some cross-country skiing in too.

That weekend, Trish and Jack joined me and we went Nordic skiing at Snow Mountain Ranch's Nordic Center.

We took the day off on Trish's birthday; skiing corduroy groomers in the morning and cross-country in the afternoon.

I'm normally a big fan of taking two weeks off for Christmas and New Years. Since everyone stayed home for the holidays this year, I chose to work through them. I took off the first week in January instead.

I worked in Stout the Syncro in the C-Lot at Mary Jane when I returned in February. That's the day I learned that four hours of Zoom costs about 7 GB in bandwidth. I tethered on my T-Mobile phone the whole time and only had to buy an additional 10 GB (for $10) at the very end. The fresh powder at the end of the day made it worth it!

Hawaii Adventures in Kauai

My parents like to get away from Montana in the middle of winter. Before the pandemic hit, we ventured to New Orleans. This year, we decided to head to Kauai for two weeks. There were many COVID protocols in place for this trip.

We had to have a negative COVID test 72 hours before departure. We had to show those results when we landed in Kauai. Then we had to quarantine in a "resort bubble" hotel for 72 hours. Next, we had to take another test and receive negative results. After that, we were free to rent a car and start our island adventures. Abbie brought her boyfriend, Joseph, and best friend, Rory, along with us.

We left early for the airport because my parents took an at-home test and hadn't received their results yet. Since they had a 3-hour layover in Denver, we figured I could take them to a local Walgreens to get tested and everything would be good to go.

When we were driving to the airport, Trish's engine light came on in her Tahoe. By the time we arrived at the airport, the vehicle was obviously dying. We called AAA to pick it up and I jumped in a Lyft with my parents. The local Walgreens was hesitant to test without an appointment, but we told them our situation, and a manager there did his best to make it happen.

The manager was successful—I received the results on my phone as the plane was taxiing down the runway!

On our last night, Trish and I saw live music for the first time in over a year!

Trish ordered a new lens for her camera when she saw the Albatross nesting nearby. It arrived just hours before we flew home.

March Madness

When we arrived home in March, I headed back to the condo for our week. I arrived late at night and texted the owner to tell him I couldn't get the hot tub to turn on. He texted me back three times before I woke up the next morning. I had the wrong dates! People were checking in that night, so I had to wash all the sheets and get out of there quickly. I got all my work done in the morning and hit the slopes in the afternoon.

I returned the following week and had a blast skiing with my buddy, Bill Lyons. He's been a ski instructor at Winter Park and Mary Jane for decades and showed me some hidden trails. Thanks, Bill!

We'd just returned from Hawaii, so we figured we might be able to skip Spring Break. Then we learned Abbie had senioritis and wanted to rendezvous with her similarly-minded cousins near a beach. Trish's parents have a place in Naples, Florida. Since they weren't using it, we made a plan, bought some tickets, and spent a splendid week with Trish's brother and his family.

The owner of the Winter Park condo offered us a few free nights in April, so Jack and I headed up for the weekend. Just before leaving, Jack approached me and asked, "Do I have to go? It's so boring up there." I agreed with him. It was boring and I liked that. I told him to bring a good book and get in the van. We cross-county skied and had a beautiful day of corduroy runs to end the season.

My stats for the season: 28 days cross-country skiing, 23 days downhill. That's 51 combined days! 😊

Detoxed and Fully Vaccinated

At the beginning of April, Trish and I started a 21-Day Sugar Detox. Abbie, Jack, and I were fully vaccinated by the end of the month, and Trish was well on her way.

I'm happy to announce that I'm #FullyVaccinated. Had 2nd @pfizer shot on Apr 14. I feel lucky 🍀 to have experienced no symptoms other than extreme joy. 🥳@TrishPhoto and I just finished a 23-day sugar detox too. We're feeling good!! ✌️ pic.twitter.com/6chqkFbPB7
— Matt Raible (@mraible) April 28, 2021

The following week, I rode my bike into Thrive DTC and marveled at their remodeling project.

The Graduate

May came quickly and with it, the end of the school. I snapped photos of both kids on their last days.

Abbie graduates from high school this Friday. My family is flying into town today. Trish's arrives tomorrow. We have the VWs all cleaned up, our landscaping/carport/basketball court project is finishing up, and we're grateful for everything that brought us to this point. 🥰

See all 148 photos on Flickr →

A Fantastically Fun February at Jfokus 2020 and the Rocky Mountain JUGs

Matt Raible — Sun, 15 Mar 2020 14:24:25 -0600

Jfokus is one of my favorite conferences in the world. It takes place in Stockholm, Sweden, during one of the coldest months of the year. As a native Montanan, I love the winter season and skiing. It was with great pleasure that I returned to Jfokus as a speaker this year, after skipping the last couple of years.

True story: the last time I was at Jfokus was 2017, and Okta had just acquired Stormpath. I negotiated my Okta employment terms in the Radisson Blu lobby!

I gave three talks this year: two on the main stage during Jfokus and one at Jforum Stockholm on Tuesday evening.

You can find my presentations below.

Jfokus also published recordings of my main-stage sessions on YouTube.

After Jfokus, the organizers planned a speaker's conference at Trysil Ski Area. There wasn't a ton of snow, but the groomers were fast, and they had a 45° double black!

I had my GoPro and shot some footage of the fun.

The beer tasting and dinner that evening at Kveik Restaurant & Brewpub was excellent!

Beer tasting at Kveik Restaurant & Brewpub in Trysil, Norway. ?? #jfokus #speakerconf pic.twitter.com/CR8t2fjmR6
— Matt Raible (@mraible) February 6, 2020

Friday was a gorgeous day on the slopes, and Saturday was the opposite.

Yesterday versus today. #whiteout #skiing #jfokus #speakerconf #day15 pic.twitter.com/L7ynGv0Umt
— Matt Raible (@mraible) February 8, 2020

I had a marvelous time at Jfokus 2020! Thanks to Mattias Karlsson and crew for a exquisite experience! 👌

For more photos see my Jfokus 2020 album

Rocky Mountain JUG Tour with Ray Tsang

I flew back to Denver on Sunday, February 9th. The next day, I woke up early for a Developer Ski Day at Eldora. Stout the Syncro was not a big supporter of the event.

Doh! Just when I thought my Syncro Westy was doing great, something breaks. Loud thump like I'd run over something, then a knocking while driving. I'm guessing it's a ball joint in the front.

Currently waiting for a tow from AAA.

Heckuva start to #DevSkiDay! #VanLife pic.twitter.com/2KMUZSTdtX
— Matt Raible (@mraible) February 10, 2020

Once I made it on the slopes, we had a ball with Christina, Ben, Robert, and Joel.

More photos →

On Tuesday, Ray and I prepared for our Rocky Mountain JUG Tour consisting of stops in Boulder, Denver, and Salt Lake City. I met him at a Google Boulder office and delighted in the VW decorations.

Our talk was titled Choose Your Own Adventure with JHipster and Kubernetes. We used JHipster to build and deploy whatever technologies the audience chose. We let them choose the database, the build tool, the JVM language, the web framework, and the architecture (monolith vs microservices). After we created the apps, I showed them running, and made them work with Okta. Ray took it from there and used JHipster's Kubernetes generator to add (or exclude) Istio and deploy everything to Google Cloud. When all worked on the first try at the Denver JUG, we were pretty pumped! 🙌

Interesting trends: we had a lot of enthusiasm for Grails in Colorado and all audiences chose microservices. You can skim through our presentation below.

On Friday, we hit the slopes for another developer ski day.

View this post on Instagram

?It's a #HappyFriday at @snowbird with @saturnism2 and @brettgpalmer! ?#DevSkiDay

A post shared by Matt Raible (@vwsforlife) on Feb 14, 2020 at 10:40am PST

Thanks to all the fine folks who joined our ski days and came to the JUG meetups! We loved the energy and community vibe from each location. ❤️😃

Ray and I had a Rocky Mountain adventure with JHipster, and you can too! From the comfort of your own home, you can install JHipster and choose your own adventure. Good luck, and please let us know if you have any questions.

January Jaunts to New Orleans and Jackson Hole

Matt Raible — Tue, 3 Mar 2020 22:47:39 -0700

Trish and I started 2020 with a fun trip to New Orleans to meet up with our family. My parents wanted to get out of the snowy cold of Montana, as did Kalin and Mya from Washington state. My Aunt Mary from New York joined us, and we brought the kids. Trish even executed a trip to the Saints vs. Vikings NFL playoff game!

We celebrated "the superiors" birthdays, listened to lots of good music, hung out with our friends Jill and Brian, and savored many excellent meals.

For more photos see The Superiors Birthdays in New Orleans.

We returned to Denver in mid-January and Trish flew down to visit her folks in Naples, Florida. They spent a joyous week together before she flew back to start a new job.

While Trish was golfing with her Dad, I prepared for another trip: a 5-day ski weekend in Jackson Hole. My awesome friends Chris and Ben arranged it all; my friend Joe and I just had to show up and have a good time. We met Jersey Dave and Patriot Tom once we arrived. There were six skiers in total, and we enjoyed some of the best powder days of the year.

I made a video of our adventures with an AC/DC soundtrack. The reason for the music is because we saw Hell's Belles play at the Mangy Moose (footage included) and they were AWESOME! I smile every time I watch it. 😊

Yes, January was awesome. We got some good family time in warmer weather and I experienced Jackson Hole with lots of powder for the first time. Yeehaw! 🤠

Farewell to the 2018-19 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Sat, 25 May 2019 15:25:37 -0600

Holy cow! 2018-19 was one of the best ski seasons ever!!

It all started in December with some gorgeous powder days and only got better from there.

Trish and I took her birthday off (December 17) and enjoyed a beautiful day with no crowds.

New Years in Winter Park

I planned things like a skiing dad should, and scheduled a family vacation in Winter Park for a week that included New Years Eve. If you've followed me a while, you'll remember that we made our dreams come true in 2011 with mountain views.

Buying the Ski Shack in Winter Park was one of the best things Trish and I ever did. It had spectacular views and provided an opportunity to make another dream come true: 42 days in a season!

Man, that place was awesome. We had to sell it when I joined Stormpath and we bought the Raible Ranch.

We have many fond memories of Winter Park, and some of our best friends live there. If you're familiar with fraternities and sororities, you'll know what I mean when I say my little brother has a place there. Trish's little sister does too. Joe and Chris are special people in our lives and we always have a blast when we get to fraternize with them.

Chris Caldes is incredibly special since she married us in 2013.

We thoroughly enjoyed partying at her house for New Year's Eve and celebrating with a plethora of folks from our rafting family.

Cross-Country Skiing

Not only did the powder fall like mad, but I rekindled my love for cross-country skiing. It was snowing so much in our backyard that I went out and bought x-country skis. Hiking with our dogs (Sagan and Daisy) in our backyard is fun, but skiing is a whole other level. There's bridal paths everywhere, and they're border collies, so I let them run free and we have a ball. It's one of the coolest parts of living in the country.

It all started with x-country skiing at Devils Thumb Ranch over the New Years Holiday.

I also played hooky a few times. My co-workers wouldn't know because I'm pretty productive at work. In fact, one of my favorite stories of the year was on a Friday morning. I'd put in a lot of hours that week and when I joined the team call for the week, my friend Lindsay said "I just hope you're not working!"

That's when I turned on my my video camera and revealed that I was sitting in Stout the Syncro at the base of Mary Jane. Trish and I woke up early, drove to Winter Park, and joined our conference calls as you normally would. The difference was we were skiing fresh powder and grinning from ear-to-ear. That was probably my favorite all-hands meeting of the year.

Multi-tasking at its best: listening to the company All Hands meeting while getting fresh tracks at #MaryJane. ? #PowderDay #LifeAtOkta pic.twitter.com/WNXH5qjWwT
— Matt Raible (@mraible) March 1, 2019

Skiing at Wolf Creek

The other untold story from ski season is about a ski trip to Wolf Creek. I'd was returning home from DevNexus on a Friday night. As we were landing, I saw the powder forecast in Wolf Creek and texted a bunch of skiing friends.

Alonso is in Wolf Creek for the next week. There's 1-2 feet in the forecast by Tuesday. He has sleeping for 8. Road trip!

I received one positive response from my buddy Ryan Moore on Saturday afternoon.

I'm in on WC.

To make it happen, I worked all day Sunday, writing two blog posts in one day. We departed early Monday morning and arrived in Wolf Creek around 1pm. Along the way, I received a reminder that I had a call with a Fortune 500 company who was interested in Okta's API. I had no reception when I received the reminder, but we found three bars 10 minutes later. We pulled over and I took the call like I was sitting at home.

Knee-deep powder greeted us that day, and we had a ball. We stayed with our friends (Chris, Mary, and Luna) that night. Chris Alonso is a very important person in my life. He was the wicked-smart computer science major that I knew in college. He's the one that showed me coding might be a fabulous career and convinced me (by example) that it's what I wanted to do. It was fitting that his newly-built house in Wolf Creek didn't have internet access, or cell phone reception.

On Tuesday morning, I needed to publish a blog post before we hit the slopes. We had a choice: go into town for wi-fi, or head to the ski resort and hope they had cell reception. We figured, "of course they'll have reception at the resort". We woke up at 6 am, left the house by 6:20 and were in the lodge by 7 am.

They did not have cell reception. Nor wi-fi. There was 24" of fresh powder in the last 12 hours.

We were the only ones in the lodge aside from the folks that were opening up the kitchen. A lady mentioned that she had cell reception. I asked her if I could tether from her phone to get an internet connection. She didn't know what I was talking about but lent me her phone regardless. An hour later, I had completed my task of creating a pull request for my blog post to be published.

The lifts didn't open until 10 am that day because of power issues and so much powder.

The powder was thigh-deep and glorious.

Around noon, I had to fix things in my pull request before the blog post could be published. I found the same lady, borrowed her phone again and took up a cross-legged position in the hallways downstairs (near the power outlet) to publish and promote said blog post. I tipped her $40 that day. I doubt she knows how much she influenced my wonderful skiing experience.

The crazy part of the story happened the next day. There was a blizzard warning in Denver and we knew the pass might close at 6 am (for avalanche blasting). We woke up at 5 am on Wednesday to start our journey home. Since Ryan knew the area better, he took the first shift. When we left Chris's house, he asked, "how many miles does the van get to a tank?"

My answer: the most I've done is 266.

His response: we're at 250.

We drove over Wolf Creek pass and found the nearest gas station on the other side. When we arrived, we were at 265 miles on the tank. Phew!

I drove for the rest of the trip and experienced the most treacherous driving conditions of my life. If you live in Denver, you'll remember this as Bomb Cyclone 2019 #1. We had a DJUG meeting scheduled that night, a Java celebrity speaking, and I needed to get back in time for it. The winds and visibility were absolutely ridiculous along the way. There were many times where I had 10' of visibility and the winds were so strong they almost blew us off the road. Following a snow plow just after South Park was a life saver. When we got to Bailey (1 hour from Denver), 285 was not plowed and there was a foot of snow on the road. 4WD and following UPS trucks with chains got us through it all.

While driving through Denver in the blizzard conditions, I realized that it would be a bad idea to do the DJUG meetup that night. My fellow organizers canceled the meetup around the same time. It's nuts to reminisce and realize the April meetup was canceled too (because of Bomb Cyclone #2).

I have another good story that proves how good it was. I bought brand new powder skis at the end of February. The shop was willing to put my old bindings on my new skis, but they needed 2-3 days to do it. For the whole month of March, I never had an opportunity to do it! The powder was too frequest.

Spring Break in Steamboat

We took the kids to Steamboat for the first half of Spring Break and had an absolute blast!

That was our last ski trip for the year. However, it did snow this week, so I did get one last backyard x-country ski in. My only regret is we didn't make it to Crested Butte this year. That's OK, there's always next year!

VWs on the Green 2019

As is tradition, we showed both our awesome VWs in the Denver's annual VWs on the Green Show. We spent several hours polishing both rigs and are happy to report that Hefe won best in his class! He's only lost one year since we've had him finished. That was last year, and Stout the Syncro won, so we're on a five year winning streak. Next year, we plan to show up, enjoy the crowd, and not enter. We've won enough, so we'd like others to have a chance.

For more photos of this year's ski season, see my album on Flickr.

As I write this, I'm on my way to Barcelona for JBCNConf 2019. I'm taking the whole family with me since Trish is fluent in Spanish and Abbie and Jack have been studying it for a few years. On our way home, we'll stop in Boston to see our niece (Morgan) graduate from high school. It's a great start to a sure-to-be fabulous summer. 🌤

Farewell to the 2017-18 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 07:50:32 -0600

Summertime has arrived in Colorado! Typically, I try to write my "end of ski season" blog post in April or May, but this year it slipped until June. Do I have a good excuse?! Not really. Things got busy with my trip to Richmond and Oktane 18, that's all.

I'm going to keep this post short and sweet, to mirror the ski season. We didn't receive a whole lot of snow in the Rocky Mountains so the powder days were few and far between. There were a couple though, and I got to spend a powder day with some old friends at Winter Park!

The kids and I skied a few days in December, but it wasn't anything to write home about. For New Years, we packed up the Syncro and headed for Crested Butte.

Crested Butte had OK conditions, but the real fun happened when we ditched downhill and tried Nordic skiing. We spent a few hours with James Ward and daughter Josie on a beautiful cross country ski adventure. I grew up cross-country skiing to the bus stop, so it was a real hoot to do it with the whole family.

The real magic happened when I visited the Utah JUG in February. I drove through several snow storms on the way and arrived just in time for my talk on microservices, JHipster, and OAuth.

The next morning, there was 17" at Snowbird. That was a lovely morning.

That evening, Trish and the kids flew in and we hit Alta the next day. They still had fresh snow in spots and lots of sunshine.

We spent Sunday and Monday in Park City and got dumped on again. 17" again on Monday. Wahoo! We stayed and skied the morning, then endured a long 10-hour drive home.

Those were the main highlights of the ski season. Both kids are legit skiers now and will ski blacks all day if the snow is good. OK, maybe not all day, but for a few hours at least.

As for the VWs, Stout the Syncro won his class at the VWs on the Green show! Hefe the Bus didn't win anything, but he sure did look good!

Summer 2018

Now it's pretty much summer in our neck of the woods. We spent last weekend rafting on the Upper Colorado and we're hitting the Arkansas near Salida this weekend. I've been riding my bike(s) a lot, but haven't done a lot of single track trails. I hope to fix that soon.

If you're a developer that follows this blog - I hope to see you on the road in the coming months! I'll be at JHipster Conf next week, KC/DC, UberConf, and JCrete in July, and Boston JUG in August. Hope y'all have a great summer.

Farewell to the 2016-17 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Tue, 23 May 2017 09:26:02 -0600

The 2016-17 Ski Season was a fun one for the Raible Family. Abbie and Jack are good enough that they can zoom down the mountain without looking back. Their preferred runs are now blacks and they're no longer intimidated by moguls. We spent most of the season skiing at Mary Jane and Winter Park, but also had some trips to Crested Butte, Steamboat, and Montana.

On our way to Crested Butte (near the end of January), Stout the Syncro's front drive train started making crunching noises and we had to pull over. It was almost midnight, and we knew we couldn't fix it on the side of the road, so we called AAA and spent the night in a nearby hotel. I rode back to Denver the next day with the tow truck driver on the bumpiest ride of my life. The tow truck's tires were out of balance and it felt like things were going to fall apart at any moment. We later discovered that several things failed that night: one axle broke, a CV went out, and a wheel bearing was gone too. Trish and the kids spent the day at a hot springs in Buena Vista while I drive Trish's Tahoe back to complete the trip. While we missed a day skiing, the day we made it for was great and CB continues to be one of our favorite resorts.

I had some awesome solo skiing adventures too: skiing in Sweden after Jfokus, skiing in Steamboat during Winter Wonder Grass, and Miller Time 2017 in Northstar, California. Miller Time is an annual event to remember a great friend, Jason Miller, who passed on way too early in October 2015.

The highlight of the season was when we traveled to Big Sky Resort in Montana. I'd never skied at Big Sky before and it's been on my bucket list for years. We stayed a week during the kids' Spring Break and experienced some of the best skiing of our lives. When I asked Jack if he had any goals for Spring Break, he said he wanted to "ski 5 double blacks". There were so many double blacks on the mountain, it was unbelievable. We had his goal accomplished by noon on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I didn't remember to use our GoPro until Wednesday. However, that was the day we skipped skiing and did zip lining, so that was a ton of fun. I left my phone and laptop at home that week and thouroughly enjoyed being disconnected.

The video below shows our zip lining adventures, as well as some footage of our best day skiing. It was a powder day, we were on one of the first chairs, and we had fresh tracks all morning. There was an immmense amount of giggline, smiling, and hooting and hollering that morning.

More photos of our ski season adventures can be found on Flickr.

Stout 5.0 and Hefe 3.0

Now that ski season is over, it's time to focus on our favorite summertime activities: VWs, horseback riding, mountain biking, and rafting. Stout 5.0 and Hefe 3.0 were released at the beginning of May and they've both been running great!

Stout 5.0 (painted hood) and Hefe 3.0 (stereo) are lookin' pretty good on this fine Colorado day! ?? #vw?? #vanlife #vwbus #21windows pic.twitter.com/te9OvbJXA3
— Matt Raible (@mraible) May 6, 2017

Driving Hefe around with his rockin' stereo has been a lot of fun. You can imagine the kids giggling in the back with no seatbelts and ragtop down.

Hefe won best in class (Custom Bus 49-67) at VWs on the Green last weekend. Two years in a row baby!

More photos on Flickr → Stout 5.0 and Hefe 3.0

Speaking of winning, Abbie and Tucker have been tearing it up at the Colorado Horse Park. They've won 24 ribbons over the last five months!

Ski season is over, summer is almost upon us, and both our VWs are in tip-top shape. I really can't ask for anything more!

A Jolly Good Time at Jfokus 2017

Matt Raible — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 17:21:23 -0700

I like speaking at conferences. I don't enjoy the stress of creating a new talk and delivering it for the first time, but I do enjoy delivering talks, and I love the feeling after. It's even better when the conference provides an atmosphere that creates lasting memories.

I've been to many conferences in my career. A conference with a sense of community provides one of my favorite experiences. Not just for the people that attend, but for the people that speak. I've been to several conferences that provide this experience and I'm happy to say I just attended one of my favorites: Jfokus 2017.

I flew from Denver to Stockholm last Monday and performed my first talk on Testing Angular Applications just a few hours after I arrived on Tuesday. Usually, I take a day or two to recover from jet lag, but this time I figured I could clutch up and make it work. Going to sleep on the plane at 6pm Denver time certainly helped and I think the talk went well. For the live coding part of the presentation, I used the second half of my Angular and Angular CLI tutorial. I posted my slides for this talk to SlideShare and Speaker Deck. You can also view them below.

Tuesday night, there was a conference party. I met many new people and put some names to faces with a vibrant community of conference attendees and speakers.

Late night #Jfokus party! pic.twitter.com/IqjczVXuP6
— Matt Raible (@mraible) February 7, 2017

I enjoyed Juergen Hoeller's talk about Spring 5 on Wednesday morning. There's a lot of innovation still happening within Spring and it was nice to get a sense of when releases will be happening.

Spring Framework 5.0 RC1 in April 2017, GA in May. @springboot 2.0 M1 in April too. Spring 5.1 with Servlet 4, Spring Boot 2.0 GA in Q4.
— Matt Raible (@mraible) February 8, 2017

I attended a talk on The Amazing Angular Router with Gerard Sans and then took a stroll around Stockholm in the crisp, cool sunshine.

I gave my talk on PWAs with Ionic 2, Angular, and Spring Boot on Wednesday afternoon. It was my first time doing the talk. I really enjoyed this talk because it inspired me to create Ionic pages for Stormpath to simplify the demo. Also, developing a mobile app with Ionic 2 has been on my technology bucket list for the last year. You can find my slides for this presentation on SlideShare and Speaker Deck. The app I wrote during the presentation is available on GitHub, as is the tutorial I used to create it.

Little did I know, the community aspect of Jfokus was just getting started. When I was invited to the post-Jfokus Speaker's Conference, I leapt at the opportunity. I didn't do it because I thought I'd learn a bunch of stuff, I did it because it offered skiing - one of my favorite activities.

It turned out to be an incredible experience. I knew some of the other speakers, but I certainly didn't know all of them. Sharing a room with a stranger caused him to become a friend. The views while skiing were magical. The coziness of the lodge where we stayed and the beauty of its atrium were mesmerizing.

I skied all three days, but I also had a blast sharing so many conversations with such a fun community of technology professionals. When I wasn't trying to catch up on email, Slack, and customer support tickets, we shared stories about how to best work with distributed development teams. Before enjoying the hot tub and roof-top sauna, we hacked games on Raspberry Pi's and make the zombie apocalypse possible with sensors and buttons.

On the bus ride back to Stockholm, I sat with Ray Tsang and figured out how to do another tech bucket list item: deploying a JHipster microservices architecture to Google Cloud. It wasn't easy with the bumpy road, but we took breaks when we started to feel sick. The bus had wi-fi, making it possible to upload fat Docker images to Docker Hub.

Hacking with @saturnism on the #Jfokus bus ride. Got a @kubernetesio cluster with @java_hipster microservices running on Google Cloud! ???? pic.twitter.com/wqest06HOu
— Matt Raible (@mraible) February 11, 2017

Before I left Sweden on Sunday, I walked around The Old Town in Stockholm and took a few pictures.

Farewell to the 2014-2015 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Tue, 12 May 2015 08:19:03 -0600

My family and I had a terrific ski season this year. Last year was an epic year with 11 resorts and a heli-skiing trip to British Columbia. This year, we skied Winter Park/Mary Jane, Steamboat, Copper, Crested Butte and Telluride. I logged 42 days of skiing, my most ever.

My season started on November 19th at Winter Park. Trish and I skied it again together a few days later. Opening Day at Mary Jane on November 28th was beautiful.

It's a BEAUTIFUL opening day at Mary Jane! #75WPR pic.twitter.com/l3BfKJgz5y
— Matt Raible (@mraible) November 28, 2014

Over Christmas and New Years, we stayed at our Ski Shack near Winter Park and got a number of days in. My buddy Joe Lamont and I skied together on the coldest day, when it was -6°F at the base of Mary Jane. I was pumped when got to ski with Mattias Karlsson and his family just after New Years.

Had a great time skiing with @matkar and his family this morning. Impressed by their skiing and snowboarding skills! pic.twitter.com/7iGZkg36M0
— Matt Raible (@mraible) January 4, 2015

For Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, we escaped the crowds and drove to Steamboat. The conditions weren't great, but we had a fun time nevertheless.

In early February, I did a hut trip in the Roaring Fork Valley with a great friend of mine, Ryan Moore. We climbed uphill a lot, sweated a lot and created some great memories.

For Presidents' Day Weekend, we packed up the kids and drove our Ski Bus to Crested Butte.

We enjoyed a fabulous weekend skiing with the kids and socializing with James and Jenny Ward. I also had fun surprising Trish with a family photograph session with Alison White.

In late February, we hosted our first tailgating party at Mary Jane. It was a powder day and the runs were great. I made some delicious buffalo chili and we enjoyed cold beverages with friends.

The kids had a couple days off from school in early March, so we packed up and headed for Telluride. The kids and I had never been before and boy were we impressed! The weather was beautiful and the kids found the courage and desire to do a number of double blacks. We had a blast that weekend, especially since Abbie and Jack both became fast and fearless.

The trip to Telluride marked an end to 5-weekends-in-a-row of skiing. I wrote about the fun we had in Skiing Adventures with our Syncro in the Rocky Mountains.

On March 13, day #36, I had one of the best ski days of my life (so far). My no-sugar and lots of exercise lifestyle helped me accomplish a 30,000 vertical feet day at Mary Jane. There was seven of us that day and we skied mostly blacks. It was hard to believe I pulled it off without eating or drinking anything all day. I was in the best ski shape of my life.

I slowed down a bit in April due to starting with a new client and visiting Trish's parents in Pennsylvania. However, my company's 9" rule kicked in on April 17th.

We ended the year with a tailgate party at Mary Jane on closing weekend. I spent the night in the Syncro at Mary Jane to get primo parking. A number of friends and kids showed up and we celebrated the end of the season with lots of smiles.

Summary
We had a blast this ski season. Normally, I shave my beard to a goatee at the end of ski season. However, this year I've signed up to a write a book on JHipster. Hipsters often have nice beards and mine seems to be pretty good right now, so I think I'll grow it until I've finished the book. Hopefully my bus will be done by then and I can get a nice author photo with my beard and a finished bus.

Next year, I hope to ski another 40+ days. Jack will be in 5th grade and can get three free days at all the resorts. We asked him if he wanted to travel around like we did last year with Abbie. He said he'd rather stay in Winter Park most of the time and do a few trips like we did this year. I'm OK with that. It was a glorious ski season.

Skiing Adventures with our Syncro in the Rocky Mountains

Matt Raible — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 06:01:09 -0600

Our Syncro Westy was returned to us in early February, after being in the shop since just before Christmas. It was in the shop for body work caused by an accident that was my fault. Luckily, no one was hurt and the damage was minor. The morning after we got it back, my awesome friend Ryan Moore and I packed it up and headed on a hut trip near Aspen, Colorado.

The next weekend was one of the most popular skiing holidays: Presidents' Day Weekend. We packed up the kids and drove our Ski Bus to Crested Butte. I took my guitar and Trish took her banjo (we both started taking weekly lessons at the beginning of the year). Our drive was smooth and our weekend was fabulous.

Saturday was Valentine's Day and I surprised Trish with a photo shoot of our family. I'd secretly hired Alison White to take our pictures and we met with her to talk about what we wanted on Saturday morning. After a fun consultation, we ventured to the mountain, picking up James Ward along the way. We skied a few runs together, stopped at the Ice Bar for a car bomb, then whisked off to our photo shoot.

We are extremely pleased with the results. Thanks Alison!

The next weekend, Trish and I packed up and headed to our Ski Shack in Winter Park. We stayed up late that Friday night, preparing chili and other fixins for a fun tailgate on Saturday. We didn't get much sleep, but we were in "C Lot" by 7:30 and on the lifts shortly after they opened. It was a powder day, and the runs were great. We met up with friends at our van around noon and enjoyed some tasty chili and cold beverages.

The last weekend in February, we met Trish's brother (also named Matt) in Vail. He was on a ski trip with a number of friends and Trish drove up to ski with him on Saturday morning. The kids and I slept in a bit and arrived at Copper just in time for free parking near the lifts. We skied all afternoon, then met up with Trish and Matt for some cocktails, then dinner. That night, we did some winter camping in the van.

The final weekend in my 5-weekends-in-a-row of skiing was a wonderful trip to Telluride. The kids had Thursday and Friday off of school last week, so we loaded up and drove to Telluride on Thursday. It took us most of the day to get there (7.5 hours), but the weather was beautiful and the roads were dry. Our van was too tall for our hotel's garage, so we had excellent parking spots all weekend.

This was the breakout weekend for Jack. Abbie's been skiing awesome all year and Jack's been pretty timid (lots of turns, going slow). There was something about our first day at Telluride that inspired him, because he loved their double blacks. We skied lots of steep runs, did laps on the terrain parks and flew down the mountain on blues. Telluride had a Spring Break atmosphere and our ski-in/ski-out accommodations didn't hurt. It was a glorious weekend. Trish and I were both very proud of the kids and how fast and fearless they've become on skis.

Full Album →

I'm extremely happy with our Syncro's performance and its new H6 (Subaru Outback) engine. It's been averaging 20mpg, most likely because I drive 55mph in the slow lanes up the passes. I figure we drove it just over 2000 miles on our 5-ski-weekends-in-5-weeks adventure. We thoroughly enjoyed skiing at Crested Butte, tailgating with powder at Mary Jane and shredding the double blacks at Telluride. I know we'll be back to all of them, some sooner than later.

In fact, I'll be meeting a few friends at Mary Jane this morning to attempt 30,000 vertical feet in one day. It'll be my 36th day of skiing this year. Happy Friday! Life is Good.

Harry Gates Hut Trip in the Roaring Fork Valley

Matt Raible — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 07:53:56 -0700

It's been several years since my last hut trip. When my friend Brad Swanson invited me this year, I jumped at the opportunity. Trish skipped this trip and my good friend Ryan joined in her place. It was Ryan's first hut trip. As a snowboarder, he opted to snowshoe with his snowboard on his back.

Our journey to Harry Gates Hut began early last Friday morning. Our Syncro had just returned from the body shop the night before and was ready to head for the hills. We arrived in Basalt, Colorado (in the Roaring Fork Valley) around 11am and were on the trail at 12:30pm.

From experience, I knew it was going to be a long slog uphill. I rented telemark skis, with NTN boots/bindings, from Confluence Kayaks. We both quickly realized we'd packed too many supplies, as our packs were quite heavy. Nevertheless, we trudged on, one foot in front of the other.

At 6.6 miles and 1900' elevation gain, Brad estimated it'd take us 4-6 hours for the hike in. We thought we were close to finishing the uphill when the sun set around 6pm. Because it was dark, and we only had one headlamp, we were unable to ski the last mile of downhill near the end. We arrived at the hut at 8:00pm, after 7.5 hours of hiking and sweating profusely. We were extremely happy to be finished.

The next day, we woke up, had a delicious pancake breakfast, then hiked to the top of Burnt Mountain. It was a two mile jaunt, straight uphill.

About halfway up, I noticed the other guy's heals looked funny. They had some sort of post that prevented their heal from coming all the way down, making it a lot easier for them to climb. I thought "WTF?", then looked at my own bindings and realized I had the same contraption. I shouted "Hey guys, this is a helluva lot easier - why didn't you tell me about the heal posts?!" They laughed and marveled that this was my third hut trip and no one had ever mentioned climbing posts. I guess that's what happens when you're always at the back of the pack.

The views from the top of Burnt Mountain were spectacular.

The run down wasn't great - we got about six turns in before we ran into flat trees. From there, it was lots of traversing and navigating between trees back to the hut. Our Saturday ski excursion took around 4.5 hours. We hung out at the hut, played cribbage, enjoyed the scenery and went to bed early that night.

Sunday, we hiked out. It took us around two hours to reach the high point in the trail, then 30 minutes to complete the 5-mile downhill stretch.

Looking back, Ryan and I estimated we did about 14 hours of hiking at 10,000 feet over the weekend. While my pack was heavy, it was much easier for me to skin up the mountain than it was for Ryan on snowshoes. Especially when he kept post-holing on the hike up Burnt Mountain. Nevertheless, we survived and created some great memories from the experience.

Thanks to Brad and everyone else for showing us that packing light can make a real difference. To lighten the load on my next hut trip, I plan on bringing nothing but a sleeping bag, some almonds and a couple bananas.

For more pictures from this adventure, see my Harry Gates Hut Trip photos on Flickr.

Farewell to the 2013-2014 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Sat, 10 May 2014 12:30:54 -0600

We took things up a notch for this year's ski season: we bought a ski bus (a.k.a. The Syncro) and rented our ski shack out for the season. Our goal was to ski all over Colorado since Abbie had free days at every resort. Personally, I racked up 28 days of skiing, Trish had similar numbers and, Abbie and Jack got between 15 and 20.

We picked up the ski bus with a road trip from Sun Valley, ID to Denver. We were hoping to ski at Jackson Hole on the way home. The sub-zero temperatures quickly changed our minds and we learned about its sub-par wind resistance driving through Wyoming.

The kids and I started the season with a trip to A-Basin, followed by a day at Keystone. Then Trish and I hit Mary Jane before heading to Montana for Christmas.

Around this same time, Trish sold her Xterra and we became a one-vehicle family. The Syncro had its first (and only!) breakdown on the way to my parent's on Christmas Eve. We raced Santa Claus to The Cabin, packed in a rented sedan with two kids, two dogs and two cats. We realized afterward the car had bald tires and a broken windshield-washing system. Thank goodness the roads were dry.

The Syncro remained in Bozeman for a week while getting repairs done at Straightaway Motors. We enjoyed the beauty of Montana without it, sledding, skiing at Big Mountain and celebrating New Years with good friends in West Glacier. Taking Trish and the kids skiing in Montana was a ski-life highlight for me. As a teenager, I learned how to downhill ski at Big Mountain and it was really cool to show my family its awesomeness.

Both Abbie and Jack started the season snowboarding. They switched to skiing when Trish took them to Steamboat the same weekend I went heli-skiing in British Columbia.

At the end of January, we stayed with our good friends, the Tillis, and skied at Breckenridge.

The next day we skied Copper and had an 11" Powder Day at Mary Jane a few days later.

The snow continued to fall when we drove to Aspen for Superbowl weekend. It took us six hours to drive there in a blizzard, but the 36" of fresh snow the next day made it all worth it. We skied Snowmass and had a ball.

The Syncro burst a cooling hose clamp going over Vail Pass on the way home. It was Superbowl Sunday and we were rushing home to watch the Broncos. Luckily, I was able to fix it enough to get to a gas station and buy some new hose clamps. I'd rather not talk about the Broncos performance that evening.

In mid-February, I replaced the propane tank on the Syncro and installed a portable heater.

We celebrated with our first winter camping excursion in Mary Jane's Challenger Lot. The next morning, we found ourselves plowed in. We learned you're supposed to move when you hear the snow plows in the middle of the night. We enjoyed first chair that morning and all our runs with fresh tracks.

The next weekend, we camped for two nights in Avon for WinterWinderGrass. We skied at Copper and Vail that weekend. In the evenings, we drank delicious Colorado beer and listened to some really great live music. We left the propane heater at home and got along just fine with sleeping bags.

At the end of February, we took the kids to Beaver Creek, where they had their first 10-run day with us. That was the day we realized they could keep up with us on the blues.

For St. Patrick's Day weekend, we drove to Crested Butte, one of our favorite resorts in Colorado. The kids both had 20 runs that day and impressed the hell out of us. It was a beautiful weekend, and I even got to hang out with James Ward on Saturday night.

In April, we gathered with friends at an A-Basin Beach Party. It was the first time the kids camped with us in the Syncro and they loved it. We woke up at 5am to get a good spot and there were already two cars ahead of us in line. They opened the gates around 7am. We stayed at our friends, the Ellens, in Breckenridge that night and skied there the next day.

The season ended with a few days at Mary Jane and Winter Park. We spent a couple nights at Devils Thumb Ranch on the final weekend.

more pictures on Flickr →

Summary
By my count, we made it to 11 unique resorts this year. That's a far cry from the 25 resorts we have in Colorado. Nevertheless, we had a great time and put almost 10,000 miles on our Syncro since we bought it. It's been a slightly stressful winter as a one-car family. But, like I mentioned, the Syncro has been humming along nicely.

In January, I realized the only way the Syncro was going to work long-term was if I became a VW mechanic. My Dad is an excellent mechanic, so I talked with him and learned how to fix most problems we've had. It's been a fun learning experience so far. We did wrestle with some cooling-system issues every-so-often, but we were able to fix them by tightening clamps and keeping the cooling tank full. Last week, Rocky Mountain Westy upgraded the cooling tubes and tank. Next week, we'll be getting axles replaced and some steering enhancements - things that tend to go bad after 185K miles.

Our biggest regret of the season was renting out our condo in Fraser. We thought we'd enjoy traveling all over Colorado and camping in the van. We did enjoy the trips, but working from the van wasn't great and it was too small to bring all our pets (two cats, two dogs). It also lacks a hot tub.

Next year, we're psyched that Crested Butte has been added to the Rocky Mountain Super Pass. We'll likely hit many of the same resorts again, and I'd like to spend more time at Steamboat, Telluride and Wolf Creek.

In the meantime, mountain biking, camping, rafting and VW show season is right around the corner. We're heading to Moab next week for Syncro Solstice, entering our first show at Volkswagens on the Green, rafting/dancing with our kids at Campout for the Cause and doing a 5-day river trip down the Yampa in Dinosaur National Monument. Yeeeeee haaaw - I love Colorado!

Heli Skiing in British Columbia with CMH Gothics

Matt Raible — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 11:18:39 -0700

I first learned how to downhill ski in Montana while I was in grade school. A couple times a year, the whole school would go on a field trip to Big Mountain (now Whitefish Mountain). I didn't ski a whole lot in high school, nor in college (at the University of Denver). However, several friends went to DU for the skiing. They'd schedule their classes so they had a couple days off per week, and they'd head for the hills. Two friends in particular, Chris and Chris, were some of the best skiers I'd ever seen. They'd fly through the moguls with legs like rubber bands, upper-body barely moving, legs absorbing the world famous bumps at Mary Jane.

I used to talk about Chris and Chris, long after college, as the amazing skiers with the rubber band legs. I didn't start skiing a lot until I worked for a .com in the late 90s. The VP of Development (whom we now call "The Professor") told us that one of the perks was a "9-inch Rule". The rule was that if it snowed 9", you could take the day off and go skiing, as long as you went to the resort that had the fresh powder. It was crazy how few people took advantage of this, but he and I never missed a day that year. That was likely the first year I'd skied more than 10 days in my life, and I'll bet I skied 20 with him.

I continued to ski a fair bit with my practice wife, then took a couple years off when the kids were born. We got them on skis when they were two years old, and they've been skiing ever since. The funny thing is, I never got really good at skiing until I started taking tips from The Professor. The year was 2010, and I got good enough to be able to ski top-to-bottom bump runs without stopping. Skiing had become a passion for me.

When I met Trish a few months later, I asked her if she skied (hoping to God she did). Her response blew my mind.

"No, I tele."

She went on to explain how she'd started with Alpine, moved to snowboarding for six years and was now addicted to free heeling. I just gazed with a dumb stare and my mouth open.

Last year, Chris M. decided it was high time we did a helicopter ski trip. At first, I gulped at the idea, mostly because of the cost. Then I came around to it, in the sense that confidence is 50% of a skiers ability, and my confidence was up from skiing so much the last few years.

As I sat in Denver's airport on January 17, 2014, I wrote down the following:

It's come to this, the pinnacle of my life: I'm going heli-skiing with the two guys I used to say we're the best skiers I'd ever seen in college.

Except now, I believe I can keep up.

We booked our trip with Canadian Mountain Holidays, or CMH as they're commonly referred to. They have several locations; we chose CMH Gothics Lodge. After a quick flight to Calgary, and an overnight stay near the airport, we boarded a bus for an 8-hour ride to the lodge. There were seven people in our group, with around 35 people on the bus.

After arriving, we checked into our rooms and got settled. Most rooms were singles, with a shared bathroom. We had a two-hour avalanche training session and then settled in for an intro from the Lodge Manager. A delicious dinner followed.

Sunday was the AFC Championship game, so Chris and I wore our favorite team uniforms (he: Patriots, me: Broncos). We made a bet the loser had to wear the winning team's jersey on Monday. We skied all day and it was wonderful. Fresh powder tracks on every run, and only a 5-minute helicopter ride to the top. In the air, we'd refresh with water and Gatorade, provided by CMH. I wasn't in as good of ski shape as I should've been, but I did keep up. At the end of most runs, I was sweating so bad - I could press the top of my helmut and the sweat would stream out. It was similar to mountain biking helmut sweat, but it was happening at -5°C (23°F).

When we got back, one of the other guests had recorded the Broncos game on Slingbox, so a bunch of us got together to watch it. The internet was fast enough for streaming and I had a glorious time watching the Broncos beat the Patriots for the first time in years. Obviously, the Patriots fans didn't have as much fun, especially since there were plenty of guests from Colorado.

Here's some more pictures from this glorious life event. As you can see, the views were unbelievable.

Everyday was awesome, but Wednesday was incredible. It snowed 10 cm on Tuesday night, which turned into knee-deep powder and face shots. The hoots and hollers from everyone floating down forced my face into a sorta perma-grin. For many of us, it was the best skiing day of our entire lives. The video below tries to capture how much fun we had throughout the week, but ultimately fails. It's one of those things you have to experience to really appreciate. I ended up skiing around 80,000 vertical feet in four days.

For more picture, see my Top 5 Skiing Days of My Life album on Flickr. I also published some of my favorites photos taken by Stephen Pope.

We Bought a Ski Bus!

Matt Raible — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 11:47:18 -0600

This summer while vacationing in Montana, I gave my Cadillac Escalade to my parents. My reason was simple - it'd been molested too many times in the big city. We did enjoy catching the criminals (busted two would-be-thieves in the act in 2010), but we were ready for a new car.

We started looking for one shortly after arriving home from our honeymoon - from the Nissan Armada to the Tesla. But none of them really appealed to me. Then I found a rig that made my heart leap, the VW Syncro Westfalia, aka The Greatest Car Ever Built.

Everyone from pro snowboarder Jussi Oksanen to Maverick’s surfing legend Grant Washburn to actor Tom Hanks, who calls his Syncro addiction "a rare dementia," has succumbed to the Vanagon. The only drawback: production ceased in 1992, and there are only so many of these babies left (maybe as few as 5,000), so the vehicles are appreciating in value.

The first one I found stood out because it fixed the problem that many VW Busses have - crappy engines. Rather than a powerless ol' VW engine, it had a Subaru SVX H6 3.3L (240HP). I found a maroon syncro that was similar to the aforementioned one, but ended up buying the blue one after I asked the owner why his was better. He replied with a 12-item list and a closing paragraph that sealed the deal for me.

Any van you end up with will have its own eccentricities, personality traits, faults and virtues. Owning one, especially a Syncro is a labor of love, not necessarily a good investment purely in terms of money but man, I've racked-up more memories in that Syncro over the past 10 years than with anything else in my life. I've owned Syncros for years and will continue to do so, it gets in your blood and there's no cure.

Trish has always wanted an RV for photography, and I've longed for a VW Bus that runs. With our plan of skiing all over Colorado this year (Abbie gets free days at every resort), it should be a heckuva ski season!

I can't wait to go and rescue it in December with my Dad. We figured it'd be fun since we did our first bus rescue in 2004. For more pictures, see my 1990 Syncro Westy SVX Full Camper set on Flickr or the original listing.

As for my '66 Porsche Bus, that's progressing nicely. It should be starting and drivable (though not street legal) in the next couple weeks.

Update: Dad is out, Trish is in for the Syncro Rescue Road Trip. She wasn't about to let us have all the fun.

The Trifecta 2013!

Matt Raible — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:25:09 -0600

The last time I pulled off a Trifecta (3 ski resorts in 3 days), it was in 2010. I hadn't met Trish yet and DU Hockey had started their we're terrible in the playoffs streak. Last weekend, I decided to go for it again, this time with fiancé and kids in tow. We originally intended to ski Friday afternoon, but Abbie had an important "Mayor Election" at school and we were unable to leave early. By the time we arrived in Winter Park, the lifts were closed.

When we drove to Steamboat on Saturday, we only intended to ski 2 days. We dressed up in our outfits and got ready for the warm, mashed-potato conditions on Steamboat's closing weekend.

The conditions weren't great, so we only skied for a couple hours. Then we hung out with Trish's friends (Jenn and Todd) for the rest of the afternoon, swimming and frolicking with our kids like good parents do. On Sunday, we woke up and checked the ski report. While Steamboat did get 8" of fresh powder, Copper had 13 inches! So we packed up the car, puppies, and kids and drove 2 hours to Copper. When we arrived, we weren't disappointed. The kids were loving it and the conditions were great.

When we stopped for lunch, I was a bit disappointed that our ski weekend was about to end. Then I checked the Winter Park forecast, was pleasantly surprised, and asked "Hey, kids - should we complete the Trifecta and skip school tomorrow?" Of course, they said "YES" and our plans were set. We did a couple more runs, listened to some good live music at the base, then headed to our mountain views in Winter Park.

Sunday night is when the fun started. I didn't call the kids in sick for school, nor did I call in sick for my current client. I simply told them both we had a unique opportunity to complete a Trifecta and the snow was too good to leave.

Monday morning we woke up to 7" of fresh powder and by the time we got to Mary Jane, it was knee-deep. The runs were unbelievable. I skied several bump runs on Mary Jane without ever hitting bottom. It snowed hard all day long and by 2pm, they'd closed Berthoud Pass. This meant we had to stay another night. Some friends were stranded, so we offered them to stay with us and we enjoyed a nice evening reminiscing about all the fluffy snow and face shots. The first photo below is the snow accumulation on Monday morning; the second is from Monday at Happy Hour.

Skiing a Trifecta with my family seems like a perfect way to end the ski season. However, it's been snowing all week and I've had several powder runs since Monday. It's snowed 37 inches in the past 7 days and there's more snow in the forecast this weekend. Winter Park's Springtopia starts tomorrow. Live music, fresh powder, the Nuggets in the playoffs and a place at the base with good friends.

The fun ain't over yet!

Farewell to the 2011-2012 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:46:33 -0600

In 2011, I experienced the best ski season of my life. On the Thursday after ski season ended last year, I wrote:

Everything did work out as planned and we found ourselves in eager anticipation of ski season last fall. We prepped the Ski Shack for lots of visitors by getting queen-sized bunk beds made for the kids. We even got a hot tub installed for Trish's birthday in mid-December.

For Christmas, my parents, sister and her wife all flew in and we spent a beautiful evening watching the parade at Winter Park.

The skiing still wasn't great, but there was enough snow to cover the tubing hills in Fraser. We got some sweet helmet covers from my Mom for Christmas and had a blast with Trish's brother's family over New Years.

The rest of the season was filled with a lot of 4-run outings, where we skied the bare minimum to count it as a day. I can recall only 3 really good days. One was at Steamboat with 11" of powder and lots of knee-deep stashes. The others were at Mary Jane where Trish and I got fresh powder tracks for a good hour.

Yep, the snow was terrible this year. In fact, my favorite lift at Winter Park (Eagle Wind) never even opened. I still managed to get in 33 days, but it certainly wasn't a ski season to reminisce about. I am proud of the fact that Abbie and Jack skied 15 days and never needed a lesson. Trish even taught them how to snowboard one day and they both loved it.

We only made it to 3 resorts this year, a far cry from last year's 9 + a hut trip. However, I don't feel like we missed out because the snow was so bad. Having a condo 15 minutes from the resort certainly helped us get more days in, but I'm willing to bet we skied 10x more hours last year.

Next year, I hope it snows a ton and we get 50 days in. In the meantime, I'm pumped that mountain bike season has started and there's lots of dry trails along the front range. I have two rides in so far this week and hope to get at least 30 days in this summer. With 600 miles of trails just minutes from our Ski Shack, it seems like it should be easy enough.

In other life-related news, I'm driving to Colorado Springs this afternoon to pick out the interior for The Bus. With any luck, MotorWorks Restorations will have it done in a couple months. In the meantime, you can see their latest progress on Facebook. I can't wait until this bad boy is road worthy!

Farewell to the 2010-2011 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:40:08 -0600

I'd call the 2010-2011 the best ski season ever, but it's really just the best ski season so far. In 2008, I wrote about a great 21-day season. This time last year, I wrote about an amazing 25-day season. This year, I took it up a notch and aimed for 30 days. I'm proud to say I accomplished my goal and had an awesome time doing it. I skied with more people I'd never skied with before (largely in part to my cool co-workers from Overstock) and shared many days with the lovely Trish McGinity.

The season started with a trip to Copper, shortly after Abbie's 8th Birthday. I remember that day clearly as the kids were a bit rusty and had a heckuva time on their first run. Sobbing, whining and fear surrounded them the entire time. After the first run, I had some hot chocolate with them, calmed them down and then proceeded to the bunny slope for some turns. The lift was broken when we got there so we had to hike for a few runs. Amazingly, Abbie said it was the most fun she'd ever had skiing, which surprised me after her meltdown on the first run.

It's fun to compare that day to the last day I took them this season. We did the same run (a blue at Copper) and both kids were doing parallel turns and having a blast. Actually, Jack was the only one doing parallel turns, Abbie was flying down the mountain, not turning at all. She was going so fast her legs looked like rubber bands, weaving and bobbing over the bumps in the snow. I'm awful proud of my little skiers.

As for me, I happened to land a new gig in Utah, home of the greatest snow on Earth. My interview with Overstock.com was two days, with the 2nd day on the slopes at Snowbird. It was easily the best interview I've ever had.

That week, I returned to Denver for 3 days of skiing Breckenridge and A-Basin for Trish's Birthday Weekend. After returning from Christmas in Florida, I got a couple days in at Mary Jane and then accomplished 10 days before 2011 while skiing in sub-zero temperatures at Steamboat for New Years.

The next 4 months of skiing were fantastic with many firsts. I experienced Alta, Crested Butte and thigh-deep powder for the first time.

We finished up the season with a hut trip after TSSJS in Vegas, a weekend with the kids at Copper (as mentioned above) and Spring Splash at Winter Park.

For next year, I think I'll keep my goal at 30 days. If everything works out as planned, we'll have a place in the mountains this fall and it'll be a bit easier to hit the slopes without sitting in traffic. For now, I'm pumped about the beginning of mountain bike season. I took Trish and I's Gary Fisher Hi-Fi Plus's to the shop for tune-ups yesterday and we have a trip planned to Moab for Memorial Day. It's gonna be a great summer.

Peter Estin Hut Trip in Colorado's High Country

Matt Raible — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 11:20:12 -0600

Last weekend, after returning from our trip to Las Vegas, we packed up our stuff, got a good night's sleep and headed on a hut trip in Colorado's High Country. The name of the hut was Peter Estin Hut and it was a bit of a hike to get to. My friend, Joe, set my expectations correctly when he warned me it'd be a 5 hour death march. It took us 4 hours, 30 minutes and we skied up 2200 vertical feet of switchbacks.

The hut itself was great. It was a lot like The Cabin, but bigger, slept a lot more people and was at 11,200 feet. It had an old fashioned cookstove, heat stove (where we melted snow) and a two-room outhouse.

On Sunday, we hiked up to the top of Charles Peak (12,000') and had a nice (albeit choppy) run down and packed up to hike down.

This was the first hut trip I'd been on since Last Dollar Hut near Telluride in college. It was definitely a physical challenge, but was a lot of fun thanks to good friends, nice views and "summit push" music from Joe's boombox.

Post by Matt Raible.

For more pictures from this adventure, check out my Peter Estin Hut Trip photos on Flickr.

The Greatest Snow on Earth

Matt Raible — Wed, 2 Mar 2011 00:11:59 -0700

Last week, I traveled on my monthly trip to Utah to work on-site at Overstock. Unlike previous visits, snow was in the forecast and it didn't disappoint. I woke up early on Friday, worked a few hours and then met a couple co-workers at the office at 8. We arrived at Solitude by 8:40 and were in line for the lift by 8:55. We were the 5th chair on the lift and quickly skied to The Summit Lift. It was here we found thigh-deep powder and face shots on every run. The video below has shot by my co-worker, Eric. You can also view it on YouTube. The face shots start around 0:45.

After an awesome morning of skiing, I returned to work and later picked up Trish from the airport for a weekend of powder. When I started working at Overstock, I told myself that I'd buy a pair of "Utah Skis" if the powder was good. It seemed like the right time, so I picked up some Bluehouse Powder Skis on the way back from the airport. That night, we saw Hot Buttered Rum and woke up early for 27" of fresh powder at Alta.

The skiing was incredible all day and it never stopped snowing. That night, we headed to The Canyons and stayed slopeside at The Hyatt. We got upgraded to a great room and enjoyed some nice views.

We slept in on Sunday, grabbed some breakfast and hopped on the lift around noon. It was a Bluebird Day and we skied as much of the hard stuff as we could find.

Several weeks ago, I said I thought Colorado's powder was better than Utah's. After experiencing knee-deep powder at Solitude and sweet, fluffy powder at Alta, I'm officially changing my stance. In my opinion, Utah has the greatest powder on earth. If Colorado happens to get that much powder, and I get to ski it, I'd be more than happy to reconsider.

Crested Butte

Matt Raible — Tue, 1 Feb 2011 17:57:41 -0700

Last week was a great one for my ski season and happiness meter. First of all, I had the pleasure of skiing Alta for the first time while traveling to Overstock.com. I started working early on an overcast day and was delighted to drive into sunny blue skies above the clouds of Salt Lake City. I never expected it to be so nice and was super impressed with the mountain and its powder stashes.

I flew back to Denver on Thursday night, had a gorgeous lunch ride in 70°F weather on Friday afternoon, then picked up my lovely girlfriend Trish and drove to Crested Butte for a weekend of skiing with James Ward and friends. It was my first time visiting Crested Butte and I can see why people call it Paradise.

We stayed at a sweet location right in town, ate some exquisite cuisine and had some of the most beautiful days I've ever had skiing. Hopefully the pictures below convey how beautiful it was. You can also checkout the full set on Flickr.

Trish and I are up to 17 ski days for the year so far, and hoping to hit 20 by Valentine's Day. Not bad for a couple Flatlanders.

Alta

Matt Raible — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:47:16 -0700

Had my first Alta experience this week. It was awesome.

Will post pictures from Crested Butte on Monday.

Farewell to the 2009-2010 Ski Season

Matt Raible — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:49:24 -0600

The 2009-2010 Ski Season ended for me last weekend. This was mostly due to the fact that Winter Park and Copper closed and that's where I have my ski pass at. I'm writing this post to reflect upon what a great ski season it was. I skipped writing a similar post in 2009, mostly because I was basking in the Florida sun at a helluva wedding on the last ski weekend. 2008's season was the last one I wrote about, and I managed to get 21 days in that year.

This season, I managed to get in 25 days, my most ever in a season! Not only that, but I got to watch Jack ski like a madman, enjoy a fantastic weekend with friends in Jackson Hole and perform The Trifecta. As a parent, I feel like a lot of hard work and persistence has finally paid off. Jack can now get on and off the lift by himself and Abbie hit her first jump (catching 2-3 feet of air) in the terrain park. Yes, I'm a proud papa.

Personally, I was able to complete several top-to-bottom runs (without stopping) at Mary Jane. This was a goal last year that I was never able to accomplish. This feat requires you to be in good shape and have some eloquence in your skiing style. I thank my good friend Matt Good for his tips on how to ski bumps more smoothly, exerting less energy. The one thing I failed to pull off was a helicopter, even though I tried twice. Oh well, I'll get it next year.

Thanks to all my skiing friends for the good times and to Winter Park, Mary Jane, Copper Mountain, Steamboat and Jackson Hole for the wonderful slopes. Can't wait to do it again next year.

The Trifecta: 3 Resorts in 3 Days

Matt Raible — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:11:17 -0600

Last Tuesday night, I worked late in hopes of having a Powder Day on Wednesday. I went to bed at 2 a.m., woke up at 6 a.m. and found that there was only 5" of fresh powder at Winter Park. My ski rule is there has to be 9" of powder in order to justify playing hookie. Working these extra hours on Tuesday -- coupled with a late night on Wednesday -- and I hit my 40-hour-max on Thursday. Naturally, I took Friday off and headed for the hills. Below is how I started my Friday morning.

After several high-speed groomed runs, I hit Mary Jane's bumps a few times (completing Outhouse and Trestle w/o stopping) and watched the Whiteout begin around 11.

Around noon, I began searching for a location to watch DU in the NCAA Hockey Playoffs. Unable to find a bar with ESPN U, I skied until 2 and then headed to my friend's mountain home. He had the game recorded, so I got to watch it and endure its unfortunate outcome. DU played really well, but couldn't beat RIT.

On Saturday, the snow report said 6" at Steamboat and 6.5" at Winter Park. Since we hadn't been to Steamboat in a while, my friend (a.k.a. The Professor) and I decided to drive there for the day. It was an excellent decision because there was easily a foot of fresh powder in the chutes and trees. We skied from 9:30 to 4:00; easily my most difficult day of skiing this year.

On Sunday, I woke up and read the ski report: Copper had 3" of new snow. That's when it hit me that I could pull of The Trifecta. I don't know that I've ever done 3 resorts in 3 days before, but I'm happy to report I've done it now. Sunday was a beautiful day of Spring Skiing and Copper did not disappoint. They'd received 7" inches in 48 hours, making Sunday an awesome day for trees and double blacks. There was plenty of powder, great friends and lots of smiles from everyone. You can see from the pictures below what a beautiful Blue Bird Day it was.

With only 3 weeks left in ski season, I'm happy to report I have 22 days in. With any luck, I'll hit 25 days and set a personal record.

Fantastic Fun in Jackson Hole

Matt Raible — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:04:57 -0700

For the last couple of years, I've done a ski trip with college buddies to an out-of-state destination. Two years ago, we went to Tahoe and had a great time. Last year, we did it again and I (amazingly) flew and rented a car without a driver's license. This year, we decided to switch things up a bit and head for Jackson Hole.

In previous years, only a couple of us went, but this year was organized by my good friend from Boston, Chris Morse. He managed to take it up a notch and invited a great group of guys, 9 of us in all. I knew about half the group, and met everyone else upon arrival.

The only unfortunate part about the trip was that no new snow fell. However, the Spring Skiing was warm and beautiful, somewhat making up for the lack of snow. The thing I enjoyed the most about this trip was how well the group jelled. Kudos to Chris for assembling such an awesome group and putting such a spectacular trip together. Can't wait for next year.

For further action of what the conditions where like, checkout the YouTube video I made. If only I'd recorded it for another 5 seconds to catch the digger that Corey takes at the end.

To see all the pictures we took on this adventure, checkout my Jackson Hole Set on Flickr.

Jack's Skiing Like A Madman!

Matt Raible — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:56:05 -0700

My kids have been skiing since they were pretty little. Abbie started when she turned 3 and Jack started when he was 2. I don't know that I'd recommend starting kids that early because it's taken a long time for them to get good. Abbie was good last year and it looks like Jack is coming on strong this year.

On Saturday, I took Abbie and Jack up to Copper Mountain's Tubing Hill. It was a balmy 45°F day and we had a blast flying down the mountain. I especially liked run #3 that had a double jump in its path.

After tubing, Jack proved he's a crazy 5-year old; then we grabbed our skis and hit the slopes for a couple runs. By the 2nd run, Jack was flying past both Abbie and I and giggling while doing it. It was a special moment for me considering he's been skiing since 2 and only recently let go of me.

Today, we headed to Winter Park for a few more runs. Since Jack has become bolder, I decided to skip the lift-walk-bus-walk pain-in-the-ass section at the bottom of Winter Park and park at Mary Jane (where you can easily walk-ski to the lift). We ended up skiing at the top of the mountain most of the time. I recall a couple times where Jack would go flying past Abbie and I and I'd think "I really hope he doesn't wipe out 'cause that's gonna hurt." By the end of the day, he was skiing down blues and even tried some bumps. Great job today Jack - you've made me proud.

With Spring Skiing right around the corner, I think there's gonna be some good races in the next couple months.

Epic Weekend at Silverton Mountain

Matt Raible — Tue, 3 Feb 2009 08:56:24 -0700

This past weekend, I joined some of my best friends for a weekend of skiing at Silverton Mountain and Wolf Creek in south central Colorado. Most of the guys went last year and I knew I had to go this year after hearing about their thigh-deep powder experience.

The trip started out kinda rocky when we left on Friday afternoon. There were 3 different cars that drove and we were the last ones to leave Denver. We took my car, but I had a friend drive since I'd had a late night on Thursday night. About 2 hours into the trip, one of our friends called us to warn us about the speeding tickets the other cars had gotten. In fact, one of the guys had gotten two! I handed the phone to the driver so he could find out where, but he had to cut the conversation short as the police car's lights started flashing in the rear-view mirror. If only they'd called us 5 minutes earlier!

After the speeding ticket delay, we pulled into Pagosa Hot Springs around 11. With 18 soaking pools, this turned out to be the perfect place to stay.

On Saturday morning, we woke up at 5 and drove 2 hours to Silverton Mountain. I didn't know what to expect at first. I had it in my mind that we'd be hiking for 5 hours and get one run in the entire day. I was pleasantly surprised to find you 1) ride the lift up and 2) hike to your run. We had a guide named "Ronbo" and our first hike took 1.5 hours. It was very steep and steep like a ladder in some sections. The White Wave run was awesome in the middle, but somewhat skied off at the top. The powder was around boot-deep and the weather was beautiful.

After a 2nd run and a much shorter hike, 5 of us decided we had to take the leap and do a heli-drop. We rode to the top of the lift, got picked up by the chopper and rode for about 2 minutes to a neighboring peak. This was by far the best run of the day and one of my favorite ski experiences of my life.

We figured we couldn't top heli-skiing, so 3 of us called it a day around 3 o'clock. We did 3 runs all day and we were exhausted. A couple guys took a 4th run and the guys that didn't do heli-skiing got 5 runs in. A 2-hour drive back, some fireworks in Durango and a night of soaking at Pagosa Springs made us all very happy campers.

On Sunday, we woke up and headed to Wolf Creek for a few hours. It was Local Appreciation Day and tickets were a mere $31! We did some hiking, found some powder and enjoyed some of the best skiing weather of the year. We hopped in the car around 2, kept the cruise control on 5-over-the-speed-limit and made it home in time to catch the Super Bowl (thanks to my DVR).

If you're in shape and are an expert skier, I highly recommend you take a trip to Silverton Mountain. It's truly epic.

For more pictures from this trip, see my Silverton 2009 set on Flickr.

The kids actually like skiing!

Matt Raible — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 17:24:34 -0700

The kids and I had a blast skiing at Winter Park today. I can't remember a day I've been more proud of my kids and their willingness to ski. I woke them up just before 6 AM this morning. I was very impressed when they both popped out of bed with huge smiles on their faces. They were actually excited to go skiing. Their enthusiasm didn't end throughout the day and we had a ton of fun.

I was most impressed with Abbie - she now wants to ski blues all the time. Not only that, but when she falls she has no problem getting up herself. Jack, on the other hand, can barely do "Pizza" and says "I can't" and "I'm scared" most of the time. I somehow convinced Abbie that if you believe you can do something, you can do it. She's been using that mantra whenever we ski and it's worked awesome for her.

For the last run today, I told Abbie we could do a blue; Jack would only do it if I carried him. We rode to the top of Winter Park and skied down a steep blue/black. I imagine it was a pretty funny scene because it looked like I was in way over my head. Abbie was going slow, snow-plowing like mad, and I was skiing with Jack in my arms while he carried my poles. Several folks stopped to see if we needed help, but I told them it was all pre-planned. Abbie fell several times, but got up by herself every time and even got "the burn" towards the bottom. It's a good thing I've been running to work lately, carrying a 4-year-old top-to-bottom on a steep blue with 8" of powder can be quite a workout.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Matt Raible — Sun, 4 Jan 2009 12:08:28 -0700

For the last couple weeks, I've been enjoying a great Christmas vacation in Oregon with most of my family. Abbie and Jack didn't join me, but they got to spend 3 weeks in West Palm Beach, Florida. Poor kids.

I made sure the end of my vacation would land on a very special person's birthday. My Mom. Not only is my mom one of the coolest people in the world, she also has an excellent job title: Burn Boss. Growing up in Montana, I was always proud that Barb Raible was my mom. She was famous for her kindness in the Swan Valley. I hope she's always famous for her story about nailing a bear's nuts to a tree.

My mom is a Montana Native who wasn't afraid to raise her kids in the backwoods at her family's homestead. It sounds like a crazy idea to me, but she made it happen - cooking over a wood stove every day and working at the Swan Valley Ranger Station to make ends meet. She was responsible for getting us out of Montana and onto Oregon. She went back to school in her early 40s, got a degree in Forestry from the University of Montana and moved the whole family to Oregon for a job with the BLM.

I moved to Oregon on June 14, 1990 driving a '73 Plymouth Duster with a homemade International trailer in tow. We certainly looked like we were from Montana when we rolled into town. We moved into a house on Felony Flats. My sister and I got jobs at McDonald's (Dad's advice) and started school at North Salem High school in the fall. I met many good friends at North Salem - Jess, Matt, Clint and Michelle becoming favorites over the years.

For New Years, Jess, Clint and I rented a condo in Bend, Oregon. Matt joined us on Friday after most of us experienced an Epic Powder Day at Mt. Bachelor. It was the first time we'd all been together in 9 years. We had a blast.

This vacation in Oregon has been very special to me. I've reunited with many old friends, enjoyed 2 epic powder days and had a great time with my Mom, Dad, Sister and her fiancé Mya.

As much fun as I've had, I'm looking forward to getting back to Denver and hanging out with my kids. January 2009 is sure to be one for the books. I start a new gig at a new office tomorrow. On Wednesday, the kids return from Florida to a mountain of presents at my house. My parents are coming to town next weekend, followed by a trip to Tahoe and a weekend in Steamboat to finish out the month.

Yeah, 2009 is going to be a lot of fun. Maybe I'll see you on the slopes.

My "almost slept in a snow cave" Adventure with Clint Foster

Matt Raible — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 11:58:54 -0700

Yesterday began innocently as one of the best ski days of my life. I woke up early, drove to Eugene (Oregon) to pick up my good friend Clint Foster, then headed up to Willamette Pass. It was an Epic Powder Day with over 2 feet of fresh pow pow and face shots on almost every run. After lunch and some liquid courage, we stepped it up a notch and skied some cornices and awesome trees.

Around 2:30, our luck began to change. In our quest for untracked powder, Clint led us off the back side of Willamette Pass. There were no out-of-bounds signs or ropes to indicate this was a bad idea. The steep tree run we found was great, but our attitude changed quickly when we reached the bottom.

With 2 feet of snow and no trail, we found ourselves trudging down a flat path that got us nowhere fast. For two hours, we slogged through the deep snow down a cross-country ski trail (there were blue signs with arrows). As we started to pass the 2nd lake (I believe they were called Rosary Lakes), we decided it was time to bite the bullet and turn around. We had no map or compass. If we kept going in our current direction, we didn't know when (or if) we'd get out. If we turned around, we knew it would take 4-5 hours, but at least we knew it would get us out. "And besides", Clint said, "the trail is already broken." The time was 4:30 and it was starting to get dark.

Yes, the trail was broken, but it wasn't broken for hiking sideways up the mountain we'd skied down. We couldn't take our skis off because we'd immediately sink up to our waste in the snow. It was slow going, sometimes only a step or two at a time. If I wasn't sweating and breathing hard, I'd start to get cold and shiver. We were soaked on the outside from the snow and soaked on the inside from sweating. It was snowing pretty good too, so we knew we might lose our trail if we dug a snow cave and spent the night.

The scariest part happened when we were about an hour from getting out. Clint started to cramp up and it seemed for moment that we were destined to spend the night in a snow cave. While it was his idea to take the trail, he was the reason I made it out last night. He broke trail for most of the hike out. I tried, but would get tired so quickly it didn't help much. So when he, the trail breaker, started to cramp up, it began to look grim. I don't know if it was the thought of sleeping in a snow cave or because we could see the top of the ridge, but Clint's cramps subsided and we were able to make it out. We ended up on a groomed run and had to hike another 45 minutes to get to the top of the mountain and ski down the front-side.

As for Search and Rescue, they were looking for us, but had only recently started searching. The resort had night-skiing and it wasn't until 9:00 that anyone thought we might be missing. Clint's wife, Autumn, was on the ball and had contracted the authorities to inspire their search. We couldn't have asked for a better concerned relative. Autumn is a special person who has a way of making things happen. If we'd spent the night in a snow cave, there's a good chance she would've had the National Guard looking for us the next day.

We made it back to the car just after 10 PM. We first started our run at 2:30 PM. From the point we turned around, it took about 5 hours to hike out. I've never been so tired after a day of skiing. We arrived back at Clint's place just after midnight after a 2-hour drive in the blowing snow and rain. Autumn greeted us with warm clothes, hot tea and the best hugs I've gotten in a long time.

If you ever get a chance to meet Clint and Autumn, I'd highly recommend it. They're the ones who got married in Costa Rica recently. As far as skiing with Clint, that's fun too, but I wouldn't recommend following him out-of-bounds.

Abbie is a Blue Skier!

Matt Raible — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:55:44 -0700

On Friday afternoon, the kids and I headed up to Winter Park for a night at Zephyr Lodge. The drive up was great (no traffic) and it started snowing as soon as we got off I-70. 45 minutes later and the kids were on the slopes for the last few runs of the day. There was a few inches of snow that turned out to be great - it slowed them down enough that they didn't have to turn or worry about "pizza".

On Saturday, we put Jack in Ski School and Abbie and I had a "Daddy + Daughter" day on the mountain. She didn't want to hit the magic carpet and instead opted for the lift right away. We skied a couple greens and w/in an hour she was ready to try a blue. She did quite well on the blue and even skied a few bumps on the side. Yes, she did fall a few times, but she got up by herself and always had a smile on her face. I was extremely proud. Below are a few pictures and a video from our weekend.

I'm glad I took the kids skiing yesterday. It's been dumping with cold temperatures ever since we left. It's currently -15°F in Denver (a new record) and it's snowed 2 feet at some resorts. Now I just need to figure out a way to make it up a couple of times this week.

Going to Colorado Software Summit? Bring your skis!

Matt Raible — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:47:55 -0600

As I mentioned last week the Colorado Software Summit begins this weekend. I don't know what to expect weather-wise, but the Keystone forecast looks like it might snow a bit. A-Basin is open and tickets are only $49 per day. Since it's only a few miles from Keystone, I think I'll bring my skis and hit the slopes. If you're coming to the show and would like to join me, let me know.

Based on my schedule, I'm currently thinking of going Tuesday, Thursday or Friday morning. If the conditions are good, I may even go a couple times. Below are a couple pictures I took during the conference in years past. It'll be interesting to see what the weather is like this year.

The 2007/8 Ski Season comes to an end

Matt Raible — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:32:39 -0600

Yesterday, I woke up early and drove to Winter Park/Mary Jane for an 8" Powder Day. I arrived in the Challenger Lift parking lot at 7:30, took a nap until just after 8, then hopped on one of the first chairs up Mary Jane. Knee-deep powder at the top of Mary Jane Trail, fresh tracks the rest of the way down. Next run was Derailed into Short Haul. Then I hit the chutes off Challenger and called friends to see when they were showing up. It was 9:30 and everyone was still on their way. One friend recommended I head over to Vasquez Cirque and Eagle Wind lift. 3 runs of knee-deep, fresh-track face shots and I was spent. I skied to the bottom of Mary Jane for some lunch and a beer.

As I was entering the bar, everyone showed up and I changed my plans to join them on their first run. 2 more hours of powder on Eagle Wind and it was (finally) time for lunch at 1:30. After lunch, Outhouse, a tree run near Challenger Lift and Bluebell to Corona Way back to Snow White. It was 4:00 and quite possibly the longest ski day of my life.

I was sad to hear that today marks the last day of skiing at Winter Park and Mary Jane. Thankfully, I got to end my ski season on an epic powder day. What a great year: 21 days, including Steamboat, Tahoe and Whistler. Next year, I'm shooting for 30.

Bring on Mountain Bike Season. I plan on riding a few races in the Winter Park Mountain Bike Racing Series as well as the Fat Tire Classic.

Spectacular Weekend at Whistler

Matt Raible — Wed, 5 Mar 2008 22:19:38 -0700

This past weekend, some friends and I headed up to Whistler Blackcomb for a weekend of great skiing. We have a college buddy who's getting his PhD in Vancouver, so that's what motivated the trip. I've never skied in a place where the mountains were so huge. I've skied Jackson Hole and Mammoth, but apparently Whistler has a lot more elevation gain. This was proven when we skied the "Peak to Creek" run on the last day. We didn't do the 6.5 mile run because one guy was on a snowboard.

It snowed 8" on our first day and a few more on our last day. There was plenty of powder and lots of really steep runs. I highly recommend it - especially if you want to spend some money. It's not a cheap place to visit and it'll likely get more expensive since it's hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics. The good news is I got a 50% discount on lift tickets with my Winter Park pass. Whistler Blackcomb is owned by Intrawest - the same folks that own Winter Park and Steamboat.

For more pictures, see Whistler 2008 on Flickr. This weekend's destination? Vail for day #19.

Powder Day at Whistler

Matt Raible — Sat, 1 Mar 2008 09:05:58 -0700

We arrived at our hotel late last night in Whistler. It was pretty warm out and we didn't believe the 20cm forecast for today. When we woke up this morning, we were pleasantly surprised. A Powder Day at Whistler - what more could you ask for?

The Ski Train

Matt Raible — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 22:09:47 -0700

This morning, I woke up at 5am, packed up the car, dragged Abbie and Jack out of bed and headed to downtown Denver to catch the Ski Train to Winter Park.

The kids were pretty groggy when I woke them up at 6, but perked up pretty good when they realized what we were doing. It probably didn't help that they didn't get to bed until 10pm last night (DU Hockey game).

I called earlier this week to buy tickets and they told me they were sold out. They recommended getting there at 6:15am to buy some from folks selling them. We were able to buy tickets (in different rows) and then waited until 7:15 for the train to leave.

I've always enjoyed traveling by rail and today's trip was no disappointment. It did take three hours to get up there, but the views were great and the kids loved the 29 tunnels along the way. The "breakfast car" was a big hit too - breakfast burritos, donuts, bagels among many other things. Our seats kinda sucked because they didn't have a window, but we moved to another car and found some that had a great view.

Two things I really like about the Ski Train are 1) you can leave stuff on the train and 2) it drops you off less than 50 feet from a lift. Abbie and Jack both rode the T-Bar lift for the first time in their lives today and pulled it off without a hitch. Abbie can not only ski all by herself, but she can get up when she falls and even puts her own skis on. Jack (3 and 1/2) still seems to be a little young for skiing as he refuses to do "pizza" - mostly because it slows him down. We had a heckuva time today and I'd recommend the ski train to anyone in Denver that's looking for an easy way to the mountains with beers on the way home. We arrived back in Denver at 6:30pm - a 2 hour nap for the kids.

There were a lot of groups on the train and it does seem like an awesome way to enjoy a ski day with friends or co-workers. I'd highly recommend it if you ever get the chance.

Awesome Weekend in Tahoe

Matt Raible — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:31:51 -0700

This weekend in Tahoe was absolutely incredible. I've never skied in a place so beautiful. Not only were the views spectacular, but the weather was terrific. On Sunday, we skied in t-shirts while the thermometer read 58°F. While I love the powder and Colorado snow, there's nothing like Spring Skiing. If you ever get a chance to visit Lake Tahoe, I highly recommend you jump at the opportunity.

For more pictures, see Lake Tahoe 2008 on Flickr.

What are the best runs at Heavenly?

Matt Raible — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:43:38 -0700

As mentioned previously, this weekend some college buddies and I will be heading to Lake Tahoe for a weekend of skiing, gambling and boozing (in no particular order). One guy has a free suite at Harrah's Lake Tahoe. I heard there's a gondola directly from the casino to the slopes of Heavenly. Is that true?

Let's assume it is true and I'll be skiing Heavenly all weekend. For those that've skied there - what are the best runs? I'm looking for bump runs, chutes, steep stuff and cruisers with a view. Thanks in advance for any advice.

It's a Powder Day, but there's no way to get there

Matt Raible — Fri, 8 Feb 2008 09:02:48 -0700

It's a sad day in Denver. It's also a "locals' paradise" at the Colorado ski resorts. Most hills received around a foot of fresh powder last night, but there's no way to get there. I-70 is closed at Georgetown (which excludes Keystone, Breckenridge, Vail and Copper). Berthoud Pass (the road to Winter Park) is closed as well. Sniff.

Powder Day at Steamboat

Matt Raible — Sat, 2 Feb 2008 06:21:05 -0700

Today is going to be simply awesome:

Snow Report
    * Time: 02/02/08 05:00 am
    * Conditions: Powder
    * Lifts: 16/18
    * Trails: 163/163
    * 24 Hour Snow: 14"
    * 48 Hour Snow: 27"
    * Base: 78"
    * Total: 322"

I'm staying 30 minutes from Kremmling (at "The Farm"), so fresh tracks are an excellent possibility.

What a forecast!

Matt Raible — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:24:21 -0700

This weekend, I'm planning on heading up to the hills for two fun-filled days of great Colorado skiing. Since it snowed a bit in Denver tonight, I figured I'd check the weather forecast:

Thursday Jan 31, 2008: 3 to 4 inches of accumulation
Friday Feb 01, 2008: 3 to 5 inches of accumulation
Saturday Feb 02, 2008: 3 to 5 inches of accumulation
Sunday Feb 03, 2008: 4 to 7 inches of accumulation

Sweet.

Friday Update: It looks like we'll be skiing at Steamboat tomorrow instead. Checkout their Straight Talk Snow Report from this morning:

Snow Report

    * Time: 02/01/08 05:00 am
    * Conditions: Powder
    * Lifts: 16/18
    * Trails: 163/163
    * 24 Hour Snow: 18"
    * 48 Hour Snow: 22"
    * Base: 77"
    * Total: 308"

Steamboat Straight Talk Snow Report: 2/1/08

Good Morning to you, indeed!

Remember earlier in the week when we had a loud, brash, windy storm 
roll through the mountains and bring us snow? Last night while no one 
was looking, a quiet storm tiptoed in like a whisper, under the cover 
of darkness, and silently dumped a foot and a half of the choicest 
"Champagne Powder" while we all slept. All over town, people woke up, 
looked out their windows, and let out a "Holy Cow"!

I could write this report with fill in the blanks, as in... My first 
run down___________ (insert any trail name) was sweet. I got face 
shots the whole way. Then I skied over to the __________(insert a run) 
trees and the snow was just blowing over my head.

I think you get the picture. The whole mountain is in epic condition.

On one chair ride, my chair mate said, "You know it's a good day, when 
you hear Monkey noises coming from the forest." Everywhere folks were 
hootin' and hollerin'.

Weekend warriors, don't despair, there is plenty powder left to be 
skied tomorrow.

Have fun. Be safe. Look out for your buddy. Peace.

Straight Talker
Kat Murphy
Grinning like a Chimp
Telemark Skier

Traveling to Tahoe, Whistler, Oregon and Vegas

Matt Raible — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 09:12:46 -0700

Last fall, I got pretty burned out from traveling so much. Not only did I fly out to Mountain View monthly for LinkedIn, I also attended JavaZone, Colorado Software Summit and ApacheCon US (fun was had by all). In addition, I spent a week in New York teaching a class for GE.

Photo from Webshots

At the end of the year, I resolved to travel less and so far I've been quite successful. However, something happened in the last week and now I'm traveling like mad for the next 2 months. This time, I don't think I'll get burned out though. Why? Because this time the travel is more for pleasure than for work - with two trips booked to help satisfy my New Years Resolution (ski more). In addition to a couple trips to Mountain View, I'll be spending President's Day weekend in Lake Tahoe. Two weeks later, I'll be meeting up with some friends at Whistler. Two weeks later, I'll be working remotely at my parent's house in Salem, Oregon. I'll end the whirlwind of traveling in Vegas for TSSJS at the end of March.

I'm really looking forward both ski trips. I've never been to Tahoe or Whistler before.

Part Apple Fan, Part Geek

Matt Raible — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:26:53 -0700

I like to think I'm not too committed to anything (except my kids and skiing). The following quizzes seem to indicate I'm on the right track. Moderation is good.

52%How Addicted to Apple Are You?
48% Geek

Proof that the holidays are treating me well? I'm heading to the hills for 2 days of skiing with my sister tomorrow. Forecast: Powder.

A glorious weekend in Steamboat

Matt Raible — Tue, 6 Mar 2007 22:26:18 -0700

After 6 feet of snow in 7 days, we couldn't help ourselves and rushed off to spend a few days in Steamboat last weekend. I bought new skis on Thursday and worked all night so I could take Friday off. I knew the skis were for me when I heard their name - Atomic "Sweet Daddies". Friday morning there was 11" of fresh powder, so I tried to convince Julie we should leave right away. She said "No" because I hadn't slept yet and said I should get some rest. 4 hours later, I woke up and Julie was packed and ready to go. We headed out for the 3-hour drive right around noon.

Saturday morning, we woke up to 4 inches of pow pow and left the condo by 8:15. I was skiing with a buddy (Steve) and we were meeting his friend (Jason) at the Gondola for first tracks. Jason showed up 20 minutes late, but that didn't stop us from finding the powder. We headed up Storm Peak, hiked a bit to the good stuff and enjoyed knee-deep powder to start the day. That run alone took almost an hour and I was definitely feeling the Fat Tire I drank the night before. We had a couple more powder runs, a couple fast groomers and it was time for beer thirty at the top of the gondola. Skiing with Jason (a Steamboat local) was exhausting - especially since he'd already skied 6 days in a row! After lunch, I hit the hot tub, took a nap with Jack and then went tubing with the kids. We ended the night with several bottles of wine and Talladega Nights.

Sunday we woke up to no new snow, but the weather was beautiful. It was something like 40°F and the perfect Spring skiing day. Julie and I took the kids over to the "magic carpet" run and had a blast. Abbie needs no help these days, she can do "pizza" and french fries w/o even trying. She does circles (down the hill, up the moving sidewalk) the whole time.

Jack was a whole different story.

He kept yelling at me "Go down" when we'd get to the top. As I'd ski to the bottom, I'd glance over at him and see a grin from ear-to-ear. When I'd get to the bottom, he'd take off. No turning, no pizza - just balls-to-the-wall with a shit-eating grin and lots of giggling. By the time he'd get to me, he'd be going pretty fast. Luckily, I caught him every time - amidst gasps from the Texans who were learning how to ski on the same hill. After 6 or 7 runs, he'd had enough and we headed back for "nap time".

I spent the rest of Sunday afternoon skiing on popcorn snow that was warmed by the Sun all day. It was beautiful skiing weather and I was ready for the ride home at 4:00. Another trip to the hot tub, a couple Sunshine Wheat beers and we drove home to a beautiful orange and pink sunset. What a glorious weekend.