We don’t get to travel much any more these days, so on the way back from skiing we detoured to Bryce Canyon.
It was surprisingly crowded for the winter. Just our luck it was some sort of winter festival. Well still, we’re here now and a bear wants to explore. We made a quick stop to the Visitors Centre and were pointed to the Queen’s Garden Trail.
The trail’s nice. And it was a great day out.
I saw people hiking in flip flops. They are crazy. I opted to be carried. As usual.
When you are well prepared, no hill is too steep to climb.
Now that Pokin’s joined YPO, she’s making an effort to meet the members more. “The Couples retreat is one of the best ways to get to know the members,” Val (the chapter manager) told Pokin. So she signed up to go on the retreat, which happened to be at a place called Powder Mountain.
Last year this time, we went skiing at Snowbird which was pretty great, so I was excited. The place is called Powder Mountain because normally there is a lot of powder. Ski time! Hot cocoa time!
Except due to some freak weather phenomenon they actually had no new snow and everything was pretty icy…I guess we’ll just have to come back again next year to get proper skiing in.
Still, I do remember my bud taking advantage of the snow and going skiing. It was a work day, and while he was skiing the servers at work crashed. His employees messaged him saying “help, the servers are down”. He took out his phone at the top of the mountain, connected to the systems remotely, fixed the problem and then took this photo to show where he was and continued skiing. That’s productivity 101 right there.
After so many years of living in Las Vegas I had almost forgotten what a lot of snow feels like.
And then Pokin got herself invited to some sort of Strategic ‘Board’ Meeting at Snowbird, Utah. It was a group of VCs and founders gathering in Snowbird resort for a few days of snowboarding and networking.
There were only 3 rules to the group.
Be a telemark skiier
Be a SASS business
Be great at a bar
I’m king of the monoski and I’m always great company so I felt those were good enough qualifications to go. I have no idea how my bud Nicholas and Pokin were still invited.
Nonetheless we got into a car and made our way to Utah.
Growing up in the Whistler mountains I was used to snow. I don’t think I realized just how much more snow Snowbird gets. This was an epic snow season so there was something like 690″ of total snowfall and the snow base got to 180″. I think in metric so I have no idea what that means. But it sounds like a lot. I just looked up the Whistler snow season and it got 373″ Because of all the snow, the valley is really susceptible to avalanches. In fact the Wasatch Mountains where Snowbird is located is ranked top 5 for chances of avalanches, right up there with Annapurna and Everest. To combat that, ski patrol manually triggered avalanches all day long.
What’s a bear to do when it’s avalanching outside in some remote part of the mountain range away from skiiers?
Have some hot cocoa of course.
I did manage to get out a bit. While Pokin was at the Chickadee slope, my bud and I got on the chairlift and went down a few hills. It was fun. Except the parts where my bud wiped out. When we were tired of that we went snowshoeing.
And then it was back inside for more hot cocoa.
I miss this kind of life. We should do it more often.
