The lesson of our first day on the ski slopes this year is this: if you don’t know where sniff out the deals you will pay out the nose. I remembered that a local grocery chain sells lift tickets, and this saved us $28 on the ski-base price of $118 for two day passes. And that’s early season! Our friends, Marcus and Ester, got passes and a room for this price, but they got it back in September. Of course your best deal by far is a season pass, IF you’ll make it to the hill more than five or six times.

Despite the expense the weather and snow conditions were good, and we enjoyed ourselves. There was good, fluffy, natural snow on peak 10 early in the day, but it was getting rocky by the afternoon. My newly-tuned board has some good rock-bites to show for it!