The Little Rock Ski Club had another memorable trip the last week of February to Breckenridge, Colorado! We met early on the morning of February 21, 2009 at the Little Rock Airport United Air Lines ticket counter. (With the exception of John & Cathy Richardson who flew out of Dallas and met us in Denver!) Upon arriving at the Pine Ridge Condos, we stored our gear and headed out to find lunch uptown followed by most of our group doing our grocery shopping for the week (and our Sunday welcome party)!

 Sunday found everyone skiing at Breckenridge to gain our "ski legs". It was a one-minute bus ride up the hill to the Snowflake lift. Very convenient though to ski back down the FOUR O’CLOCK run to the back door of our condo for most of us. Not quite so convenient for our "guys" who were in the condo across the street! Paul, Larry, Tommy, Ben & Howie got in a little extra exercise getting back home each evening. We then met in the condo of Joe Sarlo, Dave Bentley (trip leader), Jim and Bobbi Pitts for our welcome party. This was complete with a wonderful Spinach dip made by Bobbi, Spaghetti dinner made by Dave, and a tasty cheese Danish dessert made by yours truly. Of course, the party would not have been complete without our liquid refreshments of beer and wine and tales of the days "events"! It was difficult to determine truth from fiction with or without the liquid refreshments!

Our condos had a few outdoor hot tubs located throughout the complex. It was refreshing to enjoy the hot tub with snow in your hair! (Although it was a cool walk back to your unit!)

 Monday found a group of us going to Vail. If memory serves me right, it was Howie Greene, Ben Thompson, Tommy Thomas, Larry Stortz, Paul Cochran, John Richardson, Beth Kahn and yours truly. Once there, we scattered to the four winds in the snow! It became a trying day with visibility limited in the upper elevations between the clouds and the snow. At the lower elevations, rain became an issue. Larry and Ben found a Mardi Gras party to attend on the mountain complete with masks!  John, Patti & Beth discovered a bar at the base village to pass the last hour away while waiting on the "bus". And on the way home, the closing of Vail Pass became an issue. Since we were already on the snowy pass, we just had to make do with a slow ride back to Breckenridge.  Amazing to see the trucks with chains that were still having difficulties. . .

 Most (if not all of us) attended the Breckenridge Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras Parade just a short two block walk from our condos. Beads were flying everywhere. Well, except off the neck of Joe Sarlo who couldn’t get any of the gals to "flash him" for his beads. Better luck next year, Joe!

 Some folks (Howie, Beth, John to name a few) took a day off by choice on Wednesday. However, Patti took a day off Friday by accident – that was due to her fall on Thursday at Keystone. She spent the day with her left leg up and either on ice or a hot pack. That darned muscle just wouldn’t relax! Speaking of Keystone. . . while John, Beth and Patti were there on Thursday, so were Joe and Dave; however, we never saw them. Goes to show you what a vast mountain can do!  It snowed that day and the skiing was fabulous!

Cathy Richardson doesn’t ski, however she’s a great personal shopper! Not only was she locating gifts for our friends back home, she had time to "decorate" fuzzy shocks for her condo mates, Patti & Beth! Thanks, Cathy!

I heard though the grapevine that a couple of our skiers made it to Beaver Creek and Vail on other excursions.

 We all returned home (on our own powers, I might add) on Saturday, February 28^th with wonderful memories of another great ski trip!