Musings from 10,000'

Visiting at 10,000' sure is interesting. The mountain scenery is so amazing here, the sky is a different kind of blue, and of course there's snow. Leadville is an interesting old mining town, fun to walk around in.

Friday after Whitney was done at the mountain we wandered around town, got some coffee, poked in a few shops. We were walking down the main street when all sorts of police cars went flying by us. We walked a bit further, stopped in a bike shop and a family came in and said that they were told to leave their house because of a propane leak. Well! Whitney found out today that there had been a murder (apparently ski racers are big gossips) and the police were saying it was a propane leak so people didn't freak out.

Saturday my nephew, a student at Colorado School of Mines came out to meet us. He saw a bit of the racing then we came back to town, got a beer and dinner with him. It was good to see him and catch up. Hanging out at 10,000" isn't for the faint of heart...or lungs if you're from the East Coast where the elevation is about 1,000'. A friend of ours had to go down to Denver tonight and will be flying home tomorrow because he's got pulmonary edema. Hopefully once he gets back home he'll be feeling better.

We got about a foot of snow Saturday night into Sunday. It was light fluffy stuff and at least this time our rental car came with a brush/scraper. The snow was so pretty! It did affect the schedule for Sunday's races, at times you couldn't see the race course at all from the lodge. When the day was finished we went back to town then walked down for coffee, hot chocolate, and snacks. That was an adventure! The roads were snow covered but plowed, which packed down the fresh snow onto the ice below. I managed to find the sweet spot and slipped but was fine.

The drive down to Denver was...interesting. In Leadville it was lightly snowing, pretty flurries. But then we hit the heavier snow, squalls, whiteout conditions. We had to go over one pass that was pretty high then made it down to I-70. When we passed Copper you couldn't see the slopes from the road. It was a crazy drive down but when we got to Denver it was just windy, no snow although we did see some light flurries. We got our car dropped off and got to the airport in plenty of time (at one point we were wondering if we'd miss our flight, but we left in plenty of time). Safely back home now and off to the next race this weekend at Massanutten. No racing for Whitney, she'll be setting course and coaching.