Monday, March 03, 2014

2014 Northstar Day 1

Up before 5 am, I was on the road about 6 am for Northstar. The plan for the next two days is to ski with Hunter and the Larkin group. I rousted Hunter out of bed a little before 8 am with a phone call and got him to let me into the garage at One Village Place. I have had a chance to stay at Hunter's condo and ski twice before [2009 and 2010]. Looking back, I was shocked to realize that I have not been back here in four years.

I settled into the condo and then walked down to get a lift ticket. The Larkin group [Joe, Cindy, Pete and Karen] called almost as soon as I got back from buying the ticket. I met them a little after 9 am at the gondola and we headed up the mountain. We skied together on the Comstock Express stair until about 10:30 am when Hunter finally caught up with us.

After another couple of runs off of the Comstock Express, we headed towards the Backside. We skied the Challenger run. On the second run down, Hunter led us off on a short run called Follow Me. It was a mess; it was not groomed and lots of little trees sticking up through the snow. Although I twisted my knee, I worked my way down pretty well. Cindy and particularly Karen had more problems.

The next time down Larkin got tangled up with a snowboarder near the bottom. In the thirty plus years that I have skied with him, it is the longest that I have ever seen him stay down.

At this point, it was after 1 pm and we decided to head to Shaffer Camp for lunch. This is a private restaurant, bar and lounge located at the top of the Zephyr Chair. Hunter had dropped Yuli there earlier. We had a nice lazy lunch.

After lunch, Cindy headed to the mid-lodge. Larkin and I skied a couple of runs on the Backside and off the East Ridge. We never connected with Hunter. We quit about 4 pm and met the rest of the group at the mid-lodge. Finally connecting with Hunter, I skied down to the condo with him. The Larkin group stopped by the condo for a few minutes to get a tour.

Hunter, Yuli and I spent a long time in the jacuzzi. After getting cleaned up, we headed to Mikuni's for dinner. Looking for somewhere to have a drink after dinner, we wandered around the village. It was empty and everyplace was closed. We ended up going back to Mikuni's and essentially closing the place down. By the time we got back to the condo, it was after 11 pm and I crashed.

The weather was a little funky over the course of the day. While we were skiing, we had light snow flurries for most of the day. Towards the end of the day, it got very wet. When we stopped at 4 pm, my jacket was very wet. When we walked to dinner and then wandered around the village after dinner, it was raining lightly.

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