rachepache: My adventureous, but ultimately failed, attempt to ski in Colorado.

Two weeks ago, when I was in Colorado, my friend Patrick, who I hadn't seen in over four years, came up picked me up from my brother's house, having been delayed by almost an hour because there was a big sink hole in the freeway as a result of a water pipe breaking. Then we started to head up to his condo up in Silverthorne. It was snowing quite heavily and there was a winter storm warning. We should have taken the random car on fire on the side of the road as a warning that something was wrong that evening. But no, we drove on. As we got further the wind was blowing the snow around so much that we could barely see a car 100 feet or so in front of you.

We were going along ok, even though the car was a two wheel drive, when traffic completely stopped for about 1/2 hour. During this 1/2 hour it continued to snow and snow and snow. So, as you might imagine, there was a significant amount of snow when we started trying to go, uphill, when traffic started moving again. Well, we couldn't move; we just slipped and spun the tires. At this point, we decided we should hitchhike together the rest of the 10 miles or so to the condo. A lot of people either passed us or didn't have room until these three guys from Denver University stopped and helped us. They helped us pull the car over to the side of the road and offered to drop us at the cabin on their way to Breckenridge. Sadly, however, the tunnel about a mile down the road was closed and the highway patrol made all the cars turn around and head back to Denver!

We decided, all five of us, to try and find some place to stay on the way to Denver, figuring that the road would be open by the morning. So, we found a small hotel in Idaho Springs. The front desk wasn't even open; the security guy just let us in and took my ID with my promise to pay in the morning before we left.

At 7am, the road was still closed. At 7:30am, we found out that the road was likely to be closed for quite some time due to wind. So, the three DU guys gave us a ride back to Denver and actually even dropped us off at Patrick's place, which was super nice of them. Patrick's car ended up being towed, right next to where we had stayed...if only we had known.