In This Post: Alpine Skiing, Big Bear Mountain Resorts, Snow Summit, Snow Valley Mountain Resort, Big Bear City
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| End of the day at Snow Valley |
Last week we were trapped inside, first by tropical storms that dumped more rain in Southern California than we usually get in a whole year and then by colder storms out of the north that dumped a couple of feet of snow in the local mountains. Being that the local ski season can be unpredictable, Simmons and I decided to take advantage of the fresh snowfall and get to the mountains while the get'in was good. We went to the Snow Summit website and signed up for a "First Time Beginner Board Package." The package included equipment, lessons and an optimistic guarantee that we'd be snowboarding down the bunny sloops by day's end.
The next day, we were on the road and heading up to the mountains for our first time snowboarding adventure before sunrise, but our day didn’t quite go as planned. Our usual route up into the mountains, Highway 330, was closed due to damage from the recent storms. The two alternative routes, Highways 18 and 38, each involved considerably more mountain driving. We choose Highway 38. It was a beautiful, wintry drive through the mountains, but we didn’t roll into our destination, the mountain town of Big Bear, until after 10am and we still hadn’t eaten breakfast.
We were hoping the "silver lining" of the slow economy would be a smaller than usual crowd of vacationers flocking to the local mountain resorts between Christmas and New Years. Not! I guess things are turning around. The restaurants were packed. The roads were packed. The parking lots were packed. We supposed the slopes would be packed too, but... we never saw them.
At one point we were really close, just a few blocks away from the main lodge at Snow Summit, when traffic control personnel intervened and contrived to send us idling around town on a meandering tour of "remote" and "over-flow" parking lots that apparently filled up just as we got to each one. By the time we were directed into a parking lot that seemed to be miles away from the ski area, it was obvious we weren’t going to make it to our morning lesson.
The next day, we were on the road and heading up to the mountains for our first time snowboarding adventure before sunrise, but our day didn’t quite go as planned. Our usual route up into the mountains, Highway 330, was closed due to damage from the recent storms. The two alternative routes, Highways 18 and 38, each involved considerably more mountain driving. We choose Highway 38. It was a beautiful, wintry drive through the mountains, but we didn’t roll into our destination, the mountain town of Big Bear, until after 10am and we still hadn’t eaten breakfast.
We were hoping the "silver lining" of the slow economy would be a smaller than usual crowd of vacationers flocking to the local mountain resorts between Christmas and New Years. Not! I guess things are turning around. The restaurants were packed. The roads were packed. The parking lots were packed. We supposed the slopes would be packed too, but... we never saw them.
At one point we were really close, just a few blocks away from the main lodge at Snow Summit, when traffic control personnel intervened and contrived to send us idling around town on a meandering tour of "remote" and "over-flow" parking lots that apparently filled up just as we got to each one. By the time we were directed into a parking lot that seemed to be miles away from the ski area, it was obvious we weren’t going to make it to our morning lesson.
We never got out of the car. We called Snow Summit and found out we weren’t obliged to use our "First Time Beginner Board Package" on any particular day. We decided to come back on a less crowded day and headed down the mountain on Highway 18.
Highway 18 took us right past the Snow Valley ski area. The ski runs we could see as we approached didn’t look crowded at all. We pulled in, got a great parking place and bought half-day lift tickets. Simmons had his alpine ski gear in the car. He headed to the slopes and I headed for the rental shop.
Normally I am a free-heel (aka telemark) skier, but the rental shop only had traditional alpine gear, so I wound up skiing alpine style for the first time in 30 years. That Alpine gear had been steadily evolving during my 3 decade sabbatical wasn't a surprise, but I was amazed at just how easy and comfortable it was to ski on modern gear.
The combination of great gear, short runs and short lift lines made for a fun and easy half-day on the slopes. A beautiful day to be in the mountains and a terrific "opening day" for us.
The combination of great gear, short runs and short lift lines made for a fun and easy half-day on the slopes. A beautiful day to be in the mountains and a terrific "opening day" for us.
Fitness Stats
This was the first time we wore our heart rate monitors (HRM) skiing. We were only on the slopes for a little over 3-hours and considering the amount of time spent standing in line and sitting in chairlifts, I didn’t think we’d be doing much for ourselves fitness-wise.
Now that I’ve had a chance to look over our HRM stats I can say I’m pleasantly surprise. Our heart rates were in ideal fat burning zones 40% of the time and good fitness improvement zones 33% of the time. Those two zones overlap, but if you remove the overlap, we were in good heart rate zones 54% of the time. Not bad. Not bad at all for doing something as fun as skiing.
Now that I’ve had a chance to look over our HRM stats I can say I’m pleasantly surprise. Our heart rates were in ideal fat burning zones 40% of the time and good fitness improvement zones 33% of the time. Those two zones overlap, but if you remove the overlap, we were in good heart rate zones 54% of the time. Not bad. Not bad at all for doing something as fun as skiing.
Comments: Skiing is sure a fun way to burn calories
Challenge: We still need to try snowboarding
You forgot to mention the awesome Monster burritos we had for dinner! I think next time we'll need to ski for 24 hours in order to burn the necessary calories
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