Hidden Valley Skiing

Went to Hidden Valley and did some skiing yesterday.

This was really a spur of the moment thing. I had sent some email earlier this past week to some friends saying “Hey, looks like Hidden Valley has advanced lessons on Sunday afternoon”, but no one bothered responding until Saturday. Bill was willing to drive up to St Louis, so we decided to meet and get in some skiing.

So, I tried to go to bed early on Saturday night (which, of course, is never successful without training). I knew that I was going to be getting up early on Sunday, so I tried anyway. Got up at 5:10 Sunday morning, was ready, had everything loaded, and was on the road right at 6am. My plan was to be at the resort approximately when they opened at 9am. When I’m spending $50-60 to drive somewhere, the longer I can be there, the better.

Most of the drive was uneventful, until I actually got to Eureka (which is the last few miles of the trip). It had snowed off and on for the entire trip down, but a few flurries wasn’t going to cause me all that much grief. At Eureka, though, the Interstate was a mess. In the last 2 or 3 miles before I got off the interstate I saw between 5 and 10 accidents. The flurries had built up to the point that the road was just slick. The trucks hadn’t been in yet to do the salting or calcium work, and it showed. Many fender benders (and worse). I managed to fish tail briefly a couple of times, but arrived at Hidden Valley unscathed around 9:35.

I went and purchased my lift ticket (no rental necessary!) and went back to the truck to get changed into my ski pants and boots, etc., when Bill walked by. He had arrived a bit earlier than he had planned. That worked out well, though. He got his ticket purchased, and we were ready to hit the slopes!

We started off by going to Skid Row to get to the bottom of the lift, and took it up to the top of the hill. From there, we quickly branched out and did all of the blues (Lauren’s Lane, Show Me, Eureka, Missi’s Wish, The Badlands, and Josh’s Jaunt). Then, we were onto the two blacks (Ice Man’s Ridge and The Outlaw). Hidden Valley has a “front side” and a “back side” The front side is easier, and the backside is more difficult. The front side has a couple of lifts, and the backside has a single lift. As the day wore on, the resort got busier. We basically shifted back and forth from the frontside to the backside so that we could escape most of the crowds. There was another, cheaper session that started at 3pm, and I think that a fair number of visitors came for that, which also made things busier.

I had a mini pizza for lunch, and we took that opportunity to call some other friends in St Louis (Brian and Brad) and arrange to meet them for supper. Then, we skied over the course of the afternoon. The snow really felt good. We didn’t even end up taking any of the classes that we had planned to take. I know that I seemed to be paralleling pretty well, and just didn’t see the need. We should have taken classes on the second day when we were out in Breckenridge a couple of weeks ago. Oh well. Next time.

We had planned to meet up for supper a bit before 6pm, so we quit skiing about 5, and got changed, called the friends to confirm, and then headed to an Applebee’s that Brad had recommended. Made it to the Applebee’s at about 5:45 and had a rather good House Sirloin.

Brian, Bill, and myself and went to Breck together, but we hadn’t seen Brad for a while, so it was nice to chat with him and find out what was new. We ended up leaving Applebee’s about 7:30, and I started my trip back to Champaign. I ran through snow flurries, and once or twice the roadway was starting to turn white, but it never did get very bad. I made it back home a little after 10:30. I was tired, but I had had a good day. Definitely better skiing than last year at Hidden Valley. Last year it was just too late in the year and the snow was in pretty pitiful shape. Next, I want to get to some of the other resorts around here. (by around here, I mean within a 3-5 hour drive).

Since then, I’ve been to several resorts up in Wisconsin, including Alpine Valley, Cascade Mountain, and Devil’s Head.

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