One Day of Winter Fun

It has been several months since my last post but with the bad weather, my busy schedule and shooting mostly for clients I have not gone out on a personal photography outing in awhile.

This past weekend I took the family up to the mountains for some snow tubing fun. Instead of fighting traffic on Saturday, we decided to drive up Friday and stay in a cabin for the night.....What happened next was not planned nor fun.

We woke up early Friday to pack and get ready for the drive up when all we can here was the hard rain out side. This was not a good sign. Rain here means snow in the mountains but that was not going to stop us from at least trying.

By the time we arrived to the foot of the mountains, the traffic was horrendous. As we crept up the mountain, the rain turned into sleet and eventually truned into a snow blizzard by the time we got to an elevation of 2,500 feet. As soon as the snow really started to come down everyone was pulling over to put the mandatory chains on. Since we did not carry any chains, my fault and another story, we had to fork over $100 for the chain installer crew to provide and install chains for us.

As you can see, using my phone camera, the snow was coming down hard and the traffic was bumper to bumper



When we finally arrived to our exit, we were greeted by thick snow. The mini-van we were in did a great job maneuvering in the snow. The TCS, Track Control System, worked like a charm.


Our cabin was buried under a few feet of snow but at least the owners left out a snow shovel for us to dig a path to the door.



The kids and dog ran and played while Theresa and I dug out the path and unloaded the car.




As we were settling down for the night, the power went out and never came back on. The owner's came by with a few candles for some light but we were wondering what we got ourselves into. Thank goodness the fireplace was gas so we at least had some heat.

The next morning we woke up to a glorious weather. The sun was out, the skies were blue and the snow was pristine.






The Car was covered in snow and the doors were frozen sealed. It took me about a half an hour and scrapping to get the door open. Once I got the car started and turned on the heat, it took another half an hour to get the side doors and back door to open so we could pack up and get the the tubing slopes.


The car was the last negative experience we had. The rest of the day went very well and the family and a fantastic time sliding down the hill in their tubes making the whole weekend worth the tremendous effort and frustration.

The extremely convenient escalator to the top of the tubing runs



Isabel from the top of the run


Eva


Theresa surviving her first tubing run


Declan after screaming down the hill.



Isabel going sideways



The kids after a long but great day in the snow.



Just to prove to everyone that I can have fun, here is a video of me going down one of the tubing runs.......weeeeeeeeee