Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Playing in the snow, Breckenridge, CO

Manray and I recently had the pleasure of joining a group of her friends in Breckenridge, CO for a weekend of snow, sun, food, drinks and fun. Most of the folks were from back East and hadn't been to the Rockies - in one case we had a Floridian who hadn't even skied/sledded before!

While the bulk of the folks took advantage of Colorado's excellent skiing, a small cadre of us spent the weekend snowshoeing and I've included some of my favorite shots below.

Side note: The effects of climate change are definitely apparent as Denver has absolutely no snow and relatively warm temperatures and we didn't run into any substantial snow until we reached the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 at about 11,000'. Fun fact:

The tunnel was built under the Continental Divide, and at a maximum elevation of 11,158 ft (3,401 m) above sea level, it is one of the highest vehicular tunnels in the world. It is also the longest mountain tunnel built under the Interstate highway program, the highest point on the Interstate Highway system, and one of the last major pieces of the system to be completed.

Hopefully new storms will completely wallop the Front Range with new snow as the state's snowpack is well under average and a severe drought is forecast.

Enough bad news, onto the fun!



Lunch break!





Randy and a Robber Jay



More photos in this Flickr slideshow:

3 comments:

Clint Gardner said...

You are having too much dern fun in Colorado.

dbh said...

Wow, the birds! I can't believe it was eating from his hand. The photos are gorgeous, as always. I'm only sort of glad to hear that you and Manray are settling into Denver. We sure miss you in SLC!

calanan said...

Thank!

FYI the bird is a Gray Jay, aka Camp Robber Jay, and it's known to be quite the bold character!