Merry Christmas!!! We decided to come back to Jeff's house today. The places we were planning on going the next few days didn't have that much snow. So here is an update of the last few days.

Wednesday we took our time getting ready and enjoyed hotel life. We went back up to Crested Butte to do some snowmobileing. Some locals asked if we wanted to join them on a simple loop and we decided to go with them. The next thing I know we are dropping in off of a steep cat track and crossing rivers into huge powder hills. Nevertheless I found myself digging the sled out of the snow the entire time. That pretty much ended our day pretty quickly and we packed it up early and headed to Telluride.

We spent the night on the side of the street in downtown Telluride. Very nice RICH town. We couldn't run the generator hence no heat. All the pics below are from Telluride, they haven't gotten that much snow lately and is probably the only reason why we had the patience to set up some pics. We skied a half a day at Telluride and that night camped out in the public parking in downtown (which happen to be where one of the ski lifts is located). Friday we headed to Silverton.

Silverton, population of 250, was probably one of the coolest towns we visited. You can snowmobile right through the town. We found a hotel that was pet friently, Canyon View Inn, for $50 per night. Funny the owner is from Booton, NJ. We did some laundry on friday afternoon and basically just started to prepare for the next day.

Silverton Mountain has one double chair lift, no lodge (OK there is tent), no running water, no facilities (OK there is an outhouse). Lift tickets are $100 per day and we took 4 runs. All runs are guided and require about 15-20 min hikes. You have to carry a shovel, beacon and probe in order to ski the mountain. In 4 runs we skied almost 10k vertical feet (never skied that amount anywhere in the East). Lets just say it was amazing. Some of the deepest powder I have ever skied. We skied with a total of 8 people includeing our guide. The other people in our group were real cool and friendly (had a little crush on the daughter) and good skiers/snowboarders. Silverton Mountain is a must if you want to experience TRUE backcoutry skiing.

Today (Sunday, Christmas) we snowmobiled right from town and spent almost 2 hours riding trails around the town of Silverton. Real cool technical trails alongside old mining shafts and abandoned homes. We drope into Durango, realized that there was not much to it and decided to head back to Nederland.

We plan on leaving in the the next few days for Steamboat. The boat has been getting pounded with a ton of snow.

Extremly tired and happy to spend the night in my bed. Happy Holidays!