Durango 12/25/09

Waking up in Silverton on Christmas was perfection.  It’s truly been a vacation for me where I can sleep in and it’s a nice quiet time away from the busy resort town life.  I had opened my family’s gifts before I left for Silverton so Christmas morning was pretty mellow.  We all ate breakfast and wished each other Merry Christmas before everyone went off on different trips for the day.  Some of the group stayed in, others went splitboarding and I went to Durango.

I was told the drive to Durango would be 45 minutes but I made good time with the roads being clear and bluebird skies.  It was a very beautiful drive to Durango.

[singlepic id=7234 w=400 h=267 float=]

I had a couple funny chairlift rides with locals who shared their peppermint schnapps and tourists including one Texas kid who said “Yee-Haw” to me.  I pretty much kept to myself and while I tried to find a local snowboarder to tag along with, I ended up not seeing many so I didn’t mind a day of riding to myself.

[singlepic id=7236 w=400 h=300 float=]

The riding was just groomers, I didn’t feel like ducking into the trees since I didn’t know the mountain.  I was able to find the terrain parks and went on the boxes they had up.

[singlepic id=7237 w=400 h=300 float=]

Mostly the day was just lapping the main chairlift and enjoying a day at Durango.  By the afternoon, it got really cold on the mountain so I headed down and called it a day.

[singlepic id=7238 w=400 h=300 float=]

On the way back to Silverton, I stopped off the highway to get this photo of the town.  Such a tiny mountain town in the middle of insanely big mountains.

[singlepic id=7235 w=400 h=267 float=]

Definitely looking forward to Silverton tomorrow with a crew of us.