Powder SnowCat skiing with bro in the Butte

2-25-12
Drove to Crested Butte to see the bro. Got in late, around 130am, but he was there waiting for me

2-26
Zach took me on an alpine ski tour into the Crested Butte backcountry. The weather and views were gorgeous and the powder pretty decent considering the majorly huge wind event they'd had the day before. You could tell I had just come back from Antarctica, b/c I was sweating up a storm all day while bro was feeling cold. I think we thought the temps were about 5F.

2-27
Skied a day at Crested Butte Resort, which was fun. CB has a lot of good steep stuff, and it was Zach's first time riding chairlifts this year. After skiing bro took me out to happy hour sushi as he had a gift certificate. We mowed down 50 bucks at half off worth of sushi.

I had originally planned to leave this night so I would have a whole day to pack and prepare for my trip to S. America; however, the promise of a huge storm and a free cat skiing trip kept me there one more night

2-28
The storm hit as promised dropping down a foot of soft fluffy white stuff (with lots more still coming as I left crested butte). Skied the whole day at Irwin on the luxury snowcat tour run by the Irwin snowcat company with the 12" of fresh powder. It's a really fancy operation w/ fancy snowcats (including satellite radio and flat screen tvs, a cool little yurt used as a base camp which included great food, lots of drinks, including alcoholic ones. There were 8 of us skiing plus 3 guides, one of which was Zach. They gave us these custom fat powder skis which were just amazing in the powder. The powder and another day of skiing with the bro was truly amazing.
I left at 7 from Crested Butte and had to drive through the nasty storm, sometimes with zero viz on the passes. The storm lasted all the way to Golden. Lots of cars in the ditch (this is when I am always glad I own a suby) and some pretty bad accidents near Buena Vista. B/c of the storm, I didn't get home until 230 am. I had to pack, clean up the house, water mom's plants, and so some other travel preparations