Yesterday, during our meeting's afternoon break, I finally hustled up to Aspen Highlands Bowl. This involved taking two lifts, and then a snowcat, and then a 45 minute hike along the ridge, ending at over 12,000 feet elevation. The bowl is steep. Very, very steep. Up to 48 degrees steep (measured down from horizontal). For some perspective, if you were to point your snowboard straight down the mountain for 3 seconds, you'd find yourself going 50 miles per hour [exercise for the reader]. Well, at least that would be true if the mountain was covered in a sheet of (perfectly frictionless) ice. Fortunately, it wasn't.
When you're at the top, you need to peer over the edge to see the terrain. For the record, I'm afraid of heights. Standing on a ridge in the freezing cold, with a brisk wind blowing, with a thousand foot steep vertical drop on both ...
