More time in the Mountains

I’ve been sluggish in the evenings when I’ve been home and haven’t felt inspired to post. I’m feeling a bit tired tonight too, but I thought I would share some photos from this weekend. My friend Mauri came into town from Minnesota for the week for work and she wanted to go snowboarding. It didn’t take much convincing and a big group headed back down to the same house we rented over New Year’s. Brundage had gotten almost 4 feet of snow in just under two weeks, so we were all pretty excited.

Here’s Micah snowboarding in 13 degree weather in a sweatshirt. What is he thinking? Well Micah is from Wisconsin and he knows all about cold, but he doesn’t know about mountains with real “powder” snow. He’s a pretty good snowboarder and he said that Saturday was his best snowboarding day ever. Welcome to Idaho my friend!!

Ashley, Em and I on the ski lift. We were stopped for about 7 minutes so we took the opportunity to snap a few photos. We also pondered at about 50 feet in the air, what we would do if the lift was broken and they told us that there was no help to come. Ashley said she would jump, I said I would stay put, cuz hey eventually someone is going to come around, but that was not part of the “what if” rules we had set, so I said I would jump too. Emily said she would try to take some part of her clothing off like her jacket or pants and straddle over the wire cable and try to shimmy down it for awhile until she was closer to the ground. I think I looked at her, like yah right. It was a fun “what if”.

Brundage Mtn. put in 2 new lifts this year and one is off the backside of the mountain which overlooks McCall and Payette lake. This is Mauri and I enjoying the view. Mauri got back into the swing of snowboarding after 1 run even though she hasn’t been in a few years.

This is Emily and I showing our expression of surprise which I think fits us well. We continue to marvel at how much we have in common and we seem to have a pretty good dang time hanging out. Before our last run of the day it was just the two of us and we decided last minute to get a drink in the Yurt on top of the mountain. We had Irish Hot Cocoa (cocoa, baileys, little crown). They were absolutely delicious and warmed me from the inside out. The lifts had stopped running and we took a cat track to the far side of he mountain and did our last run with only two of us on the hill. It was pretty cool.

Back at Pair-O-Dice after hot tub soaks, showers, and dinner. The relaxation was over and the second round of fun for the day was about to begin. Emily showed us a twist to the game of UNO which allows people to play out of turn, but you have to be quick, very quick. It was the most fun UNO ever! I also had an Irish coffee, which was my first caffeinated drink besides hot chocolate since July. Needless to say, I was having a good time. I rallied everyone to walk downtown and go out to the only bar in McCall. The group of 13 walked in the snow downtown not knowing what a good time we were all about to have.

We hung out, bopped and danced all night. It was really a lot of fun. We then walked back home late night and scattered about doing various things. Emily and I ate just about every snack on the counter, Micah went outside to lay in the snow and fell asleep for an hour (that’s scary), and Tino tried to be quiet to no avail, and some re-soaked in the hot tub. It was a perfect ending to a perfect day!

Sunday I was pretty out of it, so Emily drove Mauri and I back to Moscow, after a group of us ate a yummy breakfast in New Meadows. The rest of the crew headed back up the mountain. Another beautiful McCall weekend to put in the memory!

All I have to say is I’m so glad I bought my point-n-shoot camera this summer. I’ve been a camera snob for a long time and love to take really good shots with my SLR. But the reality is I can’t carry that thing everywhere and I really wanted to start capturing or documenting my everyday world through photographs. I love my little Canon Powershot SD8000 IS, it goes everywhere with me and I’m actually in my own photographs for the first time in a long time.