Skiing at Monarch

We went skiing!  It was Mikey's first time skiing, he had only tried snowboarding previously, and it was Julie's first time in about five years snowboarding!  Julie bought a new snowboard in Vail last fall, and we only need to use it 4 more times to save over renting!  Some friends asked us if we wanted to spend a weekend in Salida to go to Monarch ski area, which sounded like a great idea!  On Friday it was snowing pretty good when we left and they were calling for a good amount of snow to fall.  Once we got to Salida the roads were almost all snow packed and it was still snowing.  On Saturday morning we had a very snowy drive up to Monarch and they said that they got almost a foot and a half of fresh snow from Friday.  The conditions were great, nice powder all over the place!  Mikey took a lesson in the morning, and Julie took off with our friends.  She wasn't quite up to their speed and let them take off without her.  She did a few blue runs and it all started to come back.  We all met up again when Mikey's lesson was over for lunch.  Mikey practiced a few more bunny trail runs and then we headed off for his first green!  He did really well and only fell a few times.  He really liked skiing better than snowboarding!   At about 3 o'clock we all met up again and were all just wiped, so we decided to call it a day!  We returned our rented equipment and headed back to Salida for some dinner and Trivial Pursuit.  We lost, but we think we can blame it on being exhausted.  We had a great time and here are a few pictures from the day!