Our Thanksgiving ski day at Keystone was grand. My sweet hubby no longer skis but agreed to be driver for me and our daughter who we picked up on the way. She’s a better skier but hung with me all day, mostly on “blue cruiser” groomed intermediate trails and even some green.
Got reallllly lucky on weather because Wednesday roads were snowy, Eisenhower Tunnel on Route 70 closed. But today was a blue sky sunny day with mostly easy driving. It was colder than I’d usually choose to ski (yea, I cherry picky my days). About 8 degrees when we arrived, high around 25 in the afternoon. I was overdressed with too many layers, especially in the morning, when we got into steep ungroomed blue runs. But taking off the balaclava and opening my coat made it work. Left a fleece layer in the lodge at lunch break.
The back intermediate slopes were not yet open (or we didn’t figure out how to get there… we had enough trails to keep us happy). But there was plenty of snow. Love it when you can ski on soft stuff. In the afternoon we could sometimes hear our skis on a packed patch, but usually it was quiet gliding.
We had picked Keystone because they have a lot of snowmaking. But in the days before Thanksgiving they received more than two feet of natural snow. Twice from the lift we laughed at snowboarders who had somehow gotten themselves into deep patches under the lifts and were walking in thigh deep snow, carrying their boards (sometimes using them to scoop an exit path.