Megafest 6.1 Ski Outing

For Megafest 6.1, we held a Ski Outing at Eldora on Monday, 31 December 2007.

Breakfast

Kiesa served blueberry muffins and scrambled tofu for breakfast at 07:00 MST.

Lift tickets

Full-price lift tickets at the resort itself cost US$59/day[1]. We purchased tickets for US$51 at Crystal Ski Shop in Boulder as we rented our skis. This was the same price we could have gotten at Safeway.

Ski rental

Ski rental at Eldora itself is US$37/day[2]

Crystal Ski Shop in Boulder offers basic ski rentals for half that price, US$18/day[3]. We stopped by Crystal on our way through Boulder on our way to Eldora. Late on Sunday night, Jaeger discovered that Motoko would not hold five people and their skis; to fit any skis at all, half of the rear seats had to be removed, reducing the human capacity from five to three. Yanthor and Anya drove their Lexus to fill the extra two people.

Weather

Had we been paying more attention to the weather forecast, we may have wanted to ski on a different day (though our other scheduled events may have made that difficult). The forecast high was 11 degrees Fahrenheit; around mid-day, Jaeger spotted a thermometer at the base that read 8 degrees. With twenty-to-forty mile-per-hour winds at the top of the main lifts, this created an especially cold day. The day was an economic lesson in sunk costs.

I-70 was closed for most of the morning due to avalanche danger[4], leaving Eldora the only ski area accessible from the greater Longmont area.