Early Snows Promise Good Early Skiing

Don't let her "Poor Little Match Girl" look distract you. Murphy, the Lodge Dog, loves her some snow.

It started snowing for real up at the High Mountain Lodge in October. We have had five significant snowstorm (more than 6 inches) since then.

All indications point toward an amazing early ski season for Winter Park.

Generally, this time of year, skiers can expect--at best--one or perhaps two runs of man-made snow at the resort. However, if the trend we experienced in October continues (always a gamble), we may have some pretty decent skiing by Opening Day in just a couple of weeks.

And there's nothing to suggest that skiers and snowboarders who choose to upgrade that classic winter song to "I'm dreaming of a White Thanksgiving" will be disappointed.

Come join us for some early-season snow sports, and plan to spend Thanksgiving with us. Julie is making a traditional feast with all the trimmings (thank God for the three ovens in the High Mountain Lodge's kitchen). Details on our website.

Blockbuster® circa 1995 is alive and well at the High Mountain Lodge

 

When Julie and I bought the High Mountain Lodge over four years ago, we went through the usual negotiations with the seller about what was going to be left with the property, and what the seller wanted to retain.

One of the most amusing contingencies in the contract was that the seller wanted to retain possession of the library of video tapes that, at the time, were on shelves in the Lodge's office. When our real estate agents mentioned that contingency, I almost fell over laughing. "You're kidding, right? Who wants a bunch of VHS tapes? They don't even make VCRs any more!"

Well, evidently, the seller came to his senses; when we took possession of the Lodge, there they were, in all their paleolithic glory, still on the shelves. The seller never exercised that particular contingency.

In the years since we bought the Lodge, as our friends' and relatives' VCRs  bit the dust, we have been the recipients of their video libraries. Our unwelcome collection of VHS tapes has tripled in size since the seller abandoned his original collection, and the tapes have been collecting dust in boxes in just about every room of our living quarters since we didn't have any more space in the office to shelve them with the original collection.

Just this past month, since the government shutdown and the consequent closure of Rocky Mountain National Park left us without our usual compliment of guests coming up to the high country to ooh and aah at the changing color of the aspens, we set about accomplishing a project that had been hanging fire for at least a year.

We built a series of shelves at the end of our rec room designed for videos. For three days, now, we have been carting over boxes of tapes and arranging them on the shelves. The shelves cover the entire back wall of the rec room, and already, we're wondering if we need more room to house them all.

Lest you think we're complete Luddites, there is also a rather good selection of DVDs, as well.

When you visit us, feel free to indulge yourself in a marathon of trashy movies from the 80s and 90s. But please don't feel obligated to bring your old videos with you. Our shelves are full.

The Raspberry Month

Recently we got a Facebook invitation from a new friend in the Fraser Valley who invited us to her secret raspberry hunting grounds.

Like Italian truffle hunters who take circuitous routes to disguise the location of their favorite spots, denizens of the Fraser Valley take their raspberries seriously.

Luckily for us, our secret raspberry patch is just below the dining room windows, and I have been watching it in the last few warmer days bloom with pecks--if not bushels--of ripe raspberries.

The plan is to include our own raspberries in the fruit we serve at breakfast at the Lodge for the rest of August and into September. Additionally, I hope to put up some jars of raspberry jam that we will serve to our guests this winter when snow drifts out of the west completely overwhelm the raspberry canes.

Our berries are smaller than the mutant giants we get at the grocery store, but they are oh-so-sweet. Be the envy of all your friends and come visit us during Raspberry Month.

They don't call it "mud season" for nothin'

When T.S. Eliot observed that "April is the cruelest month," it was clear that the man from Missouri who bugged out to Britain had never been to the Colorado high country in the month of May.

Since Winter Park Ski Resort closed on April 21, we have had three (count 'em) blizzards that each dropped between six and twelve inches of snow on us.

Two days later, the snow was gone, the sky blue, the sun warm, and newcomers were left shaking their heads. "What was hell was that all about?"

I hung out two loads of laundry this afternoon to dry in the wind-whipped sunshine, and I got the last sheets off the line just as a rain squall raced over Sheep Mountain like sleet-frozen Valkÿries in a bad production of Wagner. That rain turned into a short-lived horizontal snow squall that has since been replaced by the most marvelous warm sunshine. I'm not holding my breath that it will stick around, even until sundown. There are still some evil-looking clouds Over Yonder.

Our neighbors across the road, students at a Bible School, have had the power washer and the shop vac out all day trying to get their cars cleaned up for spring. Silly children. Even prayer isn't gonna keep the dirt roads--mud roads this time of the year--from soiling the spit-polish shine on their vehicles.

Actually, having a clean vehicle in Grand County this time of the year is a sign that "you ain't from around here." Locals keep a suspicious eye on people driving clean cars, hoping the drivers won't snap and turn homicidal when denied visions of fields of columbine waving in the breeze (that happens in July).

Last week, before we drove down to Denver for a celebration of an anniversary, I filled the gas tank and spent eleven dollars for an "ultimate" car wash at the gas station. "Why are you spending so much money?" Julie wondered.

"Well, if we're stopped for a traffic offense and CHP notices that our license plate is obscured by mud, I don't want to get shot before we can explain that we're not felons fleeing justice. Besides, we're going to Denver, and I don't want people to think ill of us because we have a dirty car."

Julie snorted. "The way you drive, it doesn't take a muddy car for you to get flipped off in Denver traffic."

"I'm out of practice driving in the city," I whined. "I couldn't help that I was looking at the snow on the Continental Divide last week and that truck had to drive into the ditch."

"Lucky the sheriff hasn't been around."

"Something to be said for a muddy license plate."

Thoughts in Mid-Winter

Yes, I know, it's just a little more than a month until spring. This high in the mountains, however, winter is notorious for holding on with gritted teeth until well into spring and sometimes almost into summer. It's not unusual up here to have the new-blooming Pasque Flowers to get covered in several inches of snow. Silly vegetation.

Besides, the marmot saw his shadow at Winter Park on February 2, so that means two more months of winter--never mind what happens with that fat sleepy woodchuck in Pennsylvania.

So it's still midwinter here at the High Mountain Lodge, and what a wonderful winter it's turning out to be. After some spectacular snow around Christmas, the weather pattern shifted, and we were left high and pretty dry during January.

But all that changed when February rolled around.  We have been getting modest snow storms every few days, which is keeping the terrain soft at Winter Park Ski Area and the edges of our skis from getting dull.

With the predictable snow falls, weekends have been filling up here at the High Mountain Lodge with last-minute skiers from the Front Range. And we are getting a lot of bookings from further-flung areas as well. And all our guests are getting to see Colorado at its finest. Today, the sky is an eye-popping blue, and the sun is shining on newly-fallen snow. The peaks are white and starkly outlined against the impossibly blue sky. The air is crisp and cold, but we'll be warm enough once we get to the area and begin carving turns.

We hope you can join us this year.

Naming our Rooms

Since we have been open, people have occasionally asked us about the eccentric numbering convention for our rooms. They're numeric, but we've left some numbers out. Currently, you can book rooms 1, 5, 7-10, 12-14.

The convention was something we inherited when we bought the place. And we are slowly working to distinguish our rooms with more than a numeral. And the numbers not shown are "out of service."

People have been telling us since we opened that we need to "name" our rooms in order to distinguish them in the minds of prospective guests. Early on, we added "Valley View Suite" to the name of Room 9, our very best room, because it was a 2-room suite and, well, it overlooked our valley. It has a lot of furniture that came out of our house from before we bought the High Mountain Lodge, including a Chinese carpet that we bought when Julie was pregnant and we went out to buy a rocking chair for the baby but came back with an oriental rug, instead. (Over the years, we've worked through our ADD issues.) There are also some nice Chinese prints in the bedroom. The name "Valley View Suite" probably isn't the most spectacular example of marketing positioning and branding ever conceived, but it has served to distinguish that particular room with many of our returning guests.

Similarly, we named the suite across the hall the "Atrium Suite" because it overlooked our enclosed pool atrium. On our website, we tell people that, in the summertime, it's just dark, because it has no view. In the wintertime, it's very popular because by the time people get back from skiing, it's dark anyway. It's also less expensive than the Valley View Suite, and that works for some folks, too. Another of our housekeepers, standing on the balcony of the Atrium Suite (yes, it has a balcony overlooking the pool), asked me one time, "Dude! Whaddaya do to keep folks from jumping from here into the pool, 'cause this could be the sickest most awesome plunge?!" I replied, "We fire any of our employees who suggest that to our guests." That seemed to work, though I briefly considered having a couple of brass plates engraved and affixed to the railing that would proclaim, "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT."

We have toyed with naming Room 12 "the Duck Room." When an interior-designer friend "staged" it right before we opened in 2009, she found duck and waterfowl art and objects all over the lodge and concentrated them in that room. The effect really is lovely. Then my wife, Julie, and her sister found a set of brass fireplace tools with duck heads on them at an antique shop, and they bought them to "complete" the room. Our housekeeper at the time, however, freaked out when he saw it, and termed the whole room "creepy." We eventually persuaded him to clean the room, in spite of his fear of the fireplace tools, but we have held off naming the room because we realize that some people don't like birds. Indeed, one set of guests actually put a towel on top of the mallard duck decoy in the corner of the room because, they told us when they were checking out, "It looked at us when we were sleeping." This begs the question of how people know that something is looking at them when they are unconscious, but I just smiled and swiped their credit card. Moral of the story: if you don't like birds, Room 12 may not be your best choice when staying at the High Mountain Lodge.

We have considered naming Room 13 "The Train Room." It has an amazing collection of train art from the early days of transportation in the Winter Park/Fraser area. And train buff friends have given us additional train memorabilia for the room. The press of other demanding projects have kept us from renaming it--that and sheer laziness. Because, if we have that many "named" rooms, what are we going to call the rest of the rooms? The Blue Room? The Indian Rug Room? Chalk it all up to a failure of imagination.

I have made a commitment to myself and to my wife that I will get "Room 3" in service before ski season. Room 3 is on the lower level of the lodge. When we bought the place, it was "being renovated." That renovation languished until now. We have installed a pedestal sink in the bathroom, stained and finished the wainscoting. Tomorrow, I'm painting the walls and frantically searching for a sound-proofing solution for the ceiling.

Room 3 has a fireplace and will have a king-sized bed. It interconnects with The Library (Room 4). The Library is generally a public room. The furniture consists of comfortable chairs, a recliner, a sofa-bed, and a game table, surrounded by books, both popular and academic. It also has a fireplace. When Room 3 and Room 4 are rented together, we will call it "The Library Suite." It will be an amazing, comfortable space for a family. The Library has a half bath, which means less trooping through the bedroom for potty breaks in the middle of the night--that is, if Tom can get the toilet to stop leaking....

We're looking forward to adding a new, "named" room to the offerings at the High Mountain Lodge. We hope you'll come visit us and check it out!

First Snow of the Season!

I wouldn't exactly call it a "storm." It's been gently snowing on and off all day. No accumulation to speak of, but a lot of moisture has been soaking into our very thirsty ground.

I took the dogs for "walkies" earlier today. You would think that, with all the acreage we have around the High Mountain Lodge that the dogs could explore the place on their own, but noooo, they insist that we take them. You would think they'd been shut up in an urban apartment all day the way they go nuts when we put on outdoor boots--instead of being in the country in doggie paradise.

But anyway, walking along country roads and in the pasture in the snow was a delightful experience. The aspen leaves have all fallen, and you can smell the leaf mold on the wet ground. A Dan Fogleberg song from my adolescence begins, "The end of October, / the sleepy brown woods seem to / bow down their heads to the winter." That's sort of what it feels like today.

We're really slow right now, though reservations are starting to pile up for the winter ski season, as well as Thanksgiving. Winter Park opens on November 14. In the meantime, we are participating in a Professional Association of Innkeepers offering of two free nights to active military and veterans over the Veterans Day weekend. We filled up within 48 hours of posting the offering, and have a respectable wait list, as well.

Some friends whom I used to play in a bar-band with are coming up to provide entertainment for the weekend. Should be an awesome time.

While the summer activities are winding down and the winter ones have yet to gear up, there is plenty still to do in the mountains in the fall. Hikes, bike rides, fishing, golf. Shoot, all the merchants are having sales getting read to flop their inventory for the winter.

Good times in the mountains. Come visit.