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The 2003 Ski Trip January 1-4, 2003 The following write-up is courtesy of Greg. We'll probably get him to write a shorter one. Well, it was another great ski trip again. 23 members from Venture Crew 78 and 13 members from Venture Crew 222 participated. Members from Crew 78 meet at the early hour of 9:00 on New Years Day to begin the 3 hour drive up to Kings Beach and the church that we stayed at. We arrived in Kings Beach at about 1:00. On the way up, we had to stop at a crewmember’s cabin to pick them up. I attempted to climb up a snow bank in my car, and did not make it very far until I got stuck, fortunately I was able to back down. While we were waiting to for one of our advisors to go up to the cabin, it was about 10 min away from the parking lot, we had a snowball fight, and threw chunks of snow into a river that was below. It turned out that it took Rich, the guy who went to get Pat and Chris about 30 min. to come back, it turned out that he had gotten stuck in a snowdrift that he had to go through to get to the cabin. The drive up was very interesting with Tom, our advisor sliding his Jeep into a snow bank. After we had settled in at the church that we were staying at, we decided to relax for a few hours before we went out to go sledding. At about 3:00 we decided that it was time to go sledding. We drove for about 20 min. to get to the sledding place, which had an excellent view over Lake Tahoe, and proceeded to find the biggest and most dangerous route down that we could. We had a great time, especially when we tried to put 4 people on a tiny sled and send them down face first! As we were sledding down the hill, some little kids were at the bottom of the track, and they almost got run over, but thanks to my quick maneuvering, the day was saved. After we got bored going down the hill straight, we decided to make a jump on an even steeper hill, and had a great time watching people get airborne, roll over in midair, and crash into a powder bank 10 feet below where they took off. We sledded until it got dark, and unfortunately, I lost my sunglasses, which I had put down in the snow, because I didn’t want to loose them while sledding. Argh! the irony. As we were packing up, one of our more adventurous members, Tracy who had been getting closer and closer to a six foot drop off that went down to the parking lot, finally fell off. Fortunately, she was not seriously injured, and we all had a good laugh at her mistake. For dinner that night we had hamburgers and all the trimmings, for an after dinner snack, we had popcorn, which was really good. We were up until about 1:00 that night, and played video games, watched movies, and had a great wrestling match. For the wrestling match, we took the mattresses off the beds, and jumped on to them. The next day we decided to go to Northstar to ski or snowboard. We left the lodge at 8:45, and due to awful traffic arrived at Northstar at 9:30; it should have been at 15 min. drive. We then got our tickets, and started to ski. I went skiing with Jessica, Russ, Colin, Geoff, Erik, and Christine. Erik and Christine were snowboarding. The first run we decided to do was a black diamond on the backside of the mountain, which it turned out was composed of ice moguls. We started working our way down the slope, it was too late to go back. Jessica, who is a good skier started to go really fast down the hill, and I thinking she was racing, decided that I could not let her beat me, so I started to follow her down. By the time I realized that she was out of control, I realized that I was out of control, and could not stop. Unfortunately, where she fell in a patch of powder, I fell on a patch on ice and slid down. After a fun day of skiing, we went back to the lodge, and started to cook dinner, which was lasagna with cake for dessert. It was that night that Crew 222 came up and joined us. We had another fun night of playing video games, etc, and at 9:00 we decided to go bowling. We got back from bowling at 12:00, and decided to have pizza as a snack. We were up until 2:00, when the adults came down and told us to go to bed. Friday we got up early again, we had decided to go skiing at Mt. Rose. For breakfast we had ham and eggs. We got to Mt. Rose at 9:15, and were on the slopes by 9:30. We had an excellent day of skiing, with only one accident. The last run before lunch, we decided to go down a black diamond to get us to the lodge. I skied down to the bottom, and waited there for about 5 min. Finally, Colin, who is about as good as me shows up, and tells me that there was a crash. It turns out that Christine and Geoff ran into each other, resulting in Geoff’s pole being bent. After lunch, we got back out on the slopes, Geoff had half a pole. At lunch, Russ and Erik decided to switch skis and snowboards, which was very entertaining to watch. Colin and I got separated from the group, because Russ was so slow, being as it was the first time he had been on a snowboard. So, for about 2 hours, Colin and I skied together, and then we met up with “out of control” Geoff on the back side. We left Mt. Rose at 3:45, and got back to the lodge at 4:30. Dinner on Friday night was Pork Chops with onions, mashed potatoes, carrots, and salad. That night we had a discussion on what to do for our summer camp, at camp Nejedly. It seems like that we will be having another great program at camp, and I am disappointed that I will be unable to attend. That night 222 left to go back to Vallejo. On Saturday we packed up and got ready to leave, but before we left we did the usual thorns and roses deal. Some of the interesting things that I heard were “Venturing is great, it’s so nice not to have adults hovering over us, we actually have some freedom”, and we decided that we will not be going back to Northstar, because it sucked. The lines for the lifts were long, and the traffic was awful. We left Kings Beach at 10:00, and got back to Benicia at 1:00. In all, everyone had a great time, and we are all looking forward to our next ski trip.