We were a little delayed getting on the slopes this morning but that was ok. Andrew needed to demo some skis and we realized that we had brought one correct boot and one incorrect boot for Madeline, so we rented boots for her. The sun was shining on the slopes at Crested Butte which was good because the temperature read 7F with a real feel of -5F. With the sun we were perfectly warm riding up Silver Queen Express lift. One of the coolest things about this lift is the view of Mt. Crested Butte right before you get off the lift. Madeline was more nervous than other years to go skiing but she did really well on that first sketchy cat trail like run to get to the Paradise bowl. We spent a good deal of the day going down the Paradise Bowl. The snow tended to be the best on this section of the mountain because we were as high up as you could go. None of the black back bowls were open so we all stuck together and skied with Madeline the entire day. Before lunch we ventured over to East River Express lift to try some of the blues over there, but it was kind of icy getting down there, so we took the lift and then headed straight back over to the Paradise lodge to eat lunch. After lunch we just hit the Paradise Bowl several more times before heading down to the bottom to try some of those runs. One of my favorite things Madeline said after finishing another run down the Paradise Bowl and the Lower Forest Queen run was, “We crushed it.” She truly did crush all of those runs and had no problems on the steeper sections. Crested Butte was practically empty today and we never had to wait in any lift lines longer than 1 minute except for when we went all the way to the bottom and had to wait in the Red Lady Express lift with all the inexperienced skiers. It was kind of a mistake to try and get on that lift, but Madeline did enjoy skiing some of those green runs, so we went up once and then called it a day. We ended up skiing a total of 11 runs with over 14 miles and 13, 776 vertical ft.
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