Nathan's Northwest Adventures: Pete's Visit

Pete came and visited me from Houston for for a few days in the middle of February (the weekend before Valentines day, actually). I took four days off of work and it was a much needed vacation. I hadn't gotten to snowboard enough recently. He flew in on Wednesday night and we snowboarded all day Thursday through Saturday, and a half day on Sunday, before I had to bring him back to the airport. Loveland had gotten around 16 inches of new snow before Thursday, so the snow was great through the whole trip. The weather was pretty good , too. It was mostly sunny, but a bit windy, which is about par for Loveland. The first couple days of the trip the temperature was in the single digits, but it warmed up into the 30s over the weekend. Here's the view from the top of lift 9, one of the highest points at Loveland. Keystone is the ski area you can see easily. Breckenridge is right behind the bamboo pole on the right.

We ate at Beau Jo's (my favorite pizza place) which was great, cause I hadn't been in a long time. We also went to a Nuggets basketball game for "Guys Night Out" through my work. It was a lot of fun, especially because the Nuggets won by one point with a buzzer beater. It was also cool because it was one of the last games that Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups played for the Nuggets.

The rest of the pictures from Pete's visit are on flickr.

There was a bit of unexpected excitement on the way home from snowboarding Saturday. I took the frontage road, which is a two lane road that doesn't get the best snow treatment, back to Silver Plume to avoid traffic on the highway. The road was mostly clear of snow, but there were still big patches of packed snow and ice. When we turned onto the road and I saw it was mostly clear, I said, "I'm going to do this in two wheel drive." That turned out to not be such a good idea. It's a five mile stretch of windy road and we made it about 4.5 miles without a problem. On the last downhill section, we started a curve to the right and I felt the back end start to slip. I let off the gas and tried to keep the front of the Jeep where it was supposed to be, but it was too late. The Jeep spun a 180 and slid across the left lane into a snowbank (which happened to be covering a guardrail). We stopped about 200 feet after the skid started with the engine cut off and facing the wrong way. I started the Jeep back up, put her in 4wd, and continued the drive back to the cabin, hoping that I hadn't damaged anything.

Our first appraisal of the damage showed a lot of snow in the wheels and on the rear axle, but no real damage. It seemed like we hit near the rear passenger quarter panel and I thought that the snow bank must have absorbed the impact. Pete had a second look over and noticed that the rear right rim was bent. My wheels stick out a bit from the side of the Jeep, so I think that's all that came in contact with the guardrail. We kept an eye on the tire over night to make sure it wasn't leaking any air. Despite the dent, the tire held air and we managed to drive to Loveland on Sunday for snowboarding and then down to Denver to drop Pete off at the airport.

My spare tire had the same rim as my other tires, so I took the Jeep straight to Walmart after dropping Pete off and had the tire on the dented rim mounted and balanced on the spare rim (my spare tire is full size, but a different, cheaper brand than my main four). That only cost $10. I had to order a new rim to go on the spare tire, though (I'm driving without a working spare right now, not a good practice). That set me back about $70 and will cost another $10 to have the tire mounted and balanced. Though it was a $90 mistake, I suppose I'm lucky I have cheap, steel wheels ($55 bucks a piece).

I am a bit concerned that I may have done other damage to the rear axle, but the Jeep still drives fine and I haven't seen anything that looks out of place. I'm going to rotate my tires soon and take a closer look then. When we went back and looked at the guardrail, there wasn't any damage to it. I'm hoping that means I got off easy. After all, I was only going about 25 mph when we started to slide.

Here are a few pictures of the Jeep after the mishap.