13th and 14th of January

I got off work at 1am and made the easy 30 second walk to the waiting Mini Cooper S that sat in the parking lot and would take me to the mountains. In the drivers seat sat Jeff Darrow, a shady character with hair that the rest of the family and I have dubbed, "Chrome Dome". In his 50s Jeff has fended off desk work and aging with a swift kick by hauling ass to the mountains at a moments notice or at any notice of deep fresh snow.

Some snow graffiti 

The two other Members of the Darrow Family, Olivia and Dawn have already been enjoying the mountains due to Winter Break (Olivia) and unemployment (Dawn). Jeff and I had been scanning the web cams and weather reports and had decided that taking off early from work wasn't worth it because no new snow had fallen but  snow was moving in rapidly from the Arlberg and with any luck we were going to meet it head on in the days to come.

No big deal

After arriving at the guest house in the wee hours of the morning we promptly crashed into our beds for the remainder of the night which was until 11 in the morning for me and 7 for Chrome Dome because he had to get back on top of some work in Garmisch. After the girls and I got all of our bags switched from one guest house to another we finally fought our way up to the Hausberg lift for some skiing. The snow was hard pack so it was nothing special but the beer and pommes I had at the D9 bar was great. After getting a few runs in we headed back down to House Lily, took a nap, and got up for a nice dinner at Saigon City. On our walk back from dinner it started to snow hinting that the day to come was going to be good. Having the sleeping patterns of my night job I woke up ready to go at 5:30 but waited until 6 to go get some breakfast for the family at a bakery.

A little breakfast

By the time I got back most members of the family had started to get ready for skiing and we were on the road by 7 on our way to Lermoos just across the border in Austria. We got there early enough to park in the parking lot right across from the gondola which is almost unheard of these days due to the massive amounts of Netherlanders that come to this part of the alps for their week long ski vacations every year making a point to avoid spending money in Germany. We started skiing the upper part of the mountain with a little over 6 inches of fluff to help us enjoy the runs. After 2 runs Olivia and I broke off from the older two and made some quick laps before all the untracked snow had disappeared under hundreds of tracks. The last run for me was one of the best making turns above a cliff band and quickly jetting back onto the cat track towards a hut on the outskirts of the resort. I dropped in a little fast and surprised a group of people including the rest of the family resulting in a German accented, "holy shit!". This ended up being the second best day of the season just behind the Stuiben hutte ski tour.
After arriving back at the guest house I quickly fell asleep before waking up for dinner and a quick climbing session with Jeremy at the local bouldering place next to the ice hockey stadium which was really fun. I can't remember the last time I had fun at an indoor climbing place but this was one of them. I t was just nice to actually feel my fingers as I climbed because it's just super cold in Frankenjura right now. Can't wait to climb in warm weather this summer all around Garmisch.
This was a very nice trip and hopefully the snow keeps on falling on us in the Alps, it looks like we might have some more fresh snow coming in time for my next time off work on Thursday and Friday which would be great!