I am writing this as we climb towards 41,000 feet en route to DFW from Durango.
My whole body is beat up. When you’re 25 pounds overweight, and out of shape, a ski vacation at 11000 feet suddenly becomes an impertinent imposition on the workings of your body. In the past 72 hours, I have discovered muscle groups that I did not know I possessed. I also have a practical working understanding of what happens to your thumb when you wrap the ski pole retaining strap around it and then fall at 15 mph on the pole. More of that later...

Wednesday
Purgatory Village lies at 10800 feet in the San Juan Mountains about 35 miles North of Durango. To get there from Dallas we flew a SouthWest Airlines charter from Dallas Love Field to Durango, then took a charter bus from Durango Airport to Purgatory. The flight takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes; the bus ride takes about 1 hour and 10 minutes.
Factoid #1: SouthWest Airlines does not normally provide seat assignments on its flights, yet they assigned seats on this flight. This essentially involved the gate crew making up a seat assignment process, because the airline I.T. systems have no seat assignment capability. This, however, led to several people being assigned the same seats (in addition to Marsha and myself being assigned seats in tandem).
Purgatory Village is one component of a sprawling collection of hotels, condos, vacation rentals and other components known as Durango Mountain Resort. The components of the resort are spread out along a 15-mile zone, starting in Tamarron and ending north of Cascade.
The main lodge at Purgatory Village sits at the base of lifts 1,4,6, and 10. This was going to be our first ski-in ski-out vacation. The hotel sits at the corner of a shopping plaza next to the main complex of ski lifts.
We arrived at Purgatory at around 8.00 pm local time on Wednesday. This gave us time to unpack, find something to eat, and crash. The room was well-enough equipped, with a jacuzzi bath (although, in common with many US hotel rooms, the bath appeared to have been designed for a midget).

Thursday
Under clear blue San Juan Mountain weather, we arose, ate at the Deli in the shopping plaza, and then marched into the ski hire location on the second floor to get fitted for ski equipment. Within 45 minutes we were heading towards the lift, trying our best to look like grizzled veterans.
Now the adventure began…when you have not skied for 6 years, certain elements of the skills and craft of skiing disappear into back-up long-term memory. Like how to get on a 2-person chair lift. Marsha proceeded to get all crossed up on our first entry to the chair lift. Having failed to get far enough to the left side of the mounting point, she was sent sprawling when the center pole of the lift hit her in the posterior. Seeing that she was on the ground, I baled from the lift also. The lift attendants stopped the lift while we retrieved and re-attached skis. (Just as well there wasn’t much of a queue).
We then back-tracked to the entry point, and tried again. Success! We were headed up the mountainside.
That was just the beginning…at the top, lack of current skills intervened once again, as Marsha failed to stand up enough leaving the lift, fell over on her posterior, lost both skis and sent me falling on top of her. Once again, we had to sort order from chaos. Fortunately the only injuries were to our pride.
We re-attached and adjusted equipment, and set off down the nearest Green run, called, appropriately enough, Easy Way Down. Hmmm. Within 100 yards, it became apparent that although my brain was perfectly willing to ski, my body had not yet remembered all of the tricky stuff. Like how to get into a turn. For the next hour, my brain and my body held a full and frank exchange of views. A sample follows:

Brain: Left parallel turn please
Body: What is This?!!!!
Brain: I said left parallel turn
Body: ???????
Brain: Left parallel turn dammit. The trees are approaching!
Body: #$@%^&&!!!!!
(slow, shambolic left turn ensues)

We descended Easy Way Down, slowly re-educating our bodies in the basic arts of skiing. To my surprise, by the time I got to the bottom the second time, my body had remembered right and left parallel turns. The turns were somewhat inconsistent, but, hey, practice should cure that…
The morning was spent on several slow descents of Easy Way Down, most of which is actually a road. This is a good test of parallel turning, because the road is narrow enough that snowplough turns don’t work very well. You can snowplough but you will be very very slow…
After lunch we headed up to try Mercy, another Green run. Mercy is extremely wide, and is a very gentle Green run.
By the end of the first day, I had proved that between them, my brain and body had remembered enough of the rudiments of skiing. The main challenge was that it was already clear that I lacked the muscle conditioning to actually descend an entire Green run without stopping. Lactic acid burn was causing frequent stops for recovery. At an all-up weight of 230+ pounds with ski equipment, you pick up speed rapidly on a descent, which causes a lot of upper leg work as you try to scrub off speed. I can do that reasonably effectively, but it wears you out.

Friday
As I tried to get out of bed, I suddenly discovered that while my brain was all set to enjoy another day of skiing, my body was in full rebellion from Day 1. Just about every significant muscle group below my waist appeared to be protesting. The only cure was – 3 Advil at breakfast. Breakfast was the buffet option at Hoodys in the same building. This is where one of the realities of being a captive customers comes into play – you will pay a lot over the odds for eating out. With no transportation, other options (such as soaking in Trimble Hot Springs) were also next to impossible to arrange.
Skies were still clear blue, but it was a lot colder than on Thursday. In addition, a stiff wind was blowing at the bottom of the mountain. We set off up the mountain again, and as we neared the top, a stiff wind increased to something approaching gale force. We elected to return to the top via a different lift (Engineer) after a single descent of Mercy showed that, with that run pointing into the wind, it was like skiing in a wind tunnel. I had to carry a lot more speed just to avoid coming to a dead stop on parts of that run. The wind was removing loose powder snow from Northerly-facing runs, which was exposing hard crust and making life more interesting when turning.
As we left Engineer lift, I counted on a butt lift that never materialized. The result was a collapse, during which my right knee landed hard on a ski binding. During the rest of the day, the knee would become gradually more painful. There was no damage to the knee internals, but the bruise was on the inside of the knee, and seemed to make itself obvious on turns.
Skiing today was a lot less fun due to the ambient temperatures being 15-20 degrees cooler than Thursday. Temperatures in the high 40’s had been replaced by low 30’s with the howling Northerly wind adding a further wind-chill factor. After lunchtime, I realized that my legs were cold, which was causing me to become tight. My overall performance was abysmal. I returned to the hotel room and put on leggings under my ski pants. This helped somewhat. We were also encouraged to try some runs further North on the mountain after talking to one of the people that Durango Mountain Resort thoughtfully place around the base of the mountain. These are older more experienced workers who provide information and tips for neophytes like us. Our help came from a woman who told us to work our way further North on the mountain, because there were better runs there. This proved to be a smart move – those runs were much quieter, including a great series of Blue-Greens leading down to the Hermosa Park Express lift. However, as the sun moved lower in the West, ice patches began to appear on several runs, which made turns more of a lottery. A number of the runs further North are shielded by trees from the sun after about 2.30.
At this point, later in the afternoon, on the return down to the village, I committed one of the cardinal sins of ski equipment technique. In ski school, you are taught to hang a ski pole by its strap on your wrist, and have the pole dangle before you grasp it in your hand. That way, the strap is not wrapped around your thumb. Without noticing, my right pole strap was wrapped around my thumb. Breezing down the final section of Lower Demon en route to the base lift, my left ski hit a twig lying on the surface., and the ski went out to the left. The immediate result was an inelegant sprawl, which would have been innocuous except for the fact that the right ski pole was thrown under me at an angle, which twisted and sprained my right thumb. The sprain was not severe – the thumb still worked. However, this was an avoidable incident. I continued for one more run, but by this time my legs were tired, my right knee was sore and stiff, and my thumb was starting to get stiff as the injured base joint began to swell. We packed up at about 3.30.
We tried to arrange transportation to go to Trimble Hot Springs (our bodies needed it) but the resort transportation system seemed to be marginally organized – a call to the number resulted in an answering machine. Not a positive sign. We decided instead to ride the shuttle to Cascade (another DMR location 3 miles North) and eat dinner at the Cascade Grill.
We ate an excellent set meal for $20 a head watching the sun set on the Needles range in front of an open fire. However, every time I got up to go to the restroom, my lower body appeared to have stopped working.
When we went to leave, we found that the 7.15 pm return shuttle had mysteriously disappeared…eventually, after 40 minutes (and me having to prevent Marsha from pitching a major fit to the front desk), a min-van turned up, with a young guy who explained that he was the back-up shuttle. On the way back to the Village, he explained that the issues with transportation were mostly due to under-staffing (“they’re too cheap to hire enough people” was his blunt explanation).

Saturday
I got up in the night to go pee. I wish I hadn’t tried. I now have a preview of what life will be like when I am 85…I might have been able to crawl to the toilet almost as quickly. My right knee seemed to be in a brace, judging by the level of stiffness.
When I woke and started trying to move around, it seemed that just about every part of my lower body was protesting. My right knee hurt when bent at 90 degrees or straightened fully, and my right thumb was swollen all of the way from the first joint right across my hand, with blue bruising, and was stiff and sore. My initial reaction was that I would not be skiing again (ever?). Marsha and I discussed just watching everybody else on the slopes.
After much hobbling about the bedroom trying to persuade my lower extremities to practice the art of walking, we got changed and went down to Hoody’s for breakfast. The breakfast room was full of hard-core ski racers in town for a regional skiing competition. You can tell the hard-core skiers easily. For a start, they look wiry and fit. No paunches here. The girls all look like assertive women who could (and probably would) kick butt and take no prisoners. They are also totally unconcerned with fashion or color co-ordination – they simply wear what is comfortable and gets the job done, usually layers of high-quality clothing, some of which looks well-used and almost beat-up. They are not going to win any fashion competition. It’s about effectiveness, not posing.
At breakfast I was introduced to the wonder that is industrial-strength Advil (one massive 750 mg tablet). By the time we arrived back at the room…Ye Gods, a miracle had occurred. The creaking and protesting right knee was a mere twinge, the right thumb was operating almost normally, and as for the rest of my lower body….pain, what pain? Suddenly, I felt almost normal, and ready for more skiing. So…on went the equipment and we hit the slopes at around 10.00.
However, it was apparent that the Advil-fuelled pain relief was a false dawn. The blunt reality was that my body was worn out from 2 days of skiing. Nothing worked. Left turns, right turns, you name it, my body refused to co-operate. I was reduced to a peculiar all-body spasm-like twisting motion just to get my left ski to tuck in on a left turn, after a delay that seemed like an age. After a while, my own brain’s basic intolerance of poor execution began to manifest itself in the uttering of numerous curse-words and the rhythmic swatting of the ground with ski poles. This folks, was an epiphany. Putting it mathematically:

25 pounds overweight + poor aerobic fitness + abysmal muscle fitness = Lousy skiing performance

Marsha was undergoing a similar epiphany, with slightly different numbers, but an identical result. We decided to cease skiing at about 12.45. When you end up unable to sustain even a quarter-mile of gentle green skiing, you realize that it is time to cut your losses and look forward to the next time.
Factoid #2 – Durango Mountain Resort is probably not an “extreme” resort; a lot of hard-core skiers might find the run classification system a wee bit, well, benevolent. I skied several Blue run sections on the second day that would probably be classified as Green in some other locations. However, there are a lot of runs, and some of the runs are very long, even by US standards. The long set of Blue runs leading down to the Hermosa Park Express lift is a real delight, since it covers a wide area, with multiple paths through the zones of pines, and allows you to actually pick up some speed and (for a brief moment) imagine that you are Bode Miller. As is normal, the most extreme runs are to be found on the North and South periphery of the ski areas.
We spent the rest of the day eating lunch at Hoody’s, people-watching, and rating the snowboarders and skiers who were jumping off the snow ramp on Pandemonium. Some of the skiers were pretty impressive, performing both forward and backward 360 somersaults. The skiers seemed to be rather better at staying upright on landing than the snowboarders, many of whom seemed to wipe out on initial landing; however, once you wipe out on skis, the loss of one or more skis dooms you, whereas a number of the snowboarders would somehow recover, and continue, no doubt explaining “I planned that all along” when they arrived back at the bottom of the mountain.
At 4.00 pm we headed back to the Village to await ground transportation back to the airport. At this point, confusion reigned for some time, as we were first told that there would be 1 bus, then 2 buses, then 2 buses plus a baggage truck….it all got sorted out eventually and we left for the airport at 5.00. However, the bus driver was constantly talking on the radio to other DMR folks, and changes seemed to be occurring to the plan every 5 minutes.
Factoid #3 – IMHO Durango Mountain Resort has a surfeit of youthful enthusiasm and a deficit of management and organization. For at least part of the time, the staff at Purgatory Village seemed to be unsure of exactly what was supposed to be happening and when for our charter party. I suspect that DMR does not pay enough money to retain enough good managers.

Conclusions
1. The charter tour that we had hooked into is a good option for a short-duration ski vacation. For 2 days off of work, you get 3 full days of skiing.
2. There is no substitute for at least a basic level of physical fitness. Carrying 25 pounds of extra weight is also not a good idea, especially when operating at up to 12,000 feet.
4. Don’t wrap your ski pole strap around your thumb. Sooner or later it will bite you…