I'm at Copper Mountain for the rest of this week with the Illinois Ski and Snowboard Club! We finally finished our 20 hour bus ride and rented our skis last night, all of which was less of an ordeal than I imagined it would be. We have a one bedroom condo that is only about 100 yards from the lift.
Anyways, we headed out this morning around 9:20 to get on the lift, and my first run down was pretty brutal. I hadn't been skiing in a year, and I was just building up some confidence when a snowboarder and I sideswiped each other about halfway down the mountain. I don't want to point fingers or anything, but it was pretty much his fault. After he got up and zoomed off, I attempted to put my skis back on, only to find that one of the bindings had snapped out of place, and there was no way in hell I was getting my boot back in there. this started my really fun and not at all terrible hike down to the bottom.
I quickly realized that you don;t need skis to skate down a mountain, as my boots and I were going pretty fast. My face also found out that it is, in fact, difficult to stop in boots. Don't try that at home, kids. I very carefully side-stepped a quarter of the way down the rest of the run. Some very friendly skiers (I never got your names, sorry!), offered to carry my skis down, and I managed to make it down fairly quickly. (If you brought my skis down and happen to be reading this, please email me and I will buy you all a drink.)
So, I brought my skis to the rental place to get a new pair, feeling pretty confident that the "damage protection plan" I so wisely paid for would be getting some use. If you didn't catch the cynicism in my tone here, this is where you have to pay attention to my life lesson. At first, the employee checked and verified I had my plan, and so I thought I would be all good. Then, the repair guy decided the binding was unfixable, and that they would most likely have to charge me for that. He said it would be about $80, which I wasn't happy about, but it isn't too bad. After talking with the rental manager for a while, since he couldn't figure out how much to charge me, he decided that since he orders skis in pairs, I would be paying for the whole set. Look man, I don't know what game you are playing at, but I think this is a little excessive.
So I paid $336 after tax for a new pair of skis, on top of my $5/day "damage protection plan", which by the way, didn't do shit. I was told it would cover any repairable damage to the equipment. "Repairable damage" apparently means scratches, not a replacement binding on a single ski. I don't know what the price of a new pair of HEAD BYS 150 Sport Skis are, but if they are $336 for a major ski resort to buy, then I think you guys are getting ripped off. Needless to say, it is time for me to actually buy my own pair of skis, preferably not from Copper. And this time, no "damage protection plan".
All in all, a bad experience, but I took my new pair of rental skis and headed out to the slopes for run number two. I had quite a nice time, although some runs are really challenging with no fresh snow. A few of the blues (and one black) were straight ice for a bit, so I took my time on those. We ate lunch at the top of the mountain for the view, and I'll leave you with a shot of that to cover up that rant from earlier.