I love to snowboard. I’ve been out west several times, but its always so expensive that I can’t go very often, stay very long, or convince very many people to go with. Fortunately, the University of Iowa has a Ski and Snowboard Club to help make things more fun and less expensive. I went on their snowboarding trip over break for a few reasons: 1) I figured it would be sweet going with a ton of kids from Iowa, and 2) it was CHEAP.

Seriously, we stayed in awesome, ski-in/ski-out condos for 5 nights and had four days of snowboarding in Aspen, CO; and it all cost $409. Maybe that doesn’t sound cheap if you’ve never been to Colorado to snowboard, but I can tell you from personal experience that planning a trip like this for twice that price would be a challenge. Lift tickets alone cost close to $100/day and condos are expensive. Especially ones like these, we had kitchens, balconies and were literally less than 100 feet from a trail.

Enough economics. I had a blast! Any trip out west is guaranteed to be the highlight of a winter, but this was my best trip yet. Aspen isn’t just any mountain; in fact, its actually four mountains, and every one of them is great. And having 150 other Iowa students there made a huge difference. A friend from my home town went along, (you apparently don’t have to be a student to go on the trip,) but we also hung out with the kids in the next condo. It’s nice having a bigger group to ride with and it definitely makes a difference when you’re passing time at night.

Sorry, this is getting so long that I’m getting bored, so I won’t bother concluding it.

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-DN