The other night, on a whim, I drove 45 minutes or so to do something that I've wanted to do as long as I can remember, ski at night. Night skiing has been around for a long time. I can recall Park City installing lights when I was a kid and there was at least one local place in Southern California that had lights, but for some reason I never went, until last Wednesday.

As far as I know, Keystone is the only ski resort in Colorado with lights. It's definitely the only place within driving distance. The session runs from 6 to 8. I left Vail at about 5:15 thinking I had an hour drive ahead of me, but I cruised down there in about 45 minutes, got my gear together and hit the mountain.

I didn't know If I was going to be able to ski at Keystone. My ski pass is only good for Vail and Beaver Creek, but the little credit card like thing with a bar code looks like same pass that's good for Keystone. I didn't want to pay the 39 bucks for 2 hours of skiing.

So I went to the gondola. They scanned my pass and the got a message that said "Resort Charge" which means there's a problem with the credit card I have associated with the pass. The funny thing is, I don't have a credit card associated with the pass.

The lift operator said he'd let me up, but I had to ski down and take care of the problem. Instead I skied down to the other running lift, the Peru Express, where they weren't checking passes a skied it until 8.

I was expecting the slopes to be icy, because it had been a warm afternoon, but it wasn't too bad and there weren't many skiers around so I felt like I had the mountain to myself. It was probably in the high 20s with no clouds in the sky at all, just tons of stars and a sliver of a crescent moon.

I don't know if I'm going to rush back to do it again, mostly because the drive back west on I-70 is horrifying at night, but it was fun thing to do a whim and nice to know that it's there if I need it.