Pam LeBlanc shares her 2024 New Year’s resolutions.

I try to look beyond the old “go to the gym” when I set my New Year’s resolutions.

They can’t be vague. They have to be attainable and at least some of them measurable. I like variety, so I usually include stuff that keeps me healthy and fit, personal goals and something wacky or unusual.

I had mixed results with last year’s list. I let Vincent VanGo, my campervan, out of the stable fairly frequently, and just this week I knocked off a 200-meter butterfly at the end of swim practice. But I didn’t do so good at others, like “don’t sweat the BS” or “dial back the travel,” unless you count getting grounded after ACL surgery.

I’ve got work to do this year, and writing’s back at the top of the list.

Read more: Pam LeBlanc’s top 10 adventures of the year

Pam’s New Year’s resolutions

Without further ado, here are my 2024 New Year’s resolutions….

1. Write hand-written letters to people that matter and tell them how I feel about them.
2. Dance at least a teensy bit every single day.
3. Write honestly, authentically and with humility. Never let a source steer the direction of a story. Ever.
4. Master that new Sony camera system.
5. Pick up trash left on trails, beaches, and open spaces.
6. Bike to swim practice at least twice a week during good weather.
7. Update the Pam LeBlanc webpage and send newsletter at least four times a year.
8. Finish each swim practice by swimming butterfly, and swim a 200 fly (fins OK) at least once.
9. Get serious about Colorado.
10. Be more selective with story and travel assignments. I don’t have to accept low-paid gigs or take so many trips I get whiplash.

Guide Mike Currid blasts through powder during a day of cat skiing at Keystone Resort. The Bergman Express lift that opens this weekend now provides easy access to the terrain. Pam LeBlanc photo

Two years ago, I strapped an avalanche beacon and a shovel to my back and headed into the backcountry at Keystone Resort in Colorado.

At the time, the only way to reach Bergman Bowl – or neighboring Independence and Erickson bowls – was to hike for 45 minutes to get there, or book a ride on a snowcat, one of those tractor-like machines that hauls grooming equipment (and, sometimes, eager skiers with shovels on their backs) up mountain slopes.

I hitched the snowcat ride, and loved the challenging, wide-open terrain and gnarly tree runs it allowed me to access. At the end of each snowy run, I climbed back into the snowcat, which crept up the mountain to a new section of untracked snow. It was both exhausting and exhilarating. It was also expensive.

Starting Saturday, it gets a lot easier to get there.

Bergman Express provides new access

A new high-speed six-passenger chairlift called Bergman Express will now carry skiers and boarders to 555 acres of high alpine terrain once reserved for those willing to haul themselves up the mountain or pay for a day of snowcat skiing. Selfishly, I’m a little sad those secret stashes are now open to the masses, meaning it’ll be tougher to get fresh tracks, but I also understand the need to make better use of underutilized terrain. And I’m happy more people can experience it.

The lift was originally scheduled to open last season, but construction was temporarily stopped after a third-party construction crew mistakenly built a road through high-alpine tundra. The U.S. Forest Service had to approve a restoration plan before construction could continue, which it finally did.

Read more: My top 10 adventures of 2023

This weekend, the rope drops.

And if, like me, you’re feeling a little sentimental about it, consider this: Adrenaline junkies can still blow their quads out hiking to more than 1,300 acres of expert terrain in The Windows, North Bowl, South Bowl, and Independence Bowl. No free rides there.

Deep Eddy Pool will close Jan. 8 for repairs. Photo courtesy city of Austin

Heads up, swimmers.

Deep Eddy Pool will close for repairs starting Monday, Jan. 8.

Crews will replace a damaged bulkhead and upgrade older deck lighting.

The project is expected to last eight weeks, according to city officials. The repairs were scheduled during the winter to minimize the impact on public use.

To increase access before the closure, the Jan. 2 maintenance day has been cancelled. The pool will open for normal business hours that day.
Construction updates will be posted at austintexas.gov/parkclosures.

In Alaska, Pam LeBlanc explored glaciers and watched grizzly bears fatten up for the winter. Pam LeBlanc photo

This year I made 13 round-trip airplane flights and buzzed down highways during 10 road trips, all while chasing travel stories.

I stepped foot in six foreign countries – Panama, Costa Rica, the Marshall Islands, Thailand, Ecuador, and Mexico. That’s one more than last year’s tally of five foreign countries, even though I had to cancel two big overseas trips due to my trashed knee.

I stepped foot in six states, too, and slid through the snow at four different ski areas.

Next year’s shaping up as a busy one, too.

Without further ado, here are my best travel experiences of the year…

For a snowy adventure, go cat skiing in the San Juan National Forest in Colorado. Pam LeBlanc photo

10. Skiing in the back country of San Juan National Forest near Durango. I swooped through chest-deep powder and felt strong and capable. (Then two weeks later, I took an awkward spill on a groomed slope in Idaho and trashed my knee. Argh!)

9. Hobbling through West Texas, one of my favorite places. I stayed a few nights at Cibolo Creek Ranch, then went on to experience Big Bend National Park a different way – on crutches.

8. Zooming around Bangkok in a tuk-tuk, exploring temples, neighborhoods, and bars.

An Attwater Prairie chicken “booms” at a preserve near the Texas coast. Pam LeBlanc photo

7. Watching endangered Attwater Prairie Chickens “boom,” showing off for the opposite sex with an elaborate mating dance, at a preserve along the Texas coast.

6. Clinging to the back of a pickup truck as it rumbled behind a herd of buffalo during the annual roundup at Custer National Park in South Dakota.

A young member of the Embera Tribe stands on the beach in Darien National Park, Panama. Pam LeBlanc photo

5. Meeting members of the Embero Tribe living in a small village inside Darien National Park in Panama.

4. Exploring the Marshall Islands, where the U.S. military tested nuclear bombs in the 1930s and ‘40s.

3. Scuba diving with sea lion pups around Isla Espiritu Santo in the Gulf of California.

2. Snorkeling with penguins and sea lions in the Galapagos Islands.

Grizzly bears congregate at Brooks Falls at Katmai National Park to fish for salmon in July 2023. Pam LeBlanc photo

1. Watching grizzly bears sit on a waterfall and eat salmon at Katmai National Park in Alaska.

Pam LeBlanc takes in the view from atop the Four Seasons in Bangkok – a few days after suffering severe gastro intestinal distress.

Let 2023 go down as the year I shat my pants in the Four Seasons Bangkok.

Sure, a lot of other stuff happened this year – some of it good, some of it not so good. I detached the ACL in my knee, for example, and did other assorted bodily damage while snow skiing in Idaho. I dashed out of a meeting with public officials in the Marshall Islands and barfed into an unplumbed toilet. I also watched grizzly bears fish for salmon on a waterfall in Alaska and learned what it’s like to have a sea lion chew on your swim fins while scuba diving in Baja Mexico.

Still, that moment in Bangkok, as I stood inside an empty elevator car at a hotel I could never afford on my own dime, praying to any god that would listen that it wouldn’t stop to let on another passenger, sticks out in my mind.

I’d traveled to Thailand (on crutches, post ACL surgery) to write a travel story about the thriving downtown scene in Bangkok. And it was glorious, a bustling world of tuk-tuks and golden temples and streets crowded with people.

The Four Seasons – a gorgeous hotel where an entry level room starts at $800 a night and there’s a staff member just to arrange fresh flowers – hosted me. On Day 1, a manager led me and two other journalists around the premises, showing off the spa facilities and art gallery and a few swanky suites.

I felt fine when I hobbled into the lobby on crutches to meet the others. Ten minutes later, as my guide slid back the curtains in the living room of a penthouse suite to reveal all of Bangkok unfurled like a fire-eating dragon beneath us, an urgent need struck.

I probably could have ducked into the bathroom in the suite, but that would have been obvious. And embarrassing.

I fled.

My room was miles away, and in my panic, I couldn’t find a restroom between where I was and where I was desperately trying to get. I rode an elevator down one tower and scurried through the courtyard, knowing with more certainty with every step that I wasn’t going to make it.

And I didn’t.

Thank goodness no one else got on the elevator. I made it to my room and walked directly into the shower.

I recovered (physically, anyway) in a few hours. I still don’t know what caused my distress.

Maybe it was the future granting me a preview of what life will be like when I’m really old.

Thanks 2023, you’ve been a doozy.

I mailed a postcard to Denver when I visited Post Office Bay on Floreana Island in the Galapagos. Chris LeBlanc photo

I’ll be lucky if the postcard I mailed from the Galapagos Islands last week makes it to its intended destination in a year – or ever.

It’s part of the charm of tiny Post Office Bay on Floreana Island, where for more than 200 years people have been leaving letters, without stamps, in hopes that someone on a passing ship would deliver it for them.

Naturalist Jorge Torres stands next to the old barrel that serves as a post office on Floreana Island. Pam LeBlanc photo

In the late 1700s and 1800s, British whaling ships stopped at the island to load up on fresh water, a rare and critical resource. The ships would stay at sea for several years at a time, and their crews had no way to communicate with loved ones at home. As the story goes, a clever sailor decided to leave an old wooden whiskey barrel there in 1793 to serve as a de facto “post office.”

Read more: It’s snowing in Colorado and you should buy lift tickets now

Crews on passing ships would drop letters in the container, and other sailors who visited the island would rummage through the barrel to see if they could deliver any of the mail left behind.

The tradition stuck.

Today, tourists who visit the island drop unstamped postcards in the “mailbox.” At the same time, they’re encouraged to sort through mail left by other visitors. If they spot a card or letter addressed to someone near where they live, they’re supposed to pick it up and hand deliver it to its designated recipient.

You’ve got mail

I dropped a postcard in the mailbox for my sister, who lives in Denver. I’m excited to hear if she ever gets the card.

I picked up this postcard at Post Office Bay because I plan to pass through Ridgway in a few months. Pam LeBlanc photo

I also picked up four other postcards – two headed to Driftwood, just outside of Austin, one headed to Kerrville, and a fourth destined for the tiny town of Ridgway, Colorado, where I’ve got a good friend.

Slow, yes, but comforting reminder that we’re all connected – and a charming way to find out how long it takes to deliver a message, with no stamp attached, all the way from the equator.