As we loaded up the last piece of gear 10 hours later, the sun already behind the Hogback and the temperatures dropping us back to reality, I wasn't sure how everybody was feeling.

Then I heard the guys talking about night skiing, saw their smiles and sunburned faces, and thought to myself, yeah, it was a perfect day.

"Oh, you bet. I'd do it again in a heartbeat," Ron Metzler said.

Why not?

We already had pulled off the greatest double-dip Colorado has to offer:

Mid-January.

Ski and golf in the same day.

And we had a blast.

Since moving here more than 10 years ago, I've always bragged to friends in other states how we could ski one day and golf the next, or vice versa.

But for the most part, I was talking about springtime, when A-Basin stays open until June and Front Range courses are lush and green and the breezes warm.

This was a little bolder considering the date, and the fact January historically is Colorado's coldest month, and we were going to do both on the same day.

But two things prompted this "Ah-ha" idea.

First, my midweek ski buddy, Ron, a retired educator, mentioned how he unintentionally had pulled off his own crazy double the previous week.

Owning a second house in Hawaii, he had surfed Tuesday afternoon off the coast of Maui, caught the red-eye to Denver, then was up at Beaver Creek on Thursday morning skiing with his son - all in a span of 48 hours.

Second, with unseasonably warm temperatures forecast for this week, another friend had asked me to play golf. When I mentioned plans to ski a few hours that day, the light bulb went off.

It didn't take much persuading to find a few daredevils to join me, those like me with a little need for speed.

But first we had to figure out logistics, and, then, there was the little matter of Ron's golf clubs.

He knew they were somewhere, tucked away for winter, and finally found them next to his chain saw.

The rest was up to us.

It was dark when we got up, a crescent moon in the sky looking like the perfect recliner we'd need when we were all done.

By 7:30 a.m. we were at the T-Rex lot off I-70, rearranging skis and boots and clubs so we could car pool up to Keystone.

We didn't make first chair, but it hardly mattered. The freshly groomed, squeaky snow spread out before us like acres of corduroy, the trails virtually empty against a deep blue sky.

What we hadn't expected was the temperature. Even though the forecast called for 40-degree weather at the ski area, it was only 8 when we made our first run, cruising Silver Spoon before flying down Mozart.

Like the weather, we were just warming up. We had sailed down Wild Irishman by the time Barack Obama had taken the oath of office two time zones away, and even after stopping to watch part of history, we had plenty of time to ski Mozart and Wild Irishman again, Jackwhacker twice, then Star Fire, Bobtail and Dercum's Dash before cruising home on Bear Tree and Schoolmarm.

It was only a shade after noon, and the front nine (or 10 or 12) was finished.

Mike McDonald, the third member of this group, even managed to sneak in a worldwide conference call on his cell phone - discussing IT specifics with folks from Sydney, Australia, and Vienna, Austria, to Istanbul, Turkey, and Argentina.

Now we were ready for the back nine.

We had a 1:30 tee time at Deer Creek Golf Club, chosen because of its challenge and proximity to C-470 and the foothills.

Though we were late, we weren't worried about getting in nine. In fact, we could have played a full 18 had we chosen to get off the mountain sooner.

But Tuesday, when the temperature reached 69 in Littleton as we pulled into the club, was about having fun.

It didn't matter that the ponds on the course still were frozen, as were a few of the tee boxes. Or that a few bunkers had snow mixed in with the sand.

We played a serious round, marked by the fact I refused to let Mike use orange balls.

Sure, there were some shanks and pop-ups, but we also managed six pars and some spectacular up-and-downs. Not bad considering the greens were a little wobbly - like our knees and thighs.

We'd sink the last putt at 4:45 p.m., more chilled than tired and mostly excited - as if we had just reached the summit of our first 14er.

"That was one of the stellar moments in my life," said Ron, 62, but acting like someone half his age. "It was one of those days of sustained exuberance. It just kept going and going."

Mike felt the same way, the next morning still riding an endorphin high.

As we looked back on it, about the only things that slowed us were the 10 state troopers we spotted between Georgetown and Morrison and my malfunctioning cameras.

But we already plotted what might be next: 18 holes, then night skiing; or golf, then ice climbing; or perhaps skiing in the morning, then water-skiing in the afternoon.

Options are nice. And living in Colorado, there's always plenty.

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