Chase Funding Mountaintop Removal

STOP CHASE FROM FUNDING THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA
Social Media Can Move Mountains, Or Keep Them In Place

Today, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) hosts PUT CHASE ON THE RUN, a social media day of action, to convince Chase bank to stop funding mountaintop removal coal mining in the Appalachian Mountains.

JP Morgan Chase is the biggest U.S. financier of Mountaintop Removal (MTR). Mountaintop removal is the highly destructive mining practice that blows apart the tops of mountains in order to access coal in the cheapest way possible. MTR has buried over 2000 miles of rivers and streams and destroyed nearly 1.2 million acres of the Appalachian range. MTR has severely contaminated the air and drinking water, causing increased rates of mortality and disease for local people in the mountains of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.

Join dozens of organizations and thousands of online activists in convincing Chase to stop destroying American mountains. Take a simple action on your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blog or email to end mountaintop removal in 2010. Go to www.DirtyMoney.org for instructions and PUT CHASE ON THE RUN!

This is the kind of environmental destruction that gets me fired up about renewable energy. I love the mountains and even though I don't live in Appalachia, the people there deserve to have their mountains left intact and not destroyed by companies like Chase Bank. Take action. Do something to save our mountains for today.

The Year of the Angry Inch or Lovely Loveland

So it's not too terribly often that I post anything about the inbounds area that I like to ski at, so after a surprise powder day at Loveland this Saturday I figured it might be time to change that.
It has been a lean year to say the least, storm after storm has crapped out and left us with an inch, a dusting or worse, swung south and dumped 5 inches plus of snow on Denver.
Having looked at the forecast the Saturday night, my good friend Brandon and I had decided to head to Loveland, I had a comp pass for him and the forecast was calling for enough snow that we figured the ridge would make for some excellent skiing. First thing I did when I woke up was hop on the computer and check the snow report. One Freakin' Inch. Again. Well, plans had already been made and so we hopped in the car and decided to head up to the Land of the Love and make the best of it.
We got there a little before first chair and spent the morning ripping around south chutes and different parts of the ridge. It was pretty good, surprisingly good for an inch but nothing to write a blog post about. Then, just before lunch, Justin, Brandon and I decided to take one of the longer hikes on the ridge and go check out Supernova. This was kind of a gamble as Supernova has a tendency to get wind hammered or sun baked faster than most of the other stuff on the ridge, but the sun hadn't really graced us with it's presence, except for a few lonely weak rays peaking through the clouds here and there, and the wind had been surprisingly gentle. For those who are not the Loveland Cognoscenti, if there's any wind anywhere in the Front Range the Ridge at Loveland is usually a vortex of hurricane force gales. It's great. It smoothes out snow in some areas, while hammering others and chases lesser mortals off to the less windy resorts. But these usual tempests had not shown up today so we figured we'd give it a hike and see what we found.
There were very very few tracks in Supernova once we reached the lower reaches, and from the few that were there I could see deep looking troughs. Thinking to myself, well at least it will be soft-I hucked off the cornice and was immediatly engulfed in snow on my first turn. Holy crap, this is freaking deep! was my only thought and I shifted into my second turn.



Video of the Author enjoying the hidden pow on Supernova

Each turn yielded a waist deep or greater shot, and all too soon I was standing at the bottom. My cries of joy must have inspired Justin and Brandon because before I had a chance to look up they were skiing up next to me both with powder shots gleaming there faces. Needless to say we spent the rest of the day harvesting that slope! Here's some video from the carnage, shot from Justin's Iphone, hopefully I'll have Brandon's video soon too, which I'll make sure to post here as well as he's got a great shot where I almost look like I know what I'm doing and then proceed to eat it big time.


Brandon diggin the big lines and wishing he didn't live in California

I've been saying it a lot this year, and with so many folks so negative about the weather it has been easy to get sucked in and say that the ski season this season sucks, but there are always ways to make the most of it. You can head out and enjoy the seasons, find those hidden gems where it still might not be the most blower day ever, but boot deep and knee to waist deep are still fun. And lord knows skiing and a day in the mountains sure is fun.

Aspen: Castle Creek

Castle Peak
I headed to Aspen last weekend to spend the weekend skiing with Mel and just generally getting out of town. We spent Saturday cruising around Highlands with some friends of Mel's and scoping around in town. Highlands freaking worked my legs, I completely forgot what skiing 2,000 feet of Moguls over and over again will do to your legs. We did hike the bowl once, which got us some softer skiing and killer views. I love hiking Highlands bowl, I'd say other than Silverton, it gets you the closest to an inbounds, out of bounds experience as you'll get in most resorts in Aspen. Plus you get an amazing view of the Bells.

Taking a breather in the view
Skipping taking a look at the X-Games (way too much craziness going on), we got up the next day to meet up with a friend of mine from college, Tyler. Tyler had lined up a sled for us all to take up Castle Creek and meet up with a few of his friends at the Miura hut (I think...) up underneath the East face of Castle Peak. It's a pretty long haul up so it was pretty sweet to get a sled tow, even though my fore arms almost popped. Also, Tys headed up Denali this summer with his brother and the Wildsnow crew (www.wildsnow.com), so not having to worry about keeping up with him the entire bunch of miles in was not a bad idea.

We got towed up to the hut just as the crew that had crashed up there was coming down. Said a few hellos and skinned up, getting ready to gain a quick 500 feet of vertical of slightly wind affected powder just outside the hut (note: this hut was a privately owned hut, not something like the Eiseman pretty sweet thing to have). The climb was short and sweet and the skiing powdery and slightly hooky, but still way fun. The highlight of the trip was undoubtebly the amazingly beautiful basin and creek below Castle creek and Pearl Pass. This area went from mellow slopes to massive peaks roaring out of the ground. We faced what amounts to probably some of Colorado's most technical and vertical terrain leaping straight out of the ground. Obviously, we stuck to the more mellow areas due to avalanche danger and energy, but being back in this part of Colorado made me think ravenously about 13er and 14er season this year. I've got to make sure that I have a better big line season than I did last year, hopefully with the less stressful work load and the prospect of Alaska looming, that shouldn't be too hard.

After hanging out at the hut we headed back out the door to go ski a pillow line. Due to Mel not feeling so hot and the previous mentioning of the crew we were withs skinning ability, we opted to split off and head in the direction of Pearl Pass.

Mel enjoying the wind buff all the way below the peak
We came upon a gradually winding slope that had the same consistency of snow that we'd skied before and even more stunning views of Castle Peak. If I'm not mistaken, Pearl Pass is what 'connects' Aspen and Crested Butte (I tentatively think that doing this traverse would be one hell of an adventure.) I also need to head back and do a hut trip to the Taggert-Wilson Hut. After a stellar run out we snagged a lift back out to the car and headed straight back out to Aspen.
One thing to remember from this trip: More big lines this spring than last!
Review wise: The Arcteryx Atom LT performed stellar, both on its own at highlands and as an insulator on the pretty chilly sled tow out.