Snow Wander

Kobenhavn! Part 2

2011-06-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

Short one this time-the last few weeks have been a continued whirlwind of everything bad for me as I listed in the previous post. Word.

So we just finished our Book Sprint (essentially an attempt at writing the story of being here for the last few weeks-if this sounds weird.....roll with it.) And we had to come up with some graphics and here are a few that I came up with that I quite like, and I feel maybe explain a bit of what has been going on here.

PS-This is also me realizing I should use this space for more than just adventur-y stuff. Like maybe stuff that will get me a job one day.....Overrated :)

Kobenhavn!

2011-06-08T03:19:00.001-07:00

So once again, as always I suck at upkeeping of the blog. Today's report of my suckage finds me in Copenhagen doing a 5 week study abroad program in digital arts and media and working with a firm Ornesto Mong on a project in Ostebroj (a small neighborhood in the north of Copenhagen). Link to their site here:

As always traveling has been a whirlwind of emotions and a wave of joys, ups, downs, drunken stumbling, cigarette smoke and burbles of new sound. It's been good. It's been good to be out of my comfort zone again, to go some place familiar yet new and try to see it through a new lens. New lenses are always good. Walking around this city and hearing the language feels so familiar to me, yet different. Copenhagen has gone through a lot of changes in the last 10 years (probably the last time I spent a significant amount of time here) and this is the first time I've ever been here and not been on a family trip. Family trips are great, but there are certain things that you don't experience when your on a family trip, like what do the streets of Vesterbroj look like at 4 am after an all day long street party? Usually not included on the family tour.
So this is a quick check in, I've been here for about two and a half weeks now with another two weeks left in Copenhagen and then I'm off to Stockholm, Oslo and back to Skagen to participate in a family trip. One of the assignments we've had here has been a weekly Journaling project which is essentially a digital media creation that has to do with anything that we feel like expresses some part of us. Here's a quick video slideshow I created for this weeks. I'm not sure what about me it expresses, but all the photos were taken in this trip so far, and it kind of reminds me of the last time I took mushrooms.(which was a while ago for those adult types reading this!)

Untitled from Hans Flinch on Vimeo.

TR: Early Season Skiing!!

2010-11-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

The season here went from non-existent to ON almost overnight. Usually we get a slower start with a few runs up on the WROD (white ribbon of death) and then some easy backcountry as things fill in. This year it went straight to the backcountry with some big storms dropping close to 48" at Loveland over a few days. I got a new tiny camera for better easy of portability recently and have been screwing around with the video function. Here's a little mock up of what I've been up to on the odd day off from grad school these last few weeks. Day 4 was yesterday!
Hope you enjoy!

TR: Kelso Ridge, Torreys, 09/28/2010

2010-10-04T19:09:00.000-07:00

The banni-maniac hittin' up the knife edge

To steal the words of my friend Tim, this has been some SPLITTER fall weather. Absolutly ideal for running around up high. Recently, between my job and adjusting to a school schedule, getting out and about to go run around up high has been very hard to find time for, so pretty much since Longs I've been mainly running around crags on the front range(especially Eldo) and haven't really had a chance to get out much other than that. So when I saw the forecast of 60 degrees and sunny at the top of Torreys, I gave Ann a call (we've been talking about Kelso Ridge all summer) and said that it was time to go take a look at some aspen trees. From way high up.
So due to my totally screwed up sleep schedule these days, I got woken up by Ann calling me saying that she was at our assigned meeting location already. Learning from experience, (I do sometimes do that), I had packed everything the night before and was out of the house within 10 minutes of her waking me up. (Sorry Ann, I'd say it would never happen again, but that's probably not true :))
A short drive later(which the volvo totally made it up a classified easy 4WD road!!! NO PROBLEM!) we found ourselves below grays and Torreys with a short hike to the start of our climb bathed in beautiful alpenglow.

Our first view of the ridge, looks harder than it is
Kelso is a class 3 ridge, without too much difficult route finding, however, we'd made it a point that if we didn't like the way the wind was or if it had too much snow on it, we'd back off. However, when we got to it, we quickly decided that you couldn't begin to find better conditions and with helmets off the pack up we went.
Kelso is an awesome climb, great easy scrambling, a solid degree of exposure, and a 14er at the end with views of the continental divide. What more could you ask for! I can pretty solidly say that this is the most fun I've had on a 14er without being on skis, highly, highly reccomended!

The ridge from higher up

Author about to head into the chimney, photo by Ann B.

The first major obstacle involved a chimney section (easy moves, but definetly some exposure) followed by a winding ridgeline that moved to the right and left of the ridge, (basically, look for the easiest way up and it stays class 3 with no major difficulties). Climbing this with Ann was a total blast, we chatted while enjoying easy and fun movement, spectacular views, and scary exposure as we wound our way up. The major crux here I would say is route finding, it's nothing super difficult but you definetly have to pay attention, case in point. The most famous part of Kelso is the infamous Knife Edge, 30 feet of drop off on either side exposure over a jagged point of rock that requires the most stellar of all moves to overcome: the butt scoot! Now Ann and I had been climbing for about an hour and a half when we reached a point that we were positive was the knife edge. Both of us looked at it, compared it with our mental photos we'd seen, hemmed and hawwed, decided it was it (since no easy route appeared) and me being relatively chivalrous, started up.

Yours truly, feeling perplexed and pumped. Photo by Ann B.

The second I got on this thing I realized that it was harder than class 3, there was no feet, bad friction, and even though I was straddling it I was still yarding myself up with my arms. My first thought was crap, I can't do this, quickly followed by, oh yes i can! and the adrenaline hauled me up! Definetly 5.0-5.2 I'd say, but hey I thought, the hardest part is over! I turned around to shoot some photos of Ann hauling herself up and onward we continued.

Yeehaw! Airy! Photo by Ann B.

Ann crankin' it

50 feet later and here we are confronted with a second knife edge, which clearly indicated that we were off route earlier. This one was significantly easier than the one that we first encountered, actually requiring only some substantial butt scooting and some substantial exposure. A short pitch of Class 3 later and we're at the summit!

Myself on the ACTUAL knife edge, photo by Ann. B.

I have to comment that the weather on top of Torreys was absolutly unreal spectacular, clear skies, no wind and views all the way to the Elks.
Torreys sits right next to Grays, both which are 14ers and require no more than a class 1 ridge between the two of them. Neither of us having been up Grays we decided to make the quick jaunt up after downing some grub. 30 minutes later, and we were on top of the second 14er in an hour.

Grays summit shot!

After this it was a short retreat to the car and then straight to the bar (Tommyknockers as the Plume saloon was closed-sorry Chris, I tried).
Kelso Ridge=Highly reccomended!!!!, 4 stars from this blogger!

TR: First Flatiron

2010-08-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

Photo Courtesy of Google Images

The Flatirons are a pretty decent sized massif right outside of Boulder. Their known for easy technical long climbing, great views both east and west and are generally considered to be a classic ascent. Couple that with the fact that you generally see them every day whether you live in Denver or Golden and I've wanted to climb one of them for a while. So Tuesday morning when Andrew, Brian and I were sitting at Big Daddy's Bagels in Golden and Brian suggested we nix going to Eldo and we go climb the First, I was stoked.
We headed up to the trailhead and hiked up to the base of the climb. The classic route is rated 5.6 R and it's entirely because of the first two pitches, which Brian also mentioned that it's required to take the sharp end on one of those two pitches your first time doing it. Andrew rared up for the first pitch and led it off. The first pitch is actually pretty scary, it's almost all friction climbing and smears with very little pro and one eyebolt that you can clip in between the starting point and the first belay station. Andrew pretty much killed it on this pitch, leading off with a killer sense of humor, joking about a mono-undercling and humping the belay tree when he arrived at it. Climbing the pitch myself I was even more impressed with his calm of mind as I woulda been SCARED! (note to the reader: we used a pretty interesting system of climbing for this climb being that the two followers simul climbed on different ropes while being belayed from above by the leader using an ATC guide set up., it worked well for speed, sucked ASS for rope drag)

Andrew about at the belay on the First pitch
So being that it was my first time as well, it was time for me to take the second pitch. Up I went, placing in a little tiny red nut about 8 feet off the belay, and then running it out for about another 15 or 20 feet until I found a MAMACITA cam placement in a bomber crack! I was so happy to get that placement in, I'd started singing to myself lightly to keep myself from getting freaked about how high above the pro I was. 15 feet up, slung a piton and grooved on up to a ledge through some easy smears and big jams and setup a belay station. This was pretty fun! It took me a little bit to hunt out some appropriatly sized cracks that I could build an anchor on. Belaying the simul climbers up was brutal. Way more pumping out than any of the climbing had been.

A few pictures from around 2 pitches up
The next two pitches went pretty uneventfully with Brian, Andrew and I swapping leads on pretty easy climbing and terrain, I'd say one highlight was Andrew getting a booty call text message while we were two pitches up and then Brian and I simul climbing an easy pitch and talking about girls the entire way up. Fun day!
Now we got to my lead which was on the 5th pitch up, the weather had been getting darker and gloomier looking for most of the day and by this point we were starting to hear sounds of thunder getting closer. I almost bailed on leading this pitch in favor of a faster trad climber heading up so we could bail if necessary but I decide to take it after some encouragement from Brian. I'm so stoked I did, this pitch was super fun climbing varying from some long easy runouts, to some good crack jams and stemming problems, purely a joy to lead and anywhere there was a scary move, I was able to get a good piece of pro in. Couple this with the distant rumblings of thunder and being close to 1,000 feet off the deck and this was a truly interesting lead to have. The only down side was the thunder was SCARY and CLOSE and the pitch certainly meandered so that the rope drag was un real. I had to do a final traverse to the belay station after laying back a big flake and I shoved a piece in simply because I was worried that the rope drag would make me peel off 15 feet above my last piece of pro.
So we got to the belay and once the other two guys got up we had to make a decision to rap off the back side or finish the route. By this point the thunder was right over head and it was starting to rain, so after a small debate we decide to check out the rap station and bailed off the route. Brian scoped it out and after looking at it said it wasn't half as sketchy as he remembers and went off the back. I was pretty in favor of bailing as I'll admit the thunder was freakin' me out so I was pretty happy with this decision. Although, it does mean, I'm going to have to head back and climb the thing again and make the true summit sometime soon. Oh well, the climbing was fun enough that I'll gladly do it again even though we were probably 40 vertical feet from the top.
The rappel was a true freaker though, total free hanging at one point. Definetly a song creater! (I sing sometimes when I get scared enough)

Rap city on the backside of the first with lots of air underneath!

This day was awesome, I can't wait to get out with those guys again and go climb something big and tall like that. Even though we didn't finish it we were all pretty stoked with our progress and pleased with our decision to take the safer course of action of bailing. Although, when we were sitting at the sun and eyeballing the lack of rain up there it would have been sweet to high five on the true summit....next time.

Andrew lookin' pleased with our attempt

Belated TR: Long's Peak

2010-08-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

Cause of the events of the last week, I haven't had time or the energy to post up a write up of a little outing that I had up Long's Peak Keyhole route about two weeks ago, so now that I've gained some time and energy, enjoy!
So Long's Peak is the furthest north 14er and one that you can see from pretty much anywhere in Denver, Golden etc. And oddly enough, in my last 3 years of being here, I've never been up it. I'm assuming because most of my 14ers have been skiing oriented and the ski lines on Long's are burly and typically one of those things that you might not ski unless you had a particular goal in mind. So when Mike emailed me a few weeks ago asking if I'd be interested on a moonlit ascent of Long's, my first reaction was "Crap it's a friday, I'll miss out on work." My second reaction was "I'll make it happen somehow".
So that being said my dumb ass decided to go to work for 3 hours before heading up to Boulder to meet up with the gang to go up Long's. This was very very dumb. So essentially I warmed up for a 14 mile hike with 5,000 ft of vertical gain by riding a 150 lb tri-cycle around for three hours. I'll reference why I'm making a big deal about this later....
So we met up, got up to RMNP and started the booking it approach up the long trail to Long's Peak at around 1:30 pm. The first half passed pretty uneventfully other than our moonlit ascent was screwed by the huge cloud sitting over the peak. Mike had reccomended using a red headlamp to light the way as it would help with night vision. He was totally right about this but wrong about the fact that it totally screwed my balance point. The first half of the Long's trail is pretty smooth and easy but the second we hit the boulder field I was crashing left and right until I switched to a white lamp and suddenly I could see again.
Now reaching the boulderfield is usually a pretty long hike in. For some reason we did it in about 2 hours or so. About this point, between the light color issue and the fact that I'd worked that night I was getting pretty freakin' wrecked and starting to move really slowly and frankly started to feel pretty damn bad. We'd had an arrangement to regroup by the keyhole but by the time I got there everyone had taken off. (In the after discussion, I think this was the best for the group FYI)
Most people know that it takes me a lot to lose my temper or my cool in this matter, but between how wrecked I was feeling and then finding no one there I kinda lost it. In retrospect, I'd simply pushed myself a little too hard and my emotions were all sorts of jacked up at this point. I polished off the last of my coffee and because I was beginning to be able to see the trough with the sun coming up I decided to push on aways.

Some of the views as the sun began to lap up RMNP
So it should be mentioned Long's Peak standard route is really not a hike. It's a scramble through some pretty high consequence terrain. The ledges are huge, and the climbing never harder than Class 3 but if you fall, your going quite a ways. Add this in to the amount of people that this peak sees and I'm astounded that there aren't more accidents up there. The trough is really what I'd call the real beginning of the route too. Big exposure, easy scrambling, actually extremely fun too. Mentally, I calmed down and actually began to enjoy the route finding and climbing as I worked my way slowly higher. I managed to actually catch up to half of the group just below the narrows. Coupling this with teh beautiful light hitting the Ships Prow and Mt. Meeker (I think, must check a map on that one) it became a pretty special experience.
So this was not the end of teh unpleasantness on this trip, and I'm going to publicly apologize for being an asshole at high altitude to Mike at this point. Seriously dude, my bad. I was feeling super crappy and I'm sorry I bitched at you when I passed you in the narrows. Feel free to bitch at me at some high altitude vantage point at some time.

A few climbing shots

So when the trough ends, you come into this system of ledges called the narrows, once again super easy climbing, big exposure. Other than the above mentioned bitching at (sorry again dude) this was really fun! The exposure added a nice little sphincter clenching scariness to the otherwise easy ledgewalking that led up to the homestretch. I'm going to add, I looked up and saw tons and tons of 5th class lines all around it that I'm going to have to do some research into because the crack systems and granite looked killer. So at this point we were almost at the top when we presented with the final problem, a slabby cracky wall known as the homestretch.

Shots of the Trough and Allan climbing the Homestretch

Once again a little route finding presented nothing harder than 3rd class, although a fall would have been an absolutly massive catastrophe. At this point I'd realized that the best thing for me was to just continue up at my own slow pace and relax and enjoy the easy jams and scrambling. The beautiful thing about this peak is that it gives you a wonderful alpine climbing experience. With the harder rock and exposure, long hike in, the second you crest the summit you feel as though you've gained a peak of massive importance. When I crested the summit and looked over the diamond all I could see was clouds thousands of feet below me covering the front range and to my west the vast expanses of the Indian Peaks and Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a beautiful moment especially with it all bathed in golden morning light. We summited at 10 of 7 so it was about a 6 hour trip up.

Goofy lookin' summit shot, can you tell I'm sleep deprived?

So this brings me to the other problem with Long's. Crowds. We got an early start so on the way up and at the summit there weren't that many folks but I would NEVER EVER start any later than we did because on the way down there were HORDES coming up the trough. The other problem with this is a lot of the terrain in the trough is loose scree. If I ever do this again I will be wearing a rock climbing helmet because I was living in terror that someone was gonna knock a rock down and kill me the entire way down.
There should really be a better education about the terrain and weather on long's. I saw people going up in Chacos, cotton t-shirts, jeans, carrying a single 8 oz water bottle. Seriously if there was a storm or something they'd be in some severe trouble. Last soapbox moment, PEOPLE PICK UP YOUR FREAKIN' GARBAGE! There was so much trash all over the standard route. It was absolutly foul.
Other than that I had a great time, the descent was pretty uneventful (as all good descents should be) other than a quick stop at the Chasm Lake viewing point to snap shots of the Diamond (god I want to climb that) and a beautiful view of the peak, I pretty much popped in my Ipod and let passion pit ease my weary legs down the peak.
Lessons learned, seriously pay attention to how my body is feeling on stuff like this....and don't pedicab before hand :) I would really like to go do this route again at somepoint, in a more rested state though as I feel like I'll enjoy it way more

RIP Lacy Meadows: July 24, 2010

2010-07-29T17:04:00.001-07:00

It's been a hard few days.
I've been putting off writing anything here for the last few days as the thought of it has been way too much of an emotional leap. On Sunday, July 24, my friend and ski partner Lacy Meadows was found dead in the Indian Peaks Wilderness near Ogallala Peak after a fall. I found the news out as I was gathering gear up to head out the next day to go look for him. This is that phone call you never want to hear. It's the one you then never want to make as you need to spread the word to other friends who may not have heard yet.
Trying to come to terms with this over the last few days has been tricky. For one I've found myself being extremely sensitive and thin skinned. I've been easy to anger and one moment I'll be enjoying myself and laughing and the next moment I want to cry again. It's just so hard to believe that when the lifts start turning at Loveland this year he's not going to be there bombing down Spillway and Richard's Run over and over again with us.
Lacy was one hell of a skier. He loved to ski. I love to ski, but the way that Lacy loved to ski blew everyone I know out of the water. He loved a long hike, with a steep technical descent. He was known as the powder prophet, because he could always find the good snow on a bad snow day. Or as he would say, on a less better ski day because there are no bad ski days. He had this grin that I think I'll remember for the rest of my life. It was infectious, when you saw it in full bloom you got stoked. His passion and enthusiasm came radiating out everytime that grin showed up. And you better believe that no matter what he was skiing, he was grinning.
I skied one of my first spring couliours ever with Lacy. It was the first day I met him actually. It ended up being one of my favorite ski days of all time. Starlight coulior, James Peak, James Peak Wilderness. I remember being so scared looking into the coulior and it seriously taking me a moment before I could sack up to link some turns and when I paused to breathe, I looked up and there is hungover, barely having slept Lacy, ripping beautifully linked tele turns down the slope and smiling to beat the band. I'll always remember that day.

Lacy, wherever you are, I want you to know that your passion and love was inspiring to me. The way that you skied was an absolute beauty to watch and every time I saw you link a turn I wanted to be able to ski like that. I hope one day I'm even close to being as good as you. I'll miss you friendship and hanging out with you at the Plume or anywhere else and I'll miss your incredible lust for life. All of your friends down here are feeling as though something was ripped away from us, and I think it's knowing that your larger than life presence is no longer going to come busting in the door. I also hope that you've found peace, beauty and deep bottomless powder on the steep endless lines of heaven. I feel like you were taken from us too soon and that I should have had years more to ski with you (I know! I should have skied more big descents this spring!), but that when I think of the way you went and that the last thing you probably saw was a vista of the cragged Indian Peaks that I know you loved, I know that it filled you with peace and that gives me some comfort. I also know that every time I have an amazing ski day, I'll think of you and I know you'll have been with me carving up every turn.
Vaya con dios, my friend and wait for us at the top.

Alaska: Pika Glacier

2010-07-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

Mike and I arrived in Anchorage after a late night flight around 2 am. Our shuttle wasn't getting us until 7 am so we had 5 hours to kill. I started the cycle early and busted out my sleeping pad and jacket and curled up in corner on the floor. Mike stayed awake. He's nuts.
After a couple of hours of surprisingly good sleep (amazing how exhausting pedi-cabbing can be) we caught our shuttle and arrived in Talkeetna. After dropping off our stuff, I took Mike on a short tour around downtown Talkeetna. Talkeetna is an awesome, awesome super cool hippie climber town. During the spring and summer it's packed with climbers and tourists. It's the best juxtaposition ever, you get fat princess cruise type tourists walking around next to super fit Denali climbers. Talkeetna's also got probably the best bar seen of any town I've been to in a while. The Fairview inn happens to be my personal favorite, it proudly takes the credit for President Hardings demise a few weeks after having beers there.
During the tour we swung by the ranger station and AMS, where we met our Guide/Instructor Greg Runyan and pow wowed briefly about the plans for the next day. After that it was beers and grub for the rest of the evening. Mike passed out around 730 pm as he hadn't slept the night before at all. He's nuts. I got beers, which I was super glad for cause they'd be my last libations for a few weeks.
The next day Greg picked us up at the hostel and we ran back to AMS for a morning full of skills trainings and gear checks. We met Allain, the 4th member of our team as well. Allain is a rockstar climber and french canadian and I hope to get many more adventures of this sort in with him. After a quick stop by the gear store and re packing we were set to head to Talkeetna Air Taxi, . If your ever going on this kind of a trip into the Alaska Range or simply doing a flight see, ONLY go with Talkeetna Air Taxi! They are by far the best pilots and for climbers they're the most reliable to pick you up.

Mike and Allain loading up the otter

Our destination was to be the Pika Glacier, a "small" glacier off the Kahiltna and a world class rock climbing destination. While this place is known for it's spectacular rock climbing I'm totally going to head back there in May at some point to ski. There were so many amazing looking couliors that look like they'd be a blast to get on in good snow.

A view of the Ruth Gorge on the flight in

An aerial view of the Pika Glacier, or home sweet home for the next two weeks!

Mike rockin' co pilot on the flight in.

So the plane landed and we hurriedly unloaded all the gear. (lot's of gear) and the plane piled it's other load of tourists back in and took off. This had to be one of the single most intimidating moments of my life. I won't lie and say that my first reaction wasn't "WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO!"
However, shortly afterwards we probed out our camp for crevasses and set it up and suddenly the glacier started to feel a little more like home. It's truly amazing how important a good camp set up is for this type of trip as it truly is your only shelter from the elements and in glacier terrain possibly the only place that isn't crevassed. Our tent, ice home consisted of two Mountain Hardwear Trango 3 tents, a Black Diamond Megamid and a crap hole where the CMC lived (Clean Mountain Can).

Some camp shots

So I thought originally that my body might have issues falling asleep due to the fact that it NEVER got fully dark while we were there. No issues whatsoever. I think the mental physical strain had me out like a light every night except until the end but I'm getting ahead of myself here.
The first day we did some skill work on crevasse rescue, anchor building and other useful glacier mountain skills and then roped up for a quick ski to go get a view of our potential objective, Granite creek and some unnamed spires.

View of Granite creek, a very little explored area off the Pika (future destination?)
Alain and Mike enjoying some little seen sunshine.
Skiing in mountaineering boots is freaking HARD. I consider myself to be a stellar skier and the first turn I did I feel flat on my ass. I finally made it down the equivalent of a green run looking like a total newb and to chorus of Greg cackling like a hyena. I have no idea why no one took a video of this it was hilarious.
(mike did the exact same thing)
We moved camp the next day in order to get closer to our objective (Exit Pass) and to as Greg put it, "to get away from the riff-raff". It was really nice to move camp down away from the landing zone and to what you might consider to be our own private little glacial valley. After a long trip in coupled with tons of learning moments on how to load a sled, more practice skiing roped up and with a heavy sled through heavily crevassed icefalls, we found ourselves down on what we've dubbed the Exit Glacier.

Greg on a rest break with the Dragon's spine and the Kahilitna Glacier in front of him. Notice all the sunshine. This was probably our only well timed weather window.

Mike with the Marsupial behind him.

Camp 2 with the Hobbit's path up the Dragon Spine in front of us.

This glacial valley was awesome! All around us we could see good rock, fun looking couliors and all sorts of other things that looked like a party to explore.
The next day dawned with some pretty nice weather so we decided to head over to the dragon's spine and get some "top roping" in.
After a nice short ski on in, which I got to take the lead end on through crevasse terrain (scary!). We got to the rock where we figured out a good system to get all 4 of us up it and started going!
Top roping turned into multi pitch trad climbing as the second we got above our first pitch that's where we found the really fun rock. Rule of thumb of climbing in the Alaska range is the higher up you get the better the rock gets, because it's been destroyed way less recently by the glacier and all the loose crap has gotten off it. The first pitch we climbed as fraught with perilious rock fall threat from a bove, while suddenly a good 70 meters up perfect granite cracks appeared. Delicious. It's worth mentioning that we were probably only the second people ever up this line as Greg and some of his buddies had put it up two years earlier and there were no definite quotes from anyone else putting anything else up up there.
Funny thing was, the higher we climbed the more the weather seemed to sock in, it wasn't raining so we kept on going although we were losing visibility and fast. We got to the top of our 5th pitch when Greg said we were going to do one more pitch and then head back down. This last pitch was probably the best crack climb I;ve ever done. Huge perfect jams alternating between gaping off widths and a nice traversing line. SO MUCH FUN!!! The pitch then topped out on one last bouldery move where you crawled out of a chimney onto a face that had about 300 feet of exposure dropping to the valley floor on one side and 400 feet on the other side (SCARY!)
Some Hobbits Path photos, all are by Greg Runyan, as I don't seem to have any :(

So as probably doesn't need to be said, it proceeded to start raining the second that we started our rappels. As I just described the end of pitch 6 up there, now add in lowering yourself backwards down it in the rain. Totally terrifying. The other raps after that were fairly innocous although there certainly were a lot of them and we were all getting pretty soaked and tired. As we got down to the bottom, Greg mentioned "Man, if it hadn't started raining we'd totally still be climbing."
I believe I replied something like, "Just in time for a late dinner"
Greg "What time is it anyway? 7 pm?"
Me: 10 pm?
Greg: YOUR KIDDING ME! NO WAY!

He's a madman, as he says though, "the higher you get, the higher you get!"

We had a badass ski back to camp, some rice noodles (Taste of Thai baby!) and crashed. The next day we decided to take it pretty easy and ski off to go check out Exit Glacier so we could plan out our next few days. A short snow climb and bergschrund navigation and we were up at the top of the pass. It was loose and rocky and we frankly did not like the looks of it. Our plan initiallly had been to rap down it, explore Granite glacier and the Granite spires and then ascend back up fixed ropes to regain our base camp after a few days of camping with light packs. We decided that the rockfall danger was way too great and that we should spend our next few days ice and snow climbing and working on general skill stuff instead.
Exit pass photos

The next few days were spent doing just that, ice climbing, and snow climbing. The highlight would be when we climbed a previously unnamed Coulior now dubbed the What? Coulior. This is in tribute to Alain and his language barrier that by this point had led Greg to issuing open threats of bodily harm to him for saying What? all the time. This was a super spicy fun mixed climb. It went at about 4 pitches up to the top, with the last two pitches being a mixture of snow, ice and rock. I won't write here the best thing about this coulior but if for some reason you find yourself heading there and you have the option of nice weather, bring your rock shoes with you to the top. Or hell, I'd go back and ski the damn thing given good snow conditions!

The What? Coulior and Exit Pass. I believe the what coulior is the one on the far Looker's left.

At this point in the trip I have to say our activity got severly limited due to weather conditions. I believe in the next week we managed to get two skis and two camp moves in due to rain on and off. One of our camp moves was accomplished on a rainy evening (we suck at weather windows) back up to the Hobbit's footstool and wound through a beautiful yet terrifying icefall lit up with twilight mist. I remember thinking that it was pretty damn cool looking! God bless my hardshell pants is all I have to say after this whole trip. Other than that our attempts to go rock climbing kept on getting shut down by weather or gigantic crevasse and bergschrund holes.
Here are some final highlight photos from the last of the "planned" trip.

So the last night we were supposed to be there we were given a beautiful gift and what I took as a good omen from the mountains. The skies cleared and we were given an incredible view of Mt. Foraker, in it's full summit at twilight. Little did we know that this was the last of any clear skies we would see for the next 60 hours.

My attempt at capturing the beauty that Mt. Foraker showed us, a piss poor attempt I might add...

We called TAT that evening and asked if they could come pick us up, considering we had accomplished all of our objectives. They said they were socked in in Talkeetna and couldn't. No big deal if the weather stays like this we'll for sure be out tomorrow.
I got up at 4 am to go take a pee and the glacier was so socked in you couldn't see 20 meters in front of you. CRAP. As the day went on our dreams of beer, burgers and debauchery in Talkeetna kept on getting further and further away, as this was also July 4th we were seriously hoping to get down to a rollicking good party. As 8 pm rolled around we resigned ourselves to couscous and food.
I'd say the hardest part of this kind of tent socked in was keeping our spirits up. Especially at the end of a trip when all we wanted to do was go home and yet we couldn't and other than the daily sat phone call we had no way of finding anything out about when we might get out of there. It was pretty easy to get really really down on the whole experience. Also as day 3 rolled around we were starting to run out of food and fuel pretty seriously, I know I had started limiting my consumption and trying to ween myself down to the minimum amount of food required to keep me running by this point. If we had been there one more night our dinner was going to be black beans in a tomato paste and I was already recycling green tea bags for my morning caffeine boost.
Some shots of our imprisonment:

On the third day we were stuck there we woke up to half a meter of the stickiest heaviest snow we'd seen, and my first reaction was FUCK we're never getting out of here. Around 11:30 the skies started to clear and we put a phone call in to TAT who said that t hey were trying and hopefully they'd see us soon. We started to slowly pack, heard a few planes buzzing around but not bust through the cloud cover and then went back to chill mode. Shortly before 2 pm, I got a feeling, that we needed to start doing something, so we packed up a few other things and Mike and I shuttled a load over to the LZ. Just as we were about to drop off our stuff and ask some other dudes who were there if they'd heard anything, we heard a BZZZZZZZZ and saw an Otter break through the clouds in between one of the mountain passes!
My reaction : "PLANE! PLANE!!!" and spring back to camp to break down the tents. I had our trango down in one minute 30 seconds I have to say. Short landing and loading and we were on our way back to Talkeetna and the land of the green and living!

This trip was awesome. A couple of things I would do next time I do a trip like this 1) Make sure my return plane ticket is changeable
2)Bring loads of emergency rations
3) Bring a Crazy Creek Chair

AMS is awesome. If this is the kind of experience your interested in getting I would reccomend them 100% for their knowledge and abilities in teaching. I'm definetly going to go on this kind of a trip again however, at this point I need a few weeks not in a tent!

re

Alaska 2010 Climbing Trip! Part .05

2010-06-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

I just started packing for my upcoming trip with AMS to climb in the Alaska Range, and the pile of gear at the foot of my bed was so stoke inspiring that I needed to throw up a quick blog about it....5 days until take off from DIA!!

The gear pile, I'd say this is at 95% complete....

Big Mountain Skiing in CO....

2010-06-15T22:34:00.000-07:00

Fritz loving perfect corn

So one of the things that I found super appealing and super fun to do when I first moved here to Colorado was ski big spring lines. With the usual garbage snowpack, it's the time of year where suddenly you can get on big steep lines and ski really good corn safely. It's a lot of fun. It also necessitates getting up at the ass crack of dawn and walking for a very long time in order to get to the lines that you want to ski. Usually the walk gets longer as the season winds down. The interesting thing about my love for this kind of skiing, is that the last two years, my motivation to do it has just about sucked ass. I'm trying to look on this as good thing, as though a single minded motivation can sometimes be detrimental to one's health and that I'm a more rounded person for being excited by things like rock climbing and mountain biking too. It's also a good idea to work and move with what the seasons give you right? I get 8 months a year to ski, so is it really a crime to want to get on some rock or ride my bike? I don't think so although sometimes I do still feel like I'm cheating on my first love.
Anyways, totally contrary to the beginning of this post, here's some photos from a recent ski of Quandary and Christo Coulior with Dobish and Fritz. Christo is awesome and that's probably why it appears here so much. Easy up easy down, steep and big.

Random dude that skied down with us making nice lookin' turns...

Dan and Fritz on the climb up

Best of all, us 4 wheeling at 11 pm trying to get to a flat campsite when we'd driven past four of them already!

Summit shot (slightly blurry)

Perhaps next spring I'll get the Jones for big mountain descents back again...
Either way, it was awesome getting out with you guys again, Dobish and Fritz

So the usually I suck at updating post...

2010-06-09T23:21:00.000-07:00

Busy, blah blah blah, excuses, blah, blah, blah. I know I suck at updating blogs and about once a year I post this exact same thread with me saying how much I suck at updating blogs. I really am going to try to get better at this, my only excuse being I haven't felt inspired to write about things over the last few months. Lots of changes occuring and frankly I've barely had any time to mull it all over myself. Good news is, most of these changes are great changes, its just that change seems to take time to get used to....Anyways, to make up for it here are some of the better photos from a late season ski trip to Berthoud and Loveland Passes. The berthoud ones are my favorite as Brian, Jeff and I were surprised by about a foot and a half of fresh powder and not a soul in sight to ski it besides us :)

Nothing like a surprise pow day!

Dobish probably thinking that hiking doesn't suck that much!

A slightly blurry definition of the word Stoke!

I'm headed to Bonnarroo tomorrow for a three day festival of 300 bands and rocking out with an old friend from college. Unfortunatly there won't be any photos as I've got no camera coming with me (no way I'm getting my camera stolen!) and then I'm back in CO for a week before heading to Alaska with a certain Michael Bean, who has made a few appearances here before. Definetly expect some visual love from that one, as the SLR will be out in full force :)

Chase Funding Mountaintop Removal

2010-02-18T07:27:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-10T08:52:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-01T20:59:00.000-08:00

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.

Flylow Gear Gear Review

2010-01-27T07:50:00.000-08:00

Myself rockin' the Flylow Pom beanie at Monarch a few weeks ago....

Due to the combination of a mild injury putting me out for the week (Don't worry I should be good by the weekend), not a ton of snow and the fact that I misplaced my camera connection chord in the process of my recent move (dumbass!), I'm going to finally get around to doing some gear reviews as I've been meaning to do so for a while.
First up, Flylow Gear, a local Denver based backcountry ski and telemark apparel company. This company, started by Dan Abrams (sp?) a few years ago specializes in creating gear that is mainly intended for backcountry skiers, telemarkers and basically people that treat their gear like crap. Kind of a tough lineup of things to accomplish but they seem to do it very very well. Flylow does outsource their construction to China, which is unfortunate and a bit of a negative tick in their direction, but pretty much the only one as far as I can think. Other than that the only major problem with Flylow is that if you ski at Loveland, theres a good chance that all of your friends are going to be wearing the exact same stuff.
First up, to my favorite piece of Flylow Gear, the Chemical Pant:

This pant sports a trim yet loose fit (I use the word trim in regards to the uber baggy gangster rap influenced pants that seem to made by most other ski companies these days), with articulated knees, 3/4 leg zips on the outside of the thigh and knee zips on the inside of the knees. Full gaiter at the bottom of the pant along with additional reinforcement for those of us knee benders that occasionally get our pants caught in our bindings. If your looking for a killer backcountry ski pant that is lightweight and fully waterproof, these pants are the ticket. The articulated knees can easily fit a knee pad, if you've got strap on knee pads you can chuck them on underneath by simply putting them on through the ventilation zips in the pants. My favorite thing about these pants is that so far they seem to live up to the Flylow reputation of being utterly bombproof. They don't seem to be prone to snagging for those of us who like to ski too close to trees (might be changing that habit now...) and so far have shown no durability issues on the many long tours I have taken them on. I also really like the fit of the pants, their slim enough so that they feel utilitarian and responsible when taking them into the backcountry, but at the same time you don't look like your about to scale Mt. Blanc and then ski down to your favorite creperie for apres. The waterproofing seems to have no issues with it as I've used it on several long tours and have not yet had a problem with my butt getting wet, even with doing rescue drills and mucking around in the snow a whole bunch. While I wouldn't say the pants are breathable (full membrane clothing rarely is, no matter what the manufacturer tells you) the second you start to feel yourself working up a sweat, simply reach down unzip your outer and inner zips and voila! it's like the Santa Anna winds are blowing through your nether regions. Unless it's a super warm spring day, I probably wouldn't wear my Chemicals to the resort (I have lots of friends that do on a regular basis, but I tend to get cold easily), as they have no insulation and really are a shell that intends for you to be generating your own heat. The one time I did wear it to the resort I threw on my Icebreaker 320 GT pants layer underneath and was pretty toasty, albeit a little bulky.

Chemical Pants in action!

The only two issues I have with these pants is that with only two side pockets, loads of storage area for on the go items is lacking (ie snacks, candy bars, beacons, repair equipment, compasses, bongs-all those BC esentials) and colors. A cargo pocket might not be a bad idea. The Chemical pant is available in black and brown. If you are hankering for another color, try the Magnum pant, similar in construction, but made with a different core fabric and also available in concrete color. (Side note: I have heard through the grape vine that Flylow had decided to introduce some steezier colors for next season, so if you really like the brightness hold off for a little while.) For the women, check out the Bella Donna pant, same idea, just with a few rhinestones and a girlier cut.
Speaking of next year's offerings from Flylow, I've had a sneak peak at their version of the Tough Guy glove coming out next year.

The old Tough Guy

Basically it's the same workhorse as the old Tough Guy and the Kinkos before that, except that it's a full leather glove. I've got good word that it was designed entirely for the Ridge at Loveland and those extra special days where it's not only windy but it's really really cold too. So far in my own testing these things seem to be holding up to the wind in a bomber fashion. (got to try them out seriously in a ultra windy day at Berthoud this weekend and man was I happy to have them).

Myself and Larry sporting a variety of Flylow apparel from a weekend tour up Jones, see what items you can spot!

Anyways, shop for Flylow Gear, it'll tour like a Carhart and ski like an Arcteryx (for half the price)
www.flylowgear.com

And here's a link to their blog, the winter life (cool stories to be found!)
www.thewinterlife.com

Early January Berthoud

2010-01-11T21:59:00.000-08:00

Dobish throwing down on a windlip

So after last weeks harrowing adventure, and with the weekend approaching I had two goals, 1. I still wanted to get out and go touring and 2. I wanted to do it with a super safe group and in a place I felt comfortable in, so when Dobish asked if I wanted to head to Berthoud for some Saturday turns, I gladly accepted.
So after having waged a battle with the hordes of January Front Range Skiers (often times the most dangerous part of backcountry skiing in the Front Range, and denying a car lap to a group of skiers and snowboarders sans Avy gear (typical procedure of mine and another reason I sometimes seem to avoid Berthoud) we arrived at the top parking lot around 10ish or so and headed up for a quick lap in Floral park on a beautiful Saturday morning. Fifteen minutes or so later, we were at the top of the descent and shooting down into the perfectly pitching tree laps that is Floral Park. While not exactly sublime and yielding snow, it was variable and soft enough in some spots that it made all the work worth it, and for fifteen minutes of work followed by about 1,000 feet of descent, OK I'll bite.

Fritz enjoying the amazing lack of wind up in Current Creek

Next up, we headed up the west side with the intention of skiing Meadows to the upper 90s. Meadows was slightly wind affected, while the 90s was slightly tracked, however we found some killer snow to be had in patches. It's a shame sometimes that a place like Berthoud pass is so well known, if no one else knew about it, we would have had untouched pow for weeks to ourselves! The snow still was light soft and fluffy in some areas and deep enough to make the Bibby's very happy. We skied about halfway down Triple Chute and I stopped in the middle of the run to shoot Dobish, cutting a new line on the far skier's right chute.

Tree skiing!
Artist's talk about suffering for their art, and I do have to say that I'd imagine very few of them know the sensation of getting a huge pow shot right in the face for their photography. Which is exactly what happened to me after the last two shots.
Having skied the 90s we decided to head back up the 110s to see if there was any leftover goods from the earlier week's storm.
This particular location of Berthoud holds a special place in my heart. It's one of the first places that Brandon and I ever toured up 3 years ago after our on snow Avalanche Safety class with FOBP () and one of my first memories of feeling your lungs about to burst with the effort of the climb up a windswept peak and being rewarded with knee deep untracked powder down the pitch and not another soul in sight. They don't call the area Perfect Trees just because it's meadow skipping at it's very best. It's the kind of mellow, sublime tree skiing, that every turn seems to trigger a serenity deep in the skiers soul and in a place that sometimes can be accused of having lost it's soul when too many people found it, well, it's a good reminder that sometimes stoke from your home can be the best.
Up at the top we stopped for a well deserved lunch, Fritz had decided to break out the jetboil and several ready made soups, which were much enjoyed by all.

Ramen is awesome says the Dobish and the Hilary!

Perfect trees was sun soaked and powdery, fresh and yet dappled with bits of sun kisses on it's mellow slope. In other words, it skied really, really good. And asides from a miscommunication between Dobish and myself regarding skier vs. photographer, it was excellent.
At the bottom of perfect trees the pitch steepens and goes over a cliff band, where we found recent evidence of two skier triggered slides, a reminder that the avalanche dragon is constantly lurking, even on a bluebird day that seems like nothing can go wrong. Fritz dived right in to check out the scene, while the three of us remained on watch. Once he had ascertained that the tension had been relieved in the slope, the three of us came over to check out the findings. You could see that the slope had slid on the icey basal layer and that the skier had triggered it by skiing over a rollover and hitting a weak spot that had collapsed the snowpack.

Dobish and Fritz investigating the crown
Notice the track at the feet of my shadow, that's the day or two old track of the person who had skied the slope that had triggered the slide. You could see in the turn that there was a rock just out of site of the camera where the shallow point had been hit. Classic low snowpack weakness point. Asides from a reminder that the avalanche dragon is still lurking, I have to say I felt very, very sorry for whoever went for this ride, as all there was below it was rocks and trees. It could not have felt good.
After scoping the scene to it's fullest extent and picking the safest line we could find down the adjacent slope, accompanied by some very spooky whoomphing, we skied out to the parking lot (after Hillary lost her ski for a good 5 minutes or so and had a crash course in skiing on one ski) and back up to the top of the pass.
It was awesome to go back to a place that had so ignited my love of backcountry skiing after having such a scary occurence in the backcountry the week before. It reminded me why I take the risk of leaving the resort and venturing out into the unknown, other than just having a bad memory and high tolerance for pain. It reminded me of the beauty of the natural world away further away from humanity and the camraderie that the folks who venture into the backcountry share. It also reminded me how good ramen can taste when you've really earned it.

January 5th: Close Call

2010-01-11T07:55:00.000-08:00

Last week,I had a rare Tuesday and Wednesday off and Chris and I had decided to take advantage of the day by heading to a local stash for some low angle pow skiing. Granted the avy danger in the Front Range has been beyond scary these last few weeks, but going with the usual adage of staying below treeline and on low angle terrain we pretty much figured we'd be safe.
We got to the trailhead around 9ish, and began the moderate skin in, pausing to use our compasses and orient ourselves as to what aspects we were in the midst of. The first part of this skin in is a pretty mellow tour which steepens dramatically when you get about half way up the gulch. Having worked our way up to just about treeline and a wonderful grove of trees that I'm now going to refer to as the Hacienda, due to their extreme comfort we transitioned from tour mode to ski mode, wolfed down some snacks and headed off, getting more and more excited about the powder we were to ski. From this point the plan was to do a long traverse over to our chosen line, a little tree shot that had an angle of around low 30 degrees or so.
During this ski we decided very much so to play the buddy game, because there were some larger paths above us that were very concerning, so we went one at a time, moving from tree grove to tree grove. In retrospect, I remember skiing over these low angle areas and hearing a distinct hollow sound coming from the snowpack beneath us. It concerned me, not so much because we were on such low angle terrain, however this sound now is deeply ingrained in my memory.
We were about 50 feet from our chosen line and ducking out of one last tree grove to another when all of a sudden I heard a huge WHOOMPH, and the whole slope lowered beneath me. I saw a crack shoot out 15 feet in front of me, and heard Chris shout my name, and suddenly every thing started to move. I remember having 2 thoughts: 1)This can't be happening, and 2)I'm still standing up I need to ski out of this right now.
Skiing out of it (and praying every foot of the way) I turned around and instantly started yelling Chris' name as I'd lost track of him, he instantly responded from the grove of trees that we had just recently called our safe zone and where a bunch of huge avy blocks were now piled up. He was fine, he'd gone for about a 20 foot ride and was more than slightly shaken up, but other than that fine.
We took stock of our situation, took some pictures and decided to retreat to the bar.
So in further retrospect, what do I think happened?
Some shots of the aftermath:

The windlip that created the rollover and that the whole slope ripped out from, notice the cracks continuing to the left.

A shot from down at the ground, above the line that we had hoped to ski, once again, notice the cracks.

Chris crossing over to me and a thicker line of trees, notice the size of the blocks of debris and the obvious evidence of a hard slab on top of soft slab.

First off, I think that the hollow noise I spoke of above, should be paid attention to no matter WHAT terrain level your on, and I know that now. 2. Even though we were traversing extremely mellow terrain, the one thing that we both missed was that during our traverse, we mistakenly crossed a slope that rolled over into a steeper degree (after the fact we measured the slope that we were crossing and it was a prime 35 degrees, primo avy terrain, when the slope we had been on seconds before could not have been greater than 28). 3. I think that we missed these things because we were lulled into a false sense of security being that there were so many trees around.
So what has this taught me?
Biggest of all, I've found myself paying extreme attention to any rollovers that I've found in the backcountry and paying extreme attention to any sound that the snow makes. For example, yesterday at Loveland, during the opening of chair 8, I skied over a windloaded area that was making that hollow noise and even though I was in bounds I still felt my avy sense rise.
In retrospect, I'm extremely glad that this happened, neither of us was hurt we learned from the mistakes and besides from a nightmare here and there (I woke up saturday night, because I'd had a nightmare of the sound that the slope made before it ripped) all I am is wiser from this. You can read about things in books, take classes, but theres nothing that gets your instinct going like experiencing something first hand. Mom and Dad, if your reading this, I promise we were being safe, and from now on I know what mistakes to look for. It's pretty textbook avy safety that happened, it's not the big slopes that will kill you, it's the little ones. It did take me about a week to get up the gumption to write this blog post because I wanted to make sure that I had all the details and life lessons included. Be safe out there, and frankly, I'm going to be doing some serious meadow skipping until this bottom layer sends itself out.

Post New Year's Touring

2010-01-04T21:35:00.000-08:00

After a pretty crappy New Year's Eve and Day (read: drank too much and felt like crap the next day), I managed to tag along with few friends that were heading to CENSORED location (censored to protect the powder stash) for a post new year's day tour. It was a surprisingly hefty group, 10 people, which is way larger than I'd usually tour with so, we moved pretty slowly, but considering the trade was about 5500 feet of powder turns in a brand new area, I was ok with it. The crew consisted of Gary, Chris, Lauren, Mike, Mel, Tom, Ed, Pete and a few others whose names have either slipped my mind or I didn't find out. Huge group, so especially considering the Avy Danger was at pockets of high on all aspects, we decided to stick to very low angle trees. We skinned up an east ridgeline that took us over complete and utter wind hammered and directly into treeline where I'll let some of the pictures speak for what we found.

Mike diving in...

and finding solace in every turn!
The snow was wonderful! It was deep, light, fluffy and totally untracked. It was the kind of hero tree skiing where the faster you go the better and better that it feels and suddenly your just ripping through the trees leaving beautiful trenches of depth behind you. Sweet.

Plotting about more powder..

Testing the avalung...
On a scary note, at the bottom of our first run we found a test slope and dug a quick pit, which failed on an R1 of the Rutschblock test (for those uninitiated I stepped lightly onto the isolated block and the whole top layer slid).
Exploring a new section of mountains, so close to home and yet so similar, always has a soulful aspect to it. I hadn't toured in close to a week and a half and it always amazes me how much I enjoy the movement through the mountains.

Powder Skis (or lack thereof)

2009-12-22T08:28:00.000-08:00

Of recent, I've heard a lot of complaining about the absolute lack of snow that the Front Range mountains seem to be experiencing, and granted, that compared to the last two years at this time we are way behind on our expected snowfall, when I look back on my season so far I find it hard for me to complain too terribly much except for about the rotting snow layer at the bottom of the snowpack that seems to be causing slides on an almost unprecedented level. I got powder turns in November, did a hut trip last weekend where it snowed a foot and a half on us, have done about 50 percent backcountry days and already have 27 days on skis in for the season. And it's not even Christmas. So while the WROD at Loveland has definetly gotten a little old, I know that some good snow is going to be coming and it's most likely just around the corner. Let's hope that it doesn't come while I'm home for Christmas.
These shots are a wrap of last weekends trip to the Eiseman hut. While the first part of the skin in definetly highlighted the drastic need for snow, (we had to take our skis off for a portion!), the deeper into the hills we got the deeper the snow got! For those unaware, the Eiseman hut is part of the 10th Mountain Division Hut System and sits about 7 miles outside of the town of Vail. I'd jumped on this trip as a spot had opened up on what seemed to be an annual voyage to the hut, and if the opportunity comes up I'd more than love to jump on it again! Saturday was pretty much spent skiing into the hut (7 miles with a heavy pack is usually a full day thing) while Sunday and Monday were spent reaping the goods that Mother Nature had blessed us with while we were toiling to get to the hut. Sunday, according to a rough guesstimate, Vela, Dobish and I probably logged about 6000' of vertical in both the up and down through the tree shots right outside the hut. Couple all of this powder snow with delicious food and good friends (and a lack of bacon. :() and you've got a fantastic time! Here's some pictures!

So I think I'm just going to let everyone else keep on complaining and I'm just going to keep on being patient. Because, if you know where to go, even 4 inches of snow becomes a powder day. And if that 4 inches becomes a foot and a half and you've got 20 friends in a backcountry cabin, well, your more than lucky enough.
Stereo- Blitzen Trappen

Oh and since my track record clearly shows that I probably won't post again before Christmas, Merry Christmas!

Turn of the Seasons:Photo Essay

2009-11-30T09:55:00.000-08:00

Fall and spring in Colorado are very special times, it's a time that can be frustrating if your limited in what you like to do and it's a time that if your flexible you can have all sorts of different fun in. It's a time where your best to let your passions and activities be ruled by the weather and the changing of the seasons rather than trying to force what you'd like to do down Mother Nature's throat. One day you may wake up to 3 feet of fresh snow and the next day you may find yourself skating down slightly icey single track. Either way, keep your head alert, your eyes to the sky and let every morning with that nip of pure winter excite you and your headed in the right direction.
That being said, here's a few photos from adventures during November.

And to highlight my point further, here's a few pictures from a recent trip to Phoenix Arizona for Thanksgiving with Fifer and Ames and some mountain biking

MTB TR: Fruita and Grand Junction

2009-11-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

"Broke is only temporary; poor is a state of mind"

I get really poignant fortune cookies. I'm not quite sure why, especially when I seem to be surrounded by people who get shafted in the fortune cookie department. It's as if some fickle hand of fate seems to dollop out little life lessons in small plastic packages surrounded by a semi tasteless crunchy dough material. A gem surrounded by tastelessness, could be a metaphor for some sorts of life if I were the more pessimistic sort. However, I'm not so I'll just keep getting the dollops of wisdom pearled out by whatever old fu manchu wearing chinese gentleman in the sky there is.
Anyways, above is a fortune cookie I got a Thai place in Grand Junction last night and man did this ring true with this weekend. (I have tons of pictures that I will post up here shortly). Having received just enough snow to make the high alpine dangerous, and to cover up every rock on the Front Range, some friends and I decided to journey out to the desert in search of dry singletrack and slick rock for what might be one last thrash fest on bikes for the season (perhaps not anymore...)

Thrash fest we did find. After arriving late at night on Friday we met up at a local diner to grab some grub, before heading towards the legendary Fruita trails. Mountain biking literally has put Fruita on the map. This tiny town one exit down from Grand Junction has access to some of the most exciting rim rock, slick rock, single track in the state of Colorado. We started out in the parking lot at the Loma exit with intentions of hitting up Horsetheif canyon loop and doubling it around to Lions loop.

We ended up bailing half way through Lions Loop (lack of sunlight) making a beeline climb up Mock Ridge and connecting back to the parking lot through the Moore Fun trail. Horsethief starts out at the trailhead, winds along the rim rock and then dives straight into the canyon with a series of rock steps and then loops down along the canyon walls and ravines to meet back up to the original rock steps. As the name implies, this is the wild, wild west at its very best. Looping through the ravines and past the canyon walls, you can't help but imagine Butch Cassidy hiding out in the slot canyons and taking shelter in the course of the day.

The rock hop that took out 3 tires

Zack handling the rock hop masterfully

Lion's loop doesn't seem to have stuck in my mind as poignantly as the other trails that day so I'm going to gloss over it a bit, but say that the scenery was beautiful and trails dry and rocky. Mock Ridge started with an intense 1000 foot climb up a hilltop to crest on top of a ridge that overlooked the whole valley and canyons. The trail then wound along the rimrock, sometimes coming with in 2 to 3 feet of the plunge. This part was more than slightly spooky as riding my bike along this rim it was really easy to feel the empty space pulling at you from the left. It was sort of like learning to drive where they tell you "look where you want to go, not where you don't".

The entrance to Horsethief!
Spookay and not easy to do! The trail bounced back down some pretty technical rocky spots to a low point where we began the climb up to Moore Fun. This section of the ride I'm not really sure I can take credit for actually riding as I ended up pushing my bike up hill more than riding it and walking it through some pretty technical points. We were nearing the 20 mile and 2,000 feet of climbing mark for the day and I was very very tired and had no desire to injure myself by pushing through something stupid when I wasn't at the top of my game. I made it back to the car though in very little style and to a cold beer waiting for me!
The group I was riding with was unbelievably supportive and friendly. Zack, Lindsay and Nick were incredibly helpful with tips and patient, especially since I was the least skilled rider there. I had an incredible time goofing around on the trail, and it was the type of camraderie that makes you seriously want to go back for more.
More and photos later....

Alaska Part 3: Erwin Hill and Denali State Park

2009-10-21T09:13:00.001-07:00

So after arriving at Robin's house late the night before, we had an alpine start (leaving the house around 10 am) to grab a quick hike in Denali State Park. I'd done some reading and the Erwin Hill route seemed to be pretty minimally strenuous and (if the clouds cleared up) pretty rewarding. Mel's Mom was coming with us so I didn't really feel like breaking her on a hike. We left Talkeetna with a steady drizzle going on.

I spend a lot of time in the mountains and one of the thing that fascinates me about visiting different mountains is the different types of flora and fauna one sees in different places. One of the major differences between Colorado and Alaska is Alaska is WET! It rains and snows a ton there and after a strong summer of growth there is some unbelievably thick brush and things to hack through.

Not a ton of the photos from Ermine Hill came out great as we spent most of the hike enwrapped in a cloud with a couple of fleeting glimpses of the southern large peaks of the Alaska range coming in and out of view. Thus all of my photos from this hike are made up of subject matter that involves the little joys and excitements your able to find in nature when the broad vistas are closed.
It was a good hike through solid brush and swamp, which inevitably brought you up above treeline at the crest of the hill. We were mostly dry until the clouds decided to open up on us on the way down where we proceeded to get soaked to the bone.

One of the coolest things about this hike was the combination of lowland marshes (mosquitoes) and having the hills and treeline right there. According to all the research I did, you have a better chance of seeing Denali and getting a good view of the Alaska range from Denali State Park then you do from inside the national park, so if you ever find yourself on a clear day there head for Ermine Hill.
Next up, Hatcher Pass.

Alaska Part 2: Kenai Peninsula

2009-10-11T11:56:00.000-07:00

Alaska: The Last Frontier. So about 2 months ago, Mel and I traveled up to AK with her family to partake in the family vacation, or as her Dad called it on our extensive itinerary (seriously this trip was planned far better than most government operations, we even had an exit strategy!) "The Great Alaskan Adventure". The trip started with us flying into Anchorage (flight arrived around 2 am AK time) and spending the first day in Anchorage. Frankly, the best thing I saw in Anchorage was the phenomenal view of the Chugach range from the museum top floor, other than that it was very gray and not terribly exciting. The next day we drove down to the Kenai peninsula, specifically Seward. This peninsula is famed for its wildlife, gorgeous views, whale watching and glaciers. The whole of the peninsula is still being actively carved away by sea ice on one side and internally by an icefield that glaciers pour down hillsides, grinding away the mountains as they work there way to the sea.

Now I'm usually not a huge fan of big touristy tour type stuff, so I wasn't too excited that our first day on this mythical peninsula was going to be spent on a boat with an all you can eat salmon or steak buffet (not kidding), but I figured that's the price of coming on a family vacation, you can't spend the whole time hacking through the bush. I was blown away by how well done this tour was. It was marketed as a Sea Wildlife tour and holy cow was it. Species that have been pushed to the brink of extinction in the lower 48 came swimming straight up or flew straight past the boat. Within the first hour I'd lost track of how many Bald Eagles we'd seen, on top of seeing Dall's Porpoises, Sea Otters, Sea Lions and puffins as well. And the scenery was like wandering into the Lord of The Rings. Glaciers came spilling straight down to the ocean, curved spires of jagged peaks poured upward into the fog and cloud filled sky while tendrils of clouds wrapped themselves towards the ocean. Truely, a phenomenal experience. I'll shut up for a moment and let the pictures speak for themselves(unfortunatly most of the wildlife photos did not come out as I don't have a good enough lens-must buy telephoto).

So after spending a night in Seward and eating some surprisingly disapointing salmon (my one major complaint about Alaska; the fish bought in restaurants was really not that fresh tasting, the best salmon we had by far was caught by Mel's Dad and Grandfather-other than that in restaurants the Fish and Chips were better than the Salmon), we woke up the next morning to head out to go sea kayaking with Sunny Cove Sea Kayaking. True to its name the sun came out while we were out in the boats as well. This was super fun, great to get some exercise and an awesome opportunity to see the geology of the peninsula up close. Unfortunatly, I forgot the disposable camera we'd bought for this part of the trip in my life jacket so it got left in Seward and then promptly got opened and stolen while it was being mailed back to us in Colorado (people...). So thus there are no pictures of this part of the trip. The best part of this was that while we were here, the salmon run was in full swing (early run) and during part of the kayaking we went up a river where there were literally hundreds of salmon directly below us in the clear blue water spawning and thrashing about. The guide told us a detailed description of the physiology of the salmon and I found it fascinating, I'll try to recount it here.

Salmon actually have mercury in their heads so essentially they act like living compasses, they also have an intense memory of what their exact river stream that they were spawned in and even though in their lifetime will have traveled all the way around the world, the second their spawning instinct kicks in they head directly for that river bed. Now the moment salmon start to spawn, they start to die as well, physiologically they lose all motivation to eat or rest and the only instinct that survives is that to spawn and to eat other salmon's spawn or eggs. We literally saw salmon that had almost all but fallen apart (no eyes, emaciated, losing fins) but were still swimming around spawning. Incredible.

So after viewing the salmon and heading back to port, Mel, Robin and I got in the car and headed toward Talkeetna. On the way we stopped at the Palmer Glacier (I think..) and Girdwood, home to Alaska's only ski resort Alyeska. This glacier had some of the best views of crevasses and the infamous blue color that the compressed ice adapts.

To get to the prime vantage point we ended up scrambling through a tight grove of Alders that provide an awesome idea of exactly what the brush in Alaska during summer time is like. While one may think of Alaska and think of a frozen wasteland covered in snow, this opinion is totally wrong. During the summer time Alaska has one of the best growing seasons around (it's light all the time!) and is absolutly loaded with moisture. Plants that seem like they've been dead for months grow to exponential sizes. We ended up bushwacking through about 200 yards of alder to see the vantage points of the glaciers above.

Having grown up spending time in Denmark at the northern parts of the world, I've always known the beauty of the lighting as you get towards the poles. I don't think I've ever seen as good an example as when we were leaving Girdwood and heading along the Seward highway towards Beluga Bay and Anchorage. The shots below simply don't do the golden color that highlighted the ocean and the mountains justice.

Next up, Talkeetna and Denali State Park and some very typical Alaskan weather!

Still in Denver, and a new passion and a review!

2009-10-05T08:22:00.001-07:00

So, no, I haven't finished the Alaska photos yet. I swear I'll get to them and it will be a total photog TR and it'll be awesome, but as for the last few weeks I A)haven't had the time, and B) have been way too exhausted to do much else but relax when I wasn't out blowing off some steam.
Super long story short, I'm starting a new job in a few hours which I am stoked about. I'm going to be working up at Bent Gate Mountaineering in Golden, which should, while providing me with a killer ski season unlike moving to LA would have, also be a pretty fun job. Advice from various people about how to fully take advantage of my gear situation has already been rolling in. I figure I'm going to work at doing a good job before I start milking the benefits (not that that won't come).
Other than that, I managed to pick up a new (read:expensive) hobby recently. SINGLETRACKS! This all stems from me finding a smoking deal on an awesome full suspension Mountain Bike. Salvagetti(phenomenal cycling shop, highly reccomended to anyone in the Denver metro area) was selling off their demo fleet and I managed to pick up a Giant Trance X2.

I've had some time to make my aquaintance of this bike so I figured I'd do a review of it. The bike comes with 5" of travel, clocks in at 29 pounds, comes with a full rear and front Fox suspension system and a shimano drive train. I've attached Shimano SPD clipless pedals to it, and have a set of WTB Trail 27 mm tires on it but other than that am using the kit as it comes new. This bike rips. It's just light enough that it climbs well, but just heavy enough that it wants to crush anything on the downhill in it's path. For a relatively novice mountain biker, this bike is confidence inspiring on downhills in a way that make speed feel much more comfortable. Which is a good thing because this bike wants to go fast. Taking rock drops, the suspension is good enough that it tends to cushion almost anything but the worst blows, and I've never had an issue with the tail washing out on tight turns or rocks except when I was off balance (once again, novice biker).
The disc brakes have phenomenal control and tightness, even though the back brake has a tendency to be a little noisy on some steeper stuff. The travel in the suspension makes it want to grind up larger obstacles with ease, even though myself as the rider might not have the ability to take it just right yet. I went to Lair O' The Bear yesterday and coming down a section with a serious of drops, the bike just stomped it. Straight over, no balance issue, yeehaw. On gliding rolling terrain, the best way I can describe how this bike navigates, is float. It wants to go fast and it takes curves like a formula 1 racer. All and all I am stoked about this bike and it comes with the highest of reccomendations especially for someone just starting out on the trail. This bike inspires the confidence you need to make you want to push yourself and grow
Stereo: Pete Kartsounes- Old Bluegrass home

Alaska Part 1

2009-09-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

So the last couple of weeks since I got back from Alaska have been nuts and I just managed to start looking at the photos last night. However, I wanted to get something up, so here's a slide show of the raw footage that I posted up on Photobucket. Plan on seeing a much more in depth blog of the trip shortly, once I get a chance to go through and tweak and edit some more of the pictures. Alaska was in a word, unbelievable, the scenery was specatcular, the mountains are huge and the wildlife runs rampant. Until I get the edited and tweaked photos up, hope you enjoy the scenery from afar as much as I did!

Haus Rock, Canal Zone and life in Denver for a few weeks

2009-08-13T07:16:00.000-07:00

The last couple of weeks have been an absolute flury of activity. I haven't seemed to really do much except the usual hang out in Denver and climb and work, but I also moved, took a trip to Copper Mountain and explored some crags up there and now I'm off to Alaska on Friday. Work surprisingly enough, has been going pretty well so we can table any discussion about that, which is good as that's the boring stuff.
So about two weeks ago I wrote about taking a buddy of mine up to boulder for the first time.

I think that the joy of introducing a neophyte to the sport and the joy of finding a strange trailhead and heading up it towards a crag, have very similar impacts. The trailhead unfolds towards you and winds its way through pine and growing piles of rock much as the beginner grabs for holds suddenly finds themselves at the top of something that they thought was so impossible (or at the bottom). Mel and I went and explored the sport climbs at Haus Rock in Montezuma a couple of weekends ago. A beautiful 60 foot boulder that juts right out of the hill side, this climb is on awesome gnesis and has a collection of great moderates on oneside and up to 5.13c on the other side. One of the better 5.9's I've climbed was there and asides from a couple of bro brah locals (it is there crag so I can't complain too much) the scenery was absolutly gorgeous. (pics to come later-they're on Mel's camera) The day after this we went to a crag in Leadville that the 10th Mountain division used to climb out. This turned into an adventure of getting two dogs across a single beam bridge of a raging runoff stream, Mary Jane waltzed right across it while Copper (Mel's parent's Golden Retriever) ended up having to swim the river because she was too scared of the beam. This looked like great rock that had barely been climbed on with great bolted 5.8s and 5.9s. I say looked because before I got barely 2 feet above the first bolt, ran came pouring in and we had to make a hectic escape and go for plan B (a lowkey hike up Mayflower Gulch) instead. (We'll be back Labor Day)

The weather let up in time for us to have a great leisurely hike up the Gulch until we ended in the valley where your greeted by an ancient group of dilapidated huts from Colorado's mining history.

The second we found this valley, the skies came rolling in from Fremont Pass, and we went scurrying for cover in a ferocious summer hail storm. After about 20 minutes of hiding it let up to the point where we scrambled back down the trail to the car.

Mel hiding from the storm

The following two weekends I've spent climbing at Canal Zone in Clear Creek Canyon right near Golden. This is a GREAT new crag, it's all in the shade until about 3 pm, it's got a collection of great moderates and everything up till 5.11 and it's on great rock. It's also being constantly developed by the route setter Kirk Miller, who I met two weeks ago. A great easy going chatty guy, this man has built this crag into a phenomenal sport climbing area from the ground up and seems to have the productivity of 8 men. In the week that I was gone, three more routes were completed! It's pretty sweet to have an opportunity to go to your favorite new crag and have there be tons of new routes popping up left and right. I'm excited to see what else he'll set up soon, and I promise I'll get some digging in for him.
Other than settling in to a new apartment, I'm just getting mentally prepared to take off for Alaska on Friday. I absolutly cannot wait, this week seems to be crawling by. The plan involves some time in Anchorage, Denali National Park, Kenai Peninsula, Talkeetena and hopefully, just hopeully, some bouldering off Hatcher Pass (if not it's starting to look like we'll definetly get some bouldering in in Denali National Park). One more day!

Rock Passion

2009-08-06T15:49:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this post for a couple of reasons, the major two being I'm bored at work and need some kind of entertainment and the secondary one is I wanted to take a moment to write about the revelatory joys of teaching someone a passion. My roommate Ben (after much persuasion and cries of I'm scared of heights!) has just decided to take up climbing (SWEET!) and is taking to it like a fish to water. I took him bouldering yesterday and except for the few classic newbie things that happened he seemed to really enjoy it. In fact he even took a pretty highball fall and shook it right off and bounced back on the rocks. I gave a few pointers and other than that he seems to be pulling at the reins to keep trying other problems. Watching someone discover the joy that comes with a new hobby or sport especially one like climbing gives a great perspective into your own climbing. Along with the inevitable ebs and flows its awesome to be with someone whose so excited to be doing it that it doesn't matter if it's a V0 or a V25 that they're sending, they're just happy to be out. Reminds me of the importance of process, as the lonely climber meditating on top of their spire would say.
Stereo-Ben Harper-Burn One Down

Checkin' in and a good day at Clear Creek

2009-07-18T15:21:00.000-07:00

Mt. Rainier
Whew! Just got back from the first day of climbing after (practically) a two week hiatus. I say practically cause I managed to get two bouldering sessions squeezed in there, one indoor, one outdoor. So Mel and I decided to head up to the High Wire crag in Clear Creek today to get on some healthy moderates. I gotta say, I am slightly worked! I got 4 leads in and 7 climbs total. The thing that I was the most astounded at though was that while my physical game actually wasn't that far from where I left it (got a 5.8+ climbed today, and flashed another 8 and two 7s with some interesting moves) my mental game was crap! The first two leads I was freakin' terrified! It was like every time I tried to move above a bolt every bone in my body started screaming "YOUR GONNA DIE!!" I'd like to say that I calmed it by saying "No fear for me!" but really by the end of the second pitch, I was actually laughing at myself as I came down because of how terrified I was of this nice, positive juggy 5.8 I was. After that it actually cleared up quite a bit and ended with me feeling pretty good about the two remaining leads, one that had a major commmitment style swing to the first bolt to it. Or maybe I just did that because I was so bugged out that if I didn't dyno it, I'd never make it. I'll find out tomorrow as I'm probably gonna head back there to spend about half a day before it gets too hot.
So what I've been up to in the meantime? Weddings, weddings and a birthday. Two weeks ago took me to Vancouver via Seattle for my cousin John's wedding, Vancouver is an absolutly stunning town, it has both the mountains and the ocean right there! Here's some shots that I found while cruising around town.

I managed to drag the family for a short hike on what actually turned out to be a ski resort during some down time but other than that it was pretty much constant wining and dining. I do have to say that one night I got very very very drunk. White wine is no fun as a hangover. Here are some of the better hike photos and one of a pigeon I got in Seattle:

The pigeon!

A creek

This post is getting a little long, so I'm going to end it here also as I have to pack as I'm moving in 2 weeks.
Stereo-I-pod broke so I got nothin'

Off to Vancouver

2009-07-01T18:49:00.000-07:00

So I just finished packing up all my stuff for Vancouver. It looks like I'm not going to get a ton of climbing in in the next two weeks because of this wedding and Liz's wedding back home in NC next weekend. Funny though, after cruising around on Mountain Project this afternoon, I could not resist throwing my climbing shoes and chalk bag in my bag for BC. There's just too many good climbs there that if I found myself near a boulder, I'd feel really silly if I didn't have them with me. Hmmmm...addicted much? Anyhow, I'm off bright and early tomorrow AM and I'm really excited to see what BC looks like and have got the camera loaded for bear. Even if there's no climbing to be found hopefully I'll be able to bring back some pretty excellent pictures. Here's to some good flyin'.
Stereo-Foo Fighters-Ever Long

Climbing Wisdom

2009-06-30T14:04:00.000-07:00

I found this quote on Mountain Project this morning and loved the essence of it so much that I thought I'd post it for those of you who think that climbing high mountains and cliffs might be slightly wacko. I think it sums it up well.
'The story of mountaineering is a story of faith and affirmation-that the high road is the good road; that there are still among us those who are willing to struggle and suffer greatly for wholly ideal ends; that security is not the be-all and end-all of living; that there are conquests to be won in the world other than over our fellow man. The climbing of the earth's heights in itself means little. That men want and try to climb them means everything. For it is the ultimate wisdom of the mountains that man is never so much a man as when he is striving for what is beyond his grasp, and that there is no battle worth the winning save that against his own ignorance and fear.'

- From "The Age of Mountaineering"
Cheers to that!

'Round Denver

2009-06-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

You know, it's interesting, I just looked back at my last few posts and each one of them starts with "After a brutal week at work..." or something to that extent. Pattern much? It also seems in retrospect that each one of those has just gotten worse and worse, so this time I'm going to forego any talk of work and hope that that alone doesn't tempt the Gods O' Fate.
And another home crag TR (hey, home is where the heart is!):
So not too much to report, had a pretty mellow weekend consisting of some bouldering at Morrison yesterday and a solid day at Table Mountain today. Other than the fact that I feel like I'm climbing really really strong, nothing too special happened which was pretty rock solid. I managed to up my climbing standards and push myself, yesterday I managed to send a V4 and today I led a 5.10a! Not that I'm gungho I need to be the best climber ever, it's just really really nice to see that all the effort I've been putting in is paying off and I do feel like I'm improving a whole bunch. I really hope that this next two week period of not getting too much climbing in won't hurt it too much. (I'm off to Vancouver for a wedding next weekend, and then back home to NC for another wedding and Dad's 65th b-day).
Mel and I managed to make it up to Table mountain early today, which was great because by 12 it was roasting. I'm pretty sure that Table may have seen the last of me except for evenings and mornings until some cooler winds start to blow and that the time has come to start heading into the Canyons, which is great considering I think I'll be up for it after the way I climbed today. So we managed to get in 4 leads and 10 pitches before the heat started to push heat stroke into a potential unfortunate reality on my girlfriend, which was plenty! I can already feel my shoulders and legs starting to ache a bit. The highlight of the day was definetly me leading a 5.10a, which might not have been my prettiest climb this season was definetly the hardest lead I've done this season. Here's a picture of the line as stolen from Mountain Project.

Great climb with a great crack problem, roof problem, and then the potential to TR a trad climb after hanging the rope! Anyways, I'm going into this week with my head full of thoughts towards the future and a hopeful mindset, but I still think I'm looking forward to my Monday AM bouldering session more than anything.
Stereo-The Bravery-Bad Sun

Independence Pass Weekend

2009-06-22T19:16:00.000-07:00

After an absolutely brutal week at the office and in life, I decided Friday morning that I desperately deserved a personal day that had nothing to do with answering voicemails and managed to catch up with Jason and Ken on their way out to Dream Canyon. They were headed out for some exploring as neither Jason nor Ken had ever been to this part of the boulder canyon. Would I like to join for some venturing into unknown pristine canyons in search of some excellent and non-chossy sport climbs as a warm up for my weekend camping and climbing off Indy Pass? HELL YES!

Ken TRing Wight of Time
Dream Canyon turned out to be just that, an absolute dream. A tributary of boulder canyon proper you wind down this steep but well constructed trail head to a roaring creek that gushes past huge granite rock walls and dives in and out between massive boulders. The rock in this canyon is well bolted, big (a little runouty and we did find a few pitons around), single pitch to multi pitch and solid granite. No chalk, no signs that anyone else had climbed it a million times, the isolation was wonderful, a true river crag with no highway noise, just the river roaring past and the vegetation and birds blowing in the wind. We finally got to climbing as Ken found a 5.9 (Wight of Time-1st pitch) that he wanted to lead, and J crawled up a super steep gully to drop a toprope as he was uncertain as to how sturdy the pitons look on a 10 that he was eyeing. Needless to say I fully plan on heading back to Dream Canyon this next weekend, to continue the exploration as we ended up spending a good 4 hours wandering around, which was simply scratching the surface. As the old climbers saying goes, "No tick list is ever finished, cause every time you go someplace new it triples" I honestly think mine quadrupled after seeing Dream Canyon.

J sending 1st pitch of Wight of Time

After making it back to Denver, I immediatly threw my gear in the car and hit the road for Independence Pass and the difficult campground. This has to be one of the most beautiful drives in Colorado, you wind past huge super resorts, windy decrepid mining towns, ruins and past eye soaring knife edges with snow capped tops all in two hours. There's at least 3 14ers on the drive, La Plata, Elbert and Massive, all beautiful and huge especially when seen from faraway.
After getting to camp, I picked Mel up at Ellen's (her Mom's best friends house) and we drove out to our site, which was serenaded all night long by a finger of the roaring fork, rushing at full tilt. We woke up the next morning with some overcast skies and headed straight out to go find the Powerline crag on Indy Pass. We were under a bit of a time crunch as Mel had to be back in Aspen for a luncehon around 1:30 pm so we got our hustle on for sure.

Mel tying in

The crag was awesome, once again no signs of chalk, no chossy rock, well placed bolts and fun moderate climbing. No sandbagged routes either. We got a 5.6 and a 5.8 in twice a piece before we had to book it back down to town. Great moderates with fun moves and just enough pitch to keep you moving your feet around. Untouched perfect granite. Unfortunatly not too many action shots as there were just two of us and it's hard to take good action photos while belaying (your climber tends to get cranky :)).

MJ kicking it near the gear at the crag
We headed back into town just as the skies decided to open up and pour rain on us for the rest of the day, which nixed our plans to hit up the bouldering area near our campground and instead relocated us to Ellen's hottub. Shucks.
After a great dinner and a good night's sleep we got up, packed the tent and headed back to the Powerline area, there had been a number of other climbs there that I wanted to send so we decided to hit it first and then try out one of the bouldering areas on the way out of town. This turned out to be awesome, I got 4 leads and 7 pitches in during the day, mostly on stuff that I'd never led before. There are some great 7s there and two phenomenal 8s that are anything but a walk in the park and give you some serious commitment moments. The sun kept on ducking in and out of the clouds as bits of rain poured in and over the pass. It's always amazing to me how gorgeous the light is at high elevation and how fast the weather can change from bluebird day to scary thunderstorms.

Mel perched atop one of the dependant boulders
After sending all the climbs at this crag we headed over to the Big Wild Boulderfield bouldering area a half mile down the road to get a final work out in before heading up and over the pass. My major accomplishment here was sending a V4 that had a mandatory throw in it. Other than that we just played around on a few larger rocks. There is so much bouldering potential still here and almost nothing is chalked out, there's probably still tons of lines to be developed and sent as first ascents. Hmmm, I think project time?

Mel rockin' out the Lone Stone
It's always awesome and liberating to boulder after roping up all day long. Your hands grip the rocks and you realize that if you fall, your hitting the ground and not much is stopping you. But with that realization comes the freedom and sometimes the confidence to just send it rather than wimping out. And seriously, bouldering at that altitude with snow covered peaks around, simply cannot be beat. Indy Pass, expect to see me again at least twice this summer.

Mel topping out the Lone Stone
Next on the list on Indy, Pooh Corner and the Burger Shack....
Stereo-Pete Kartsounes-Out of Nowhere (seriously check this guy out any bluegrass fans)

Goals and Table Mountain Goodness

2009-06-14T15:10:00.000-07:00

I'm so fortunate to live in a place where I can have a true Colorado spring time thunderstorm chase me off a mountain, 20 minutes drive from my apartment. Seriously though, it's that kinda adventure that just keeps me totally attached to this place. And the fact that every time I turn around it seems as though it just keeps on getting better! I got 4 leads in today and 7 pitches before the storm broke, which so far is my best outdoor day this season, I feel like I'm majorly getting my confidence back as far as lead climbing goes and the old popeye arms and climbing body feels like it's coming back as well.
Climbed today:
Offline (5.8)
Kevin Spies the Line (5.6-5.9 depending on how you start)
The usual warmup, which is probably going to be bumped as a warmup by Kevins above
The line to the left of above
BM Route 5.9ish Here's the photo from MountainProject.com

I'm going to see what I can do to keep this regimen of climbing 4-5 times a week up so it just continues going on the up and up. Even though I'm a huge believer in climbing being a process, experience and a learning technique I'd still like to hit the goal of climbing one of the flatirons before the summer is out. Probably one of the easiest ones, but still a multi pitch trad climb would be a great top out for climbing season. Once again as it was just Mel and myself climbing I have no pictures for this (your climber gets pissy when you take your hands off belay to start snapping photos), so here's one of Mel's first completed route (on Table Mountain) to keep you going.

Stereo-Talib Kweli

Toppin' Out

2009-06-12T20:11:00.000-07:00

Rough week. And I mean really rough week at work. I have no intention of getting uber sappy and venting my primordial angst of my job on this website as that is exactly NOT why I started this blog. I want to meditate instead on the relieving pressure of rock on hands, of hitting a hold that you missed last time, of topping out a bouldering problem that scared you so much last time that you got half way up and then came down. It's amazing how a modicum of tunnel vision and fear coupled with a few solid deep breaths, can wipe away a seemingly city full of negativity. Perhaps this is where the void is, this is why one risks the Big Splat and finds themselves with no rope 15 feet up on a cliff face with nothing but rock beneath them and adrenaline coursing oxygen to their muscles. All the minor cares seem to fade away as one thought remains, "Will my fingers hold this rock or am I going to break my leg?" It's a zen feeling putting yourself towards that moment, and then, even when fear is gripping you, to push through and still move up, to that moment where the problem disappears and you find yourself on top of your nemesis/lover/guru.
I can find no photo that defines this moment of clarity in my photography collection, so I leave you with a thousand words instead.

Teva Mountain Games Vail, CO

2009-06-07T19:02:00.000-07:00

Paul Robinson at the World Bouldering Cup (with some Photoshop love)

Not too terribly much to report here, ski season has decidedly and unceremoniously came itself to a close. I'm actually rather doubting that I'll boost up one more day to make 70 instead of 69. I'm sure that I could but between the lack of snow left up high, a trip to Vail proved that for sure, and how stoked on climbing I've found myself recently, it's kinda doubtful it'll happen. Strange, I guess I appreciate seasons more than I would have thought!
Anyways, other than working on my lead climbing skills and slowly getting my strength back, Mel and I took off to go watch the Teva Mountain Games up in Vail this weekend. Teva and Vail Valley throw this huge three day party that essentially celebrates the mountains in the summer time. It's pretty damn cool and an amazing reminder of all the joy and love that the mountains bring into your life. We went up Friday night with the intention of watching the Bouldering World Cup finals the next day and then staying Saturday night. We ended up coming back after the World Cup on Saturday due to the fact that the place we were staying was more similar to a frat house than anything else (last time I'll let Jason make the accomodations) and that we wanted to go get some routes in in Golden today.

Alex "Pooch" going for a hold at the cup

The climbing was awesome to watch and earlier in the week I had been roped in to participating in the Mud Run (2 miles ish with a 100 yard sprint through an obstacle course filled with sticky gooey mud) with Mike and Ben. I'll let the pictures speak from here. The next list of pictures below were all taken by Melissa Walker

first lap through the mud!

second time around!

L to R, Ben, Mike, and a rare picture of yours truly covered in mud

the carnage remains even after the battle is done!

It was a really good time and I'm being told is being developed into a tradition. So all I have to say is man, running was actually way more fun than I remembered it! Climbing today was so so as we got rained off after about 3 routes in. I flashed a climb I'd never been on before on lead so I felt pretty good about that even though I definetly didn't do it in the most graceful of manners. All in good time, so here's a picture that I took of Mel and Mary Jane enjoying the Vail sunshine to round this post off.

On the Stereo-The Kooks (pretty much anything off the new album)

Clear Creek Canyon

2009-05-23T17:19:00.000-07:00

Well, the ski season is working itself to a close and I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to get my next 6 days in to hit 75. At this time of the year if its cloudy and been raining/snowing, it's generally not worth hitting the high alpine and those lines that I've been waiting for. Between the oddly wet weather and the dust layer the snow seems to be melting on the days that I'm at work and reaccumulating on the days that I'm off (Note: this would have been awesome had this been mid season, Cooly season-different story). Our plans to climb and ski the Emperor Couloir on Torrerys scrapped because of the wet weather, my buddy Jeff and I headed to Clear Creek Canyon to get some climbing in. Great climbing weather, well overcast and not too hot, however I gotta say my climbing leaves something to be desired, I guess that's what I get for not hitting the gym all season. It was a ton of fun to get out on some rock, but man I'm out of climbing shape. I don't have any pictures from today, but I've got some pictures from last weeks trip up to Golden Cliffs (much easier climbing than Clear Creek) and Mel's first finished route (5.7! not bad!)

Right after the crux

Close to the top!

and shackles banged!

I'm so proud! Headed up to Boulder Canyon tomorrow for some more bolt clippin' I hope to grab some more pictures while I'm at it.
Stereo- Soul Rebel by Bob Marley

Quandary: Christo

2009-05-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

Early Morning Start at Quandary

I'm sitting here feeling pretty burnt out by the week on this Thursday evening and I finally got around to digging into some of the photos from my trip to Quandary last weekend. Pretty good trip, however we dawdled a little too long up top and by the time we got skiing, the snow was pretty slushy and bottomless. It was still a really fun couloir and a great climb up and another 14er off the list of things I've been thinking about skiing. And considering the weekend looks full of strange precipitation it might be until Monday that another ski trip comes around. Short spring season what with all the raining on the weekends and the dust layer melting fast. I'm starting to think that I'm going to have to save a lot of the objectives for next season.

Summit Shot

Anyways onto Quandary: We started around 6 am from the trailhead, which was a short hike to the place to crampon up. Crampons on, it was a straightforward and fun climb up to the summer. We made it in about 2 and a half hours which I gotta say I'm pretty impressed with for a 3000 foot climb up to a 14er. Mainly scenics from this trip as the snow was pretty beaten by sun and a ton of Colorado Mountain Club folks that were roped up and climbing up Christo. They didn't even think to bring skis with them! Silly mountaineers!

The foggy couloir

It was a beautiful climb especially because half of it was the most humid I've ever been on the way up a Front Range mountain. I've never dripped sweat like that on the way up a coolie. There was a cloud that sat in the valley until mid morning and then suddenly evaporated. The clouds drifted out and in between peaks in a beautiful way all morning. It was like being privy to a slideshow of mountains slowly unveiling themselves. Here's the photos and I hope that the weather takes enough of a turn that I can get up on some more high peaks this weekend.

Up and up!

The mountains slowly peaking out of their veils

The high alpine plants reveal themselves

A high alpine bivy!

Great trip and great day. Here's to hoping for a few more this season.
Stereo-The Bravery-Bad Sun

Ode to the Weekend

2009-05-15T09:02:00.000-07:00

Friday morning. Coffee pot's broken. But I've got another 6 hours of enslaved working to get through before a weekend of climbing and skiing. I've always said that solace can be found through sweat and goal setting in the high alpine, however there is no time that I feel like I feel it more than on Friday morning before heading to work. I find myself craving to go on a bike ride, to call up a friend and see if he wants to go crag, but instead I'm headed to 711 to go get a cup of coffee as our coffee pot is broken.
Tomorrow morning at this time I'll hopefully be headed down a couloir on a 14er and I'll have been awake for about 6 hours and climbed 2500 vertical feet already. And hopefully, I'll be looking at something like this.

(photo from 14ers.com)

A Weekend in Dry Gulch

2009-05-10T17:11:00.000-07:00

"Go to the mountains and get their good tidings"
-John Muir

As Loveland closed last weekend (sad) I finally had no excuse to go skiing at a resort and instead had to drag my lazy ass back up the hill to the life of a backcountry ski bum. Sweet. As the weather looked iffy all weekend with Saturday as the close winner, Mel and I decided to try (second time this season) for the collar line on Citadel. I made sure to prep myself by watching the movie Steep earlier in the week to get excited about some steep climbing and skiing. We'd been up to this line in March during a Low Avy danger bit but had been chased down off the ridgeline by a considerable amount of wind. The weather this day seemed to be saying either wonderful corn descent down this incredibly aesthetic line that is bounded in by huge rock walls, or that it would be so bad we wouldn't make it past the trail head (there was a 10% chance of the second so we thought we'd give it a shot.

We were greeted by blue skies and slight wind at the trailhead, so we decided to give it a go and made the bench that leads us to the line at 1000 feet of climb in record time. I was totally set and stoked about the fact that we were going to get to ski this line. All the clouds in the ski were moving heavily east and not towards the north which is where we were. Ah life in the mountains. As we gained the saddle that marked the 2000' mark and the ridge line that we would follow we were forced face down onto rocks by 60 mph sustained gusts of wind. We hung around for 20 minutes face down on the rocks hoping that the wind gusts would die down. Just as we started to discuss climbing further, a gust came along and ripped Mel's sunglasses straight off of her face and down into the bowl. We realized there was no climbing further and we had better ski the face below us, which was rock solid bulletproof snow.

Sometimes the mountains tell you yes and sometimes they tell you no. Citadel that day was screaming a big fat no at us, and I'm glad that we listened to it, even if the skiing sucked. I was especially glad when we got a view of the line that we had wanted to ski and there was avy debris of a recent wet slide on it.
On to Sunday......

Citadel (3rd times a charm!)

Being that it was mother's day, Mel had to run off to brunch with her Mom. I had been wanting to continue some backcountry exploration and found a willing partner in my buddy Owen who I'd done some skiing with last season. We headed up late with a couple of potential plans as the weather forecast was way dicey. We were greeted near Loveland by a ton of snow coming down and so plan B of heading back Dry Gulch with an attempt at Hagar or one of the other bowls at the back of the gulch in mind, it was. A longer tour but always good to get the exercise, except when my skins suddenly start carrying an entire glacier uphill with me. This got so bad that by the time we reached the real ascent I was moving at a pace of maybe a quarter of my usual. After halfway up the ridge line and above treeline, I decided to eschew my skins and packed the skins and skis and booted it up the rest of the way (hardly as enjoyable). We reached a beautiful cirque full of wonderful lines, bowls, rocks and drops. Next season I plan on spending a ton of more time in this area. The terrain looked AMAZING and the access out of a gate in Loveland would be incredibly easy to access. Needless to say I'm stoked and here's some stokeage to share.

Owen charging down into the bowl

where'd this knee deep powder come from?

into the blue yonder!

and the beautiful tracks...

chargin' the line.

There really is nothing I like more than an unexpected knee deep powder day :)
Stereo-Groove Armada-Suntoucher

New and Different

2009-04-28T19:42:00.001-07:00

Instead of an update on skiing I have an update on the activism side of my life (oddly enough just as I started writing that an ad for Exxon-Mobil just came on the TV in my hotel room in DC) Currently, I'm in DC for a CC training for the week, we kicked off the week by participating in a protest outside the state department demanding that the major emitters sign a treaty to reduce global warming emissions at a conference in Denmark at the end of this year. I'm always inspired by being here in DC and being around the GP CC crew for the next couple weeks. Seriously, it always reminds me of whenever I feel world weary or getting old and crotchety I need to place myself around people who honestly believe that they can make change and have the insane yet invigorating energy to do it. I think that there must be something distinctly different in the chemical makeup of those who set out to be activists. Something in the brain says, "Fuck it, I can do it." rather than, "Eh who cares, I can't change the world". I always wonder what that is, in those moments where I'm kicking my ass to do something and thinking about how much more money I could make doing something else or how I could be a total ski bum, it makes me wonder how I ended up with that chemical makeup. No matter what I'm glad I have it. It's what drives me to want to change the world and climb mountains at the same time, it's what drives me to lead a different life and to believe it's possible. So I'm glad I have it, I think.
Anyways, I can't find any pictures of the actual protest online but I can find a picture of the banner dropped off a crane that faced the state department. Sexy right?

Makin' up for the suckage

2009-04-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

Berthoud Pass at Dawn

So as I sit here one Friday AM drinking some coffee and doing some laundry before heading out to wage war on inspiring the masses (my current occupation when not skiing) and as the sun is shining and it looks like the only major stoke I might be able to provide this next week is from the Corn/Ice/Dust on crust Harvest at Loveland tomorrow. Most likely which will be centered around hilarity of sorts.
So that being said, I promised photos from the part of the season that I totally forgot to post so here they are!
As far as chronology goes, chronology be damned, but for those of you that enjoy a nice linear viewing period, I'm starting from last weekend and movin' backward.

Goatse gettin' inverted

Carl launching off Junior

Brandon finding the pow that he came searching for

Doug skiin' out of the tree chute

Doug launchin' the cornice on Jones

Brandon rippin' the powder wheels

It's been a good season, I'm at day 63 so far, way short of my goal, but I've come to some great realizations and I also feel like I'm skiing up to par. What the summer and next season will hold, I can't tell, but I hope it will be good and when I look over these photos, it brings a smile to my face. Right now I'm looking forward to a summer of climbing and probably another month or so of skiing. There's a couple of coolies that I've got in mind that need some tracks laced down them, but even in the middle of that I'll still be dreaming of powder.

snow snow snow snow!

2009-04-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

So I realized one thing. I suck at upkeeping blogs. Seriously suck at it. However, I'm trying to pull myself out of my suckdom on this because I have one thing to say about the last two days. WOW!
So a spring storm came to roost and dumped around 40 inches of snow on loveland, and I with my tactful sense, called in sick Friday, got stuck up there yesterday night, had to sleep on the floor of a bar room in Silver Plume and skied there again today. Unbelievably good snow was had. Deep, about as deep as stuff that I had driven across the state to get to. Seriously, when we were in the bar yesterday night watching a ski porn, we were all saying, dude what we skied today was WAY better than that. Not often you get to say that?
So I'd love to say that I have pictures but the snow was just too good to stop to take pictures. I will in a few days add on a bunch of new shots from this last season that I haven't had a chance to put on, but for now I'm just leaving with this.
YEEHAW!

Sangree M. Froelicher Hut Trip

2008-12-24T11:35:00.001-08:00

As mentioned in the CB wrap up, I was headed out the door to go spend the weekend at the Sangree M. Froelicher Hut at 10,700 feet on an alpine ridge above Leadville, CO. This hut is run through the 10th Mountain Division Huts (which were created in honor of the ski troops from Colorado that fought in WWII-pretty interesting history-website here: http://www.huts.org/)
We took off from Denver on Thursday afternoon and headed up into the mountains (oh I'm typing this on Polly's computer so the letter that comes after I is missing it is because here key doesn't work) to a nuking winter storm that seemed to be crowding in the Tunnel. Mel and I had signed up for this particular hut trip because it was also an AIARE Avalanche 1 certification class. I was pretty certain that a lot of what we learned for this would be review for me but I figured I should take the official certification anyways and theres nothing like spending a whole weekend in the backcountry studying avalanches to get it into your skull. In fact, when we got up there it seemed to me that I was actually the most experience of all the people taking the class. In fact, there were several people there who had zero backcountry experience, which I was a little surprised about. Anyways, the class got me pretty geared up to take my Avalanche II certification and was a phenomenal review to get me to start thinking like an avalanche.
So we had the class Thursday night and Friday morning and then departed for the trailhead from the Leadville Hostel (where I am totally staying the next time I end up in Leadville) on Friday AM. The trailhead started by heading up Buckeye Gulch towards Buckeye Peak. It was about a 3 mile skin with about 1600 feet of elevation gain. Not too bad, but an interesting experience doing it with 12 people. I'd never skinned with that many folks in one group. For the size of the group we kept up a pretty consistent pace. Mel did really well, only minimal swearing this time, considering it was her second time skinning. The scenery was mainly below treeline, but I struck up a pretty consistent amount of conversation with one of our guides Deborah Keller (she works for the Powder Cat operation off the back of Aspen Mountain, she's great! Highly recommended) for most of the trip up, so between swapping stories and trying to breathe the uphill went pretty quickly. The scenery got gorgeous as we neared treeline as, the ridge line we were on had stunning views of rollers and the mountains that Independence Pass goes over. And suddenly peaking through a pine grove about 20 feet down from treeline, the Sangree hut appeared through the mountains. This hut was a beautiful restored log cabin complete with solar array, wood burning stove and an outhouse. Everything had a pine and wood burning odor to it that welcomed you the second you stepped in the front door. (Side note: none of the pictures came out all that great so the editing has been shafted for the moment, however whats a blog without pictures?)
So returning to the story at hand. After a quick drop off of stuff and another round of classroom session with our guides Scott and Deborah, myself and a few of the other gentlemen on the trip decided to rip up above treeline to find something to ski down. The work up went fast, sans packs and all, what we managed to find was slabby wind swept snow and really really really cold weather. After locating our options we decided to make a hasty retreat below treeline and back into the hut. I decided to go last as I was trying to snap some of photos of the high alpine at sunset and with one last glimpse at the alpenglow settling in over the west I jetted down through some wonderful trees that seemed to be holding nothing but fresh powder.
This was my longest trip out into the backcountry and also my first time traveling with guides. While we were distinctly in a classroom setting we did definetly get times to ski on our own which was awesome. It was great to meet some new backcountry partners. I really enjoyed being able to pick up the language and knowledge of the guides, in fact, I made it a point to talk to them as much as humanly possible to see if any of their knowledge could rub off on me.
Saturday dawned after a night of crashing out and only a few midnight outhouse runs to extremely cold weather. Scott and Deborah had long prepared us that we might have to change from the usual Saturday plans for the class as the weather was just that bad, which was the case. This is generally the way of backcountry travel, you have to be flexible and be aware that a lot of times your going to go with plan B or even plan C so this wasn't really a problem. It's part of the experience and part of what inspires your time in the mountains and turns your experience just that much more into a living breathing thing, which is how you have to treat mountains some times.
True to the name of this blog, later in the day we got some of the best tree runs in that I have had in a long time. Mark (first time mentioned here, potentially to be mentioned again) and I yo-yoed a few runs right outside the cabin right around dusk. There is a sublime feeling that comes from skiing through trees with deep powder, it's like a less operatic technical line. Same high consequences but something softer and more sublime that conquering a massive cliffed in chute. These runs that we skied had close together trees, laced in by deep powder, but alternated with rollers and open meadows.
The next day we woke up to a flurry of packing and a gorgeous sunrise peaking in through the windows. I really love waking up to the sun rising over mountains and creating an alpenglow that bounces right off the snow and in through the windows. The soft tranquility of it just knocks your socks off and made me leap out of my bed to get to my camera. Today was the day that we were departing the Sangree hut and once again due to a lack of snow on some of the rollers that usual route finding tips are done on we would be skiing in the trees again on some broad open slopes that would take us right down to the trailhead. We ended up departing the hut around 10:30 and skiing through some glade runs that took us straight to the bottom of Buckeye Gulch and right back to our trailhead. We went pretty slowly as we had some beginning telemarkers with us, who practically fell down the slopes (skiing up until this point had been totally optional), but ended up back at the trailhead and the car at 11:30 am.
I'm still not quite sure what my full thoughts on the weekend were, I felt as though the class had loads of practical information in it and the experience itself was one that any aspiring alpinist should start off with. I guess I'll leave this post with a quote that I just read that I seem to like, "Both activities (climbing and skiing) are more than just sports: they are ways of coming into intense and beautiful relationships with mountains, and that was what I wanted in my life." -Bela G. Vadasz
I think this weekend is summed up in this quote for me. To have a relationship, you have to give and take, but when you have a relationship with a mountain, it will give you so much, but when it needs something you had better respect that intense and beautiful bond and give it what it needs.
On the stereo-Dispatch, Hey Hey

Steeze=Style and Ease

2008-12-18T14:14:00.001-08:00

Gotta make this a fast Crested Butte wrap up as I'm leaving for the Avy 1 class at the Sangre M. Froelicher Hut in less than an hour (sweet!). I've been meaning to write this for a few days but the internet at my apartment has been in and out, so that has made it quite difficult. Went to Crested Butte last weekend to be greeted by an unexpected 20 inches of snowfall that seemed to be blowing in over Monarch Pass. I think this was the first time I had ever actually driven over Monarch (Rapetti drove us over it last year on the epic Silverton, Wolf Creek adventure) and I gotta say that it is one big mountain pass. It made me really excited to try skiing at Monarch at some point this year. Anyways, I love the southwest part of this state. There is something so incredibly western and rugged about it that sometimes when you live in Denver and constantly ski in Summit County is really easy to lose touch with. That portion of the state while significantly less affluent seems to have the true westerners love of space, space and more space. It's not an area that I'd go wandering around private property in.
On to Crested Butte, Crested Butte sort of feels like a reverse Aspen, (which is interesting because as the crow flies, they are only 30 miles apart over Pearl Pass and the Maroon Bells). It felt to me (and I'm sure that Mel will disagree with this) like you could really sense the mining town and rancher roots of the town much more so than in Aspen. In CB, the ranches come straight up to the resort town, in Aspen, the ranches are all owned by movie stars. The peak itself of CB is phenomenally beautiful. For the few moments that we glimpsed it (the whole valley was socked in the entire weekend we were there), it's an epic pointed peak that looms out of the center of the valley, with a jagged cut to it that pierces into the sky. To quote a local on the lift, "I moved here because I was looking for smaller towns and bigger mountains.". I think that that pretty much sums up the town of Crested Butte and the jagged rugged peak. Also, it could be because this was pretty early season with only about 20 % of the mountain open, but it seemed very much so to have a real locals scene to it, people who had found there own little slice of paradise up valley.
The skiing was way better than I had anticipated, I was expecting two runs to be open, which was about the case, but the 20 inches of snow over the weekend sure as hell made those 2 (I am grossly underexaggerating here) runs feel to be about some of the best runs this season. The snow was your classic light and fluffy Colorado Champagne powder, which was different than any of the stuff that has fallen on the Front Range so far. Pretty bad stuff for Avalanche danger though, which is the reason we canceled our planned tour. Between not knowing the terrain, the avy danger and the lack of visibility we decided to play it safe and ski the resort. Besides the snow was so good there we didn't really need all that much else. No action shots this week, but I've got some scenics that I'm putting up.
I'd go back to Crested Butte in a heartbeat, between the locals scene and the big mountain that had so much more terrain that wasn't open to explore, it seems like the kind of place once could really spend a season. And it was super cheap, even with the free lift tickets tossed in!
On the stereo- Uncle John's Band- Grateful Dead

December 2-3:Loveland and Berthoud

2008-12-03T06:56:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a fast post as I have to make it to work in a little while. Got back to Denver on Sunday after a very relaxing vacation in Florida with the family (more pictures later) and was greeted by snow, lots of snow. Tons of snow up in the mountains in fact, around 63" in one snowfall at Loveland in fact. Hooky was definetly played on Monday, in fact, it couldn't really be stopped considering the 20" of fresh that they reported Monday AM. I know it's not good to play hooky from work but 20" of fresh!?! That's amazing! Last year I drove to different parts of the state to get that kind of powder, and now it's sitting at my local hill. Work didn't have a chance.
Anyways, an excellent day was spent meadow skipping on the lower angle stuff at Loveland (the avalanche danger was pretty high-so I think they were afraid to open the steeps and the steeps under Chair 1 were pretty bumped out from the last few days). They opened up Benton's Bowl and Dave's Ditch (which I think is the first secret pow stash that I've discovered at Loveland (much thanks to my friend Lindsay!). Benton's tracked out pretty quickly, but there were a couple of excellent runs in really deep powder. And I mean slogging heavy deep. The sanouks were able to plow through it with no problem, but when I swapped to the motherships they were having issues with the heavyness of it. The good news with the heavyness of the snow is that it's making the avy danger go down as the snowpack is solidifying much quicker. It was still an awesome day to get to ski that kinda snow, and finding Dave's was the cream on top of the cake!
Tom and I had planned a seasons first Dawn Patrol for Tuesday up at Berthoud, so the next 4:30 AM rolled around and we were out the door and on our way up the pass. We were greeted by gusty breezes and a stunning sunrise full of alpenglow and the reds and yellows lighting into the snow. Absolutly beautiful. A pretty short skin up (I was feeling the fact that I'd been at sea level for almost the last few weeks, whew!) and we dug a quick pit to see what the base layers were doing, and found rotten sugar snow! We had already had the plan of sticking to skiing the Meadows down to the very bottom of Roll Out as the Avy danger had been at High the day before, so seeing this layer of rotten snow we decided to stick exactly to that plan.
The ski down however was a beautiful soulful meadow skip, and felt more than a little solid. Tom did a quick ski cut over a more convex roll over, and it didn't even budge. I think this new density of snow is definetly solidifying. It was awesome to get up to Berthoud and see it so filled in. There were a couple of spots that needed some extra snow but I can't wait to get some major skiing time in up there this season! Hopefully, I'll have time for another tour on Sunday, so Mel can get some more practice time in, but between now and then I need to focus on work as much as it pains me. Keep prayin' for more snow for right now.
On the Stereo-Dispatch-Passerby

November 16, 2008: Vail

2008-11-28T12:58:00.001-08:00

(a week before opening!) Being as I'm sitting in Florida right now and have been enjoying the beach for the last few days I realized that I had some major blog catching up to do as I'm about two weeks and a couple of cities behind. So here goes...
November 16-After an excellent day of early season Loveland turns on the 15th with Tom, Mel and the usual tele crew; we were driving home and debating a trip up Butler Gulch the next day. This backcountry area is pretty easy to access, has got lots of options and tends to hold snow pretty early in the season. We had some friends who had been up there that morning and had mixed reports, however just the promise of something other than the same three runs at Loveland sounded as though it would be more than worth it. And a first skin for Mel would be a great thing to get in, as we were starting to run up fast on the hut trip that we were taking in December. However, halfway through the car ride back, Tom got a phone call from some other friends who had skinned up Vail that morning and the reports were that the snow was goooooood. That's a direct quote.
Quick change of plans, and the next thing we know, we're leaving Denver at 7 am in order to make it to Vail at 9 am to meet up with Matt and Katie. It's amazing to me how early and late season, different areas in the mountains, even though they're so close to each other can have such grossly different snow coverage. For example, driving through the Front Range and up to the Eisenhower tunnel, very thin coverage could be seen, but the second we started heading up Vail Pass, it suddenly looked like mid winter! This proved excellent for our trip and excitement was mounting as we pulled into the parking lot.
A quick gear up and we were heading up to the base of the gondola to meet Matt and Katie. The snow as we moved up went from thin and grass flecked to consistently deeper the higher we got. I was a little worried about Mel knowing that this was going to be a long first skin. Vail, while not being very tall is EXTREMELY gradual, and one tends to be a really long haul. As we started out, the air was filled with the occasional curse word and questions for tips as we cut through the snow heading up the empty slope, but even with the swearing, she would not give up and made it to the top in two hours. It was a weird experience to skin up an empty resort. It was a mixture of the solitude of the backcountry and sounds of humanity like bustling snow cats moving across the hill and the top gondola dock blasting Iron Maiden. It was a gorgeous bluebird day, that heated up rapidly. As we climbed higher and higher we were greeted by shots of the Gore range in full snowy majesty. The peaks of the Gore look like the spires and castles that one typically finds in the Alps, and lining Vail pass, were lined up like snowy temptresses. I must ski there a bunch this season.
When we got to the top; we were greeted by Matt and Katie congratulating us and Mel looking exhausted by happy. We then took our skins off and skied down the face of mountain where we greeted by a very welcome sight: untouched powder all the way down to the bottom of the mountain! Whooping and cheering down the slopes and alternating skiing fast and taking photos of powder lines being cut up and leaning way over in the hopes of getting a face shot was how the rest of the run went. I only double ejected once (straight head over heels into a snow bank) and except for the last few hundred feet the snow was excellently deep and fluffy. When we got to the bottom; we went and had a beer, which was hilarious because everyone in the bar gave us the strangest looks you'll ever see when we walked in with full ski gear. A great day out on the hill with great company, especially because the forecast from now until after thanksgiving is DRY AND HOT. Oh, well I'll be out of town anyways, for now I'm praying for snow though. Even though I did just poach from "the greatest resort on earth"....

On the stereo: Damian Marley- Welcome to Jamrock

Gettin' there....

2008-11-13T08:02:00.000-08:00

November 11. Being as I had veteran's day off (much, much, much needed) I decided to head up to Loveland for some early morning turns. Being that I had already spent 7 days on the WROD (white ribbon of death typically found early season) I decided to throw my AT setup in the back of the car as well as I had heard rumors that an area near Jones Pass might be about ready to ski. Either way I wanted to check it out myself as well as hopefully get some exercise and get skinnin'. Met up early morning in the parking lot of Loveland with Doug and Emilie (two telemarkers that I ski with-they seem to accept the fact that I like to have my heels fixed). We were greeted by a delightful sight, the entire valley was socked in by the remains of last nights storm, and the flakes were a flyin'. Spent the AM skiing with them, on surprisingly soft snow, which was a delightful surprise compared to what Sunday's snow had been. Around 1 or so, they decided to take off (Doug petty cabs so he needed a nap before he could start haulin' people around on his tri-cycle) and I decided that I was tired of the same two runs, and that I should head off on my exploratory mission up Jones Pass. A short drive later, I was greeted by another socked in by snow valley (yay!) and an empty parking lot except for one snowmobiler dealing with an overheated sled. Brief conversation later confirmed we had some friends in common and I started my skin up Jones. It was pretty thin coverage for the beginning on the road (enough snow to move on though!), but the snowpack started to deepen dramatically as the road started to switchback up a south facing aspect. The climb felt good, really really good. A little guy that greeted me by running across my skin track
There's a solace and soulfulness that I really believe can only be found through moving under your own power through a wilderness area far, far away from human contact. Usually, I prefer to have a friend or two with, but for this first trip inaugurating the season, it felt good to find myself moving up a windswept ridge past treeline by myself. Once I gained treeline I poked around for a while in the snowpack finding variable depth (thinner on south facing aspects-deeper on others) and lots of windloading that had occured. I found a couple of deeper pockets along with a couple of suspiciously forming slabs, good information to have gathered. Being as I was by myself I picked a mellow meadow to practice my meadow skippin' in and then skied back down the road all the way to my car and only managed to hit a few rocks. Awesome first trip! Unfortunatly, the light was super bizarre and I need to remember to bring my hood with me next time, or lower my shutter size, so only a few pics came out. Headed back down the hill to be greeted by a mid fall day in Denver and an old friend on his way out to California. Now all I need is about 2' more of powder to get to the serious tree skiing...
On the stereo: "Caribbean Wind"-Bob Dylan

Decisions, Decisions....

2008-11-09T17:08:00.000-08:00

Why start a blog? I haven't the foggiest of ideas as to why I decided to do this a few days ago. I've got some partial queries and thoughts as to why. Mainly, I feel like I'm going to be doing a lot of skiing this year and hopefully in some big gnarly looking places. So I guess I'm hoping (as I am about the couple of flakes that are right now beginning to float down upon the mountains west of me-part of the storm that I've been almost obsessively following for the last week) that these adventures will turn out big enough to write about. And why not keep a spot somewhere for those thoughts to be? I also anticipate this year as probably being full of decisions about what I want to do next, where to go and what is truly important to me, so I guess secondly (huh, I guess that say something about import as it is doesn't it?) I'd like somewhere to journal those thoughts. So I guess I'll start now: Hi, I'm Hans, I'm 23 years old, I work for Greenpeace, have a bachelors degree and LOVE skiing. I also have a girlfriend of a little less than a year now, and a desire to explore quite a bit of the world. Hopefully, on skis.
Ok, that doesn't sound too much like an AA meeting...
Oh, I also love taking pictures, and just recently bought a new expensive camera, so all the photos on here will be my own. This one is a photo of fall Aspens up in Summit County.