Arctic Glass

This morning on the path into work, a Modest Mouse song came on the pod and just fit the bill perfectly.."on the arctic glass..." Blue sky and 5 degrees when I left this morning with sheet ice and snow on the roads and bike paths. It didn't FEEL like 5 and breezy cause the sun was shining, and the studs on the tires were keeping me glued to the road. I am not exaggerating when I say I had the best commute of the year this morning and last night (it's still early).

It started yesterday afternoon. In a meeting from 10-12, I spotted a coyote hunting outside my office. I knew right then that it was going to snow even though the weather channel wasn't calling for it. They have a 6th sense on weather: get the hunting in before the weather stops that from happening. The burst of snow that dropped 4-6" on Boulder and nowhere else (my house in Ned got NO snow) dropped wet snow that froze instantly on the warm pavement. I've never seen so many stopped cars on so many roads at the same time (except for LA maybe) and so few people on the bike path! I left the farmhouse (my office) for a downtown dinner with my cousin's family at 5 and stayed off the roads. It's only 6 miles, but it felt like an epic in these conditions.

Fresh tracks on the bike paths and I didn't need to use my light as all the ambient light from all the car lights in traffic reflected off the snow and lit the way more than enough.

Then this morning, it was absolutely beautiful. The roads were snowpacked and the studded tires stuck to the road. I walked the dogs around the yard before getting on the bike and i think that's what saved my fingers and toes from freezing on the 3k drop into town. That, and I seriously recommend Moose Mitts. I've been using these for winter commutes for several years and they make a huge difference.

Topped off the day with a rolling tasting with Timmy. Brown Shugga ale from Lagunitas is an interesting experience as it changes taste and gets better as it warms.

Seeing Van Halen tomorrow night for some serious arena rock...i never saw them as a kid and i think it'll be a pretty fun show to see with the Redneck and Guitar Hero. Full report on Saturday.

Dumping and windy

It is dumping in the mountains, but not here in Ned where it's just windy and 5 degrees this morning (2 inches in the last 2 days sadly). But the San Juans and Aspen area are buried!
"Yesterday Silverton Mountain got slammed with over 36" of new snow falling in less than 12 hours, and Wolf Creek has passed the 27 foot mark on the season's total already."
That is just insane...3" an hour at Silverton?! They've gotten 50" this week alone.

Breaking trail for the Monkey

Bobcat at 3 o'clock checking us out as we passed by on the road. Bob was patiently waiting to hunt for dinner, but stopped, turned and sat to see if the dog across the street was going to come chase him off (he didn't).

With the lack of new snow and warm weather (Sunday had a high of 47 in Ned...not cool) I skipped skiing for the weekend and did a couple snowshoe hikes instead. Large news that will be somewhat life-changing for us: it looks like we may be moving down the road and that we'll be rescuing a couple of horses that have had less-than-ideal lives (to put it lightly) up to now. More on that later. For now, some pictures of the hikes.

The Monkey waited as I broke trail with the snowshoes and shovel (shovel, shovel, step, step - in true Rocky Balboa training style - yes, I'm worked today). The Monkey is the adventurer in the pack. She could be out all day and it wouldn't be enough. Kinda like me! She's 11 now, so I'm trying to spoil her as much as possible. In the above picture, I'm making her wait while I pack the trail down so she doesn't hurt herself trying to post hole through the 3ft deep unconsolidated (before I got to it) snow. She loves the out-back hikes much more than the yard, and so do I, so it's worth the extra effort. Today it paid off as we had a sweet packed down trail to hike with Basie.

The Monkey looks for lions off B-day rock.

Today I took the dynamic duo for the lollipop loop out back. The trail was nice and packed from my effort yesterday so it was easy going. Not a soul in sight, but these guys definitely smelled something. There were elk tracks and scat everywhere so I imagine that's what they're looking for. Monkey and Basie NEVER look at the camera.

An interesting article from the Wall Street Journal.
"The 247lb Vegan"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120122116182915297.html?mod=rss_Today\\\\\\\'s_Most_Popular
I'm a long time vegetarian and my wife is vegan, so seeing this makes me want to try for once and for all, to go vegan. For me it's the right thing to do, but it makes eating out very challenging but that shouldn't be a reason to not go vegan.

Commuting in again!

The sleeping Rhino awakes

The Hunter is back in action today with tubeless Hutchie Pythons, the Moots Tailgator, and the MooseMitts (not shown). At 6:30am it was more or less sunny, then started snowing, then got windy as all hell. The temp was about 17F then, but then dropped to around 14 when I left at 7:30. A bit icy, wish I had brought out the studded Nokians for a test ride...but all went well and stayed upright just fine. The ride was direct to work, but amazing. Since my broken foot, this was only my second commute into work by bike...and I have definitely missed it! I have some Planet Bike 29er Cascadian fenders in the shop ready to attach, and then the Hunter will be the perfect winter commuter no matter what the conditions.

Then Friday (today) was my Birthday. Happy Birthday to me! I'm now 35. Don't feel much different. I went for a very nice short hike with my girl and Monk and Basie in the hood before heading out to work on the bike. Today I decided to use the Nokian wheelset since some new snow had fallen and the road was pretty slick most the way down - dirt to pavement.

I cannot say how cool these tires are for grip on ice. I had no fear about sliding out...i felt like i was on rails around the turns and didn't slide out once even on the sheet-ice bike path. Although i think this was a bit too rough of a ride as i lost two studs in my front tire on the FIRST RIDE on these tires....maybe the commute isn't the best for these tires...or they just suck. But they're Nokians! Those Norwegians who make great winter auto tires with studs...so that can't be it!?... Can it? I'm writing them either way to bitch about it anyways. They're slightly SLOW on the pavement too...see those knobs? Very widely spaced and HUGE...and heavy. May have to stash another wheelset in the bushes in town somewhere for the 6-mile ride out to the office like GuitarHero suggested. The studs are really great though for the 3K drop from the homestead to town.

The trail leading to work. Holy crap it was windy...but looks nice and sunny, eh? I think i'd much rather have it be cold than so windy. The Chinooks can go away anytime and I'd be just fine with it!

For my birthday I got a new guitar! Simple, clean lines, great look and sound for cheap! And it's a PRS! The SE Singlecut in black. It's way cool. You should see it. Ok, here it is.

It's been over 10 years since i've had an electric guitar...the last one was a G&L ASAT telecaster which I sold to help buy a race MTB i think. I've had an acoustic that I rarely played, and with inspiration to play from GuitarHero, it was time to start playing more. It's never too late to start playing the guitar, again.

(ps- the Pilot added some photos to the Fowler-Hilliard hut trip photo album - the link)

Wax track

Now that my foot's much better, I brought out the Asnes Combats (84-62-74) - the "white skis" - and took them up to the mountain for some practice turns in the leather boots and 3-pins. Whoa...what a FOOT workout! This setup makes you learn tele the right way. I can't say i'm an expert, but I felt much much better linking turns today than ever before. It was actually the first day I took these to the resort...something about bringing this setup to the resort just seemed wrong. But like a gym, ski resorts enable you to practice through repetition...so I dealt with the guilt. It ended up being seriously fun to ski the Intermediate slopes at Eldora on these skis and boots! It reminded me of riding a trail on a singlespeed that I've only ridden on gears before...technique is everything, although fitness definitely helps. That's why after two runs, I headed for the back gate. On my way to explore some new terrain. Something I've been eyeing for at least two years.

Wax Track. Those 2 words say a lot to me right now. I spent 4 hours in the side & backcountry and didn't put on any skins. It is a whole new way of touring, where the extra blue wax has to get you to where you want to go and the skins stay in the pack. Contouring is paramount, you just can't go where you want, you must contour and switchback. So I toured like I was creating a singletrack-on-the-go with the correct grade and picking a line through the trees - the path of least resistance. Summer trails mean nothing, except where likely NOT to go.

After thinking I was at the place I wanted to be, and not finding any good slope to ski, I decided to put in another 1/2 hour search to the south. I contoured around and around finding only wind blown alleys, wind slab, and flag trees....when finally there IT was. I was indeed NOT in the place I wanted to be before, but had found the place where I just KNEW there'd be a good slope to ski now. It's the place I call 411 hill (as there are 4 consecutive 1's and another # that make up the top of the hill's elevation...that, and you really have to KNOW how to get there to find this lil open gladed 22+ degree hillside - or search for awhile!).

As the sun glared down and the temps rose to over 30 degrees and hardly a trace of wind (no I wasn't high), I sat looking east over the flatlands and wondered how many others tried to find this hill and skied this slope. For all i know it's a main route for old locals - locals that stay up in the hills near here and purposely keep it out of the guidebooks. But today I pretended that that wasn't the case. Either way, I had a great tour to some great turns on a hill I call 411-Hill.

Here are some shots of the day:
http://picasaweb.google.com/whitcj/LocalTurns

The Monkey out in Left Field
Smrp, me and the yahoos took a long weekend to Tabernash and Devil's Thumb Ranch on the other side of the divide. What an awesome trip! The dogs had a great time skijoring (pulling us...some more than others...while nordic skiing) and the snow and weather was just perfect. Check the video link below for some of the action with Jessica Elenor Guppie Jr. Jr.
http://www.dropshots.com/meriwether#date/2008-01-17/07:32:45

Fowler-Hilliard Hut Trip

What an awesome hut trip...only pictures can explain.
The mix of diverse cool people, a hut at 11,500ft between Camp Hale and Vail on a gladed ridge with and more terrain right around the hut than we could ever hope to ski in 2 and 1/2 days, and the addition of 15+ inches of new snow...well, priceless.

http://picasaweb.google.com/whitcj/FowlerHilliardHutTrip

Quote of the trip: "After we left the hut and skied down to Resolution Road, we ran into the Vail Powercats guys at the road while we were waiting on some people to descend the west side of the gully. The guide was also working on Monday and saw us over on Ptarmigan. He said in the 14 years he has been guiding the cat, he had never seen a group from the hut cover so much terrain. On Tuesday, they were skiing those west facing glades again. He called them the Buzzards. They took their guests in a little north of their Monday tracks only to find we had hit it already. We poached them!!"

Hut Trip!

I'm headed out to the Fowler-Hilliard Hut above Camp Hale this weekend with the Frozelap crew. I'll be back Tuesday night if all goes well. There's 2-3 FEET of snow predicted in the mountains from today (Sat) to Monday afternoon. It will be a pretty insane trip, I hope we can find safe turns and not just tour around and WISH we could ski downhill! I'm actually hoping we only get 7" or so each night so that we can ski the sweet terrain right off the front porch of the hut! This hut has a 1000ft descent right off the deck, but it's open with not much tree cover. See you in a few days.

Tour day

Sunday January 1st, 2008.It was a bluebird day in the high country of Colorado...but freaking cold. 12 degrees with gusts up to 50mph... felt like -16 according to the NWS Wind Chill index. The Pilot, DV8 and myself headed out for a tour to look for safe turns in the backcountry behind DV8's house. I had a route in mind, but wasn't sure if we'd get there. The first destination was a view of the skier-triggered slide that happened the day before above the lake. Five foot crown, ran 50x400ft, the entire path really. Lots of recent snow + strong winds have made some pretty serious avalanche conditions in many places above treeline and has swept off all the snow off west and northwest facing slopes above treeline to Kansas. You'll be skinning and cross pockets of 4 feet deep powder (wind deposited mostly) and then be scraping on rocks and grass a few feet later. It is truly nuts, but such is the backcountry life in the Front Range.

Wish we had taken one run on this low angle gully...but we got a late start so had to push on.

The second destination was this Hut. We've all passed right by it on MTB rides but never seen it somehow. A 'rustic' hut compared to the 10th mansions, it sleeps about 7 and isn't that well maintained. We took a safety break (sans spliffs) inside to get away from that freakin wind.

Windy alley picture....this looks nice, but it was pretty miserable for a few minutes there. I also lost my camera for about 15 minutes...found it where I took the below shot as it sat precipitously on the edge about to cascade down the 45 degree slope to its demise.

The last picture: On our way out...it was a slog on flat terrain. We just made it before it got too dark. Deep snow and sloped enough so we didn't skin-up but wish we had wax on. The hill we scrambled (survived) down is seen in the background to the left just inbetween the exposed open area and the sunset. For me on teles, it was a treacherous descent with about 10 good deep turns in the entire 1100ft descent. But it really was the only area with soft snow between wind-exposed 45 degree scree fields.

On the way down the main trail, packed and fast from so many snowshowers, the Pilot took a pretty nice faceplant coming too hot into a left-hand turn that hit a rock garden. He scrambled up the trail like the boogey-man waving his arms for us to slow down so we didn't experience the same fate. He bloodied his cheek and scratched his skis, but he was no worse for the wear.

All smiles, we skied all the way back to the metal coffin in one piece, if worked. Today felt like a true adventure. Not the best turns, but a great 10 mile tour!