Moving...

Yes, we've bought a new place, a "ranch" of a relatively smaller sort to be exact, about 3 miles away from our current house. We are psyched! So in the next 3 weeks, we'll be packing everything up and GOing with the 6 dogs...and we have two rescued, very cute, horses who will be joining us there in June.

As always, moving is a huge event, so before putting my head down and getting moving, I thought I'd sneak out for a ski with the Pilot as we got 8" of new snow up high and it was going to be a bluebird day in IP.

Here's the Pilot at the first "top" of the run. See the fog way down low? Boulder was socked in with dense fog, up high it was 15deg and sunny...perfect for some ridge turns! Nobody is ever up here and it's always safe after storms as it's not that steep.

This time of year the south facing slopes get weird, hard from getting sun-baked and then the new snow on top slides really well on that sun crust. In this area we hug the skiers-right trees every run for that reason, and because that's where the snow piles up! This is USUALLY the windiest place in the county, but today it was amazingly still.

This is "Benji's Trough" named for the skier in the picture. The Pilot and i were de-skinning about to take a run on this untracked slice of paradise...and then suddenly heard voices. Being all alone up there and seeing no tracks from where we came from, we did a double-take...HUH?! Then two guys skied down from above us on the ridge seemingly out of nowhere! They were headed for the same gully in the picture. After some casual conversation they asked if they might take the first turns in the trough. Seeing as we just tracked up another run, we gracefully obliged - especially after hearing that Benji and his friend had (1) skied from his stepfathers house down on the main road, (2) had skied this exact spot 30 years earlier on wood skis as a kid, and (3) had to get home to brunch at the house. That was pretty cool...and we thought WE were locals.

After another run following those dudes, we headed for the other bowl, the big bowl around the windswept krumholtz ridge from the Peanut Bowl. We followed Benji's tracks over there and then the wind picked up, of course, giving near frostbite to our right sides of our faces. Once there, the snow was a bit deeper and the run is quite a bit longer if less steep...and just amazing. For me, it was the perfect run, that last run of the day. Hitting the trail we come in on, we had 2 options - go left back to the trailhead which would be a 4 mile mostly rolling XC trail, OR head down the creek where neither of us had ever been before and come out on the main road and risk the hitch back to the truck. Hmm...yep, we chose the latter.

Needless to say it was sweet. Here's the Pilot hiking out from the creek to the road where we sat for 40 minutes waiting for a ride. Finally, a dad from AZ with his two his kids from CU stopped and picked us up (and our gear!) in their rental SUV. Safely back at the truck 10 minutes later, i got that grin that only this type of day can produce. The type of day where it could've been a real standard route, predictable almost, but thankfully we chose a couple of options that made for a mini-adventure. We linked two spots that we usually do independently, and then explored the lower reaches of the creek instead of the known XC trail. I was even home by 2 to start moving!

Hope everyone has a good week. I'm heading to the Bay Area to help my Mom around the house who fractured a vertebrae recently, and then I'm heading to the Clark Peak Yurt with some Pilots next Sunday for a few days. Cheers!

Time to lose an hour

I felt like I visited the island today (Lost)...we all lost an hour but I didn't even realize it until I was late for a ski date. It all started at 5am, or 6am had I known that the result of GW's "Energy Policy" was to move daylight savings forward 3 weeks. I guess that's cool now there's more light to ride home in if less in the morning. ANYWAY...I was trying to squeak out a dawn patrol this Sunday morning so that I could meet my girl and a couple friends to XC ski some trails where we ride bikes in the summer. I hit Backdoor Spring for some guaranteed solitude and fresh turns, and the fact that it's Frozen Dead Guy Days in Ned so there's traffic as far the eye can see on the Peak to Peak. It's ugly...I didn't want to go anywhere NEAR town. I went skate skiing at the nordic center yesterday at 4, and there were parked cars (traffic) from half-way up the shelf road to Eldora all the way into Ned...that is certainly a record. After sitting in traffic for 40 minutes I decided to go SOUTH today and stay clear of the festivities.

The Spring was in excellent shape, got 4 runs of really nice turns in a few inches of new snow, and didn't see anyone until I was departing at 11am. Yes, I'm a total recluse. Blogging is how I share my stories with my friends and the "world." I truly do have friends, they just can't (or don't) always ski when I can on the weekends. So solo it is many days. Such is life as a weekend warrior. I many times prefer it actually.

Having returned to my truck after a good 3 hour jaunt i saw that my phone said it was 11am, but my truck clock said it was 10. Hmm. WTF?! I was really confused...which was right? Daylight savings isn't for another 3 weeks!? I thought my phone was messed up...but then if that was true i had another full hour before I meet up with the crew. So how did this happen? Did I just ski really that fast? Did I enter a worm hole while cratering in the powder and somehow gain an hour?

So on back home I went to meet the group of Smrp and NinjaPonyMom&Dad for some XC skiing and exploring. We didn't bring any dogs, but i wish we had brought the Monkey as the trails were perfect and we only saw three people and one on-leash dog during the 2 hour ski.

You rang? A busted open door to the YMCA showed a ransacked cabin (by mice) and a phone...? Is there really service up there or it just for the loudspeaker to let the kids know supper's on?

I love this shot, even though it's low light. Skiing by its nature is "singletrack," but here it's the actual place you HAD to ski.

A few pictures from the week

It's been a long week at work, and finally it's the weekend! I saw Gogol Bordello last night at the Fillmore (which sucks for a venue -- 7$ beers? I mean, really...). Met up with SpeedRacer and his girl at the Watercourse in Denver - the best veggie/vegan restaurant i've ever been to...the options are endless! Wish there was one of them in Ned. Missed Timmy and family and only saw the Redneck up front at the show for a second or two "GO HOME OLD MAN!" he said (he's older than me, it's an old joke...when you're one of the oldest in the front area of a show...you get the picture).

A couple of nice rides into work this week on Wed and Thurs. One day was snowing pretty hard, the other was just cold: 6deg when I left home. See the difference in the Hunter at the overlook.


Then somewhat fresh tracks on the Creek path. Since I can't make turns before work most days, i carved some 29er turns on my way down the path. Not the same as teleturns before work, but fun nonetheless.

Sunday

Sunday was pretty FAR from Saturday weatherwise - it started snowing sometime overnight and in the morning only an inch was on the ground, but then it started dumping. By 2pm there was over 6" of snow and it was still snowing but less intensely. I spent the morning out with the dogs, playing ball with the Guppie (above) and laughing at them enjoying the powder day.

Here's Bear and Rikki with their respective chipmunks (the orange toys that squeak). Bear actually caught a ball a few times this weekend...a NEW thing for him. He didn't seem to impressed but I was! The other times the ball just hit him in the head...silly Guppo.

After a fun couple hours up at the "Resort" I took the Monkey out for a little hike across the street so she could get some fresh tracks too. The Resort...that makes me laugh each time i write it - Eldora is hardly a Resort...was really fun with few people and the new snow falling so hard that the sides of the runs were knee deep powder. I took the XCD setup out just for kicks and a challenge. It really is fun trying to ski like you do on a big ski/plastic boot setup on these narrower skis and soft boots! The dogs really miss their Mom, it's pretty obvious that I'm 2nd hand to some of them. Each time I let them outside, they RUN to the front gate hoping to see Smrp approaching...some sit there for a 1/2 hour at a time!

Record temps

I hear the 74 degrees yesterday broke the previous record high temp in the flatlands. It was pretty damn warm up top too turning everything to slush like a mid-April day would do...only it's March 1st! So after getting the dogs nice and tired in the slushy snow, I tucked them away into their various compartments separated by baby gates and left for a 3 hour ride. This is by far the longest ride i've been on since before I broke my foot last October...and I didn't even bonk! I headed the favorite summer route into work first to see how rideable it was (or wasn't as the case may be).

The front side was a mix of what you see in the next two pics. Some parts were bone dry, others were packed ice and snow - some rideable, some your front wheel dropped and you stop dead.

I managed to ride most of the back section since the locals had laid down a good packed trail over the winter and it was mostly half frozen ice (grippy!).

The Hunter gets his hands dirty. Got the tubeless Jones XR 1.8's on for commuting now...and I can see that I'll have trouble taking these tires off anytime soon - they're so fast and versatile!

Then for something completely different, Timmay brought over his bass and we jammed for awhile....longer than both of us thought we'd play for. Thankfully, the Stone Vertical Epic and Bigfoot barleywine helped me get over some of my nervousness as this was the first time I'd played guitar with another person in years...14 to be exact...and it was really fun. I played guitar and then bass in a band in middle through high school, and continued less frequently with some friends in college, but even after all that time I never developed good technical skills (I was always rhythm guitar). But that's the great thing about music, you can just play what you can play, and no matter what your level it's still really fun!