4th of July weekend

Photo by DV8. I love this picture.

If only every weekend was a 3 day weekend. Then I'd want a 4-day weekend I guess.

Lots of time to make up for here so sorry for the picture heavy blog.
I learned this week to not hang your bike up by the front wheel on a hook if you have a shock...the oil drains in the secondary chamber and my favorite feature of the fork (the lockout) doesn't work for awhile! I'm so off the back on bikes these days.

Friday headed up to North Forks Lakes Bowl with DV8, MikeV (not the skater, but I'll still call him MikeV the 15yr old badass since he got second on a singlespeed to TBrown at a recent 60+ mile mtb race in Gunnison!), and Dubba! Dubba made his first spring ski appearance all year...first skiing for him since our Clark Peak Yurt trip back in March. Nothing like your first day back and skiing a 40 degree couloirish bowl!
Nothing quite like going to the 4th of July trailhead on the 4th of July...duh. Once again, we wish we had a sign with the first person in the group saying "Yes, there's snow up there. Yes, we skied. Yes, it was fun." It's great everyone's so friendly, but after the 20th time answering the same questions it gets old!Saturday I got out on a shortish ride around the hood. Too hot for my tastes at 82 degrees (Swede blood) but really nice to scope the new area. I rode out back to the overlook to see if Radiobeacon Couloir was still skiable...but couldn't make out if I was looking at the right one...but called DV8 and we made plans for the next day to scope out Forest Lakes Bowl and the sweet couloirs within.

Woke up to a cooler day and some light clouds covering the sun. No worries about snowmelt today it seemed as we drove up to the lake on Rollins Pass road talking about how the one downside of sking is how you have to drive everywhere to go ski. Ideas about how to fashion a Bob trailer or Xtracycle for skis and pack were tossed around. Maybe next year we'll have a carless option for longer approaches by bike...? It'd be a great goal for local stashes, but not always realistic for getting some places with long drives in severe winter weather (i.e., Summit County is a 1.5 hour drive)! But for some spring approaches...could be cool.

I'm borrowing a pair of demo Ski Trab Stelvio's from CosmicPete. I like the idea of these skis...they feel like the Rivendell of skis? The Karhu Guides feel like that too, in a different way.

Sunday was the day for some steep couloir skiing and climbing. I just had that urge to climb up something steep and attempt to ski down it. For some reason, I had a hankering for Radiobeacon's northeast Couloir. I had no idea if it was melted out or not but we decided to make a push for it. We got up to Forest Lakes at around 8am and saw the bottom 1/3rd of the couloir was melted out and ended in a pretty big 100+ foot cliff band. Hmm.... I wondered where the couloir actually was before it melted out!? The only way to climb up and then go down was to climb up the lower more easterly couloir that leads up to Radiobeacon snowfield, then traverse over and down to the northeast couloir that we wanted to ski. Kinda round-about but a sweet approach if you ask me! Here's a pic:

We decided NOT to ski this steep thing because of the consequences if one fell and couldn't stop right away....that 100ft cliff terrain trap thing. If we only had base-jumping packs!! Um, yeah.
Instead, we traversed the CDT north to a more southerly aspect couloir with the remains of a huge broken off cornice at the top. It's the 1st one on DV8's right in this below pic.

After dropping into this sweet narrow (for me at least!) steep walled cooler, we just had to get the shakes out of our system and do a more mellow run so headed up to Radiobeacon proper.

It's funny how the transition from skiing 40 deg chutes to 35 deg slopes can be so odd feeling...it's only 5 degrees!


Here's a movie of DV8 skiing these things.
http://www.dropshots.com/meriwether#date/2008-07-06/18:03:29
Music by Treepeople covering Morrisey's "Bigmouth stikes again."

On our last run we noticed the clouds starting to consolidate over the divide...it was gonna thunderstorm. It's hard to tell what the weather's going to do when you're 2000ft down from the divide. We packed up quick and booked it back to the truck just in time for some sprinkles and loud thunder. No strikes nearby, but we knew it was coming. Of course we then see a cyclist with earphones headed up the pass with no worries. It always amazes me how many idiots DON'T get hit by lightning a year.
Here's Missus Guppie scared shitless of the thunder when I got home: