DoJoe

Riding up early

the 8th DoJoe was Sunday. I need to do this event every year. The last time I did it was at least 4 years ago. What a total blast! Great people and a very well put on event to celebrate snow, skiing, and just being alive in the mountains. The event was created for Joe who lost his life in an avalanche in the nearby hills in 2001.

Seeing as it was my last real "training" day before the Grand Traverse, I decided to go big. I rode up on the Hunter with my boots and skis attached to my pack, then nordic skied for an hour (I had stashed the black skis in the woods the day before), then took a couple of runs on the teles before the race started at 1pm. It was a true spring day with a high predicted at 61.

The lineup for the women's race

Everyone was in costume...EVERYONE. The Redneck, DV8 and I were all sporting our respective Pilot suits and we were ready to rock. DV8 on AT gear, me on the Karhu Guides with no skins (it has scales), and the Redneck on our skinny-ass nordic setup we're using for the Grand Traverse. Everyone thought he was crazy for using those skis as the downhill is very steep and has very large moguls. We all weren't too surprised when the Redneck gapped us on the climb. He just plain dropped us! I thought to myself, "we'll catch him on the downhill." Well, we didn't. Or at least I didn't.

Up and over the top of the hill with no skins was very sweet. This is the Dojoe setup. I went past the skin-drop off point 700 vert up and traversed right out onto West Ridge. I started down and didn't see the Redneck anywhere! First I got worried he had shot off into the woods on those narrow-ass skis and knocked himself out! Right about then, the "Aspen ski patroller" in the race passed me on his lightweight AT gear flying down the mogul run. Apparently he narrowly beat the Redneck passing him in the last 50 yards of the race!

Not knowing this, and thinking the Redneck was out cold in the woods somewhere, I thought I was going to get first in the tele class until i saw the Redneck in the finishing straight already done! Holy Shit! He was a bit beaten up from the downhill - literally - bloody fingers, bloody lip, and scraped up forearms...but all in one piece. He has slid down from the top on his ass switching sides of his ass to "turn." We were all jaw-dropped impressed. A stellar performance indeed. Especially after having pounded a Dale's Pale immediately beforehand. Then me and then DV8 rounded out the top 4 finishers - three of the top 5 were Pilots!!

Upon returning to the lodge, we had a couple o pints and met up with the rest of the racers on the sun deck. Great raffle prizes and awards followed. They made a new "Green award" for me because I rode up. Very appreciated, but I really wasn't looking for anything like that. It's not the reason I do that kinda stuff, as I hope you readers know. I just love riding my bike everywhere!

Until next year. I highly recommend this event y'all.

Here's some pictures.

Swinging a heavy bat

The Elk Mountain Grand Traverse is a week away, midnight. I am as ready as I'll ever be and I'm pretty excited for this event. It will certainly be one of the more epic adventures of my life and I'm just hoping me and the Redbeck finish in one piece mentally and physically.

In preparation for this backcountry ski race, the Redneck and I headed to Aspen last weekend to learn the route on the last part of the course - Taylor Pass to Aspen Ski Mountain. We thought this would be the best part to learn as we'll be the most tired at this point (about 15 miles from the finish at Taylor Pass) and having done it before will reduce our chances of error (getting lost). There are many "exit-stage-lefts" on this part of the course as it follows a narrowish ridge line (Richmond Hill) and roads dive off left and right frequently. Making a mistake on the course here could result in the end of your race if not worse.

We took Clifford the Big Red Truck as it was supposed to snow (but it doesn't snow in March in Colorado anymore) to Aspen Friday morning. We were headed to a dude's house that we didn't know - he was the ex-boyfriend of an ex-coworker of the Redneck's...pretty far removed but it's all we had to choose from. We didn't even know his real name, she just called him "Greeny". I am pretty sure it's because he smoked so much pot. I mean DAMN!! I've never seen anyone smoke this much pot, even in my high school days. This dude had a very high tolerance. The wake and bake started at 7am and went for an hour or so and then he's go ski, go to work, and then come home and smoke some more bong hits, and then watch lots of TV while pulling a few more rips, walk the dogs, then go to bed and start over. It was incredible to watch this guy pull down the bong hits one after another like it was regular oxygen in there! He was a caretaker of one of those huge mansions you see around Aspen. An insane house living next door to people that don't live there for more than a week a year...people you'd know from just their names. The Redneck and I decided we'd start bugging Lance (Armstrong) about being the caretaker of his new Aspen house.

So onto the skiing. Saturday morning we got shuttled up to Ashcroft where we were going to ski up Express Creek to Taylor Pass and then take a left on the Richmond Hill road and finish at Aspen Mountain Resort some 15 or so miles later. Stupid as i am, I brought the GPS but neglected to calculate out how many miles it was from Ashcroft to Aspen going this route. The locals told us it was anywhere from 10 - 30 miles depending on who you asked. People are definitely prone to exaggeration. Luckily at Ute Mountaineering, we met up with Elliot, who we strangely both knew from racing in Boulder nearly 10 years back. (At most three degrees of separation in Boulder I tell you.) He had done the GT 5 times and gave us all the inside beta - best maps displaying the route with mileage, and super secret geeky light stuff to use for the race.

"What stove are you bringing?" he asked.
I replied that we were bringing a Jetboil (a superlight camping stove if you haven't heard of it.) "NO NO NO...check this out."

And that's how it went for several of the items we planned on putting in our packs. We ended up with a new "stove," if you can actually call it that. It's basically a piece of aluminum that folds open like a clamshell, burns fuel blocks in the open area below where you set the pot. It's weightless compared to the Jetboil. Such it is with this race - you don't want to carry any more weight than you have to for the 40 miles.

Ashcroft in the early AM

Training for this race has been the most unique and fun training I've done since I was "training" for Montezuma's Revenge - a 24 hour bike race that is no longer, sadly. (If you haven't heard of this race, Google it, it is truly insane and beat me to a bloody pulp the two years I did it.) But like any such race, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Cliche' as it may be, it's true. And although you may hate these endurance events sometimes while you are racing, there's truly no experience like it, and there's not many things mentally harder than keeping yourself going. Overcoming the want to quit is incredibly difficult sometimes. But when you do keep going, the satisfaction of finishing - just FINISHING - these events is overwhelming. When training means days like these where you spend as long as you can out in the woods on skis, exploring as many places as you can....I can dig it.


I've been swinging a heavy bat to train for this event. Like riding with heavy training wheels or a heavy pack to make yourself stronger on the bike...skiing with heavy skis and a heavy pack will eventually make you stronger. Along with spending many hours each weekend day on the tele and AT gear in the backcountry, during the week I've been skate- and classic-skiing on the Asnes Holmenkollens, a 3/4 edge black as night Norwegian skis that only Neptune Mountaineering carries (literally, the only shop in the entire US). They are light, but definitely not made to skate or classic in tracks necessarily. But they're so cool cause they CAN do it, and do it all pretty good. They also have this inexplicable 'spirit' from the old country that makes them just cool. These are our guides on the Grand Traverse.

One thing they can't do so well, however, is go downhill in variable conditions. Here's the Redneck headed down a slight descent on windblown crust...sketchy to say the least!

The route was much easier to find than we expected. My GPS background map actually showed Richmond Hill road on it...so navigating wasn't too hard. Also, the snowmobile tracks (see above pic on the left) followed the route pretty closely, although there were frequent offshoots. The temperature got up to almost 50 degrees (at over 12,000ft) though so our choice of kick wax became an issue. We must have put on/taken off our kicker skins 4 times as the ridge line tilted up and then down the entire way back to Aspen. The snowmobile track also make using kick wax harder than normal because of inconsistent and broken up snow and the "whoops" they create on the trail from accelerating. The whoops were just the right length where our skis would mostly make contact on the tips and tails leaving the wax pocket in mid-air and therefore no grip to push forward. This became even more interesting on the downhills when our skis compressed and the wax pocket hit the ground nearly stoping us on every other whoop! Needless to say, I went over the bars a few times.

After about 5 hours at around 2 or 3pm, we reached the top of Aspen Mountain and skied into a different world. Aspen is its own bubble - Boulder times 10. Imagine us with huge packs, skinny-ass skis and long poles kicking and gliding past the Sundeck at the top of Aspen. Aged "Information Officer" skiers watched as they talked to sking newbies and passed out ski maps; a woman ski patroller threw a ball for the avalanche dog in the middle of the passing skiers; fur lined-coats lined rich skiers in all directions who had all paid $97 to ski there for one day here. The reality of it all was in such funny contrast to our mindset at the time. Even funnier was that we were going to go down Aspen Mountain on these skis. This is something to witness, and practice especially before race day when you're 37 miles into it and still have to ski down 3,000ft vertical to the finish! With a mixture of old-school skinny-ski telemark turns and hip-chucking alpine turns, we threaded through the other skiers on the mountain getting some pretty funny looks and comments along the way. We were just happy not to run into any ski patrollers as we didn't have lift tickets or leashes for our skis...both a hefty fine I imagine. But I wondered if the trespassing and leash fine would be more than a lift ticket? Doubt it.

All said and done it took us about 6 hours at a relatively mellow pace. At the bottom of the mountain, we de-skied and hopped on the local free bus back to the mansion where we met up with Greeny who was again hitting the bong after a good day of skiing.

"How was the route-finding mission boys?" he asked.

"Great! No problem in finding the route at all!" I said.

In his thick Jersey accent, "Yeah, you'd have to be fuckin retaaahdid to get lost on that part of the trail!"

Indeed we would...but I've been known to be fuckin retaaahdid before...!
A full report when we get back.

Silverton Mountain

The website says:

Mountain Stats:

Peak elevation: 13,487’

Peak of Chair (singular): 12,300’

Base elevation: 10,400’

Annual snowfall: 400’+

Skiable acres: 1,819

Lift Serviced Vertical Drop: 1,900’

Trail Classifications: 0% Beginner & Intermediate, Advanced & Expert = 100%

Guided group size: 8 or less per guide. Private guides available. Guides can take you beyond the unguided boundaries.

Need: You will need your avalanche beacon, probe pole, and shovel (rentals available). YOU DO NOT NEED ANY AVALANCHE TRAINING.

Season: November through May? (Check for dates and times in April and May).

Easiest Run: 35 degrees; (30 degrees steepest run at your average ski area)

That pretty much sums up the numbers. But I’m not sure how to sum up the experience 6 of us had on Feb 19^th, but I’ll try my best.

Silverton is a one-lift ski "resort" located 6 miles outside of Silverton, Colorado. Silverton is up and over Molas Pass north from Durango in Southwest Colorado. This area gets a ton of snow, for Colorado, because of southwest storms bringing up moisture from the gulf of Mexico. Silverton, the “resort,” is truly in the middle of nowhere. It’s up Cement Creek road – a dirt road that dead ends at an old mining town. The backcountry skiing in this area is unsurpassed. Red Mountain Pass and the surroundings link to hundreds of gulches that drop from over 13,000ft to around 10,000ft making for some of the longest (and steepest) backcountry ski runs in the state. There are places with as much relief in Colorado, but I’m not sure that there are many with such a consistent drop. Anyway, Silverton is a very unique ski resort. Not only because it has only ONE lift, but because most of the best terrain is accessible only if you bootpack up to another 1,000ft from the top of the lift. And as said above, the easiest slope is 35 degrees. Most of the runs are well over 35 degrees and in a typical Colorado winter, there are not many places in the backcountry that you can safely ski powder on 30-45 degree slopes. THIS was why we just had to make the pilgrimage down there. I set the course for the southwest with the Pilot, MK, and Dubba, and we were meeting the Frozelaps from the land of God and tacos, down there as well. We were going to spend a day at Silverton and then meet the others atop Red Mountain Pass to ski into the Mountain Belle Hut.

On the drive down, we saw that around 8" of snow has fallen on Vail Pass...so we got out and skied off the pass. Why not? We have all our gear and from the top of the pass it was only an hour and a half round trip for one run! Following what appeared to be Jesus' skin track, as it was simply perfect, we climbed up to the open tree'd hill we spotted from the parking lot. We ripped skins and flew down the mountain back to the highway in less than 20 minutes. So fleeting were those pow turns, but so worth it. Especially when you get back in the car and drive for another 4 hours!

Top of our run on Vail Pass

We got to Silverton Wednesday night after the 6 hour drive and checked into the Triangle Motel…purportedly THE place to stay for skiers going to Silverton Mountain. It’s actually one of the ONLY places to stay in Silverton. This town used to shut down in the winter, being merely a tourist stop in Summer for people on the Iron Horse train ride from Durango.

Having the ski mountain has been a bit of a revival for this tiny town. The old mining town’s shops have been converted into Coffee shops, restaurants, and hotels that now stay open all winter. The old architecture is unmatched - there are only a few places on earth that these types of buildings, in more or less their original form, still stand and lay testament to what once was. Since the mountain opened, Scotty Bob skis relocated from Golden to Silverton, and other small businesses now call Silverton home such as Venture snowboards (making “green” big mountain snowboards) and Mountain Boy Sledworks (making some of the nicest handmade sleds around). There's even a bike shop in town since the mountain now has bridges and stunts for freeriders. Enough of the commercial. On to the skiing.

This place is sick. There's really no other way to explain it.

Upon arriving, you boot up and grab your skis and head to the "tent." The tent is a canvas structure with no insulation stuck on the side of the hill just uphill from the base of the lift. It is a tiny operation. The parking lot fits maybe 40 cars, and the entire base area (lift area included) is smaller than big lodge at Eldora. In the tent is housed the operations center of Silverton along with a crappy wood stove that hardly puts out an ounce of heat, and an assortment of garage sale chairs and couches to sit on. You are asked by a guide/patroller to sign the release (I wish I had a copy of this because it is FUNNY to read) and proceed on to one of two lines - one for people that own their own beacon/shovel/probe and the other for those that don't (and need to rent). The latter line is the larger.

Being in a tent at 8am along a creek bottom at 10,000ft in February... well, it was cold. Really cold when you're waiting to get moving. It started out about zero so a bunch of us sat ourselves by the crappy wood stove with our feet outside our boots nearly touching the metal in a futile attempt to warm our toes. They make you get there early, but also make you wait an hour if you get there early. Music is blasting, people are everywhere, the outhouse is knarly and I didn't even go in it. I heard rumors that it was by far the worst outhouse ever constructed and kept. I didn't know something so cold could smell so BAD.

At 8:45am, we all headed out to the parking lot where we were asked to separate ourselves - the left side of the parking lot if we wanted to do more climbing and advanced skiing, or to the right if we wanted a more mellow day. Being the Dynafit/skinny ski crowd, we head to the left of course! We had a group of 6 and were hoping for 2 additional kindred spirits to join us. We also were asking for some dude named Michael for our guide but they sent us Travis instead. They also gave us two snowboarders to fill out our group. We were a bit curious why they'd stick two snowboarders with a bunch of AT geeks but hey, it all turned out OK. Turns out they were freelancers from Backcountry Magazine doing a story on Silverton - one the writer, the other the photographer.

Let me describe our guide, Travis. He was a more or less soft spoken dude that had the biggest reverse camber skis I've ever laid eyes on - the K2 Pontoons. They're something like 130mm underfoot. For perspective, my skis are 84mm underfoot. The widest skis in our group were 100mm underfoot...his were over an inch wider than the widest in our group...which is a shitload for skis! Travis didn't ask what we were up for, he straight up told us he was going to take us to HIS favorite places on the mountain. I'm not sure if this is just how he is or if he was trying to impress the Backcountry guys with what Silverton has to offer. Either way, we were taken to the knarliest places that were open. Not always the best snow, but always the nuttiest lines.

After a more than cursory check to see if we knew how to use our beacons ("how do you turn them on?" was the test), we got the chair. We got up the lift first, and were the first to hike to the Billboard (the top). The boot pack was awesome, if a bit overwhelming for our first run. It was no warm up run, it was a race for first tracks we'd realize later. Although we were the first skiers of the week (Thursday - they're not open Monday-Wed) and some new snow had fallen, we were competing with almost 100 other people for the same tracks. And being kind to those that came later on in the week, we were only allowed to stick to certain runs so stuff tracked out pretty quick. They also only had controlled certain areas in the previous days so didn't want us risking anything. But back to the boot pack. It started out normal enough, skis on back, hiking up a ridge line towards Storm Peak. First to a saddle, then to another ridgeline and on to a more narrow saddle, and then suddenly to a trail that went straight up. Travis said just before we entered this section, "You guys OK with this?" UM...as if we had a choice!? But yeah, we were loving it! The wind had blown the snow off this ridge and it was mostly off camber loose rocks that led into a 45 degree scramble with a fixed rope.

At the top, someone spied a hidden halfpipe and a yurt down in the valley to our south. It was Shawn White's personal halfpipe where he stays for a week at a time and trains. The surroundings of this halfpipe cannot be compared to anything other than what a snowboarder could dream up in their wildest dream.

After we had put our skis we got ready for the unknown. We couldn't see the run we were going to drop in from our hike up. We were heading to "the Pope to the Dope" as Travis called it. He went first. The top of Pope was an open snowfield that progressively got steeper until it funneled into a halfpipe shaped couloir of sorts. Once out of the wind affected area, it also got deeper snow and the steepness of the run mattered much less. At the bottom of the run we were to traverse over to the right where Dope started. Problem was, with this winter we're having, there was a rock band slightly covered in snow inbetween the bottom of Pope and the start of Dope. With speed, we all made it over, some with more gashes in our ski bases than others (i got some damn good ones). Pope was a "good" warm up as it was, but now we were dropping into something even steeper and unknown. Travis went first and disappeared but said for us to "meet me on the left." This was indeed Dope! We dropped into a narrower 40 degree couloir with knee deep powder that cushioned each turn so that it didn't feel all that steep. Looking back, I think this portion was the best of the day - snow, steepness, it had it all. I'll never forget those turns we made down Dope. It's rare (never?) that you get to safely make knee deep turns down a 40 degree couloir in Colorado. It was truly spectacular. And that was only the first of three thousand feet!

the Pilot starting down Pope

Down and more down we got 3K of fresh tracks until we were at the bottom groomed road that led us back to the "Mine" and the van that would take us back to the base area after each run. Imagine a 30 year old box van with no windows in the back, ski stickers plastered on every square inch of the inside, and 30 people stuffed inside all with their skis and poles. If you are claustaphobic, you would die in this van. I'm amazed it still ran. On the dashboard was written in a sharpie "check fluids before driving EVERY DAY!"

MK going down Pope

Back at the base area, we immediately headed up for another and hiked a bit less to get to some more steep powder turns and crazy steep and shelfy rocky terrain. It was sometimes survival just making it down to the bottom of each run. I was thankfully on my AT gear...i cannot even imagine making it 2 runs on my tele gear here.

The Champ at the bottom or run 1

I felt for the Champ. She was smiling the whole day, but i know her legs had to be just fried. We didn't stop for lunch, just snacked along the lift ride up and brought water in our packs. We were here to ski. We hiked at least for a half-hour on all but one of our runs and each run took us at least 2,000ft vertical down where we met up with some other groups and re-stuffed into the van for the 5 minute ride back to the base.

Rushing to get last lift at 3pm, we hiked nearly to the top of the Billboard again but this time jumped off on the west side of the resort, our first time on that side. We all kinda looked confused to where Travis was leading us. He had just got some sort of beta that "Horse Cock" was declared recently safe (and therefore open) by Mr. Brill himself, so we headed that way and ducked one of the few ropes on the mountain. We all shook our heads as we saw grass sticking up through the snow where Travis was about to drop in. "It'll be fine! There's only grass and no rocks right here!" Um....yeah. We all went left of his line to where it looked like there was more coverage. Well, we should've listened to the guide. I quickly veered right back over to Travis' line and didn't hit any more rocks. Being almost 4 now and well over 6 hours into skiing such crazy terrain, we were all starting to make mistakes, especially me. This year is my first year on alpine gear since I was 13 (23 years ago). I'm ok, but when i get tired i make mistakes and sit back too much. Well, after Horse Cock couloir, which was super sweet by the way, I flailed and bailed onto my face and lost my right ski. There it slid, straight down the hill towards the Pilot as he skied down, unbeknownst to him, as I yelled "SKI!" but no one heard. Luckily it took a dive into a deep part of snow and stopped about 100 feet down from where I lay covered in snow. I slid on my ass down to the ski, put it on and continued down to everyone. After two more bails and a 20ft wide north-facing fracture that went to the dirt (yes, i was following our guide on a little foray) we made it to the road completely COOKED! But safe and sound and all having never experienced a day like that before in our lives. We were so late compared to the other groups who didn't get a last run in, we had to make a special call for the van to pick us up. After returning to the tent, we were pretty damned thirsty but all they had was Red Bull and a keg of beer. Yep, there's no water at Silverton! Just locally brewed Silverton beer, and Red Bull...classic!

Upon planning for this day, and hearing that we'd only do 3-6 runs before the day was over, we all smirked and said, we'll do 7...at least. Yeah...well, maybe if we had just the skinny ski clan and more fresh powder, but we barely made 5 runs before 4pm. That may not sound like a ton, but we hiked more than any of the other groups and totaled almost 12,000ft of vertical descent that day. I've never even come close to that figure on a backcountry day or even a lift-served day! We were slightly hammered on the last run...and we still had to skin into our hut off Red Mountain Pass that night! Thankfully (not to my awesome navigation abilities as i almost got us lost AGAIN on a 1 mile approach) we made it to the hut by dark...but just barely.

Tour-iffic!

Less than 3 weeks away to the Grand Traverse. I'm a bit worried about my fitness for the event...but it's pretty much too late for me to do anything about it. I've been skiing as much as I can working over 40 hours a week. It's hard to find time to train for a 40mile backcountry ski race! It's been very marginal at the nordic center and in most of the backcountry. I haven't even visited two of my favorite spots this year because they're under 10,000ft elevation. It's been fun, but it's been a relatively POOR winter we're having. Here's my post from last year on this day...significantly more like winter.

Anyway, after 3 hours at the nordic center Saturday with 1" of new snow on ice corduroy I headed to EP today to tour as long a tour as I could. There was about 4" of new snow up high, but with windblown, the leeward slopes had about double that (it was quite windy last night). The first hill I had been eyeing for awhile (above picture, line along left tree ridge) and we had crossed the lower reaches with some Pilots a couple of months ago. It was quite good right along the trees as the aspect veered more north. The south and east aspects were mid-May mashed potatoes. This is one weird March so far. Then I headed over to my favorite secret stash - Chutes and Ladders.

Pine marten tracks next to the Stelvio

Huge old growth stand of spruce and fir trees with massive snags on this hard to get to ridge.

Upper Chutes and Ladders. This little (apparently secret) area always has soft snow on the northeast gullies. I'm amazed I only make tracks here and never FIND any tracks. I think it must be because it's hidden from view from the main trail and any other turns in the area.

Lower Chutes and Ladders. Altogether, a mere 400ft vertical but oh so sweet!

After a great 6 hours trying to tire myself out (it worked), I made my way down the hill to the main trail. The sun baked aspects were now death-crust mixed in with the shadier soft snow, it made for an interesting (scary) downhill. The skis stick in the wet snow, fly in the soft colder snow and stop dead in the death-crust. I didn't make it down safely. BOOM! I fell so hard on one turn near the bottom that I landed on my ass on the back of my skis forcing my right boot backward so hard that the metal pin that locks the boot into ski mode from walk mode popped out. It split in two. No more ski mode in this boot. In the same crash, my hip belt on my pack popped off of one side from the impact! My neck is a bit sore tonight from the whiplash. Hope these are fixable issues or that was one seriously expensive crash. Moral of the story, if there is one - bring caffeine for the last run of the day.

Coming soon, a full Silverton report...