Happy Festivas!

Smrp and the Guppies looking west

Dog days of winter

peeping smrp

The first official day of Winter. It's going to be hard to leave the snow, where we can snowshoe from the front door and right into the woods.  The dogs seem to love powder days as much as the people standing in the lift line at the mountain an hour before the lift starts.  I honestly don't miss those days of waiting for the lift to open while freezing my balls off.  I'm so glad I found Jesus (the Backcountry...with a capital "B").  This includes our backyard, as the Backcountry is everywhere there aren't lifts and lift-lines.  Just GO...and you shall find it.

Jesse Guppie can barely control her excitement for all the powder!

Crazy-dogging in the belly deep powder.  She ran around up and down dragging me along with her.  We keep her on a long 25ft leash because...well...without it? She'd be gone.  Deer, squirrels, elk, coyotes, foxes, you name it...she'd suddenly chase something and look up and be 10 miles away.  Not worth the risk.

More pouncing.  She's like a half bunny half kangaroo in the snow!

Jesse Guppie at Sunset only somewhat tired from the big hike in the deep snow. 

Solstice ride and SNOW!

I think the Mayan's world ended yesterday but i can't be sure. But up in the Nederlands, all was well last night after preparing the ranch for the upcoming big storm.  Everything (pony poop, for example) that you don't pick up will be buried for a long long time if you don't take care of it now!  They were calling for 8-16" and we woke up to just around 14-16" depending on settlement.  Hayride, Powers and I got out on what may be the last small-tire (not a fatbike) MTB ride on westMag for awhile.  Left and headed up Pungee at around 5:45pm and returned an hour an a half later having done a lil lollipop loop.

 Hayride was sporting the snowmobile pogies and that's all i could see of him. They're HUGE! And toasty.

 

 A pitstop at the usual place although there was no scenery to be seen (it was dark).  It was the start of the storm and just dumping.

The beer of the night was some solsticey Norwegian smoked barleywine which was...interesting. Can't say that I'll get it again but glad we tried it. We chased it with some hot tea and a slug of whiskey before heading down the trail.  Even if you hike more when snowbiking, it's SO much f'ing fun going down!

December 15th snowride

 Studded Nokian tire on the front and just some rather low tire pressure in back I headed out for a local loop to see what was rideable.  Lots more than I thought! With temps in the mid-30's and no wind (yep, none!) it was stellar outside.  The dog walkers, runners, snowshoer's, and XC skiers have packed down many of the closer-to-town trails so that even on a regular MTB tire you can ride most of them.  I did see KB's trax out there though and it made me have tire-envy.  Wow...those Endomorph's are freaking huge!

I just love this view of the old surveyline

Crisp and clear view of the Divide from the Lookout trail.

 The snowfall up high is lacking but at least the wind has been silently absent (so far).  Unfortunately for this area, with snow comes wind, so you can't have it both ways (no wind and lots of snow to ski).  So in the meantime, I'm happy to keep riding my bike.

Another loss...

me and Mariah, 2006

It's continued to be a rough year. It's been about a month already since we lost Mariah, our 25 year old Morgan. She was my girl's real first horse and she was such a funny personality.  Her sudden colic and death took us all by surprise.  Everybody knows colic is common in horses...but it doesn't make it any easier when it happens to one of your crew.  It's pretty awful to experience to find them writhing on the ground in pain, soaked in sweat from rolling around due to the pain from their stomach.

For you that don't know, colic is a generic term for a blockage in the intestines of a horse.  They can't pass the food through and it is extremely painful.  If not operated on and removed, they either eventually pass it...or die trying.  After 8 hours, Mariah wasn't getting any better with drugs on board and fluids, so we asked our vet to let her go as peacefully as possible.

Mariah was a total sweetheart with a tougher than nails personality on the outside.  We called her the Viper because she would 'viper' at Tango (who she loved and this was a sign of affection).  She got the funniest look on her face when you'd scritch her withers...but she hated to admit she loved human contact.  She was tough and sweet at the same time.  We will greatly miss her.

Our family has shrunk by 3 in 2 months. We still have 6 horses and 3 dogs that keep us busy and happy, but wow...what a Fall.

First ski tour of the season

 

Today's tour was...how do i say this nicely...challenging.  We've received almost 2 feet in the past several days so we thought it was about time to put on the planks and head up to the Portal.  Well, we need more snow. 

This looks really serene but we were hitting rocks just a foot under the snow almost every step here.

 Hayride, JHK and I headed up and did our best to stay positive on what was some of the most "interesting" conditions we've experienced.  The recent windstorm had knocked down a ton of trees here too and with only 2 feet of snow...not many trees were buried yet.  It was like trying to find your way through a corn maze that hadn't been cut yet.  There was no *good* way through, it all pretty much sucked.  Just keep bushwhacking and you'll eventually get to the top.  Hayride brought up how a recent article in Backcountry Mag stated that the ideal skin track is right around 12 degrees.  Yeah. That ain't gonna happen.  We were heading up to Squirrel Huck Gully and if we stuck to that rule, we'd have skied to winter park and back before getting to the top.

Who needs 12 degrees? Let's BOOTPACK! If anyone followed our skin track they died out there (self-inflicted).

 Once at the top, we were surprised at the calmness of air (no wind).  That made me pretty happy (shocked) since it was hovering around 0 degrees F.

View over to Crater Lakes

JHK at the 'top' - Marmot Poop Rock.

 

The best 10 turns of the day right here...and they WERE good!  Never-mind it took 3 hours to do the 3 miles to get here.

Hayride lower down for another 5 turns.

Can this be counted as training for the Olympics...?

Hayride getting his carve on

 All in all, we got back to the car almost at dark.  Our ski bases didn't look quite as bad as I thought they should have.  Maybe the cold temps helped protect our bases (hardening)?  A shot of whiskey to warm our insides helped, but we were pretty whooped.  My body hasn't felt like that since...well, the last time I was at the Portal.  Winter backcountry season is here!  But I think we're going to wait a bit longer for more snow to fall before heading up to Squirrel Huck Gully again.