1st day in The Powder room

A great day out there today.  Eldora was claiming 8" of new snow over the night and I believe it this time.  The tunnel had 8-12" depending on where you were in relation to wind-blown snow. The ever-present wind was howling at the parking lot, and up at the lakes, but nowhere in between.  The wind is certainly back in full force this winter.  

JHK breaking trail

...and again. No sun but what you see in this picture, which lasted a total of 5 seconds.

Heather takes her turn in the powder room...

...and now JHK heading down the middle lower Prospector Gully.

Eldo Traverse

First tour on the Holmnekollens with Heyride this year to break in the body for the Grand Traverse.  Felt good to warm up on an 12 mile traverse from the tunnel to Rock! No navigation issues, left at a leisurely 11:30am, got back before dark, pretty sweet route, and only saw 2 people in the 4 hour tour! Arrived at the Rock with a shot of 12yr old whiskey and thank you AP for picking us up with a 4pack of TenFidy! Great recovery food. Really looking forward to more traverses this winter.

Snow on the divide, and not bleeding east at all

Heyride pointing to where we want to come back in springtime to ski. Sweet terrain up here.

Pointing to where we have to go...down to that road cut. It's fun, and scary, trying to get the Asnes Holmenkollen's to turn...on this type of snowpack.

Heyride making it look easy...

Splitrock. This rock was so awesome. Looked like it fell from the sky and split into three. The tree hides the center 'aisle'.

Compacted coyote track with the soft snow blown away from it's perimeter.  Photoshopped to make stand out a bit more...

This was pretty cool. A small spruce cone suspended by a frozen pillar of ice and snow.  Yeah, there's no wind here...

Rocks are hard

Went scouting on the Trabs this week and found some new prospects up lower than high on the rib. Follow the tunnel, it gets you there easier and faster - that's basically what i learned.  I've been getting lost up here for how many years (?) and just finally found a good route to Quicky couloir, and the middle rib area. 

MegaHare tracks

The route I took up was just stock full of snowshoe hare, bobcat, squirrel, marten, and mouse tracks.  A great old growth stand of fir in between trails so gets very little human use.  No ski tracks were crossed.

Looking east, one of the runs that opened up in front of me.  The Trabs ski SO much different than the Manaslus...i bailed a few times until I realized you really have to dig into the turn instead of 'surf' the turn like on the Manaslu!

First snowpit showed some questionable stability on east/southeast slopes up at 10,800ft.   Some serious sun crusts (ice layers) and wind slabs separate softer snow (see the layer that my snow saw is bisecting in the photo?).  Break through one of those and whaBAAM! I exited the safe way down in the deep woods but not before tip diving in some nice breakable crust. The layer near the ground is just pure ice with huge facets underneath.  Cold weather, no significant snowfall, lots of wind, classic early season Colorado snowpack.

Safely back to the trail with only minor gashes in my skis, I snowplowed as I look left for the goods.  Bad idea - I hit a rock sticking up just a couple inches about the surface. The ground came up and hit me so f'ing hard, my shoulder feels like I just played a Rugby game against Burlingame (long story, yes I played Rugby in high school).

Steel*Wool has an entry in the 14th Annual Elk Mountain Grand Traverse!  Heyride and yours truly are heading to Crested Butte at the end of March for another round...let the training (ski touring) begin!

Nederland...it's fucking windy here

That's me and Heyride heading into the gale force winds. 18 degrees down at the lot, 5 degrees at 10,200ft with 40mph gusts.  I thought the Chinook winds were supposed to bring WARMER weather...?

Heyride skinning up at 12:30 this afternoon, yeah, low light this time of year...!

Lil cornice break from my SINGLE ski kick.  Lots of windslab everywhere today. Not the best conditions up here, but in the woods there were some dreamy spots.

Heyride heads down into the best 7 turns of the day. When it's windy, stay in the trees!

Today we headed up to the tunnel spot to see how the snow cover is. It's...good in places...bad in others. But much more snow up there than I thought there'd be! Why is that? Sympathetic snow, which means we get lots of wind.  Blow-over from Winter Park...sorry you Park peeps! We steal your snow.  The divide is scoured, you just have to find the pockets of catch snow...and you'll always have a powder day here.  It's harder on the fingers, toes, and face (i.e., frost bite), and there's certainly more climbing here than some other spots...but it's worth it!  Winter has arrived.

New name, same ramblings/rants, new content coming

I changed my name, as "Meriwether Rants" hasn't been too descriptive of my blog for a long long time.  It's more my ramblings on bike, ski, or foot.  I plan to turn this into a companion site to Meriwether Cycles at wordpress to talk more about other things than bicycle fabrication, but also as an eventual showcase for other fabrications that I come up with.  I hope to sell Discos again for example, since I have probably 100 cassette spacer sets still sitting in my shop.  I also have the tools to make the Disco's myself so let me know if you're interested...

Ok, so here goes...!

Tahoe

5pm Friday night...

...and Saturday 7am.

A quick weekend visit to Norcal had me running around before the winter storm hit. It's crazy reading that 5 feet of snow is going to fall in the next 48 hours. It certainly dumps in Tahoe! When I got up this morning, there was 'only' 9.5 inches of new relatively light snow (for here) and 24 degrees, with a claimed 16" at the top of the nearest ski run. Damn...I wish I had my backcountry gear, but then i wouldn't have gotten any work done!

Surprise blizzard

3pm, total whiteout coming home from Ned yesterday. Cars all over the place, dumped a couple inches in a half hour's time. Wasn't that bad if it hadn't iced up a half-hour before that. Seemed like all northern Colorado passes closed down from this one surprise storm...nobody was prepared. (Said 40% chance of snow and less than a half inch expected...). Winter is here! Eldora opens Friday but I'll be in the land of sierra cement.