Day 2: Swamp Canyon: "Not a mercy tour"

Hoar frost sugaring out of the spruce tree needles and crystallizing the pillows and mounds of powdery snow in the shade of the creek bed. Frosty morning air stiffening my fingers and urging me to hustle up the road and into the forest until I can announce: "Disrobing" and pause to stuff my puffy into my pack. Creaky ice over a stream crossing, like loud spiderwebs casting their threads away from my skis as I cross. Squirrelly early season skin track on the slope, meandering up and around trees with crusty snow skirts from sun-melted drippy needles.

Rocky candy branch

Today was my first day EVER ski touring without JC. Kind of momentous for me to willingly break away from that and venture forth with Mel. Truthfully, I wavered on Thursday evening, conjuring up some semi-valid reasons, then snapped out of it and gave myself a mental tongue-lashing, committed, drove to Ophir in the morning and just went for it.

We got a few "gluck-glucks" from the swooping raven at the top, and the raven got a few "gluck-glucks" from me in return. Welcome back, we agreed.

Cloudless, breezeless, huge landscape but a familiar run with fairly low risk getting back to the bottom. As we put on our skis I said, "Now comes the hard part." Skinning is a lovely way to move in the winter landscape, strong and steady to the top, just a few slippery kick turns where the sun has nosed its way into the forest. Thus far, skiing down has been the most challenging part of back country skiing, and honestly I have dreaded with every ascent. But today? How could I feel anything but contentment and excitement with this friend beside me?

Check out the new ski jacket! I know, I know, I was talking a big game about not needing new gear but I actually did not possess a non-insulated shell. (Here is the cool part of the story behind the jacket, which I am now calling the Plum Line, because of its purply color and the use of it skiing a line - duh - so anyway, JC ordered it for me for an early combo birthday-Christmas gift, and we were hoping it would get to me before I skied on Friday. Well,  he gets a message that his credit card was declined WHAAAT? so he calls and finds out he has been sent a new card that has not been activated even though his old one has yet to expire, so ANYway, he calls up the jacket people and the customer service guy looks at his shipping when JC indicates how important it is to us to get it by Friday, and he says Let's see, let's see…. You're from Telluride?! I LOVE Telluride! and on and on and he ends up giving him free overnight shipping). Long story short, it was waiting for me when I lurched in from yoga on Thursday evening, actually yoga and a dinner date with Natalie, but anyway, I wore it to ski even though it was kind of too warm to wear even a shell. But there you have the Plum Line story).

We pieced up our ski into three segments. The snow at the top was consistent but heavy and thankfully no sun crust. I forced myself to make big strong confident turns until I reached Mel. 

The second segment we literally skied through brown fronds of seeded grasses and such that were taller than normal after our super wet summer. They made cool crunching sounds as you shushed over them and were easily 2 feet taller than the snow.

I dinged a few things in the lowest segment which made me ski a bit more cautiously but whatever. I had done it. Without JC. I felt triumphant and surprisingly not too tired. I had the usual between the shoulders ache from digging my poles in on the skin up, as well as the occasional "botany assist" to quote Bruce Ericksen, where you heave yourself up and over a lump or two with the help of a handy trunk here and there.

We passed a few folks on the exit and I couldn't help but to ask Mel how my pace was on the uphill. "This is not a mercy tour" was all I needed to hear (who knew mercy tours even existed?!) to know that I was not the weak link today. That will come later this winter, of that I am certain.

We chatted a bit about ski goals for the winter, and about her experience skiing in Chile this summer. Her goals are pretty fucking simple: Have fun, ski powder, be safe.

Mine (no surprise) are a bit more analytical, but that's ok. That's just how I operate.