The snow is like fur when we start to skin. Like someone's old white teddy bear, where the ends of the hair are kind of tufted up and separate from each other. The almost look soft.
We are shushing up Brown's Gulch between Red Mountain Pass and Silverton. New terrain for us (N.T. we always call it, no matter where we are. Sometimes when we turn off a road or a trail onto one that neither of us has been on, I will cry out, It's N.T! or "We're on N.T! or something equally as silly and exuberant) . Today I play it cool because we have a third with us, Julie P., who has been into this area once so we decided to take advantage of her and learn some New Terrain.
We had surveyed our options on the drive up and over, after we picked her up in Ridgway, J scoping for wind-scoured areas to avoid and me and Julie talking about epi-genetics and the works of Bruce Lipton (naysayer alert), me becoming slightly car-sick as I always do on that drive. I have a weakness for skiing with anyone who starts sentences with "thus far…" and can discuss intelligently far-out topics that aren't really that far out, they are just far in.
One of our goals for this winter was to get to know the Red Mountain area better, so here is the perfect opportunity, we figured. Our conclusion: if we have someone who can take us onto a skin track through old-growth forests, with some knowledge of the area, let's do that. We are all a little uncertain of what to expect with snow quality, as it sounded like these areas got hit pretty hard by skiers throughout the week, but the avalanche danger had settled down after the Christmas week sketch cycle so we are hoping for the best.
It's pretty cold this morning and we were in no big hurry to leave our house and by the time we are headed up it is quite pleasant out. We are skinning up a road and then it veers off into a beautiful forest, which leads up right up to treeline below Ohio Peak. From there we can see a bomb crater where a helicopter unsuccessfully tried to get Battleship to slide, way across the way nearish the Ophir Pass road. We can also see a few humans headed up a long steep ridge above Silvertone (the Anvil?). Again, the perspective of familiar peaks now made unfamiliar is a fun challenge to identify them with faces hidden that we usually see.
We decide to take a short lap then another that will lead us back to the car. We have another group ahead of us that are trying to be un-cool but by the time we see then 30 minutes later and they realize there is more than enough snow for us all, they are friendlier. It's pretty thin getting up to where we start, but once we poke around the corner from the wind scour the rocks are hidden enough to forget about them and we make our plan of where to reconvene in a safe zone below.
Because I am the weak link I go after Julie and before J, she hoots and hollers as she makes her way to the trees, and it is immediately apparent the snow is better than we had anticipated. Of course I am nervous when I go: I haven't really ski toured above treelike yet, it feels pretty exposed, and I really want to ski well. And I do. I get to Julie, then J reaches us, we marvel at the snow quality, then map out our next section - who skis first, what line we each want, and where we are meeting up again.
The next section is super fun, down a wide gully with roly poly features , then onto the next section, where we reconnoiter again and finally stop to put our skis back on, have a snack and some Constant Comment, and laugh about how insanely good the snow is.
We skin up through this incredible forest of huge spruce trees, widely spaced and solemn, the unfriendly/friendly group ahead of us, and we figure out a plan with them based on where they are headed. The map is moderately helpful in helping us figure out what we think is just beyond a ridge, we at least know the general direction we want to migrate, so we skin up above treeline again, discuss our options and do some investigating.
We ski the top pitch, then assess the next section. The light is super tricky where we are, and we watch J head over to what looks like a shoulder or a nose, only to realize, as he does, that it is not either of those things, just a smallish ravine of sorts but not really. Hard to explain.
J gets some shots of me and Julie making our way to our next meeting spot in the sun:
The terrain is super fun here, with big rolling features and consistent snow the whole way down, I didn't fall (even thought I could see that J was nervous for me, even from looking at his body language when he was way below and shouted up that there was some wind riffle to be aware of).
And then we are together, resting on our laurels:
We are shushing up Brown's Gulch between Red Mountain Pass and Silverton. New terrain for us (N.T. we always call it, no matter where we are. Sometimes when we turn off a road or a trail onto one that neither of us has been on, I will cry out, It's N.T! or "We're on N.T! or something equally as silly and exuberant) . Today I play it cool because we have a third with us, Julie P., who has been into this area once so we decided to take advantage of her and learn some New Terrain.
We had surveyed our options on the drive up and over, after we picked her up in Ridgway, J scoping for wind-scoured areas to avoid and me and Julie talking about epi-genetics and the works of Bruce Lipton (naysayer alert), me becoming slightly car-sick as I always do on that drive. I have a weakness for skiing with anyone who starts sentences with "thus far…" and can discuss intelligently far-out topics that aren't really that far out, they are just far in.
One of our goals for this winter was to get to know the Red Mountain area better, so here is the perfect opportunity, we figured. Our conclusion: if we have someone who can take us onto a skin track through old-growth forests, with some knowledge of the area, let's do that. We are all a little uncertain of what to expect with snow quality, as it sounded like these areas got hit pretty hard by skiers throughout the week, but the avalanche danger had settled down after the Christmas week sketch cycle so we are hoping for the best.
It's pretty cold this morning and we were in no big hurry to leave our house and by the time we are headed up it is quite pleasant out. We are skinning up a road and then it veers off into a beautiful forest, which leads up right up to treeline below Ohio Peak. From there we can see a bomb crater where a helicopter unsuccessfully tried to get Battleship to slide, way across the way nearish the Ophir Pass road. We can also see a few humans headed up a long steep ridge above Silvertone (the Anvil?). Again, the perspective of familiar peaks now made unfamiliar is a fun challenge to identify them with faces hidden that we usually see.
We decide to take a short lap then another that will lead us back to the car. We have another group ahead of us that are trying to be un-cool but by the time we see then 30 minutes later and they realize there is more than enough snow for us all, they are friendlier. It's pretty thin getting up to where we start, but once we poke around the corner from the wind scour the rocks are hidden enough to forget about them and we make our plan of where to reconvene in a safe zone below.
Because I am the weak link I go after Julie and before J, she hoots and hollers as she makes her way to the trees, and it is immediately apparent the snow is better than we had anticipated. Of course I am nervous when I go: I haven't really ski toured above treelike yet, it feels pretty exposed, and I really want to ski well. And I do. I get to Julie, then J reaches us, we marvel at the snow quality, then map out our next section - who skis first, what line we each want, and where we are meeting up again.
The next section is super fun, down a wide gully with roly poly features , then onto the next section, where we reconnoiter again and finally stop to put our skis back on, have a snack and some Constant Comment, and laugh about how insanely good the snow is.
We skin up through this incredible forest of huge spruce trees, widely spaced and solemn, the unfriendly/friendly group ahead of us, and we figure out a plan with them based on where they are headed. The map is moderately helpful in helping us figure out what we think is just beyond a ridge, we at least know the general direction we want to migrate, so we skin up above treeline again, discuss our options and do some investigating.
 |
| Julie's perfect form :) |
We ski the top pitch, then assess the next section. The light is super tricky where we are, and we watch J head over to what looks like a shoulder or a nose, only to realize, as he does, that it is not either of those things, just a smallish ravine of sorts but not really. Hard to explain.
J gets some shots of me and Julie making our way to our next meeting spot in the sun:
 |
| Bank shot! |
The terrain is super fun here, with big rolling features and consistent snow the whole way down, I didn't fall (even thought I could see that J was nervous for me, even from looking at his body language when he was way below and shouted up that there was some wind riffle to be aware of).
And then we are together, resting on our laurels:
Getting back to the car is kind of like skiing down Telluride Trail at the end of the day, winding road, curving around and providing some fun corner drops. I decide to skip one unknown section that J and Julie explore, it is close to 3pm and I am tired and don't feel like wallowing around in a tree well, which my legs are telling me is a distinct possibility.
The Brown's Gulch day was significant in that we skied with someone else (dun-dun-dunnnn) and it was such a great fit. Three is safer than two, and getting up high above treeline has its own challenges that were good to experience, especially with 2 humans I trust so much. Those 2 have been skiing their whole lives so it was kind of like having 80 years of experience with me. I'll take it.
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