Day 11: The Roadside Attraction

The front door shuts, as the kids rush out to catch the 9 o'clock bus, to catch the gondola, to get to Saturday Ski Club by 9:30. J, buckling his ski boot says, "God I love this age." The kids. No more of this: Where is my glove? You've got 7 minutes! Yes, you need to wear your down vest. My sock feels funny….

Just this: getting their shit together, and getting out the door, on their own.

SIDE NOTE: We love the Telluride Ski and Snowboard Club. The kids love the Telluride Ski and Snowboard Club.

The day started out pretty cool as we had visits to our bird feeder from not only the black-capped and mountain chickadees, but both red- and white-breasted nuthatches, and a female hairy woodpecker. If you suet it, they will come. Of course the arrival of each bird is shrieked (by me): "WHITE BREASTED NUTHATCH!!" and all lesser birds (magpies and sparrows) are shooed away (by me) by racing across the living room, flapping my arms, frantically tapping on the window and muttering, "Fucking magpies" or "Assholes" or some such idle threat as the rest of the family rolls their eyes whilst eating buckwheat pancakes.

Anywho, the kids have now fled, and we are hopping in the car to ski The Roadside Attraction, a nice little shot right off the road in between Lizard Head Pass and Rico. We are hoping for few or no tracks from other skiers, as it is not that big of an area, and our expectation is that the snow is still good. 

Have I mentioned that whenever we are going through the decision-making process of what to do with ourselves, whether it is hikes/peaks/backpacks in the summer, desert hikes/backpacks in the spring and fall, or ski tours in the winter, I take it on as a mini-competition to see who comes up with the winning idea? It makes it waaaay more fun when we are weighing all our options and factoring in drive time, weather, possible crowds, personal objectives, etc… to pretend that I have to beat JC for coming up with the best idea. Last summer I think he won out, he pulled a couple of "outside the box" ideas out of his fundament, that proved to be fantastic excursions, and he does have a major advantage in the winter with his experience and sense of snow, but today I nailed it with The Roadside Attraction. I actually think he may have been considering it already and maybe he "gave it to me" but I was the first one to suggest it. Just sayin'.

So we drive around the corner and get our first glimpse of it and there are what appear to be 2 sets of tracks, but only on the bottom half. The top half and the skier's left that is a little steeper and shadier, so potentially has the best snow, is untracked except for a skin track across it. What does that mean you ask? It means by the people who skied here yesterday, they left the best skiing for us AND by skinning across it they drastically reduced the avalanche danger in the most dangerous spot! This photo is taken after we slew it and are driving away but it helps to have a visual:

The "nose" tracks on the left, the other set on the right by the treeline.

We skin up to the top, and make a plan. Here I am in my power pose:

And the plan ends up being 4 laps: 2 in the steep skier's left shady area and 2 on the "nose".We take our skins off, take a few turns to meet up and assess the next pitch, and are rewarded with some incredible snow, right from the get-go. Down to the bottom, back to our starting point, skins on, back up to the top. This time we ski down the nose, back up to the top, down the nose again, then calculate we have time for one more, head back up and take the skier's left again. The snow was absolutely perfect every single turn from top to bottom.

You can just make out Lizard head on the horizon between 2 trees.

This was particularly exciting for me, as multiple laps is kind of the norm and I want to start having the strength to do them, which as we all know, is mostly mental, backed by some heavy duty ass and thighs.

Back up for more!

Just me and the tree, throwing our shadows around.

So we high-tail it back to the ski area where we meet the kids at 3 when they finish up ski club. Cella has just done Gold Hill 9 (!) and we follow Anthony into the terrain park and ski alongside him while he does his crazy giant I-can-barely-watch jumps, then we all ski down to catch the bus home.

Here is Cella's little group at the top of Gold Hill 9:

That's her bottom right, all pink and purple.

Awesome ski day for everyone :)