Day 13: Secret Mustang Stashes and New Ninja Top

Still in the good January snow cycle, we take another Mustang excursion with very low expectations (do you recognize a pattern? "If you're not satisfied, lower your expectations") on a Saturday Kids In Ski Club Day.

Our expectations are low not so much because of the amount or quality of snow we expect to find, but because of the amount of tracks we expect to find on all the safer routes. 

I am trying out my new Ninja top that I purchased the day before. I has a hood and an off-set zipper that lets you reveal only your serious weather-assessing face at the top of the skin track. Yes, my avalanche beacon on my belly makes me look frumpy and pregnant, but check out the Ninja top!!

Serious weather-assessing Ninja Face.

We run into Bill and Dr. Peter, quickly assess where each person is skiing, then Bill gets a crackling voice on his Motorola from Parker, his 3 year old at home in Ophir ("Hi dad." "Hi Parker") It was pretty cute.

We decide to ski Mustang in a way that allows me to learn a little more about the terrain and routes, and us to poke around sniffing out untracked snow. It is so much fun! I successfully navigate some tighter steeper trees, then we traverse across an opening and marvel at how different the snow quality can be with just the slightest difference in angle away from the San Juan Sun, even in January.

The rare selfie. 

I like skiing like that, where you just enjoy being outside, watching the light change and analyzing the snow as you go, getting some surprisingly good turns by being observant, patient, and appreciative. There was plenty of untracked snow out there. Plenty.

Short post about that day. But that's kind of just all it was.

Day 12: Two Mustangs! and the Gift of the Magi! (sort of)

I have probably mentioned a time or two about how small our house is, which is mostly true when the kidlngs are with us. When it's just the two of us our home is "plenty" as the Hawaiians say. That being said, we still have to navigate tiny space considerations like One person in the kitchen at a time, and Should we hang more coat hooks or get rid of some coats, and What else can we cram under the dining room table that we use as a storage vessel?

Our upstairs bathroom is such that if 2 people are in it, one must remain sitting on the toilet (lid down preferably) while the other Does Stuff (teeth, hair, etc…). JC likes to keep an extra toothbrush and toothpaste in the downstairs bathroom which is just a toilet and sink, so he can do his teeth before his early morning forays without waking us all up, and he often does them downstairs at night as well.

Why am I telling you this, you are surely by now querying in your little brains.

Well, a little while ago we were readying ourselves for bed, which seems to take an unreasonable amount of time when all I really want to do is just Get In Bed, but anyway, I went upstairs and waited in our bedroom for a few minutes to give JC some space to do his teeth in the upstairs bathroom, while unbeknownst to me, he was doing his teeth in the downstairs bathroom to give me space to do mine in the upstairs bathroom.

We crossed paths when he crept upstairs (he walks around like a goddamn Indian, and inadvertently scares the shit out of me on a daily basis because you never hear him coming and then he suddenly looms in the darkness, silent…) and it suddenly came to light that neither of us had used the upstairs bathroom out of consideration for the other. We stared at each other for a moment until I whispered, "It's like The Gift of the Magi!". JC gave me that look that a dog does when you blow those stupid silent whistles, cocked his head to one side, and got in bed. So it may not be exactly like The Gift of the Magi, but sorta kinda close, in my book.

Anywho, we head out to Ophir to check out Mustang a couple of weeks ago for our usual Saturday ski tour excursion. We had medium-high hopes about the amount of snow we had received overnight, then dampened our expectations when the Ophir road showed less new snow than we had in town, but by the time we crest the top of Mustang, we realize we are in for it! In a good way.

A lone skier had broken trail for us the whole way up, which is not necessary but appreciated (thank you Dylan) and when we survey our first segment, we are overwhelmed with the amount of new snow - a total surprise to see the snow reaching up towards our knees. We reassess our routes and form a slightly safer plan for each of the segments, then start to make our way down, face shots the whole way.

As we are shuffling back to the start of the ascent up the jane's skin track, I am thinking my throat is kind of scratchy but I really want to ski another one, I don't want to get sick but how can I just go home and be done with all this before noon?? and then what, ski on the area all afternoon?? so I said, I'm in for another one. We see some of the Ophir old-timers heading up and they pass us, then we borrow some nice coconutty smelling sunscreen face stick thingie from a guy who is heading up the same way as us. 

Top of the second lap!

Turns out my energy is better on the second lap up, which becomes a subject of discussion and my conclusion is this: I may wake up naturally fairly early (between 6 and 7 every day) but it takes my body quite some time to really get moving. Yes I may eat a heavier breakfast but my energy has always come to fruition by late morning, and that is exactly what happens this day. We march up to the top again, connect with the old farts, hear a few stories about Ophir that neither one of us knew, then make our way down again, loving every turn. I am thrilled to have the strength and mental fortitude to do 2 Mustangs and still not be all that tired after skiing.

And then… within 17 feet of the car I have a total bonk. I was pretty much ripping into our bag of salty chips and peanut butter sandwiches while simultaneously taking my ski boots off and getting into the car.

Super successful day and incredible snow. Again. Here's some more eye candy of those blissful snowy January days:

P.S. Powder skiing is not overrated.

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 :)

Day 10: Brown's Gulch

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.

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.

Day 9: Norelco Land

Saturday, December 26 in Telluride, as many of  you will recall, was cold as shit. The high at the top of the ski area was 3. All day that was as "warm" as it got. We opted for a ski area day, because we had just received 51" of snow in 7 days and the area was skiing great. We did a few hike-to's and a few Gold Hills and it was still truly a struggle for me to stay warm. Truthfully, I did not dress appropriately. (You know what they say: there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes). I should have worn my insulated pants and "Down Patrol" giant marshmallow puffy jacket. The coldest part of my body - believe it or not - was my ass. When I got home and took a shower, my ass was so cold that the hot water of the shower turned cold when it hit my backside and ran down my legs. I shit you not. I almost came down the stairs to show JC how red my ass was before I got in the shower but decided that was weird and didn't do it.

Anywho, the point of that is leading into our Sunday Dec. 27 ski tour. I had to work on Christmas Day, but my awesome boss said I could come in at 10 and our Big Plan was to get up early (which we did, at 5am), leave the house at 6 (which we did, in a white-out blizzard), drive to Ophir and start skinning at 6:30. Here is where the plan goes awry. In these parts, weather can be very isolated, so we figured, let's start driving and see what happens. It is not out of the realm of possibility to get to Ophir and it is not snowing at all.

On this day, Christmas, that was not the case. We made it as far as the Mountain Village entrance:

 and decided to turn back and wait for the lifts to start running so I could get a couple of runs in before work. It was a great decision. I got to talk to my family on Christmas morning, and we were some of the first folks to ski down Coonskin, which had been groomed the night before but now held somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 inches or so on it, so we just bombed down it together, twice, then parted ways so I could ski to work.

So. That was 12/25. 12/26 we skied on the freezing cold ski area and Sunday, 12/27, we head out to Ophir for our once-a-week ski tour. 

It was kind of tricky when we started to talking about our plan for the day. I have an admitted insecurity about how tired I get and how much I enjoy periods of rest, mainly because JC has the endurance and stamina of a goddamn moose, whereas I tend to vacillate between periods of high energy and motivation and lower energy and the desire to lie in bed and read all day, interspersed with sunbathing (summer), yoga (any season), and sipping tea/nibbling dark chocolate (winter). Sunday morning I was tired. Tired from the increased work over the holidays, tired from the brutal cold and skiing the day before, tired from the darkest part of the year, whatever, I was just tired.

So when we start to talk about what our plan is for the day, I am thinking, shit, here I am all tired again, am I going to have to be the one to say, the idea of nibbling dark chocolate while loading more books on my kindle is infinitely more appealing than putting on my ski boots and bracing against the cold?

Thankfully, JC said he was looking for a moderately easy and safe ski tour "just to get outside for a while." I suspect he was lying but who cares, it worked. And it was warming up nicely so far.

The avalanche warnings had gone from flashing red, to red, to orange, from several days ago and we are looking for terrain that had been skied already. Where we park in East Ophir we can see Jane's and Mustang, and surprisingly, neither had tracks on them, which left us thinking about alternatives to the usual routes down Swamp, as we were guessing it had not been skied either. There appeared to be one set of tracks ahead of us, but that's not really good enough. We were looking for some skier compaction and evidence that what we wanted to ski looked pretty safe.

The forest this day is beautiful. It has snowed so much that the inner branches of the spruce trees, all the way to the trunks, were plastered with snow.

As we ski up the Swamp track, we notice that the person ahead of us has skied the meadows, that the skin track kind of meanders in and out of. So there goes the possibility that the person ahead of us has skied the Main Event, and we start to consider the brilliant idea of doing what they did. Tree skiing at this low angle is incredibly safe, and so far we are only seeing one track. 

We get up to a place where we can peer out onto the Main Event and no, it has not been skied. The decision was made. We will ski Swamp Meadows, which I am secretly more excited about because it looks super fun and different and I am kind of scared of Swamp today.

We ski down through a couple of beautiful snowy meadows, loving every minute of it, then put our skins back on and head up to do it again, but possibly explore poking out into a new area. Which we do. This takes us back down to the road but is a little more roly-poly and exciting, as the snow is still incredible and it was like our own magical little land.

JC was fortunate enough to have the whole week off from work, and happened to run into some friends  a few days later as he was skiing in Ophir and when he described where we skied, they said, oh that is called Norelco Land! Like the ads for Norelco razors from the 70s:

Check out Santa zipping around on that incredible snow!

Anyway, we made the best of it and discovered a whole new zone that is super safe and the snow is really good. We will let someone else be the first people to ski out in the open, while we tool around in the meadowy trees, laughing at how little we need to have a fun day outside.