CB

Winter continues as I bounce between Boulder and Crested Butte.



Jake and I volunteered for the Prater Cup, a Junior Olympic qualifier. I mostly numbered and watched gates for faults. I never thought that 11 year old kids could go that fast. It was a great cause (free lift tickets for me, oh wait, the kids)


Eat Here!


Fix the heel, fix the problem. I've been complaining about sore knees. This is usually in combination with leaning on my poles, weezing after a run of coming up out of dozens of tele turns. I used to look at AT skiing as unclean, a bastardization of skiing (randonee: French for "can't tele"). Lately I've been seeing the wisdom in practicing a form of skiing that doesn't leave you exhausted, exposed to non-releasable binding related injuries, and fighting like heck to keep up with your buddies. So I headed on down to the Alpineer to take a trip to the dark side. AT skis are actually pretty cool. There are several problems though: they're expensive, I suck at Alpine skiing, and it's not very stylish. Still, it's a viable option.



It was pissing down wet snow that was borderline rain. Not a great day to be on the mountain and the Nordic tracks were in nasty shape. I decided to head out for a mellow skin up to get some excercise...no avy terrain and a decent amount of skier traffic, left a note with my where-abouts. I got directions to Snodgrass road. I started out and about halfway in realized I was on Gothic road. Big, big lesson in how easy it is to get turned around out there.



Got in a day on the hill before heading back to Boulder. 12 inches of mashed potatoes. It was too warm to squeeze powder out of the clouds. Ironically I commented the night before about the danger of knee injuries while skiing heavy snow...and Courntney strained her ACL the next morning. She's fine and back on skis.