Days 8, 9, 10 - Big Storms, Maiden Dawn Patrol, and Going Bust at Alta

As expected, I'm behind on my ski day logging. But I guess that's not so bad since I've been busy skiing.

Day 8 - Dawn Patrol!!

Thursday morning (Dec 20), Josh and I decided we wanted to get a piece of the big storm that was hitting SLC. We got up at 4:00AM and busted up to Solitude and Willow to ski hourglass/USA Bowl. It was snowing as we skinned, but relatively pleasant. We made good time to the top of the ridge, but when we got there the wind was whipping! Wished we had a rope as we looked down into the Monitors - I bet they would've went huge with a nice fat cornice drop. Huckering down, we traversed the ridge to USA Bowl, hoping that it was sheltered from the wind. Um....not so much. USA Bowl was completely raked. Gametime decision to traverse back to hourglass and get off the ridge. The snow was good and deep, with a little bit of a windslab on top. Tricky skiing on the top half, but nice soft snow in the bottom half of the run. Not a lot of turning to be had in 1+ feet of new snow on 20 degree slopes, but it was an awesome workout. Great way to start the day.....except for the drive down. The Element needed tires in a bad way, and that morning the plow happened to not be plowing down the canyon in the morning. The result was a ice-skating 2 mph drive down the canyon that took about five years off my life. Let's just say we got new tires on Friday night. Much better.

Stats for the day:
4.4 miles
1800 ft vertical

(click on the maps below for route and profile info!)



Day 9 - A First at Solitude, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Honeycomb Canyon

After beating my head against my desk on Friday (Dec 21) as two feet of snow was being skied up the canyons, I felt a small bit of respite when I heard that Solitude hadn't opened Honeycomb. Josh and I got up to Powderhorn by about 9:15, psyched to get some well-deserved powder. However, honeycomb wasn't open. We spent the morning skiing the Powderhorn trees and finding some good stuff off Summit, but we were getting a little worried that we were going to get the shaft. I started bitching about how I always have the worst timing, and I'm never the one that's getting off the lift as patrol opens gates. I'm always the one that takes off down the slope right before the rope drops. Well, maybe it was my time. Lo and behold, as we're getting off the lift, patrol is flipping the Honeycomb sign to "open". We followed the patroller off into Black Bess and dropped in early to avoid the massive amounts of avy debris from the morning's bombings. Good stuff. After Josh completely exploded on a compression in the Honeycomb runout (funny, but I'm glad you're not hurt honey!) we hauled down to the lift, and rallied back down to Sunrise. 20 minutes later, we were hiking up the Summit ridge to ski Buckeye. Good lord, it was good. We did about 4 more laps before we had to leave, and it was hard to say goodbye. Skiing next to your tracks after the 40 minute lift loop is pretty sweet.

Day 10 - Remembering Why We Have to Get Alta Season Passes Next Year

I try to deny it. I try to say how much I love Solitude. I try to convince myself that Alta is not all it's worked up to be. God damn, I'm not going to fight it anymore. I LOVE THAT PLACE.

I met up with Tara and Chase on Monday Dec 24, as they were working on day 3 in a row. Chase was pretty worked, but he was up for another awesome morning. The temps had risen considerably overnight and we were stripping layers all morning in the heat. We started the day in Supreme and found some awesome snow in Supreme Bowl. Definitely heat-affected, but still soft and really creamy. It was great catching up and laughing on the chairlift - it seems like nothing ever changes when we all get back together. We hit the rope tow to get back over to Collins (Sugarloaf traverse was closed) and Gwen and Tara wanted to get up to Gunsight. We hit the wrong traverse and ended up at Thirds. The wind was raking the ridge, but once we dropped down into Gunsight, it was beautiful. I forgot how fun it is to ski long, steep runs. Another rope tow, and the Hays wanted to go in for lunch. I wasn't ready, so I took off and decided to check out Jitterbug/No Name. The entrance wasn't too great, but the skiing was awesome. I met up with Connie and Craig, and Tara joined us since Chase was done. We did a few more runs off the high T and I called it day to get home to my boy. Of course, as if to reciprocate for Saturday's excellent luck, I left right about the time it started snowing. Craig told me later that High Boy was on all afternoon. God, I suck.

I love that place. The snow stays good longer. The runs are long and steep. There are lots of friends to ski with. The views are spectacular. I guess we're skiing at least 11 days at Solitude this year, because I'm ready to go back to Alta.

Day 7 - Pain, Suffering, and Good Turns in Days Fork

Josh was out-of-his-mind psyched to get out skiing on Saturday, and I was having a hard time motivating. My tour on Friday with Chris had really kicked my ass, and I knew it was going to be a matter orf mental strength to get out of bed the next day. I did, however slowly, and we ended up meeting James at Alta a little after 9:00.

The day started out beautiful, and we followed the cattle train up Flagstaff. I felt alright, just plugging along at my snail's pace. As typical, the wind whipped up as we were approaching the ridgeline and I silently cursed that horrid approach. The clouds had moved in and the light was ridiculously flat. Great.

But, the silver lining to the horrid cold was that the snow was still great. We dropped in on Two Dogs and decided to do a lap on West Bowl in the trees. We motored up to the ridgeline and were extremely excited by the quality of the snow. A quick pit showed three feet of consolidated snow to a small facet layer at the ground. Shear testing looked good, so we hit it. The snow was awesome, and the extra hike was so worth it.

After more fueling up, we started the slog back up to the LCC ridge. Now the fun really got started. The south-facing exit getting out of LCC was NASTY. An inch of breakable crust was coming off in plates while we dodged buried trees and rocks. Lots of traversing and kick-turning (FUN!) We skied the bottom of Toledo Bowl, and finally the snow softened out a bit for the last couple hundred feet. After watching Josh double-ejecting on a compression, we got back to the car and headed straight for Lone Star.

One good thing - I think I found a good method to keep my hands warm. I tried out our Mammut ice climbing gloves for skinning. The concept was that if I never had to take my gloves off, my hands would never get TOO cold. Well, it seemed to work. I was able to get in and out of my bag, handle skins, eat, dress, and everything else without ever having to expose my hands to the air. No more glove liners. I used my mittens for skiing and for when my hands got cold, and it was extremely manageable. I think I'm going to toss those stupid REI gloves.

Stats for the day:
3.0 miles
2833 ft vertical

Click below for route and profile info!

Day 6 - Unexpected goodness on Red Stack

I love those storms that you don't see coming. The sleeper storms. No one really cares - 5" overnight? Come on, that's nothing when we need like 3 feet to be able to ski.

But today, the sleeper storm came through in a big way. Chris got to the house around 8:30 and we sauntered up the canyon, skinning up around 9:30. The snow looked like good ol' UTAH snow, and we were psyched. We didn't really have a game plan, other than staying off the NE to NW aspects. We got up to the meadow below the lake and decided that west-facing Red Stack looked pretty nice.



The skin up Tri-Chutes was a little rough on the legs and lungs(early season tours are nasty), so we decided to follow the skin track as far as we could. We cut off from the old skin track about half way up and traversed north into another small gully. The snow was REALLY nice, and the coverage was great in the wind-loaded gully. That 5" that no one cared about turned out to be fun as shit.



I was cold as BALLS today, and my hands really suffered. As long as the sun was out, I was OK, but the clouds arrived around noon and it was a fight for the fingertips. I've got to come up with a better solution.

Miles = 5.1
Vertical = 2595'

Day 5 - Where's my snorkel? Wallerin' at Solitude

On Friday morning, I rolled into the office early and did my usual check of the avy report and weather. The NWS was forecasting a pretty good storm and it looked like 8-9" of snow had already hit the Cottonwoods. I instantly got the "ants-in-the-pants" feeling I always get when a good powder day is brewing while I'm at work. I couldn't sit still, and I kept rotating from work, NWS, TGR, SkiDiva, work, NWS....you get the picture. Anticipation was running high and I felt like I was ready to burst.

After lunch, I checked the forecast again and to my surprise it had been updated. Instead of an additional 6-10" overnight, it had increased to 10-16" overnight. And the storm was forecasted to last through Saturday night. Cue ants-in-pants.

I stayed up late Friday night trying to get my ski clothes through the dryer, and right before I went to bed at 11:00, I saw an update pop up on NWS..."Storm forecasted to stall over Salt Lake area". Ding, ding, ding! The ants had moved from the pants and were now crawling up my neck. I cursed my study group for planning a Saturday morning meeting, although they were nice enough to move it to 8AM.

The next morning, I had to do a double-take at the snow report. Solitude was reporting a 24 hour snow total of 32". Are you fugging kidding me? I pranced through he house all morning and left for school early since I was so antsy. Luckily the group meeting was fast and efficient and I was on my way up the canyon by 10:45. I called Chris to get an update on conditions, and he said "It sucks." My heart dropped a bit since I figured nothing was open and he was bored as hell. "Huh?" I said. "Yeah, it sucks...if you don't like over-the-head blower so deep that you can't breathe. And skiing on to lifts all morning." Joy!!

After hooking up randomly with John and Jack in the parking lot, we met up with Chris as the Powderhorn lift was opening. First run, we decided to hit the trees to skiers left and I had to gasp a little bit as I dropped off the cat track. I instantly dropped in to my waist and it just kept getting deeper. We all giggled like idiots down through the trees, as none of us could turn and I was literally choking on snow. A couple more laps and we were actually whining that the snow was maybe even a little bit too deep. Poor babies.

Rachel met up with us and we got to watch her try out the new snow. We had to help dig her out a couple of times, but she was a good sport and was psyched about her new knee. Jack lost not one, but two poles in the waller-fest. I was worked by 2:30 (sad), but it was a day I won't forget anytime soon. Thank god the snow finally came, and that the season has officially started with a bang!

Saturday night was the Campbell's christmas party and it was a great time. I ended up with a pineapple (who's gifter had to show me how to remove the stem. Huh?) Josh got a redneck Xmas album and iTunes gift card. It was great seeing everyone, but Josh and I both paid the next day. Instead of skiing we had a uneventful (but sorely needed) day full of Costco, movies, and lounging. I was still pretty happy by the end of the day, as I know now that every weekend for the rest of the season will be a ski weekend.

Anxiously waiting for the next ants-in-the-pants day....

Bikes, Bruises, Booze, and Binging - A Thanksgiving to Remember

Ah, Thanksgiving. A time to be with your family, eat until you're sick, and drink for 12 hours straight. This year did not disappoint.

It started at Bill and Kathy's. Josh and I had spent the morning at the skate park and making appetizers (pigs in a blanket) which also became a pseudo-lunch (healthy, I know). The drinking started in earnest at about 2:30. I had brought a 20 oz bottle of my apple mead and proceeded to drink almost the entire thing before dinner. Needless to say, the huge meal helped me out. It was great seeing Bart and Kate, gabbing with Jacque and Kathy, and just chilling out.

Around 6:30, we arrived at my parents house and I promptly started arguing with Tad. Aren't the holidays such a great time to catch up with family members? The night turned into drinking beer and bickering around the kitchen table until Josh got a phone call from the AG household. My parents were all about partying, so we all arrived at the AG's in time for MacDaddy to pour us a shot. Everyone loved the family, and it was a great time. Although Connie and Craig both dropped the ball on my new bike....ugh.

(Speaking of my new bike....I got a new bike!! Josh found a killer deal on an Ironhorse 7Point5 that we just couldn't pass up. We picked it up a few Saturdays back and promptly took it up to Bountiful. I had such a great day and I am so excited about it!)



So the rest of the weekend consisted of bouts of studying in between bike rides and more partying. Friday night was Ricky and Molly's shower at the Hidden Valley BerMansion, complete with a full sushi spread and martini bar. Drunk again. But turkey burning was on the agenda for Saturday and we met up with a huge crew to ride the LCC covert White Pine trail. Extremely difficult, but after the second lap I started to feel more comfortable. I ended up doing the pipe ride and subsequent pipe drop, and I have to admit I felt like a rockstar.

Sunday = more turkey burning. Due to Craig and Rob's pure frustration, yet another huge crew decided to head up to Alta. It ended up being a beautiful day, and the manmade snow wasn't too bad. Connie and I hacked it up on tele gear, and there was a veritable feast of turkey, stuffing, crack cookies, and beer at the top of Collins. The hard core crew had brought their bikes up to Alta and completed the Thanksgiving LCC duathlon with style on the White Pine trail. I wasn't part of the hard core crew, as I sadly had to go home to put some study time in.

So the result of an awesome four day weekend? About 2 pounds of extra junk in the trunk, sleep-deprivation from three post-1:00AM nights, gnarly bruises in mysterious places on my legs, complete depletion of the Petersen PBR stores, a couple of school assignments in the bag, and a huge mutha-fuggin smile on my face.

(3rd ski day, 1840 vertical feet, 3 miles)

Sgt. Tracie's Lonely Hearts Club Brown

After much debate and pangs of guilt, I decided to opt out of another spectacular weekend in Moab. I made my decision based on: 1) pure exhastion and 2) being a total slacker last week with my school group work. I wanted to make the most out of my lonely husbandless weekend, so what did I do? I brewed beer, of course!! (There will be no comment on the Moab trip that I missed. I'm not bitter. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not...)

Scott had given me this recipe over a year ago and it had been sitting in the beer recipe pile gathering dust. I just couldn't bring myself to brew another brown ale, since my first was less than spectacular (drinkable, but a little blah). However, I finally got to taste the renowned brown at Scott's house a few weeks back, and I was counting the days until I could brew a batch of that bad boy. The beer is an amazing blend of Porter chocolatey goodness, a nice mellow hoppiness background, and a very smooth, non-Porter finish. Granted, I was drinking from an all-grain computer-controlled batch served out of a temperature-controlled keg, but I was sold.

I went to the Beer Nut on Saturday to get all my supplies in preparation to brew on Saturday. I had to make some substitutions (see the recipe notes below). On Sunday morning, I hauled all the gear upstairs, cleaned the kitchen up, and I was ready to BREW, baby!

Um, I forgot about water. Off to the grocery store. OK, now I'm ready to BREW! Shit. I go back to the Beer Nut for hop and grain bags.

Goddammit, it's time to BREW! Good lord...I accidently brought up the bottling bucket, which is now full of iodine in the tub. Back downstairs for the right bucket.

Is it time to brew yet? Shoot me in the friggin head...I need a new thermometer - back to the Beer Nut.

Finally, the planets aligned and I got my water boiling. Thank goodness the brewing went much more smoothly than the preparation. Two hours later, I had five gallons of goodness ready to ferment. It started bubbling this morning!


Scott's Dark Brown Ale

2 lbs Maris Otter Malt, crushed
1 lb British Chocolate Malt, crushed
4 lbs Light DME
1 lb Dark Malt Extract
5 oz Fuggles hop pellets (4.5% alpha)

Note: The original recipe called for 6 lbs Maris Otter Malt Extract, which the Beer Nut did not have. I substituted the 2 lbs of malt combined with 4 lbs DME.

Bring approximately 2 gallons of water to 155C and add grains (Maris Otter and Chocolate). Add more water if necessary to cover the grain bag. Steep for 15 minutes and remove grain bag. Squeeze to extract additional liquid, and discard.

Add additional water to brewpot (approximately 3 gallons total) and turn off heat. Slowly add the Light DME and Dark DME until dissolved. Turn heat back on and bring to boiling. Start timer when wort starts boiling.

15 minutes into the boil add 2.5oz Fuggles hops (bittering)

55 minutes into the boil add 2.5oz Fuggles hops (flavoring)

Turn off heat at 60 minutes. Add additional water to brewpot if desired (4 gallons total) and use wort chiller to cool the wort to 80 degrees or less. Once wort is cooled, pour it into the sanitized fermenter, being sure to agitate it for additional oxidation. Add additional water to bring total volume to 5 gallons.

Pitch yeast and allow to ferment ~ 1 week (active fermentation complete). Rack to secondary for at least a week. Bottle with leftover DME.

I wish I would have had a camera to document the process, but alas, Josh took both cameras to Moab.

Fruita and GJ - The Land of Schweet Singletrack and CO Douchebags

With the lack of snow in the Wasatch, and temps averaging in the mid-60's in Moab and Fruita, we decided to get out of town last weekend. James and Traci were up for it, as always, and Fruita was on the agenda since everyone seemed to be in a downhilling rut (not that there's anything wrong with that) and we needed some pedaling.

Friday
Josh and I left town on Friday afternoon (since Josh came down with a mysterious vision problem that morning - he just couldn't see himself going to work). We loaded the Element to the gills with bike and Maddie crap, and rolled into Fruita around 6:00.

Since we had no beer in the car we stopped at the City Market to pick up some firewood and a 12'er of PBR. As we're checking out, the lady asks Josh for ID since he was paying. He obliges and she turns to me and asks for ID. Since I stupidly lost my ID the night of the Aussie Pink Floyd show (don't ask), I didn't have anything to show her. So, instead of accepting defeat, I went into instant defensive psycho-bitch mode.

"Why do I need to show ID? I'm not buying the beer."
"There is a good chance that you will be drinking it, so I need ID."
"WTF? What if I was his 12-yr-old kid? Would you not sell the beer to him because he's with a minor? And how do you assume I would drink this?"
"I'm sorry, that's our policy."
"This is a bunch of crap. That can't be the law. WTF. We're going to the liquor store and I'm staying in the car."

Granted, the lady felt really bad and kept apologizing to us. On the way out of the store, we kind of got the idea that there was some police sting action going on and the checkers were under surveillance. So, it wasn't really her fault, but it still felt good being a bitch.

So, after a stop at the liquor store for some 2 Below and 90 Shilling, we're off to 18 Road. We got one of the last camps (CO people were arriving in droves), yanked the bikes off the car, and busted up the road with Maddie for a quick Kessel Run before dark. Perfect timing...we rolled back into camp with about 20 minutes to spare. Maddie was a Kessel superstar, staying right on my wheel the whole way. Needless to say, she crashed pretty hard that night.


How sweet is that?

An awesome turkey burger and potato salad dinner, a pack of firewood, and 3-4 beers later, James and Traci showed up. A little planning for the next day, and we called it a night.

Saturday
We rallied a Kessel Run with Maddie before breakfast to wear her out for the day. Josh "Rachel Ray" Petersen cooked up a mean breakfast of pancakes and eggs, and the morning warmed up nicely into the 50's by 10 o'clock. As we passed other camps on the way out, there seemed to be a large ratio of spandex, weeny bikes, and Colorado plates. Hmmm....

All of us were psyched to check out some of the Grand Junction rides since none of us had been over there before. From the descriptions and reviews we'd heard about the Ribbon, we were very intrigued. We spent an hour looking at maps and trail descriptions trying the figure out how the hell we were supposed the ride the damn thing. Eventually, we decided that even if the book didn't mention it, we could shuttle it. Perhaps the lack of shuttle info could be related to our morning observation of the Colorado spandex phenomenon?

We rolled into the lower Tabeguache parking area and piled into the Suby to drive up to the upper Ribbon parking lot. As we're gaining thousands of feet of elevation, I'm looking at the map thinking "why the heck does the trail description say to go UP the Ribbon and DOWN the paved road we're on now? Are we missing something?" James and Josh strapped on their armor, and we hoped we made the right decision. Well, it ends up the author of the guide book must have been a local CO masochistic douche, because shuttling was DEFINITELY the way to go.


The huge slickrock slab. The views didn't suck.

Instantly we were whooping and yee-hawing as the trail opened up onto a huge slab of featureless slickrock. It was incredible! One slab ended, and we traversed an exposed ridge of singletrack. Then it opened up again onto another slab! The upper section continued like this for a couple of miles, with some gnarly drops (portages) and singletrack in between. Eventually it spit us out into a dry creekbed. And who knew a dry creekbed could be so fun to ride? The remainder of the trail was a combination of loose and not-so-loose singletrack, some technical rocky sections, a huge portage, and some exposure. Very, very fun day.


Josh on the singletrack

On the last big singletrack decent, we ran into a guy coming up the trail. Full tighty-whitey race gear and a wimpy bike - surprise, surprise. He asked whether we were enjoying the trail and how we liked the climb up. Uh...we didn't do the climb. He shot us a look of pure shock and proceeded to tell us that the only way to truly experience the Ribbon is to climb it. Uh, OK. He'd never heard of anyone shuttling it before. What kind of weird, retarded world of mountain biking had we been warped into here??

Finally, back to the trailhead, and we're surrounded by spandex, moose knuckles, carbon frames (whaa??) and too many people with a body fat % less than a gallon of skim milk. The jaw-drop looks we got as we rolled in with armor and bikes with more than 3" of travel was priceless. Again, after telling people what we had done, we mostly got deer-in-headlights looks. Wow. Can't wait to bring more of the Utard crew to rip the shit out of that ride - as a shuttle.

But the day was not done yet. Back to camp for an awesome dinner and a few beers around the campfire.

Maddie wanted a better view of the fire

Around 8:00, it was time to bust out the lights for a little night-riding action. I'd never done it before, so I was extremely excited. We decided that Joe's Ridge would be a good choice, since there were a few spicy descents, some exposure, and we could finish it off with the bottom half of Kessel.

Night riding on Joe's

I was hooked! My light died at the bottom of Joe's, but Josh decided against another lap and gave me his. Traci, James, and I did one more lap on Kessel before calling it a night. Damn, I wish those lights weren't so expensive!

Sunday
Kokopelli is a great spot to hit on the way out of town. James and Josh were dying to try Moore Fun, a highly technical loop that meets up with Mary's. Traci and I weren't into it so we rode Horsethief Bench. Traci told me it was her favorite Kokopelli ride and it did not disappoint! The singletrack was buff and beautiful with just enough technical rocky sections. The views of the river were beautiful too.




We finished up on Mary's Loop and met up with James and Josh. Apparently Moore Fun was an ass-kicker, but they had a good time (see Josh's blog - I'm sure he'll have his trip report up soon).

Love, love, love Fruita.