Ha ha, what a sweet weekend! I went mountain-biking on Friday, paddled Pine creek yesterday, and now I got to ski! Whooo-hooo! I love living here :)
After skiing the Angel of Shavano last weekend, Matt and I wanted to make some more turns. The Independence Pass was opened just a few days ago, and he took a scouting trip up there. The snow still seemed good... and so he, I, and Kathy Mears drove up there last Sunday morning. It's been a long time since I have been there -- 3-4 years almost! And so I forgot how far it was, and we got to the top with the "low gasoline" light already on. For that reason, we decided to ski onto the Leadville side, so that we minimized the driving.
We brought a bicycle to run the shuttle, and it looked like I was going to ride back up to get the truck, but with low gas we decided to chance it and just hitch a ride. Lots of cars were driving by, seemed like a much easier way to go.
There were some other skiers, and one of them was skinning up. Laika chased after the other two skiers, and didn't want to come back -- she was probably afraid that I'd leave her in the truck. So I had to chase her on my bike, do the alpha-dog routine, and she stayed close after that. All three of us hiked up -- Kathy wore ski boots, Matt hiking shoes, and I had sneakers. It was a beautiful hike -- plenty of snow around, but we were mostly walking on old grass and rocks. Incredible mountain views all around, including the Maroon Bells. Beautiful.
After getting to the first set of runs, we decided to skip going the Aspen side (it was still a possibility), and to instead explore the bowl on the Leadville side. Where we were was full of cornices, and none of us wanted to drop into there blind. The three other skiers did that, as you can see on the next picture. They were too far for me to get pictures of them making turns..
We kept hiking, planning to go over a mini-summit and ski off the saddle.
There was some talus (loose rock) to deal with towards the top of the mini-summit, and we converted to using hands and feet to climb. When we got to the top, well, it turned out that it was be pretty hard to get to the saddle -- perhaps a 300-400 foot downclimb, down a fairly steep and loose rocky rib!
It was pretty steep. I tied the poles to my pack, downclimbed the rock, then went up and got their packs down. Then they came down, and we agreed that skiing this chute was the safest thing to do. It looked pretty steep from the top!
Before we did, though, I walked a little farther to see what our options were. And skiing was the best one :)
Matt dropped in first, made some sweet turns, and tested the snow. It was great! Dropping in felt on the edge -- jump or ski off a foot ledge onto a 45-55 degree slope... without much place to run if anything slid. But, the snow felt good. Kathy was going to go next, but she was nervous too, and while putting on her gear she dropped both her ski poles down the chute! So.. I went second, with Laika following, and tossed her the nearest pole.
I'll let the pictures tell the rest -- we had a blast skiing, and it turned out to be probably the best run we could have made -- long, steep, beautiful snow.
After all was done, we had to hike maybe 300-400 yards to the road, where we ditched all our gear. While Kathy and Matt held onto Laika, I started walking up the road with my ski poles. And soon enough I got a ride -- from the coolest car on the road, a little red sporty convertible! I had a fun conversation with the driver, and he dropped me off on top of the pass. After that we had a beer in Twin Lakes, took a look at Lake Creek (it'll be a while before I paddle it), and were back in town with a good few hours of daylight left...
