Run, ski, ski, run...

Frickin' marvelous. ~ Steve Willett

Sun: 1:00, 6 miles, treadmill
Mon: 4:00, ski @ Crested Butte
Tues: 4:00, ski @ Crested Butte
Wed: 1:19:14, 9.5 miles, treadmill/track tempo run

Instead of trying to cram a bunch of running in at the end of the year to reach some arbitrary yearly mileage (don't hold me to not doing that in the future, however), I decided some skiing was in order. After getting in a nice recovery run on Sunday (and feeling pretty great, actually, after Saturday's effort), I jammed over to Gunny early Monday morning and met up with Dad, Donna and my cousins David, Dianne and their daughter Reagan. (Wow, that was a lot of Ds.) The skiing wasn't particularly awesome but it was good to see everyone. I then gorged myself at Donita's, hung out with Dad a little bit (Donna was wiped out after chasing Dad and me around all day), then did it again on Tuesday. Slightly better conditions on Tuesday and a storm rolled in late in the day so hopefully conditions improve.

I jammed back home Tuesday evening and was greeted to an awesome dinner/snack made by Rach. Too awesome.

I had a bunch of work on which to catch up today so just hit the gym late to do a quick tempo run. Felt great to get back with the program (albeit somewhat abbreviated). Looking forward to starting the year off with some skiing and then have a long run planned for Sunday. As always, frickin' marvelous.

~stubert.

Lil Grandad...

That's what she said. ~ Michael Scott

Here's some video Pete shot of me in the Grandads at A-Basin. This looked a lot bigger from above.



~stubert.

Three feet high and rising...

That pile is Rach's car.

I didn't even have to use my AK. ~ Ice Cube

Yesterday was pretty sweet. Pete and I met fairly early at Kermit's to get in some pow turns at A-Basin. Turns out we were ahead of the major cluster that eventually closed I-70 but a little behind on the first chair action. That was okay, however as we still got in many hours of great skiing. AND managed to make it home without getting stranded (though it did take Pete 6 hours or so).

So the conditions were prime after 16 inches of snow overnight and more consistently throughout the day. It was seriously puking snow up at the Basin and the locals were out in force. Even Gary made the scene after suffering some sort of back injury that kept him out most of the year. Pete and I rallied on Pali all day in search of the goods and fun stuff to drop. The wind was doing its weird wind thing (out of the Northeast again for some reason) which made seeking the best snow a little more of a challenge (it usually loads up with winds out of the West) but we managed just fine. Pete worked on sticking the drop off Mini Kong and I finally stomped Little Grandad. Sweet!

The drive home was slow going and Pete's car was seriously buried by the time we got back to Kermit's. Once I got home, I was greeted with a couple feet of snow in the driveway (and a rather large pile of munge from the plows). I had mowed the driveway prior to heading up in the morning so this was all accumulation during the day. I mowed again (while it dropped at least 4 inches an hour) then once more before bed. We also lost power, which was pretty awesome but the best was the jackassery that went down during the course of the evening.

Since we had no power, entertainment became watching people try to deal with the heavy snowfall. First, some guy drove down the road, backed up WAY back up the road, then came back down and for some inexplicable reason tried to do a 30 point turn-around in front of our house only to get stuck in our driveway as his truck died. Apparently there was some marital tension going on as well and I think that at one point keys were tossed into the snow bank but I am not certain. In any event, they finally got the truck rolling again only to reappear two hours later in a different car, which they stuffed into the snowbank at the edge of our driveway, did another 13-point turn around and went on their merry way. There were also many snowmobilers racing up and down our road which always is good for a laugh.

So our power came back on about 10:45 then we went to bed. When I got up, the road crew had deposited a pile of snow and road munge 4 feet tall at the end of our driveway. Disappointed. I spent much of the morning getting that moved out of the way then the rest of the day getting the truck out and able to roll. All in all, we got over 3 feet in about 36 hours and it is still snowing lightly as I write this. Springtime in the Rockies... gotta love it.

~stubert.

Wasatch love...

No channels and nothing's on. ~ me

Heading up again this morning. Yesterday was awesome. Hit Solitude for
a half day of pow. Loads of fun. First true powder skiing of the year.

Today we are going back into Wolverine Cirque (I think) to spin some
BC laps. We may go to the show this afternoon but are playing that by
ear. Our shooting plans seem to have fallen thru but that is okay.
Good to just go make turns at this point.

More later.

~stubert.

______________________
via mobile

Tweaked...

If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough. ~ Mario Andretti

Headed up to the Rock late morning today to get in a few turns. Hoping to build on the successes of yesterday. It was cold but relatively calm today but conditions were far worse than yesterday's dreaminess.

I made a few runs back in Salto and was feeling fairly well... not as great as yesterday but definitely getting the flow of things and skiing relaxed. Pretty much what I need to be doing. On my third or fourth trip down through the glades, I stopped to help some poor monkey who was in WAY over his head retrieve his ski. This was shortly after watching him nearly take a header through the woods at an alarming rate of speed. Did I mention he was on one ski? Seems like I did. After he came to a stop, I skied down to him and gave him his missing stick, then made a couple of turns and proceeded to tweak my right knee a little. Nothing major but a definite set-back to my plans for world domination.

So now I am rockin' the ice shuffle, vitamin I, Arnica (which Pete doesn't believe in, kinda like gmail) and rest. We'll see how it feels Wednesday but I definitely am looking out for Thursday when we are planning to shoot in Utah. I'll keep you posted.

~stubert.

Ex-STREAM skiing...

Idiots rule. ~ Jane's Addiction

Today's adventure began with a trip to the Vet. Sam, our wonderful Siamese kitty is sick. This is really horrible news after the loss of Oliver just a couple of weeks ago. We have pretty much ruled out the pet food problems that have been seen around the country but Sam is having the same problems as Oliver and this is not good news. She is back home now and resting.

Post Vet, I hooked up with Luke and Pete for some backcountry skiing. We opted out of another Chihuahua/Margories loop for a sojourn into the National Forest around Eldora. We were promptly kicked out of the Eldora lot and headed down to the Hessie Trailhead to try our luck skinning up the back way. After several false starts, we were on our way.

The skin took WAY longer than we hoped as we did a bunch of poking around to see if there was an easy way to ford South Boulder Creek which, being May 7, is roaring. No luck. So after bushwhacking back up to the main trail and getting a ton of practice donning and removing our skis, we finally made it to Lost Lake.

Conditions were a little sketchy so we opted out of starting our ski from the top of Left/Right Chutes and just launched out descent from the roll. Not a lot of vert but still good lines were lain. Lain? Sure, lain.

On the way out, Pete jacked his knee up which made for some interesting navigating. We decided to traverse over to Corona and jam straight back down to the car. Pete handled it all with good humor and Luke showed off his stream skiing and tree skiing skills on the way out when we crossed back over the creek - sans bridge. Needless to say, I am putting my boot drier to very good use.

I may still go out for a run later this evening but am looking forward to seeing Shirley at In Motion Rehabilitation (Luke, this may be the worst site I have ever seen. Think they'd trade us some bench time for a little help?) tomorrow and then going for a bike ride. Singlespeeders, start your engines for a 4:30 launch. Be there or be elsewhere.

~stubert