Archive for 2006

Today is the beginning of a travel day. Turkey Day is almost upon us! This picture is my take on the fantastic sky last night. Waves upon waves upon waves.

Earlier this fall, Mark and I decided we would go ahead and make the investment in a pair of 4-packs to Copper Mountain and try to get several days of skiing in this year. Last winter, I had one 3 hour lesson and a very scary and embarrassing experience on a steep green at Winter Park that effectively ended our ski season in December last year. We chose Copper Mountain for our passes this year because the mountain has a large amount of gentle green terrain that doesn’t intersect much with faster slopes.

Last weekend, we had a fantastic two days of early season skiing at Copper Mountain. We really lucked out this year as a couple large snow storms have already blown through, and Copper Mountain had almost 40″ of packed powder base already this year. On Saturday, Mark and I both signed up for full day lessons. It was early enough in the season that there weren’t many other people in the classes. In fact, Mark had his instructor all to himself, and I had only two other people in my class.

We both had a great day and learned a huge amount. I learned to relax and use balance, not force in my skiing. I improved my trust in my turning ski (lean on it, and it will turn!). Mark learned to carve and stop with a right turn.

We cemented our new skills on Sunday and had another great day in the sun and snow. I started to bring in my inside ski for more parallel-type turns and a little bit of a sliding stop. Mark had a fantastic, cloud of snow, skis and poles flying up in the air crash on one of my greens. That was fantastic to watch!

So, now it’s Monday morning. I’m so sore I can’t hardly walk. Mark groans every time he moves. And we both can’t wait to go back.

For more shots from the weekend, check out the photo gallery.

We had a great storm yesterday. The wind started blowing hard enough to make the roof creek and moan louder than the TV. I grabbed the camera and ran outside. After chasing some tumbleweeds around the neighborhood, we all ended up here.

Well, it’s finally working, and it’s great! Cyberhobo wrote this excellent WordPress plugin that takes location data associated with a post and plots it on a Google Map. I installed it on Colocalders, and you can check it out on the Adventure Map page in the menu to the left. Have fun!

This was the last lake we passed on the way down. It was mostly frozen over. Close enough for the people who walked across it. More shots from the day are here.

On Saturday, Mark and I donned our brand new mountaineering boots, our favorite snow shoes, and our best winter gear for a trek up to Emerald Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.

We spent the morning getting everything together. Hopefully now that we’ve done a full-gear trek this season, it will go much faster next time. We didn’t leave the Bear Lake trailhead until about 12:30p. We hiked up the trail past Nymph Lake to Dream Lake where we stopped and put on our snow shoes. We were able to short-cut a good bit of trail by hiking straight across the lake, which was kind of creepy as the day was warm enough to melt a thin layer on top of the ice. But nothing cracked or creaked or moaned, and we made good time.

We arrived at Emerald Lake at just before 2p. While we passed a couple people on the way down, when we got to the high lake, we had the whole area to ourselves. The wind was coming and going. Occasionally it would blast us with ferocious spindrift, and then it would die down for several minutes of sunny peacefulness. The thermometer read 35F degrees, which is pretty warm, and with a 40mph wind only equates to a 20F degree windchill, so a balmy day by comparison to some.

Photos all around, and then we headed back down. We wore the snowshoes for traction the whole way down, and they helped quite a bit. We were back at the car around 3:30p, and Mark was not tired at all. He kept saying “That was it? Lame.” But it was a fun day, and a beautiful place. We’ll just have to make sure the next trek covers more miles!

The rest of the pictures from the day are in the photo album: Snowshoe to Emerald Lake.

Some days around here are beautiful. You can walk around in shorts in the middle of January. But some days are just plain icky. Today was cold, dreary, rainy, windy, gross. That’s ok though. I’ve got a lot of projects to finish before Christmas, and it’s good to have the time to work on them.

Seems like we’ve had a lot of amazing sunsets lately. I thought I’d try to find something interesting to put in front of one. This one is just for the fun of it too. :-)