backcountry skiing

Tony had gotten a brain scan a few days before we skied Hayden last year. As it turned out, while he was up there getting 6,000 vert on a big Colorado mountain, the scan interpreter noticed a blood vessel in his brain was ballooned out in a large and potentially deadly aneurysm. It the thing had ruptured, even in civilization his chances of surviving would have been rare. Up on a mountain? Zero percent. In a word, it is miraculous Tony didn’t stroke out (as in permanently) during our Hayden Ski, what with the dehydration and raised blood pressure of hard endurance athletics.

It’s not skiing, it’s snirting. The new sport. Just have a place to dunk your skis afterward, and get ready to load up the washing machine once you’re home. But a day in the mountains, no matter how close to a laundry soap commercial it comes, is still a day in the mountains. So yesterday myself, Nick Thompson and Dave Downing ended skiing what I call the Teeny Couloir (left) on West Pearl Mountain. But not before a small detour as well as a pastry alert. Check it out.

Congrats to 27 year old Colorado native Joe Brannan, 6th person to ski all of Colorado’s 14,000 foot peaks! Till now I’ve known the fourteener skiers pretty well by the time they’ve finished their projects. It helped that all were from this area (including Crested Butte).

This weekend my friend Skyler and I took a trip up to Winchester Fire Lookout, an historic fire lookout north of Mt. Baker highway on top of Winchester mountain up here in Washington State (see map below). I hadn’t gotten to go skiing in a few weeks and I was itching to get out, even if the conditions looked a little iffy due to warm weather and tons of new, unconsolidated snow (and I don’t mean powder).

Congratulations to Deanna and Mark on their new baby Sean. Word is that Mark already has a pair of Dynafits hung over the crib, and the nursery decorated with a Swiss mountain hut interior theme. Word is he even shopped for Salewa pj’s, but had to settle for cutting down a Dynafit knit cap.