weather

Outdoor Retailer trade show, summer, still has tons of backcountry skiing related gear.

Yeah, that mountain up there is calling my name. I know she’s friendly most of the time, even sexy. But she’s cold and dangerous too. Sometimes, the thought of her up there without me is too much to bear. Who’s she with? What are they doing? Is the snow good? How was it climbing in that wind before the storm broke? Every-detail-please.

Backcountry skiing Independence Pass, Colorado, Geissler Peak. Good corn snow conditions for late May.

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.

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).