Back at it

"You can not cross a chasm with two small steps... at some point you must make a leap." Author Unknown

I love to document things and make records. Sometimes its useless information like how many glasses of water I drink in a week, but it at least keeps me moving forward. This year I am going to track the number of ski days I can get with my kids. We have already gone water skiing 16 times, now that the snow ski season is coming up I am looking to hit the 16 mark as well.

So that I stay young and continue to add gray hairs, this winter I am going to get as many kids ages 4-8 to Solitude every Saturday and most friday afternoons. My theory is that if I can grow a little batch of ski buddies for my kids they will get it deep in their bones so that when I am really old I will still have some little ski buddies coming through the ranks.

So if you have or know of any 4-8 year olds that can reasonably get around by themselves on the mountain let me know. I will take them and moderatelty supervise them. All I require is parents permission to use my unorthodox, yet high effective techniques. If you need references regarding my techniques, you best not inquire. Otherwise, lets have a go. See you on the slopessss!

I know, I am worthless

Well, one of the signs of a good blogger has surely has to be consistency. I this regard, I have failed. My little digi-cam is no longer operational so I have been reluctant to post without photos. But the sun is bright an a new day is shining, so... here we go. Last thursday morning Dalt and I headed up Alexander Basin in Millcreek. The climb to Gobblers knob was very direct, yet quite pleasant. Dalt was good enough to get a few shots of some flowers. We were up and back in 3 hrs. 3,200 ft and 2.2 miles one way. The shock absorbers are a little sore still after the decent. We ran into a trio of golden girls on our way down.

As for the rest of the summer we have been really busy. I'll give a run down and try to post some photos later.

• May. Memorial weekend: Anderson Cove at Pineview. Mangrums (including Alli's boyfriend-in-law and nephews) and Flandros. We took Gary and Sue's boat, bikes and tents. The highlight of the weekend was the drunken red-neck family riot next to our camp at 1:00 am. Goodthing Flandro didn't have it loaded.

• June. Mindy's B-day weekend: Westgate Resort at the Canyons. Just our little family and a fun weekend of hangin out at the pool and playing a bit of tennis.

• June. Dunyon Family camp-out: Dunyon Property in Big Cottonwood. Well no other Dunyons but Janis and my family came (shame shame) but it was great fun nonetheless. We hiked around, cooked dinner and enjoyed our surroundings. Mindy, mom, and Ava went home around 9:30 pm. Talin and Elle fell asleep out in front of the fire. We were up early and down to play 7s by 9:00 am.

• June. Troop 1068 back-pack trip: Big Cotonwood Canyon-Millcreek divide. Desolation Lake via Bear Trap Fork, Dog Lake, Circle-All peak and out via Butlers Fork. We then went up canyon to the Dunyon property and scoured the plat for signs of natural springs. It was a fun trip for the boys. We hiked over 15 miles and endured sporatic rain throughout the trip. I joined the party late Thursday night. Dispite intermitten showers throughout the day I just put my tarp beneath me and went to sleep without a tent. When the rain started I thought it would be short, so I just wrapped up in my tarp taco style. Big mistake. The rain didn't stop and after about 2 hours my feet were wet. I endured, after a few more hours I was completely wet. It turned out to be a real tough night. As hypothermia set in I tried to monitor my physio. Soon the shaking become uncontrollable and I flet my self getting stupid. So in the dark of night, soaking wet, I crawled out of my bag, emptied the water out of my shoes and started to move. For awhile I was in a real bad place. Then after I was able to get moving a bit faster and get my wits about me. A few minutes later I heard a birds song, which meant two things (1) the rain was stopping and (2) morning was on the way. With renewed mental ability, I was finally able to find some tinder and get a fire going. I hadn't felt such joy in awhile. It took me the whole day to dry out my gear. However, we still had one night to go and the skys threatened all day. We hiked most of the day and got to our next camp spot around 4:00 pm. I spent the next 6 hours constructing a tarp shelter and sleeping area, complete with a water drainage system and pine bow sleeping pad, in preparation for another rainy night. Around 9:00 pm we got a call from the valley that the storm was raging in. For about 30 minutes it rained hard and blew 20-30 mph. The shelter stood, the clouds cleared and I enjoyed an undisturbed 10 hour slumber. A great experience.

• July. 4th weekend: Ryan Morgan's Cabin at Flaming Gorge. Morgan's family (including Judy, Rich, Diane, Chandler, Rachael, Ryan and Shanna). Great weekend. Boating on the lake, cruising around on the four-wheeler, and hangin out at the cabin. Tons of wild-life and great scenery. The highlight of the trip was either the fun night of fire-works in Dutch John or the fun family time on the boat. I think the kids are FINALLY getting over me dumping them off the SUPER-MABLE last year.

• July. Iverson Family trip: Sweetwater at Bear Lake. All Iversons. This is about the fifth straight year of this trip and it is always fun. Bike rides, beach trips, boating, and condo life. It was all very fun and great to see the kids gaining confidence. On Saturday I got the hall-pass and headed up to Jackson Hole for the Teton 10's. (shout out to Clint for letting me score his FJ for the drive). The tournament was great, Haggis downed all that came before us. 35-0, 31-7, and 35-5. Pretty consistent performance.

• The rest of the summer has been filled with swim lessons, bike and long-board rides in the neighborhood, and boating trips to the dam. Couldn't ask for much more.
  

Has anyone seen this man?

Last seen on the pitch wandering around somewhere in Rhode Island.

Future Backcountry Efficianado

The other day Morgan called and asked "now that it almost summer, when are we going to start doing our morning hikes?" Well, Morg doesn't really like the cold, so he hasn't been coming along on our morning skis. But I know he would love it if he just got a good first experience skiing in the backcountry. So I tricked him. I said "sure thing Morg, lets go to a little hike called Patsey Marley"... hehehe. We got there and it actually took him awhile to figure out that he had been had. We loaded the skis on our backs and headed up Grizzly Gulch. We put the skis and skins on once we passed the cabins and Morg got his first lesson in skinning. The snow was still rock hard from the refreeze so it wasn't the best learning conditions. We nailed the approach without too much trouble and got to the bottom of the run when Morg asked "ok we are not going to climb that are we?" I just laughed and headed up the hill. Morg was a quick learner of the art of the kick-turn. As we switched up the run I was hoping that the sun would soften the snow, to my disappointment there was only about 2 inches of corn snow on top of rock-hard. Again, not the best conditions to be re-learning to down-hill ski (Morg is a boarder and hadn't been on skis in about 20 years.) However, between my excellent coaching (uhem) and Morg's natural ability we enjoyed not only the run down, but made the transition and had a second go. I think I may have done just enough to plant the good seed into another future backcountry efficianado.

Patsy Marley

There are a couple of a stories floating around out there as to how the Patsy Marley Peak got its name. Some say Patsy was a well-known madame amongst the early Alta miners. Others say Patsy was an Irish bare-knuck brawler who owned a pub in Grizzly Gulch. Either way its fun to think about how crazy those old mining days must have been when the town of Alta's population swelled to more than 8,000 mountain hardened souls.

Dalt, Dustin and I met at the LCC p.a.r. around 5:00. We were looking for high elevation, north facing with a short approach. Enter the mistress. The climb was very nice. We had some fun steep skinning at the top near the cornices. We had enough time for two runs. Dalt on his second run.

Then follwed by me. Nice high-speed floaters. Thanks to Dustin for the shots.

Fly on My Zephyr

I once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. This time I went to play rugby. The rugby was forgettable, with a few splashes of brilliant desperation. We took Corbie's (Lopes' wife) four runner, which included Lopez's camera. On her blog Corbie was surpisingly accurate in her description of the proceedings (and I appreciate your discreation on the post Cobie). So if you are interested there you go. http://corbiecoy.blogspot.com/2009/04/boys-will-be-boysand-so-will-men.html.

Pink Pine Pink Snow

Went up LCC, shooting for Patsey Marley. We got rejected by udot avalanche folks at the upper Alta lot so we went back down canyon to the White Pine parking lot. We (Dalt, Dustin, Jason and myself) skinned up to the ridge that divided White Pine canyon and Red Pine canyon (Pink Pine) It was a pleasant climb.

The snow was deep and surprisingly fluffy. The crazy circular pattern storminess we experienced carried red sand from So. Utah so the snow was pink (Pink Snow). You'd have to see it to believe it. Thanks to Dustin for the photos.