047 | Berthoud Pass, Colorado

No frills this time. Sorry, I'm lazy and just want to get this entry out at a decent hour. Two feet of snow on the way so next week's writeup could be worse.


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► Successful skiing recap of the week:

Late Monday on April 1st, I got a bit of the black lung and was forced to not show up for work on Tuesday. Poor me, right? I did manage however to sneak out of bed for a few hours and partake in a little winter wonderland fun.

I met up with Gary and this is what we did.










































And Cody got into the action as well:





Just anothing shitty day at the office:






► Failed skiing recap of the week:

On Saturday, April 5, 2008, the group (Gary, Dave, Chris, and myself) was pumped to lap Grizzly Gulch just below Grizzly Peak and near Torrey's Peak. The area in question is several football fields wide and delivers 700-800 vertical feet of untouched awesomeness. Unfortunately, we picked the wrong day for said awesomeness.

To get to here, we climbed over 1,000 vertical from Loveland Pass for 1.5-2 hours accompanied appropriately with sustained 60 mph winds. Fun times. Shortly after reaching our destination which was a few tenths of a mile shy of Grizzly Peak, we dug three snow pits at various points on the slope.

Eventhough the avy danger for the day was moderate (next to lowest level), the pits did not show strong enough stability and we had to bag the whole idea. We instead skied down some 2,000 vertical feet on a west-facing slope that was severely hammered by wind at the top for the first 300-400 feet, but quickly the descent become more manageable and enjoyable.

There's always next time.


Torrey's Peak on the left; Gray's behind it:










Gary graciously giving thanks to our sponsor:




What we eventually skied down (not the greatest, but better than hiking down):




The agenda for this coming weekend (Guyot on the left; Baldy on the right; A-Basin in the foreground):






► Drunk self-pain-inflicting picture of the week:

My brother came to town for a couple of days along with The Guy. Not sure they had a good time, but fire was certainly something to play with.






► Quote of the week:

"The significant problems we face in life can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

- Albert Einstein