storm skiing

It was just a trick with smoke and mirrors but there must be something magic on the turning away from the door to a snow covered hill.

Old-hat wearing, same old me, skinning up the road with Dan and Winter. Beware of dog while crossing neighbors yard to another road behind their house and then up another driveway.

We skirt the backyard of an unfinished house alongside trees and up an evergreen corridor.

Covered cold by a cotton candy canopy.

Dan’s sea level lungs labor, skinning from two miles high.

Up 1,700 feet more into thin air.

Warmth of sun on skin fades to gray swirling weather colliding with us mere minutes above treeline. Wind bites and whistles. Flapping hoods, numb noses and stinging fingers press on with a black dog white on one side up and up and up. Horizontal snowfall whips a rippled white desert across the ridge, into the corniced abyss. We look over and wonder “is that 4 inches or forty feet?” and can’t tell up from down from that vertigo headspin.

So on beyond the cornice to what brief flickers of sun reveal to be seemingly smooth sailing. Dan doesn’t believe at first “That’s not a drop right there? Are you sure?” And yes, I’m sure, ‘cause I happened to be looking that way when a yellow ray of light fleeted by with a school of baby snow devils.

So I traversed first to a long strand of leafless shrubberies showing us a way by defining down. Down we go and Dan dances first, finding mildly surprising chalk under inches of new snow too dry to matter.

But then we turn aside and come down a different, drool over it, dive in and sigh gully, gulping on deeper snow.

Back into the trees we take a break in the shelter of an old gold mine. Then the sun shows itself again.

Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

Schusses and turns down the narrow evergreen road. Cotton candy canopy. Swerves around corners, cutting switchbacks where woods were ready. Mmmmm.

Skiing down, exit trees and enter someone’s buried backyard. Ski it to the driveway, down the road, across more permissioned private property and down some stairs to my ground level front door.

Inside, a warm fire and cold gin wait.

Hold the olives.

http://www.uvm.edu/skivt-l/image_upl...0041215rm1.jpg

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http://www.uvm.edu/skivt-l/image_upl...20041215rm.jpg

Man, that sounds familiar. Nicely written- feels like I'm there, probably cause I have been.


You wouldn't happen to live in Red Cliff,CO would you?

Somebody count the alliterations... :eek:

Nicely written, mang. Gotta love the storm days.

Thanks guys.

Not in Red Cliff - Summit County actually.

Nice words. Pleasant read of a TR.

peace,
BS.

Good stuff Matt. Sure wish I could skin from my house and make some turns. Although, I did make a first descent down my driveway during the last storm :biggrin: . 4" on top of zero base with 11 feet of vertical. I got some time off coming up, so keep me in the loop of things.