Month: March 2008

Many thanks to Kellie!

Posted by Brittany – March 31, 2008

Previously posted on my Thrillhead Blog

I just got back from a week long trip to Alaska and had the pleasure of spending some time with Kellie, one of the finest rippin-chicks around.

For those of you who don’t know Kellie, you need to know that she is filled with positive energy which bubbles over, everywhere she goes. Her smile brightens an entire room. And her motivation is far greater than most anyone. And her generosity is never-ending. We all know, too, that she pretty much kicks ass. She’ll leave boys in the dust with the things she likes to climb and ski.

My time with Kellie was limited, due to some conflicts in each of our schedules. But the little time I did spend with her was the best part of the entire trip!

Kellie went out of her way making sure I had a great Alaska experience. Even when she wasn’t around, Kellie made sure to set me up with her friends as my ski buddies.

Not sure who will all find this, but I have many other people to thank, all who made my Alaska vacation one of the best!

Brooke- for showing me around the resort, and for being an inspiration with her many dashing costumes
Ben, Robin, Lucy, Garret, Ashley- continued to keep me entertained at Alyeska
Ron and John- for kicking my ass on Turnagain Pass
Barry- for buying bottomless drinks
Jared- for being the butt of too many jokes
Heather- for dressing me up in the pirate costume (and reminding me why I HATE high-heals)

I can’t wait to come back again someday soon! :)

Alaska-bound!

Posted by Brittany – March 22, 2008

I leave today for Alaska!

I’ll be returning on Monday, March 31st. Most of the time, I’ll be hanging out in Girdwood, skiing at Alyeska and hopefully hooking up with some locals for some AK backcountry goodness. I was hoping to ski with [url=http://www.kellieokonek.blogspot.com/]Kellie[/url] there, but I don’t think our schedules are going to mesh very well. Nevertheless, Kellie has been so kind to hook me up with quite a few locals whom will hopefully be able to find the time to show me the good stuff.

For two nights we hope to hike into a cabin on the Resurrection Pass Trail on the Kenai Peninsula. We’ve been to this system of cabins before, but only in the summer. This will be our first winter attempt. We hope to spend 2 nights at the cabin. We will be staying at the Juneau Lakecabin. We have not stayed there before, but we have been to the Trout Lake, Swan Lake, and West Swan Lake cabins. All are nice, rustic places. It should be fun!

As I said in a previous entry, I will try to post a Blog when I am up in AK, but I’m not sure how easy it will be for me to find internet access. At the very least, you can expect me to post some pics as soon as I return.

Happy Easter to all, and here’s to having some good times in the land of Northern Exposure!

TR: Berthoud Pass on 3/16

Posted by Brittany – March 20, 2008

Previously posted on my Thrillhead Blog

This week has been a busy week of preparing for my upcoming trip to Alaska. I hope to be able to post a blog entry while I’m up in the northern state, but internet access is not predictable right now. I will surely post pics when I return!

I’ve hit up Berthoud Pass twice this week: once on Sunday with Frank, and then after school (for a dusk patrol) on Tuesday with Frank and Sydney. I didn’t break out the camera on Tuesday, but I did on Sunday. Here’s some pics.

Top of the first lap:

Beautiful views

Frank

The first lap took us all the way down to the Peter Rabbit cabin.

Then we went back up to the next ridge for another ski. Frank dropping in:

Me skiing down

Looking back up at our tracks. I like how our tracks have much bigger turns than the tracks next to ours. Who needs to make all those turns anyway? :)

Some not-so-smart snowboarders trying to get after it. Not exactly the brightest thing to do when the CAIC rated the snowpack as “Considerable” that day- which means human-triggered avalanches are likely. Booting right under some huge over-hanging cornices sounds like a death-wish to me!

Someday I want to ski this:

It was a fun day to get out, though it was probably the warmest day I’ve skied all season. Spring is definitely here with warm temperatures and the monsoons that bring the wet-snow blizzards.

The Little Rippers of Winter Park

Posted by Brittany – March 16, 2008

Previously posted on my Thrillhead Blog

I finished up my season of coaching at Winter Park on Saturday. The program runs for two more weeks, but I will miss them since I will be in Alaska. I am sharing this group with another coach, and he will finish off the season with them.

Coaching is very time consuming, and on good powder days I often wish I was skiing on my own than with the kids. But, at the same time, I love coaching. I love being able to share the experience of skiing with these excitable kids. I like being able to give back to a sport that I love so much, and I love contributing to America’s future rippers.

I’ve included some photos below which show a glimpse of our season. It was a good one!

Moab in March

Posted by Brittany – March 14, 2008

Previously posted on my Thrillhead Blog

This week I had the pleasure of taking a group of students from my high school on a trip to Moab. It’s always fun introducing these students to the outdoor elements and teaching them that the desert really IS alive!

The weather was fairly good: not much wind, no rain or snow. But it was a bit on the chilly side and usually overcast. Because of this, I wasn’t inspired to break out the camera a whole lot. A sunset hike to Delicate Arch brought out some beautiful colors, however.

The students, and a few other spectators, watching the sunset show.

A raven came to say hello.

One of the other teachers is quite the monkey.

Sunset

Students hiking off into the sunset.

Fourteener season has begun!

Posted by Brittany – March 10, 2008

Previously posted on my Thrillhead Blog

Fourteener season has begun, and it started off with a bang when we did Culebra Peak this past weekend.

Culebra is located entirely on private land- by a guy from Texas named Bobby Hill. How would you like to own a whole fourteener? And a few thirteeners to boot! Today, the land is known as the Cielo Vista Ranch, but many Coloradans may know it better by it’s former name- the Taylor Ranch. The Taylor Ranch was controversial, as the owners provided very limited access to the land and disturbed environmentalists by engaging in activities such as logging. The new owner, however, seems to be more flexible with access. He also seems to promote environmentally friendly stewardship of the land. Throughout these owners, Carlos, the ranch manager, has been a constant. The ranch is his home and he does what his boss tells him to do, which has often landed him in a position of dislike by the locals. But, he’s a man who is simply doing his job. Carlos has many stories to tell. If you go to Culebra, be sure to talk to him as he will give you insight like no other.

The ranch spans for miles and miles, from near the town of San Luis all the way to the New Mexican state border. Gaining permission to access this peak during the winter is a bit tough. But, we were persistent, which seemed to pay off.

Frank and I were joined by Jordan White, Ted Mahon, and Christy Sauer. It was a powerful team of experienced fourteener climbers!


Here’s a few teaser pics:

Carlos, the ranch manager, met us at the gates to the ranch. From there we took snowmobiles up to the ranch headquarters.

From there, we continued on snowmobiles to the Fourway point at 11,200 ft. Carlos took Jordan on his snowmobile, and made sure we arrived there in good time. We must thank Carlos a lot- earlier that week, knowing of our plans to climb Culebra, he made sure that the road was passable to snowmobiles just for us!

A ridge on Culebra

The weather started out fantastic

But then got gradually worse:

Frank, Jordan, and Ted at the summit:

Christy and I at the summit:

By the time we skied down, it was a complete white out. Skiing went more or less like this:

When we returned to the snowmobiles, we found an extra snowmobile waiting there, with a note attached. Carlos had left it for Jordan to take back to the parking lot! Thanks Carlos!!!!

Back at the cars, group shot. Christy, Jordan, Ted, Frank, me.

Christy, Carlos, Ted, Frank, Jordan:

I will post some more pictures later in the week, as this truly was a memorable experience. But, for now, I’m off to Moab with a group of my students!

Update on friends who did 24 hours of Sunlight for Gavin

Posted by Brittany – March 5, 2008

Previously posted on my Thrillhead Blog

Some of you may remember me posting a blog entry about my friends who were doing the 24 hours of Sunlight to raise money for Gavin Ozanne, who was born one month after his father perished in an avalanche accident near Aspen.
Well, here’s an update from Jason himself:

First of all we’d like to say thank you to everyone who supported us for this race and gave so generously to the Simon Ozanne Memorial Fund. The amount of support everyone gave for this cause was truly incredible, and we cannot thank you enough. Its amazing to have so many great friends and heartwarming to see everyone come together to support this cause. We don’t have the exact number yet but so far it looks to be over $9000 that was raised for the fund and Gavin Ozanne’s future. The total donation will be made in Alexis Dodin’s name (the other victim of the avalanche) – we know he would have been right there with us if he could.

Ok so on to the race – It was amazing, and we manged to blow away our goal by completing 28 laps (see the note at the bottom for people who pledged by the lap). The weather was perfect (only got down to 20 at night, 2 years ago they said it was negative 15 at night), the event was really well run, and somehow we did pretty well. We actually had plenty of time to get in one more, but we decided not to gouge those of you who pledged by the lap anymore and to take the last lap all together. So we let Bloomy rest for a good 30 minutes and headed out at a “casual” pace, a.k.a Julien’s pace, for a victory lap. The third place team for the 5 person teams actually only completed 2 more laps than us, and if we had about 15 more minutes we could have scrubbed the team lap, got 2 in and sent the last one up just before the deadline (as long as you started your lap before the deadline you were allowed to complete it), so we weren’t too far off from turning our participation medal into the coveted semi-precious bronze type. All in all it was great and actually a lot of fun.

Info on our lap times (and other teams) is available through the link below (we are team 62 – Atleast they’re trying, I think – we had what we thought was a much better name but opted for the PC version, which we will never happen again). Check out the soloist times too – those guys are incredible: The winner set a new world record by completing 34 laps by himself – insane – and the female soloist champion almost completed as many as our whole team.
[url]http://www.grannygear.com/realtime/public/sl_team.php?team_id=62&action=display[/url]

Again we’d really like to thank everyone for contributing to this fund (and to Scooter’s parents for hooking us up with the winnebago – it was a lifesaver – sorry about the muffler, I’m pretty sure we can blame the winnebago’s decision to turn its muffler into a sparkbar on Bloomy’s new mustache).

-Jason (Country), Angela (Midj), Jon (Bloomy/Inigo), Jordan, Julien and of course Gavin and Jenn Ozanne.

Great job folks!!! Here’s some pictures the team has shared:

Country getting the race off to a great start:

Go team! Julien, Angela, Jordan, Bloomy and Country

Gavin, the little one who all this is for!

If you would like information on how to contribute to the Simon Ozanne Memorial Fund, please contact me (my contact information is on the right of this page) and I will connect you with Jason.

TR: Axtel on 3/2

Posted by Brittany – March 4, 2008

Previously posted on my Thrillhead Blog

A mild snowstorm hit Crested Butte on Saturday night. It only snowed a couple of inches in town. The resort had been baked from warm temperatures the day before, so we knew a couple of inches would amount to dust on crust… which wouldn’t be good.

So, backcountry was in order. We headed for Axtel, and found some fantastic goods there.

It felt great to be skinning again! It had been far too long since my last backcountry outing! We made great time to the area where we skied; only 1 hr 40 minutes, when normally it takes 2.5 hours or so.

Our line:

Frank getting the goods

This shot would have been most excellent had my fingers not been so cold that I couldn’t get the camera to focus!

Frank’s shots of me:

What a great day out! Stay tuned because we have great plans for this weekend :)

Where has the winter gone?

Posted by Brittany – March 3, 2008

Previously posted on my Thrillhead Blog

Temperatures have been in the 60’s and 70’s along the Front Range. Even this weekend in Crested Butte, temperatures were high enough to get those huge snowbanks melting sadly away. I’ve found myself wearing my light shell jacket with less layers underneath. The buses were crowded with tourists on Spring Break. The calendar may not read that it’s spring yet, but when March hits, it’s springtime in the ski season.

I can’t believe it’s March already, and the ski season is over half done! It seems like only a few weeks ago I was enjoying day after day of light fluffy powder during my Christmas break. Now, the powder is changing, becoming heavier and stickier. Another sign that spring is here. The powder doesn’t stick around for long now, as warmer temperatures quickly melt it into the existing snowpack.

This winter the snow has been pounding the mountains nearly incessantly. This has made backcountry outings few and far between as the snowpack was often unstable, and we were busy enjoying the continuous powder-filled runs at the resort. But, with spring, the weather changes. And even after it snows the snowpack can be more stable with the warmer temperatures.

Due to the incessant snow, this winter has shaped up a lot differently than last. By this time last year I had skied five fourteeners (including one on March 4th). This year I haven’t skied a single one. Well, dang it, it’s time to ski some fourteeners!

Frank and I had a great backcountry outing yesterday. It felt good to get out. I’ve worked on my skiing at the resort, and now I am resort-satiated, for lack of a better word. This weekend’s weather is shaping up nicely for a fourteener ski. So, stay tuned!