7.15.10 What Was I Thinking? (Raggeds Ride)

Posted by Frank – July 21, 2010

I haven’t been riding my bike much this summer. Frankly, I’m finding it quite boring. But that doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying to get the passion back. So when Pete and Jasper suggested an epic ride on some new trails, I decided to say “Yes”. How hard could it really be to go almost 100 miles all the way around the West Elks on my 7th ride of the year? Turns out, it’s pretty hard, thanks to literally hundreds of downed trees on the Raggeds trail. In fact, we needed a brief period of cell phone coverage on the West side of Kebler pass to get a call out to Brittany, asking her to pick us up as night fell upon us after 13+ hours of pedaling, 10k of vert, and more than 70 miles. Good fun, in a twisted kind of way. The pics:

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Breaking New Ground… 7.5.10

Posted by Frank – July 12, 2010

I heard about a new trail last week (new to me, at least), one which isn’t even on any maps, and instantly wanted to check it out. While there are certain trails in the area that I love and know like the back of my hand, I love the exploration factor even more. Unfortunately, after roughly 15 years in Crested Butte, it’s becoming pretty hard to find new trails in the area. There are a few, to be sure, but not many. So, like I said, once I found out about a new trail, I headed there immediately.

Did I like it? It’s pretty good, for a change of pace, although a chainsaw for the 15 or so downed trees would really help the flow of the trail out a lot. Also, I didn’t find the top half of the trail, which is pretty faint as far as I can tell. Maybe if people want the trail to get burned in, they could flag the top of the trail, but that’s not up to me. Speaking of which, I’ll only say that this trail is somewhere near Deadman’s….

Enjoy:

“Camino de Equis” from 14erskiers on Vimeo.

Book Review: Two Planks And A Passion

Posted by admin – June 29, 2010

Title: Two Planks And A Passion

Author: Roland Huntford

Year: 2008

For those of you who check my blog frequently, you may have noticed this book on the sidebar for most of the winter under “Currently Reading”. At 390 pages, I would normally finish a book like this in a month or so, but this one took considerably longer. Why did this book take so long? For starters, it is written very dryly and matter-of-factly- picture the teacher in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” writing a book like this. The other reason the book takes a while to read is that nearly every sentence has a lot to say.

I’ll start off with the things I didn’t like about this book. Besides the somewhat droll writing style, my main complaint with the book was what I would call a lack of organization. Something tells me this book never started with a well-developed outline, for one paragraph could easily go through several centuries and multiple continents without any discernible tie between them. The book attempts to follow skiing in a chronological order, but at times it jumps around- a lot. The other thing that bothered me quite a bit about this book was what I felt were the author’s biases towards the following things: nordic over alpine, Europe (especially Scandinavia) over everywhere else, and a fascination with the slight contributions of the English to the skiing world. Scandinavia unquestionably reigns supreme when it comes to the history of skiing, but in my opinion that doesn’t mean that North American contributions like the world’s first charlift in Sun Valley barely merit one sentence.

On the other hand, parts of this book were utterly interesting. Ski shapes from the very beginning (10,000 years ago) have run the gamut, including what most people would consider to be “new” shapes, namely fat (over 100mm in the waist), reverse cambered, and reverse sidecuts. It seems that “what is old is new again”. As a reference work, the amount of information in this book is simply astounding, and it’s hard to imagine another book covering such a vast array of ski facts.

Overall, I’m happy to have this book as part of our library. I am quite sure that this book will come off the shelf frequently to look up a specific fact or two that can’t be found on google. Still, I wish this book had all the same information but had been written by a different, and better, author. Comparing ancient and modern skis and skiing styles could have made for a much more fascinating book. And as a ski mountaineer, I wish the book had had a chapter on the development of that aspect of the sport. But on a final note, I think that knowing the history of skiing only leads one to appreciate it more, and on that level, this book is a must-have for any serious skier.

Some Thoughts on Little Bear Peak and Private Property

Posted by Frank – June 22, 2010

In the wake of another fatal accident on Little Bear Peak, I’ve thought a lot about the current standard route on that peak: The Hourglass couloir. For skiers like Brittany and I, the Hourglass route is straightforward enough; just your standard Colorado couloir, somewhere in the 40-45 degree range, and actually pretty short at less than 1,000′. For summer climbers of the 14ers, Little Bear via the Hourglass may be the most dangerous 14er of them all, although Long’s Peak has been the most deadly by numbers alone. Once free of snow, the Hourglass route becomes a funnel for rockfall from the loose ledges above, and often forms a thin coat of verglas (ice) in the early morning. Having climbed Little Bear and all the other fourteeners in summer, Little Bear is probably the one peak that I would be quite concerned to climb again, mostly because of the danger other climbers would pose as they climbed above, possibly knocking rocks down on me.

Little Bear wasn’t always like this. Through the 60’s, the standard route was on the other side of the mountain from Blanca Basin through private property, and is mentioned in Gerry Roach’s guidebook as the easiest route. Unfortunately access through this area was dependent on one the Sangre’s many HUGE ranches for access, and once they decided to close off access, the Hourglass became the route of choice for peak baggers.

Private property is just that- private- and people are certainly free to choose what to do with their land. In today’s litigious society, many landowners choose to bar access from trails, climbing areas, skiing, etc out of fear from lawsuits when people are injured on their land. So I had a crazy thought after the most recent accident on Little Bear: What if the landowners in Blanca Basin were sued not because somebody was injured on their land, but injured elsewhere avoiding the privately closed safest route. Yeah, I know- it isn’t realistic and it would open a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences. But I do think the landowners who have chosen to close access to Blanca Basin should be ashamed and should feel guilty each and every time someone is killed or injured on the dangerous Hourglass route.

SPOT GPS Messengers: Worth It or Worthless?

Posted by Frank – June 17, 2010

Recently, a sad event on Little Bear Peak highlighted one of the many potential problems with the SPOT device. Condolences go out to the friends and family of Kevin Hayne.

SPOT’s, for those of you who don’t know, are a brand of locator beacon which can be used to let friends and family track your location in the backcountry, or more importantly as a device to send an SOS signal when something goes wrong. Unlike a cell phone, the SPOT uses satellites to relay messages to Search and Rescue (SAR) teams when the help button is pushed, making them ideal for backcountry travelers. This all sounds good in theory, but the Little Bear accident and another one in Rocky Mountain National Park make me wonder.

On Little Bear, after Mr. Hayne fell, his partner attempted to initiate a rescue using not one, but two SPOT Messengers. From Kevin’s partner on 14ers.com: “When i got to him he was breathing heavily and both him arms looked broken, both of our spot trackers malfunctioned at a terrible time. I waited 30 minutes by chance that the distress signal did go out, tried to comfort Kevin, and after no response from either Kevin or SaR.”

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June POWteenth on Grizzly Peak 13,988′ 6.13.10

Posted by Frank – June 15, 2010

Grizzly Peak is Colorado’s highest thirteener, formerly thought to be a fourteener but demoted after new surveys made the mountain twelve feet short. I wonder how many hundreds or even thousands fewer ascents the peak sees due to those twelve feet. Regardless, Grizzly is known as a great climb in an area of the Sawatch range which is uncharacteristically rugged. Grizzly has been on my “to-do” list for years, but I hadn’t yet gotten the chance to give it a go. With a powerful late spring storm poised to drop a few inches or more over the weekend, we nearly decided to bag it but in the end decided it was worth a try. We were certainly glad we did…

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Photo from Independence Pass, Memorial Day, 2006

Brittany and I were joined by Jarrett Luttrell and Kim Ross, and as we headed up Independence Pass from Aspen, we found ourselves in a blinding snowstorm of the Star Wars variety. At the campsite:
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We awoke the following morning with a few inches of new snow, and some continued light snowfall. Needless to say, it was beautiful:
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The hike up valley quickly broke out into meadows and we were able to enjoy the views of this area, which most of us hadn’t been to. Jarrett and I both commented that it felt like one of the first trips of the fall, rather than one of the last trips of the spring. It even smelled like fall. Kim, riding high on expectations:
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The sun came out momentarily and gave us a great view of our objective. The actual peak is slightly behind, while the Grizzly couloir remains mostly out of view on the right, tucked up against the cliffs.
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Strand Hill Top Tube Cam 6.10.10

Posted by Frank – June 14, 2010

Recently, 14erskiers acquired a new toy to play with and hopefully add to the quality of our trip reports:
A GoPro HD helmet camera.

 Having seen footage from other users of this camera, we felt that the wide angle that this camera captures offers the best POV footage. I have another helmet cam, but more often than not I found that the battery was dead, or my video camera batteries were dead, or one of the many cables weren’t attached perfectly. In fact, the only really good footage I ever got with that camera was from Pyramid’s Landry line. One of my goals this summer is to edit up that footage and get it on the site, so stay tuned for that.

We found Microsoft’s Moviemaker to be incredibly awkward, so we ended up using a trial version of Cyberlink PowerDirector. It’s pretty good, and we may end up buying it for about $70. We would love to hear from our readers about other good, inexpensive editing software options. Our other question is what format people save their videos in, so the quality remains high but it doesn’t take hours to upload. We also noticed that our video lost considerable quality when uploaded to Vimeo and YouTube. We weren’t sure if this had to do with the compression format we used (wmv) or something else. So, any tips you could offer us regarding maintaining video quality while uploading to sites like this would be much appreciated.

Being just a small, stand-alone unit, the GoPro offers up a lot of unique mounting scenarios, and I decided to give a top-tube mount on my mountain bike a try. I’m not sure if it will be my go-to bike mount, but I thought it was kind of fun and different. We need to get a better SD card, so for now we just shot in regular, rather than HD, mode. The best version can be viewed here: Download Video

Otherwise, here’s the Vimeo version. Brittany gets the credit for the excellent editing job- I started freaking out after trying to use MovieMaker and had to take a time-out. ;) “Easy”, by Lucy’s Fur Coat came up on my mp3 player when I rode Strand, and the size was right, so that’s the song we went with. Long-time MSP movie fans might recognize the song from the closing shots in their second movie, “The Hedonist”, one of my favorites. Oh, and it was only my second ride of the year…

Strand Hill June 10, 2010 from 14erskiers on Vimeo.

The Line

Posted by Frank – June 8, 2010

I’ve been catching a little bit of flack from my friends lately, wondering why I’m still skiing and not on my bike yet. The truth is that right now, riding a bike doesn’t seem that interesting to me. I’ve been trying to figure out why getting up at 3am to ski dirty sticky snow is somehow more appealing than riding a bike in the sunshine, and I think I’ve got it figured out. It’s all about The Line.

Hopefully some of you took the time to read and watch Brittany’s recent post about Reinhold Messner. In the video, Reinhold talks about seeing a line on a mountain, and then being able to make it a reality. What only exists in his imagination will be made into reality once he climbs the route. This works in the same way for skiing, whether it’s a gnarly route with rappels from one snow patch connecting to another or a big mellow bowl. A skier can look back and admire the tracks they’ve laid- big turns, little turns, a slash on a wind lip, a slarve turn on a spine- a skier’s tracks are their personal signature, their artwork.

Compare that to mountain biking, where the goal is simply to follow the trail. To be sure, there are always slight variations between riders’ lines on singletrack, but we’re talking about a difference of inches. The only person who invents a trail in their head and then makes it a reality is the trailbuilder- every subsequent rider is simply following someone else’s dream. Not only that, but most trails aren’t the result of just one person’s vision, but are more likely the result of a few people building a trail within the confines of land managers and all the other hoops one must go through to make a trail. In fact, most trails were probably just a deer or cow trail at one time, all us bikers are just following some dumb cow’s vision.

Anyway, I’ll probably love the bike again in a couple of weeks. Thanks to The Line, though, I’ll always prefer skiing. Maybe I just need some new gear: Spring 2010 Gear Guide – The Best And Burliest New Mountain Bikes, Apparel & Accessories At HucknRoll.com. Valid While Supplies Last.

Life and Death In The Mountains (We lost another one)

Posted by Frank – June 4, 2010

Today, like most days after work, I cracked a beer and checked out the latest on the internet. It didn’t take long to discover the sad news that the ski world had once again lost a member, this time Arne Backstrom. While I didn’t know Arne personally, I’m sure we competed in an IFSA contest or two over the years. The news of Arne’s passing came not much more than a week after hearing the news that former Crested Butte resident Scott Murray perished in a kiteboarding accident in San Francisco. I used to ski with Scott back in the late 90’s when he was in Crested Butte- he was an amazing telemarker as well as a talented kayaker from what I hear, but what I remember most was how happy he was to be doing the things he loved doing.

A lot of people who really loved the things they do and lived life to the fullest have left this world lately. Sometimes I feel like I went through a long stretch of dodging bullets in terms of not losing anyone I really knew to these sports, whether it’s ski mountaineering, kiteboarding, mountain biking, climbing, hang gliding, or something else. These sports can be dangerous, and it’s really no wonder I’m starting to develop a long list of friends and acquaintances that have passed away. For a long time everyone I knew was just out there having a good time, up until a few years ago, but now it seems as though at least a couple people I know pass away every year. So I’m going to take a minute and think about my friends: Tobias Lee, Scott Murray, Captain Jack Carey, Billy Poole, and especially Jack Hannan. Not a single day has gone by that I haven’t thought of Jack- miss you buddy.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s time to take a big step back and chill out, and quit doing the sports I love. But the thing is, I just wouldn’t be “me” anymore if I tried to tie myself to a desk and do nothing more dangerous than the commute to work. That doesn’t leave a lot of options- be happy and be who I am, or play it safe and live a life I might not be that happy with. I guess I’ll keep playing, and try to stay safe the best I can. And remember my buddies that aren’t with me anymore.

14er Ski Descents: The Classics

Posted by Frank – June 2, 2010

The line we skied on El Diente last weekend was an instant classic in my book, which got me thinking about classic routes on the 14ers in general. The truth of 14er skiing is that many of the lines pale in comparison to routes which can be found on thirteeners and twelve-ers. But many of the 14ers offer up classic lines that rival anything else found in the Sierras, the Cascades, or the Tetons. A wise Colorado skier might consider doing only the best that the 14ers have to offer, and then move on to the multitude of great lines on the lower peaks. Classic lines may mean different things to different people, but here’s one man’s list. (An * means I have not yet skied the line) Most of the descents can be found in my 14er ski page.

Long’s Peak: North Face*
Long’s Peak: Keplinger
Torrey’s: Dead Dog
Democrat: North Face
Holy Cross: Cross Couloir
Huron: East Face
Tabeguache: North Face
Missouri: North Face
La Plata: North Face
Crestone Peak: South Couloir
Crestone Needle: South Couloir
Kit Carson: Cole Couloir*
North Maroon: North Face
Maroon: Southwest Couloir
Pyramid: Landry Line
Castle: East Face
Castle: South Face
Sneffels: Snake Couloir
Handies: Northeast Face
El Diente: Luttrell Line
Wilson Peak: Northeast Face
Mount Wilson: Boxcar Couloir

That’s my list. I’d love to hear what else belongs or what doesn’t. Happy skiing!