Gooney Riders

100 Days of Paleo

I've mentioned my sweet tooth here before.  What I haven't mentioned is how much distress my sweet tooth causes me.  I, very simply, do not deal well with sugar any more.  And moderation has never been my strong point.  I get cranky.  Major cranky.  Then I eat more sugar and get even crankier.  Then I stand on the scale and the result is the last straw that leads to the destruction of large quantities of  chocolate via my stomach.  I know, it makes perfect sense.  

 

As I lay there, stomach completely distended wondering what I was thinking going back for handful after handful of chocolate covered acai berries, I remember what it feels like to actually feel good and grudgingly admit to myself that my diet is responsible for 98% of me physically feeling good, which tends to lead to me mentally feeling good.  The final months of winter are hard enough for me without me making myself sick.

 

So I'm back on the Paleo Diet bandwagon.  For 100 days.  And my master plan is to have 100 de-lish paleo recipes up here when all is said and done.  Will I manage 100 unique recipes?  Probably not, but I'm going to try.  So we'll start with Saturdays breakfast:  Banana pancakes!

Ingredients: 1 banana, 1 egg, 1 tbsp almond butter, cinnamon

Directions: Mash banana.  Whisk in egg.  Stir in almond butter and cinnamon.  Pour small pancakes onto hot pan.  Flip gently.  Enjoy.

Rando and the Trifecta

On Saturday I had a fantastic ski with Eszter.  We have diverged over the years in our interest skis/bikes.  So Saturday, we went big.  

Peak # 1 Red Lady 

After dropping 3k plus feet back down to Kebler, we climbed Peak # 2 Axtell 

Down some beautiful glades, and up Carbon.  Anthracites in the background.  

Summit Peak # 3 Carbon

Carbon is the old volcano you can see from Gunnison.  Pretty unique mountain.  

The GPS died about halfway through, but we are guessing somewheres around 9000 feet climb/descent for the tour.  Super windy but it yielded an incredibly crisp sky.  

Skiing together has been challenging, but I seem to remember the good ones and forget the bad like mosquito's on a backpacking trip.  This was a good one.  We just skied down Carbon! 

Amazing linking three peaks with huge vertical with low angle skiing.  It has really been a spooky year and I have actually enjoyed the creativity of finding low-angle routes.  

We are going to try to do more of these long tours in prep for the Elk Mountain Traverse where we will ski 40 miles to Aspen.  It will be fun and challenging trying to do this race with Eszter.  

Sunday I was shooting at a Rando race at Monarch.  Team CB killed it! Brian 1st, Jari 2nd in womens, and Wick in 3rd.  

Met up with a good friend from Salida that I rode a good bit of the CTR with.  

Eszter and I talk about moving all the time, but you really cannot help but love Colorado.  

Cheers,

Chris 

Episode 3

Episode 3.

I don't have the budget for the fancy equipment that is used for video production but I did make a Millerperspectives custom camera boom for 30 bucks from Ace Hardware.   

Cheers,

Chris 

 

More Turns

It was a good week for me.  I skied 5 days this week with some massive vertical.  

On Friday, Josh and I toured the mountain that I look at when I walk the dog, Whetstone.  There is an entrance to the X chute that looked safe that I have been looking at for a while.  Our turns.

 

Josh, powder junkie. I have had this great idea to implant  a GPS chip behind Josh's ear and create a website, "Where's Josh."  I am pretty sure he skis more vertical than Mt. Everest every week of winter.  

We ended up doing 2 laps before Josh had to get to work.  

Saturday I write off as 'work' filming, which had it's benifits.  

Our tracks above Gothic

I am not making much doe from this project, but it sure is fun.

Team Crested Butte

Episode 3 will be up tomorrow.  

Cheers,

Chris

 

 

Recovery Fallout

I have a notorious sweet tooth.  I love candy. I love chocolate.  I love chocolate covered candy.  So you can imagine my disappointment when I settled myself into the minivan I had rented to drive from I-Falls to Minneapolis with my leftover chocolate from the race in my lap and saw a new email from LW on my phone.  It said (with a few more words): Put the chocolate down.  I immediately felt like I had been caught with my hand in the cookie jar and I sadly closed up the baggie of chocolate and tossed it in the far back of the van.

Saturday morning ski

But something funny happened. Instead of candy, I ate fruits and veggies and by the time I got back to Colorado, instead of having a stomach that hated me, I was ready to rally.  So I did.  And I may have over done it.  Just a teensy tiny bit.

The climax of overdoing it?  Waking up Saturday morning and skating for 20 minutes to get my daily ski in and then driving to Vail for the TEVA Mountain Games snowbike crit and then driving home that night.  

Saturday evening racing

Exhausted, I tried to skin Snodograss the next morning with Chris.  It did not go well and while I've learned that the voices in my head are just that, voices in my head and often don't speak the truth, I was still in a bad way.  I got home and went straight into my leftover chocolate stash from Arrowhead.  A large number of peanut butter cups, chocolate covered acai berries, and chocolate covered peanut clusters met their demise and I spent the next 24 hours sick to my stomach.  

Sunday ski.  About how I felt.

I'm not a quick learner but I've learned enough to take it easy this week.  Fitness peaks are a fun wave to ride but eventually every wave crashes into a beach so instead of climbing big mountains, I've been content to stick to the corduroy of the nordic trails, sliding along blissfully for 20 to 40 minutes before work and giving myself an extra 10 minutes commute time to fully be able to soft-pedal along the highway.

Monday ski

Maybe next time I'll learn to give Chris all the junk food that I come home with and have him hide it where I'll never find it.  Sometimes I feel like I have to outsmart myself.  Sometimes I wish I understood the meaning of the word 'moderation'. 

Tuesday ski

Wednesday ski

Thursday ski

Friday ski

 

But then again, what's the fun in moderation?

Frosting

Our tracks off of a ridge above the East River.  

East Face of Gothic.  

Zero wind at 12000 feet.  One of those magical days.  

Our skin track.  

Big terrain 

Pushing out the ridge to another massive rib run.  

Incredible light on the edge of the Elk Mountains 

The pyramid group appearing dream-like in the distance.

Sparkling descent on a SW aspect 

Amazing evening with Snodgrass in the background.  

Zach remote triggered this pocket when he was well into the run.  I yelled for him to pull out as I saw the slope fracture below me.  It seems as if we played our cards right, for the slide quickly lost energy on the low angle ramp.  It was a pocket of new snow on a convexity, but spooked me none-the-less to see it fracture above Zach.  

The ramp with our tracks 

Exiting the valley as the sun sets.  

We returned pretty dehydrated for we both ran out of water halfway through the tour.  Hours of breaking trail in deep snow is well worth it in the end.  

Cheers,

Chris 

New Cycle

This is the second storm cycle that we have had this year with some localized snowfall thrown in between.  Our snowpack tells the history of the droughts in between like tree rings.  Deep powder is out there, but we must travel with caution.  

We started off with a tour into the storm.

and milked the low-angle cold smoke 

Pushing it into some steeper chutes.  We had seen these chutes clense or avalanche withe the last storm. The persistent slab was flushed out, but I made sure to ski cut the new snow hard.  We leap frogged with extreme caution with incredible snow

The next day we received some more snow and the snow got a bit thicker under its own weight.  The trees were excellent.   

Deep skin tracks 

We ski one at a time to islands of safety 

Janelle makes some turns through 'money.'

Face shots 

While we smile with snow plastered to our face, there was a recent fatality of a backcountry skier in Telluride.  I still think backcountry skiing is safer than driving down the highway, but skier fatalities always hit hard at home.  My life is the mountains, and they will let me pass as long as I am humble.  

Be safe and enjoy those beautiful mountains,

Chris 

New Chapter

I find myself thinking of my life in chapters.  At least in the relatively short term.  For the past three months, most of my efforts have been focused on the Arrowhead and the week after it had been spent tying up loose ends relating to it.   As much as I'd love to be able to bask in the glory of a well executed race, I finished my last major project relating to it today and with my bags unpacked (yes, it took me this long), it sort of feels good to call it done.  

Tuesday skiing.

And with the closing of the Arrowhead chapter, I get to open a new one.  It's going to be called: Fretting about the Elk Mountain Grand Traverse.  T-minus 7-ish weeks.  My highly scientific training plan (since I get a glorious month off of anything structured): Ski lots.  Lots lots lots.  Try to get my ski legs back as I'm quickly realizing that just because I can pedal all day doesn't mean I have the leg muscles to ski Red Lady Bowl without getting completely worked over by the bottom.  

Wednesday skiing.

I'm settling into a nice routine.  My workday doesn't start until 10 am, so I ride in and show up at 9, grab a pair of skis, skate from the Nordic Center for 45 minutes, take off my stinky clothes, put a hat on and try to pass myself off as presentable.  

Thursday skiing.

I've been getting first tracks on the trails above the Nordic Center, admiring the view, visiting with the fox that lives up there, and loving the fact that I can spend my mornings skiing instead of doing a core workout.  Each hill is a lesson in humility, but I think I'm getting better.

Gotta scrape the seat before commuting.

Then on a day off with errands to run in the afternoon, there's little better than a lap of Red Lady, even if it is completely tracked out.

Drinking my tea!

I finished the main bowl with snow clinging to my pants up to my waist.  I found myself complaining that I could still feel the tracks under the fluff.  I am so spoiled rotten.

Red Lady Ski Resort/Friday ski

Guides Ridge and Alley Loop

Guides Ridge video and Alley Loop

Cheers,

Chris 

 

Whetstone Traverse and Gothic West

 Eszter and I skied the x-chute last spring on Whetstone but that's just the tip of the iceberg. When I free-wheel the 6-7 miles down 135 to CB south on the bike, Whetstone is above me the whole time.  There is a lot of terrain on that hill.  

My frozen bicycle with Whetstone catching morning light in the background.  

Five of us headed up to traverse to town from the South.  Summit # 1 above the X-Chute 

Several interesting lines that I am excited to come back for

This face is hidden from the highway and town

There was a face that looked skiable but indecision amongst the group lead us to the final summit 3500 feet above town.  Dropping some cornices on "Big Bowl."

We lowered Zach into the bowl and he conducted a an ECT or Extended Column Test.  Listening to his shovel blade cut through the glass-sounding depth hoar, my visions of endless powder turns down the bowl diminished. The hard slab failed, but it took a little effort.  Agh the grey area.  

While it would have been excellent powder turns, we took a pass and skied  off a ridge to the West, which actually was pretty damn good.  

We skied down the lookers right ridge and into the glades.  

Looking more closely you can see our tracks

It was quite the adventure skiing into town.  Zach and I ended up skiing down a private drive, through a backyard of 2nd home, down the Green Lake trail(awesome mountain bike trail) , powder turns down to the bench above town and a skate on the nordic trails.  We stopped by the nordic center to bother Eszter with shit-eating grins.  That was a goofy ski to say the least.   Always a bummer getting shut down on the bigger lines, but I have been skiing long enough to know that it's worth the wait.  

 The next morning Josh and I headed out to ski a line on Gothic that Zach had skied 2 days prior.  I have skied on the East Face of Gothic but never the West.  I was excited to check out some terrain that I have not explored.  We were heading to ski the lookers left face of Gothic pictured below.  

The climb was fun up a steep ridge.  Well actually it was pretty loose rock and gave me the stumbly wumblies. 

looking down the "Spoon" as some weather moves in.  

We entered in a chute that has some rocks with unconsolidated snow.  The turns were conservative, but fun. At some point I'll have to take a pictures of my bases, looks like Pollock went to town with a knife on them.  Thin year = ski the rocks. 

Good powder in spots, some suncrust and some rocks.  All and all it was an awesome 2000 foot continuous steep descent.  

I am always happy to throw the skis on the back and climb.  Sure beats moguls;)

Cheers,

Chris