Nevertheless, with little time and inappropriate technology to really edit anything, this little mashup will suffice to show you how nuts I really am. Cheers.

JCA

For all it’s worth, I hope any passers-through can enjoy the rough cuts as much as we do.

Cheers,

JCA

p.s. KFC (aka Keenan, is the red puffy-jacketed planker)

After gouging our gear and bodies on granite stones at Guanella last week, Steven and I opted for some manicured groomers at Loveland this week. I am a Loveland pass holder, but Steve is still drinking the corporate Kool-Aid that Vail Resorts pours him every winter. Though there are many more skiable acres beyond that heinous, death-is-awaiting pass, the friction of getting there (the traffic, the parking, the scenesters in basketball jerseys and over sized beanies, the frequent pass closures on those days when the snow is actually worth going out there for, etc.) outweighs the frills of a few extra tree runs and bowls. I often tell Steven I’ll be watching him in traffic while I make deep turns just up the hill from the highway.

But whatever…the point is that I ride alone all winter and I’m bitter about it.

So it was a thrill beyond words when Steven decided to debase himself and ride at a “lesser-quality” ski area with me. The video below is a document of proof that you can have lots of fun no matter where you are for little money–it just depends who you’re with and how creative you can be. (It’s also a reason for me to keep developing my video editing skills–I apologize in adavance for the nausea induced editing…).

Cheers.

p.s. I added a Facebook transcript to show you how desperate I get to find someone willing to go into the backcountry with me. It’s also a foreshadow of my own probable death…

so, about tomorrow. I found this website:http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/snotel/Colorado/colorado.html

See the little red dot aaaaalll the way down on the NM CO border? That’s where I’m going. 27 inches of snow…all freshy. And I am going to build a kicker and ride an abandoned resort, and probably die…alone. Unless you are guilted into joining me.

NRCS National Water and Climate Center – SNOTEL Map Based Network – Colorado

www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov

Select a SNOTEL Site Apishapa (303) Arapaho Ridge (1030) Arrow (305) Bear Lake (322)Bear River (1061) Beartown (327) Beaver Ck Village (1041) Berthoud Summit (335) Bison Lake (345)Black Mountain (1161) Brumley (369) Buckskin Joe (938) Buffalo Park (913) Burro Mountain (378) Butte (380) Cascade (…

• • 

    Jason Abdilla ‎”Anticipation and excitement run high with early season storms. Everyone is eager to get out and play. Be sure to unpack and dust off your avalanche thinking, good travel practices, and safety equipment with the rest of you gear. An early season encounter with an avalanche will often come with a ride through rocks, downed timber, stumps, or other obstacles, which can quickly bring an end to your riding season. Always think of the consequences if you get caught and take a ride in an avalanche.” from the avalanche center. Geeze. I’m a prime candidate…

    Wednesday at 6:34am · Like
  • 

    Steven Arnold was this last comment suppose to be the icing on the cake? because it completely failed and convinced me to just go to a resort.

    Wednesday at 7:53am · Like
  • 

    Jason Abdilla i knew you’d flake out on riding the backcountry…

    Wednesday at 8:18am · Like
  • 

    Steven Arnold haha yeah i already explained you, i want to get a solid day of skiing in to get my legs back

    Wednesday at 8:19am · Like
  • 

    Jason Abdilla go for a walk today and “drop knees”. you’ll get your legs back pretty quick. it’s almost the same thing.

    Wednesday at 8:20am · Like
  • 

    Jason Abdilla well. where I thought the old resort was is no where near where all the snow is. Guess Im staying home and eating potato chips.

    Wednesday at 8:39am · Like
  • 

    Steven Arnold or going to loveland

    Wednesday at 8:41am · Like

Ah. It’s that time of the year here in Colorado where there is just enough snow to tease then coax the snow-deprived into packing their gear up a hill only to destroy the goods in one run. Steven and I, without many 14ers we feel comfortable to climb right now, decided to head out to Guanella Pass to scout out some places for riding this winter. Our goal initially was to just build a big enough jump to goof around on (a birthday tradition of mine with friends since I was in high school), but when we saw the wide open runs we convinced ourselves there was enough snow for a few turns.

Well, we were right–in so far as we took a few turns just to dodge giant granite boulders and saplings. The snow was thick and heavy with a nice crust on top that made turning about as easy as driving a rear-wheeled pickup in mud. I ended up clipping the top of a buried tree, which sent me full lam into a medium sized sapling, resulting in a massive muscle contusion and sprained ankle. Steve took a large rock right to the core of his ski and was barely able to get down the hill due to the drag it caused.

Despite let down expectations of deep turns and big drops, it was still a really fun day with a friend. It definitely whetted our appetites for more backcountry riding. So, as soon as we get that season-opening dump, be sure to check back for another goofy video.

Cheers,

Jason

The Deer Creek/Rosalie/Tanglewood trails have been a go-to for my wife and I anytime we need a quick wilderness tour and don’t have a lot of time to travel. The view from Tanglewood’s summit yields unique views of the southern Front Range and the undulating expanse of the Great Plains. The trail becomes faint in the tundra after the summit, but becomes clear again near Roosevelt Lakes; a pair of shallow, trout-filled “lakes” that reflect the serrated horizons back into the thin, 12,000 foot air. Tanglewood will eventually drop you near Bear Track Lakes and a host of streams and glacial rivulets that, like Roosevelt, are humble, but offer great fishing.

Despite having spent considerable time here in the spring, summer, and fall months, we had yet to snowshoe out there. After a series of October snow storms, we were excited to head out and traipse around in the snow.

The road into the trailhead was pretty clear up to Deer Creek campground, then was dicy after. Some cars were parked at that junction, but we continued going thanks to the ol’ RAV 4′s AWD. For it being so cold, snowy, and sketchy to get to, there were still a surprising number of cars in the lot. This is to be expected, though, for such a beautiful trail so close to the city.

Not feeling like we would contribute to a chaotic environment, we strapped up and headed out. We only made it to just before tree-line before we decided  to stop and have lunch in the thick of Engleman and fir trees while rosy finches and chickadees darted above us in the treetops.

Below is a video I made of the trip. I used both a Canon 60D and a little GoPro. I’m using iMovie, which is so convoluted compared to a more professional system like Adobe CS 5; but alas, you were with what you have. It’s still a great training tool for the other software, but just limits what one can do with their footage.

Enjoy.

Here are driving directions to the trail:

Deer Creek Trailhead

Travel North on I-25 from Pagosa Springs to Denver. Drive west from Denver on US 285 approximately 28 miles to the traffic light before the top of Crow Hill. Turn right (northwest) on to Park County 43 and drive in a northwesterly direction for 6.8 miles to a “Y” in the road. Bear left and drive 2.1 miles, staying right at the campground, to the parking area at the trailhead.

 

Despite a strong bi-partisan agreement that environmental protection is in fact economically and socially important, a major issue we’re now faced with is how to evaluate the success of existing publicly funded environmental programs–such as the Endangered Species Act–in the midst of economic turmoil.

Over the weekend I read budget proposals and press releases from the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, specifically from the subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. What I learned is that legislators on both sides give full-lipped service to protecting the environment and its inhabitants, but are unsure how to set aside funding for programs whose “track record” is all but impressive.

Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson admitted that though no one on the committee is opposed to saving endangered species, it is difficult to set aside funds for a program that lists 2,018 species as endangered but can only recover 21. He continues:

“By any calculation, that’s a pretty poor track record. Any other program with such a poor rate of success would have long since been terminated.”

Chairman Simpson, though, evaluates the ESA the same way a Subway manager evaluates a day of business. A hard cost-benefit analysis applied to issues like saving species is not only unjust, it’s absurd. Our politicians’ chimerical expectations are thanks to the fact that they’re entirely disconnected from the science and process involved in a “successful” environmental program. Yet, to Chairman Simpson’s credit, he says:

“It’s time to fix ESA. The best way to do that is for the authorizers and stakeholders in the conservation community to come to the table to fix what is broken so we can begin actually recovering species again. We are sending that message today.”

Despite his enthusiasm for corporate activity to save species again, he still addresses the issue of saving species as though it were an isolated and simple problem to fix. This is what is so discouraging to me. Each issue (climate change, energy sustainability, clean water infrastructure, and job creation) is addressed as an isolated problem and not as a component of an intricate system that requires extensive time and resources to execute well.

We’re in a pinch that’s forcing our representatives to make enduring decisions on the fly with minimal information. This situation did not develop over night, though. So long as politicians are pointing fingers at failed programs, I’d like to call on politicians from over the last century (or decade!) to show how their policy track records for economic sustainability are panning out…

As a participatory democracy, the question we face is clear: Do we want to perpetuate misinformed policies?

If not, I suggest we take Chairman Simpson’s offer to come to the table with confidence and forthrightness in order to educate our policy makers of the programs they decide are relevant and worth funding.

Now, if only I could get this post published in the New York Times…

-J

Links to sources:

Committee on Appropriations

Endangered Species

With no full moon to light our way, Steven and I had no reason to set our alarms for 11.30 pm to leave by midnight for the trail. Instead, we decided to sleep-in until 2am. At 1am I was brewing coffee, and just as tired as if I’d woken at 11.30. So much for energy conservation.

The nice thing about Front Range 14ers is the ease with which the urban, time-scant adventurers can access them. With that being said, though, be prepared for the shock-smashing, lip-biting trudge up the road to Grays and Torreys. If Steve was not able to drive his Xterra, we’d need to stop at the lower parking area (close to 2 miles, I believe, below the trailhead) and walk up a chunky granite road, past private land with idyllic cabins, and arsenic and cadmium soaked streams (heavy mining has made the ostensibly clear water questionable for generations).

We were the first climbers at the trail and could see the two peaks thanks to a foot of snow that had fallen a day or so earlier. Not long, however, after we began our climb, a car pulled up in the lot. Then, a matter of 15 minutes later, another car. Grays and Torreys, like Quandary, Bierstadt, and Longs, see thousands of boot and trekking pole use annually. And, come winter, telemark skis will slice open the snow leading to the peaks.

Conversation at those hours, if recorded, would keep both Steve and I out of politics and serious relationships with women. Something about our brains being frozen, lacking oxygen, sleep-deprived and fueled on cheap coffee and caffeine-soaked gummies (GU makes some seriously tasty energy candy) turns our English into a fetid slew of obscenities. I only mention this because it creates laughter–and at those times and altitudes, and with long switchbacks glaring down at you, laughter is my one response to misery that keeps my feet moving one in front of the other. When the day is over, we admit our lunacy and return to a more civil way of speaking and living.

At the top of Grays we took a few photos, watched a poor climber try to stay warm against near 0F winds in nothing but shorts and a t-shirt, then trekked over to Torreys.

We’d made the decision to climb down Kelso Ridge because I wanted to up our experience from cat 2s to a cat. 3 climb. Kelso seemed like a great place to begin. With just enough snow to turn everything into an ice skating rink, we questioned our decision to continue on the narrow granite spine. But with slow, deliberate steps, some crying from Steven, and some reserved horror from me, we made our way safely.

This is the first time, though, that I’ve ever been assured of imminent death if I made mistake. Scooting across a knife edge of granite was thrilling, but it was, as Steven said, “having an ass full of granite with death on both sides,” which can be less than “fun” for some. It took a long time to go that way, but, when it was over, we felt empowered. This was my first taste of  climbing in a more technical sense, even though we hardly needed ropes or other gear, it was definitely more challenging mentally, which I crave in outdoor sports.

In the end, it is a circuit that can be completed by most anyone–but be prepared to take your time.

Cheers,

JCA

“Ojibwemowin is one of the few surviving languages that evolved to the present here in North America. The intelligence of language is adapted as no other to the philosophy bound up in northern land, lakes, rivers, forests, and plains; to the animals and their particular habits; to the shades of meaning in the very placement of stones. As a North American writer it is essential to me that I try to understand our human relationship to place in the deepest way possible, using my favorite tool, language.” -Louise Erdrich, Two Languages in the Mind, but Just One in the Heart

“As a student of anthropology in the 1950s I became convinced…that the traditional cultures of the world were doomed. We could study them, we could try to preserve what we could find of their languages, customs, myths, folktales, ethnobotanic knowledge…but it would be quixotic to think that we should invest any political effort in the actual defense of their cultural integrity.” -Gary Snyder, The Politics of Ethnopoetics

“Anthropological curiosity only occurs if you are a member of an expanding civilization.” Snyder, ibid.

“An expantionist imperialist culture feels most comfortable when it is able to believe that the people it is exploiting are somehow less than human. When it begins to get some kind of feedback that these people might be human beings like themseves, exploitation becomes increasingly difficult. We can see…how the publication of Native American poetry and narrative helped the larger white public come to realize the depth of these cultures.” Snyder, ibid.

“If Levi-Strauss is right, myths are constructed by a universal logic that, like language itself, is as characteristic for human beings as nestbuilding for birds. The stories seem to be different stories, but the underlying structure is always the same, in any part of the world, at any time.” Lewis Thomas, from chapter Some Biomythology in The Lives of a Cell

“Language…is the most compulsively collective, genetically programmed, species-specific, and autonomic of all the things we do, and we are infallible at it. It comes naturally. We have DNA for grammar, neurons for syntax. We can never give up; we scramble our way through one civilization after another, metamorphosing, sprouting tools and cities everywhere, and all the time new words keep tumbling out.” Lewis Thomas, from chapter On Various Words, in ibid.

“[W]e all come from some place, and if you are in your place for some time, your place intensifies you. And if you move away, there may be some kind of alienation or some loss that takes place. And this is true if your ancestors came from another culture. If you are unable to speak the language, you lose some of the freedom that results from that kind of interchange…

Once you lose the language of a previous generation, you lose access to those people. What you have very often in this country is a kind of uniligual grandparents, and a middle generation who are bilingual, and a third generation who have to resort to a pidgin-Czechoslovakian…

we should realise that “story” is much older than literacy…and that all kinds of people tell stories who can’t read or write. But I think that as a writer…I like to give the impression that I am telling the story rather than writing the story….All culture has oral history, all culture has story. Some cultures are more literate than others, but they all have stories. It is interesting to think that what we do as writers comes from storytelling, which is as old as man.” Alistair MacLeod in an interview with Robert Jarovi from The Scots Canadian

When I see photos of grizzled mountaineers on top of Denali or Rainier in what appear to be burlap sacks, leather moccasins, and heavy, inefficient wool jackets, I wonder if they survived the trip down. Of course, many of them did–albeit with less digits and limbs that were claimed by Jack Frost. Nevertheless, the fact remains that their gear was, by and large, primitive compared to what we have now to keep our suburban skin Dove soft. As much as I respect those men and women who climbed with nothing more than heavy, gritty wools and rusted ice axes, I would not want to give up my merino wools or Gore Windtopper-embedded jacket for the glory of “roughin’ it.”

The advent of technology means the rise in cost to produce such amenities. These costs don’t reflect the true nature of where the resources came from to make them, but that’s another post and another day. This is a double-edged issue, though, because I can guarantee that early mountaineer gear companies were not creating an image as much as they were trying to make good gear to keep their mountain heroes alive. Now most gear is designed to help us achieve our semiotic heights: Fashion statements achieved through name-brand flaunting. For many of us, a Patagonia down vest is form over function; not because Colorado Mills or Cherry Creek is so frigid that without that vest we’d freeze to death, but because the Bougainvillea matches a beanie that matches a shirt that goes great with the jeans that frame my ass best…

So, as working students (or non-Boulder CU students–sorry, I had to…), were can we go to get good gear that won’t break the bank?

Here are a few places I recommend searching for your next outdoor gear purchase:

First, and, in my opinion, last: Any of the Backcountry.com Corp companies

Steapandcheap.com (SAC), Departmentofgoods.com (DOG), and Backcountry.com  (BC)

These three sites not only offer affordable prices for top-of-the-line gear, but provide the best customer service I have ever experienced, even over REI. Without a doubt, they get taken advantage of, but for someone like myself who is a weird body type (that’s what a Maltese-German-Irishman gets…), buying clothing from various manufacturers, who all have different sizing definitions, is never easy online. Then, once the item is in my hands and the fit is good, what happens if it fails the performance test? That’s when having a great return policy puts me at ease because, after all, it’s about being safe and being able to enjoy the sport and not being forced to wear the wrong gear simply because you can’t exchange it or take it back for a better alternative. Other than SAC (30 day), both DOG and BC have lifetime return policies.

But WAIT!…As a consumer, this is where having a buying ethic is necessary. The purpose of such a return policy, I believe, is to provide an affordable place for outdoor enthusiasts to gear up comfortably and confidently, not to provide a tool for slick capitalists to manipulate a pretty altruistic system–which, in profit-is-god America, is something to cherish.

In the end, places like Sierra Trading Post and REI (especially their clearance sites) are equally as good, but I have found better prices and customer service at the previous sites.

Now go, gear up and get out!

-J

We wanted our second ascent to be more challenging, but still within our expanding skill levels. We originally chose Mt. Columbia because it offered a vista that we imagined would be as eye-dazzling as Quandary’s, but which was twice as long a climb with a step up from cat. 1 (Quandary) to a cat. 2. With that in mind and not a map in hand, we left Denver at mid-night, drank close to eight cups of Folger’s instant coffee, and arrived, after some navigational errors, at the trailhead around 2.45 am.

The sky was clear, and the faint luminescence of snow limned fir and spruce trees. The snow glazed the yellowing aspen leaves, giving them all icy pendants that bowed them toward the earth. Climbing in the dark–or at least beginning a climb–turns otherwise post-card-perfect landscapes into dimension-less voids that rarely show any detail. Having the new snow on the ground and trees gave impressions that could only be defined through negatives: Where the snow wasn’t, we assumed, was the rest of the tree, the ground, the sky. And it is this challenge to imagine where I am that keeps these night hikes so appealing. How often I take for granted the “given” information of a scene, and how rarely am I left to create one out of pure imagination.

Soon we were above tree-line and I realized we’d missed the trail that snaked up Columbia. We decided to keep going toward Harvard, which was, at that point, only a cuneiform mound outlined by snow. One of the drawbacks to night climbing is that subtle changes of trail are easily missed; and if your headlamp does not catch a sign off the trail, you’ll keep moving, and end up off target. And so, just like this, our 9 mile hike turned into 13.

Eventually, the sun beat us to the top. The last mile was nothing but switchbacks over snow and scree; the last hundred feet was mild bouldering. On the way up we met a guy who was too chipper for that time of day. A Sierra Design rep. who was camping on all 14ers over the summer and who had watched his tent get hit by lightning and burst intio flames not more than a few hours before he saw us. He gave us some cards for an online discount. “Too bad their stuff is so crappy,” said Keenan. Either way, it’s amazing that he lived and was so stoked to keep climbing.

Finally at the top, we ate “summit turkey”–a tradition started on Quandary that Steve started where he packs a pound of Boar’s Head turkey to the summit. After the tryptophan sunk into our muscles and stomach, we all fell asleep, strewn out like the dirtbags we are, on boulders overlooking some of Colorado’s most glaciated valleys and ridges and peaks. After the nap, we were warm and reluctant to move. Nevertheless, we packed up and began the hellish trek down.

On the way down we came across a few people who were making a “late” ascent. A couple of older men, dressed in all the appropriate attire, boasting finely-combed beards, and moving with a gait fit for gentry-men, asked us to identify the peak we’d just come down from. We all pointed in different directions. The leader–I suppose–barked at us as though we were idiots, “Well! why don’t you know where you just came from?”  I guess that’s a fair question. But sleep deprivation is a bitch. We ignored his other comments and questions and continued down the slick stones of dirtbag lane.

A couple hours later and several illusions where Steve imagined a helicopter coming to pick him up, we were at the car. We soaked our legs in a stream in silence. It felt good to push ourselves that far. With two peaks in two weeks bagged, we spoke of the next peak as though it were only a moment away.