Deep Transitions With Dad

My Dad and I often have long conversations about solving the world's problems. They can go pretty deep sometimes. I cherish these kinds of conversations with him. He is a wise man, and I am grateful to learn from him. He also taught me to ski when I was five years old. He taught me to ski powder when I was nine years old at Vail. He gave me the keys to the rig that has drove me to where I am today. I was able to return the favor a little with getting him into the backcountry and learning to tour in and around avalanche terrain. We typically stay on small slopes and short approaches, because it makes for a more enjoyable day as my Dad began touring when he was sixty years old. He says that he wishes he had found touring twenty-five years ago, and I just laugh and say that he was still too busy teaching me to ski in Wisconsin to have the time to get access and learn. He and my mom were married young and had kids pretty young too by today's standards. My dad never got to move out west and charge like many of his friends did. I am glad he can still take advantage of it now. "Better late then never" is what we always end up with when that topic comes up on the skin track. My dad came into town along with a big storm, and we got a chance to do some charging.  

^The moose at Snowbasin shows the morning's

Sunrise Special

Sunrise is a special time of day. The magical golden light only lasts a short while, but the glow casts a warmth on the morning despite the coldest of temperatures. This particular morning touring with my friends, Loren Griswold and Alex LeBlanc, was one of the coldest mornings of winter. Having started our day in the dark, the bitter cold bite as I changed from my street clothes to my ski gear penetrated straight to my bones. When we shoved off on the tour the blood started pumping and finally began to warm the bones to heal the bite of the cold. An hour later we were crested the ridge and the sun began to emerge over the distant peaks. 

^The sunrise had cast that

Downtown Tuesdays

For the last few seasons I have had a weekly ritual of a dawn patrol tour in the big city Central Wasatch just east of Salt Lake City. I live and spend most of my time in the northern Wasatch in sleepy Ogden situated just an hour north of Utah's capital city. In my younger days I frequented the Salt Lake Wasatch much more, but as I aged and fell comfortably into my place in the north country I kind of stopped making the one-hour commute down to the busy city. A few years ago I started scheduling a weekly meeting with the fellas down at Telemark Skier Magazine, which is headquartered on Salt Lake's west side. As a result, I began doing a weekly morning dawn patrol tour to make the most of my southern migration each week. I rallied a few friends and by now we have a nice little weekly tradition going. The early season this year had a late start, but has come in pretty heavy recently ramping up the avalanche concerns, but our short and small slope approach to our weekly dawn patrols has paid dividends in low angle sheltered ski turns with relatively low avalanche exposure. 

^Sunrise in the mountains is a special

Dropped Third Strike

I grew up with a baseball in my hand, and as such I carry a lot of classic baseball analogies with me in my life despite not having swung a bat in many years. This weekend's endeavors harbored a scenario that I would liken to a dropped third strike in baseball. I still struck out, but then I still got on base too.  I swung and missed, but the catcher dropped the ball opening the opportunity to advance to first base remaining in the game, and possibly still scoring arose.

All this baseball applies here as a metaphor in that I was scheduled to go down south to Fruita, Colorado to meet up with a bunch of my college buddies for a long weekend mountain biking trip. Due to a variety of factors the whole trip melted down at the very last minute. A real swing and miss. A full-on strike out, and all the disappointment that comes with it. The dropped third strike scenario comes into play in that one of those old college buddies had a friend of his, Brian, that was traveling to my area in northern Utah and was looking to ride an area just north of his destination in Orem called Corner Canyon, a little over and hour south of where I live in Ogden, Utah. Our mutual friend made the network connection between the two of us and the plan was on. I also have a ski buddy of mine, Lance, that lives right at the base of Corner Canyon. Lance and I have been trying to link up for a ride all summer, and I saw this as the perfect opportunity to put it all together to have Lance show me and a new friend around his backyard trail system. An opportunity to get on base and possibly still have the weekend result in a mountain biking score!