The 12th Annual Elk Mountain Grand Traverse was held this past weekend. Nearly 130 teams of two lined up for the midnight start at the Crested Butte High School, ready to make the 40 mile ski pilgrimage through the night to Aspen. This year’s race was marked by single digit temperatures and driving winds up high which most participants took in stride, because anyone who has done this race knows–...
The day after crying uncle at the Steamboat race, Christy said we needed some so called “active recovery,” so we joined Dirk and Tim for an awesome day out in Big Momma Bowl. The weather was perfect for the two hour skin and hike to the huge bowl in the Maroon Creek Valley. The pics tell the rest and yes, Christy is skiing with fixed heels. Tim Mutrie, barely keeping...
Curiosity got the best of me this past weekend. I figured joining Christy for her 5th go at the 5th Annual Coureur Du Bois, a 90km skate race from Steamboat to the Wyoming border and back, sounded like good fun. It wasn’t– it crushed me. Who was I to think I could show up with only a single 40km training day and a few shorter races under my belt and...
With the big snow that fell Monday and Tuesday came the text from Chris Davenport– Sievers Mountain on Wednesday, who’s in? As testimony to both the classic status of the Sievers tour and Chris’s ability to rally the troops, nine of us assembled at Snowmass under bluebird skies and began. Nine is definitely on the large side for a backcountry ski group and with three climbs and ski descents that...
If the set goal for the day was to ski good snow we would have been let down. Instead, Christy, Tim and I went to Hayden on Sunday and filed it under the category of “getting out for some adventure” rather than “epic backcountry day”– and that small label change made it appealing. After all, when I was up here last Tuesday the snow left much to be desired and...
[Christy here]With four ski mountains in the area, locals have an unique opportunity to ski them all in one day. The “four mountain challenge” as it has been called, isn’t something that’s done or talked about very much and there seems to be several different ways it can be executed. Most of the time it’s an Aspen old timer that has gone out for the challenge. Tom Hines and Dick...
Timing is everything. Sometime last Saturday I noticed Bob Perlmutter peering through the telescope at the Sundeck on Aspen Mountain, following the progress of a skier on Ski Hayden (Hayden Peak’s north summit). I had been tracking the solo skier as well and after noting Bob’s interest, knew exactly who to recruit as a partner. After a half dozen more skiers followed suit up there on Sunday and Monday and...
A mid winter ski descent of the 14er Mount Sherman.
Locate this sign and you’ll feel a bit less lost out there With six weeks to go before the Grand Traverse, team Lucky No. 9, a.k.a Christy and I, went out to log some miles, skiing a classic interconnect between the two founding huts of the 10th Mountain Hut System, Margy’s and McNamara. Starting at the Lenado trailhead (8640 ft.), we made our way to McNamara Hut (10,360 ft.), via a linkup of...
Christy and I are happy to report we both set personal records at the Owl Creek Chase this year, and by more than twenty minutes! Congrats, right? Well, not so fast (pun intended). For as much as we’d like to take credit for this, being a result of hard work, training, ski prep, or whatever, there was a more obvious reason. The course was 4 km shorter than usual, reduced from...
We met in Aspen in 2000 and have been happily stuck in the rockies ever since, getting out in the mountains every day we can, in every season and by all means possible. Read More
