Face Time: Longs Peak’s Diamond calls to climbers craving a big wall alpine experience—and keeps them coming back for its secrets. Photo: John Dickey

Trust is the heart of any relationship. Without trust, it’s all up for grabs. Trust requires intimacy—and the risk of harm. If that’s the case, I’ve had a rich relationship over 15 years with The Diamond. I’ve climbed the famed face via new routes, in the cold clutches of winter and as a summer free climb. It’s given me epics, hospitalized me and taken a friend’s life. For many rock climbers, it’s an end in itself—and a worthy one at that. As Matt Samet, former editor of Climbing magazine says, “It’s the premier, most committing high-alpine cliff in the Lower 48.”

Welcome to life on the Diamond.

2:30 a.m.

An ascent of the Rockies’ most storied alpine face usually starts when most days end. I’ve done the commute many times and now I almost enjoy the drive through Boulder in the wee hours of Sunday morning, when the last dregs of the weekend are tottering home. They’ll face inevitable hangover or walk of shame, while my climbing partner Andy Donson and I will be elevated above the whole Front Range. Our goal is a true alpine rock climbing experience on Longs Diamond face. It’s not our first time, and it won’t be our last. But we treat it with a deference born of hard experience and anticipation informed by past success.

Even in mid-summer, there’s a chill in the air since the parking lot is at 9,400 feet. I’ve been here as early as 1 a.m. and as late as 6 a.m. Either way, the days seem stretched out. If the Diamond had an easily defined quality it’s the long day—and this parking lot serves both as a starting point and a psychological nadir. At least once, I’ve actually bailed from this very point, even before starting up the trail.

The lot is already full—the curse of Longs Peak on a summer weekend. Andy and I silently collect our gear and stride into the forest. The woods are monochrome and our headlamps cast Blair-Witch funnels as we bob up the trail. Andy has a wry, British sense of humor, though for some reason—maybe it’s the thin air—we begin our usual cackle of endless and nonsensical banter. It’s the kind of humor that bears misery well.

3:30 a.m.

Shortcuts. On a winter attempt on the Diamond, I once got lost in these woods. We spent an extra hour trolling through waist deep snow before getting spit out in a drainage a quarter mile off the trail. Now, in August, even in the dark, it’s hard to get lost since the trail is full of climbers. On any given Sunday, more than 100 people will gun for the summit via the class 3 Keyhole Route. Some carry daypacks. Some shiver in shorts and cotton tees while clutching plastic shopping bags with bottled water and granola bars. We’ll see some of these folks on our way down, exhausted after a long fruitless day. Some will shine through their sunburn, having stood atop the prize summit. With our packs and harnesses, we like to think we give off a hard-core aura but who’s to say we are having more fun. When it comes to adventure, Longs Peak is an equal opportunity employer.

The gray sky eases into the first pinkish strains of dawn as we break through tree line. The Diamond is foreboding, even as the first sliver light dapples the face. I’ve been to the Himalayas, but hold an undiminished awe at this sight, a face so sheer, Samet says of it: “you could drive a Mini Cooper along it were it tilted horizontally.” First climbed by Dave Rearick and Bob Kamps in 1960, the Diamond has been the focal point of groundbreaking climbs and scene of countless epics. And it keeps calling me back.

5:00 a.m.

We bust out along the old trail through jumbled moraine. The Diamond fills the horizon. The air is redolent of pine and mountain air until a cloying, mock-fruity tinge of chemical toilet wafts in. We clamber above the dwarf pines where the trail to the Keyhole, the most climbed route of any fourteener in Colorado, splits from our track. I take a coffee-driven break in the open-air privy, enjoying the scenic wonders at 11,500 feet.

The routes on the right side of the Diamond often require overnight bivouacs on the face or the long ledge bisecting it, called Broadway, But one—I think better—alternative is to hike with heavy loads through the endless switchbacks up to the juncture between the east face and the long sloping incline of the north face called Chasm View Overlook which looms above The Boulderfield camp.

From here, a few rappels onto Broadway save the arduous semi-technical load humping required by a direct approach. I’ve done the Chasm Overlook option more than once, rappelling in for a new aid line, spending several nights cowering under a tarp with lighting blasting Chasm View. At one point, the lightning was so close that the flash and the sound of thunder were indistinguishable.

Such memories are a reminder that climbing the Diamond by any means, season or time frame epitomizes an ideal: it’s a test not of how you function when everything is perfect, but how you manage when everything is wrong. If there’s any lesson to learn here, it’s the knowledge of how you dealt, not what you did.

Today, we try to spare ourselves that kind of epic. We’re going light and fast—the day trip strategy most climbers adopt, tracking for the Yellow Wall and one of the three most popular routes. Don’t be fooled. Popular does not mean easy and fast is never fast enough. In summer, the Diamond, often wet or frozen, is blindsided nearly every afternoon by monster thunderstorms. Add to that the technical difficulty. Samet says, “Most of the free climbs—many the work of the tireless Roger Briggs—are stout, from 5.11 to 5.13,” adding, “All begin on the exposed Broadway Ledge, at 13,000 feet—you’ll be huffing like a glue fiend.” Yep.

6:00 a.m.

True sunrise. We reach the stream-laced meadows below Chasm Lake. We’ve now entered the amphitheater and the treeless, rocky terrain shimmers in the early morning light. We filter water, skirt the lake and traverse up rocky slabs.

In winter, this lake freezes solid and it’s easy to cross it and access climbs up along ethereal and transient ice features, to classic alpine routes like Keiner’s and the Notch Couloir. Indeed, the first time I ever climbed Longs Peak was via a winter ascent of the Diamond.

That three-day effort was training for bigger things and though meaningful for me, it was just another insignificant blip in a long pageant of climbs here by both the famous and the unknown. Significantly, Tom Hornbein, used Longs as training for first ascents like Everest’s West Ridge in 1963. He’s climbed Longs more than 70 times, including the Diamond, at the age of 65, noting, “It has all the flavors of so many different mountains.”

Above Chasm Lake we enter yet another iteration of the alpine environment. Now about five miles in with an altitude gain of nearly 3,000 feet, its time to find a second wind—the day is just starting.

6:30 a.m.

We stop for a breather and scope the face. Last time we were here, Andy was in a stretcher, waiting for a helicopter. We’d been attempting a new free ascent when Andy, rappelling, dislodged a rock and was struck in the head. He lost consciousness and slid down the rope until he miraculously hit a ledge where he stuck with about 25 feet left in the rappel rope and another 800 feet to the ground. Immediately after the accident (the rock cracked his fiberglass helmet), it was hard to tell which of us had the sharper acuity. The dialogue upon Andy’s return to consciousness,

Andy: Pete what are you doing here?

Pete: Do you know who I am?

Andy: Yes, you’re Pete.

Pete: Do you know where we are?

Andy: Hmm… (looks around at the unmistakable cleaved wall, the view of Denver’s brown cloud, and the massive exposure), the Diamond?

Pete: Do you know what time it is?

Andy: No, do you?

Pete:  Well, no. But that’s not the point.

Despite its popularity the Diamond still can provide pure adventure, with first ascents and first free ascents. For those seeking other challenges, the Lower East Face, which is as massive as the upper Diamond, claims established fright-fests and copious climbing options. To the right, the Chasm View Wall has two of the amphitheater’s best moderates—excellent warm-ups for bigger routes and great options if the Diamond is crowded.

The trickiest part of our climb is the North Chimney, a 400-foot trough of rubble-strewn slabs and rock steps rated 5.4. Andy and I choose to free solo, trading the safety of the climbing rope in favor of speed. It’s the scariest part of the day. The rock is loose and fussy, and the real danger comes from the climbers above us and their predilection to drop or dislodge rocks in the narrow confines of the chimney. It’s like playing pinball with boulders. The only safe options are to get in the chimney early, late or improve your chances by climbing on the weekday. It’s only a matter of time before there will be a serious rockfall related accident here in the North Chimney.

7:00 a.m.

We’ve ended up in the middle of a queue for D-7, one of the Yellow Wall routes encompass most summer Diamond traffic. The masses tend to flock to The Casual Route—he 1978 link up of existing pitches via an improbable and spectacular traverse—the easiest route on the Diamond. For those seeking more edge, the 5.11’s to the left include Pervertical Sanctuary, Curving Vine, and D-7. Ariana on the far left margin of the wall is a prize at 5.12a.

As we start up, we pull out the rope, a precaution given the patches of ice and treacherous footing. I remember a friend who died here soloing the “easy” ground to the base of the technical part of the climb. The guy who did the first free ascent of the route we are currently climbing, died free soloing last year. But we find the rhythmn of ascent as the wall takes on the aura of a place haunted by ghosts and memories of accidents and near fatalities. To our right, a decade ago, I nearly rappelled off a rope, pinching the slippery ends with fingertips as I swung about, looking for an anchor. Last year, in the shady corner 100 feet to the left I lost my front teeth in a big fall. Farther right I had half our belay explode from a rotten crack.

I won’t bore you with descriptions of climbing, adrenalin, etc. Lets just say that the climbing is a pleasant blend of face holds and jams. The sun is warm while it lasts. The climb is classic, well within our abilities.It’s still tense and vaguely terrifying because, the actual climbing is secondary to the totality of the experience. It’s a reminder that ascending the Diamond by any means, season or timeframe epitomizes an ideal, not a test of how you function when everything is perfect, but how you function when everything is wrong.

9:30 a.m.

Anticlimax. Halfway up the route, I drop a climbing shoe. After a brief chat Andy and I rappel down. We’ve both climbed the route, so rather than tempting the weather gods we opt to head home.

The definition of classic is, “something of lasting worth or with a timeless quality.” The Diamond provides value for those who have come before and those who will come after. It’s that way for Andy and I. Even on this, the most benign of days, getting to Mills Glacier is like getting out on parole.

Pete Takeda lives in Boulder, Colorado. He’s an author, writer and climber. Check out his latest adventures here and here.

Online Resources:

• A definitive Diamond History by Roger Briggs.

• Overview and details.

• Description and suggestions on the “easiest” route.

Books:

• Classic Rock Climbs No. 08 The Diamond of Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park by Richard Rossiter (Falcon, 1997)

• Longs Peak: The Story of Colorado’s Favorite Fourteener by Dougald Macdonald (Westcliffe, 2004)

• Rocky Mountain Naional Park: High Peaks: The Climber’s Guide by Bernard Gillett (Earhbound Sports, 2001)

Guide services:

• Total Climbing

Last look? Author and Rios Libres co-founder Chris Kassar overlooks the confluence of El Rio Baker and El Rio Neff. This spot will become a massive reservoIr if the dam is built. Photo: James Q. Martin

The sun rises over the Patagonian Andes. A blackened kettle bubbles on the fire. Eggs sizzle in cast-iron. In the distance, chunks of glacier crash to the earth as the enormous expanse of frozen water groans under the pressure of time. I am awake here, where the Rio Baker begins its slow journey to the ocean.

One by one, members of my new family—this crazy crew that I will spend the next four weeks with—emerge from down cocoons and arrive at the fire in varying levels of consciousness. Boulder-based athlete and comedian, Timmy O’Neill buzzes about, oozing energy and handing out cups of steaming cowboy coffee. He joined us only days after sending a few epic climbs on the north and central towers of Torres del Paine. I blame his lightning quick and often irreverent wit for my increasingly sore belly muscles.

Perched on a rock, writer Craig Childs scribbles in the tiny, battered red book that he always carries with him. I don’t know what he is writing, but I’m sure it is insightful, brilliant, beautiful. Craig has a knack for perfectly capturing the moment and I wonder if some of this morning’s musings will find their way into his next book, article or NPR radio commentary. I’m definitely careful with what I say around him.

The rest of us mill about cooking breakfast, fiddling with video cameras and sorting gear. James Q. Martin (a.k.a. Q), the passionate outdoor photographer who brought our team together, takes advantage of a rare lull in the barrage of questions being launched his direction to sip a maté and enjoy the view.

We are far from home. Over 6,300 miles lie between our backyard river, the mighty Colorado, and this camp at the source of the Rio Baker, Chile’s largest waterway. This creates a formidable gap between where we live and the rivers we are fighting to protect. So, you might be asking, how did we end up here? Why would a bunch of well-intentioned dirtbags come all this way to take on a multi-million dollar corporation that wants to drown this place for power? How can we even stand a chance?

This whole Rios Libres project started in July 2009 with a simple conversation in my kitchen. At the time, it was innocent banter between friends; in retrospect, it was a more important discussion than we could have ever imagined. That day, Q emerged from his first trip down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. Nature had recharged and inspired him and he excitedly shared his ideas for new projects.

“I want to shoot famous climber so-and-so on the fastest ascent of XYZ big wall … I’m going to follow the most incredible base jumper in the world as he hurls himself off various cliffs in Norway…”

I zoned out. But when he mentioned rivers in Patagonia, I returned without hesitation.

In 2000, Q drove the length of Chile in a rugged rebuilt 1984 baby blue Toyota Land Cruiser. Like so many visitors to Patagonia, he focused on hitting major adrenaline-inducing hotspots like the Fitzroy Range and only stumbled on the far-flung Aysén region as a function of passing through. But its rawness made an immediate impression on him. It stole his heart.

I enjoyed listening to Q recount yet another escapade from his time in a distant corner of the globe, but I had no idea where any of this was going.

“What does this have to do with your time in the Canyon or me or anything?” I asked.

He explained that a conglomeration of companies wanted to dam two rivers in this same part of Chile. Traveling down the Grand on the Colorado—an incredible, but broken river—had reminded Q of how special and rare it is for a river to flow freely.

“You think we could we do something down there to help?” he asked.

Of course, we could do something. Five days earlier, while Q had been frolicking through rapids, I had become another statistic of the recession when I lost my job as a conservation biologist for a non-profit. To add injury to insult (literally), I had badly sprained my ankle while running in the mountains. No work and no outdoor fun made me dangerous. I researched the issue all night, foregoing sleep to learn whatever I could.

What I found out disturbed me. Chilean Patagonia, one of the few blank spots left on the map, is under attack. Big business is exerting pressure to build five major dams on the free-flowing Baker and Pascua rivers. The majority of Chileans oppose the dams and a campaign aimed at stopping this attempt to alter the heart of the Patagonian Andes is gaining momentum, but it faces long odds.

The more I learned, the more I knew we needed to be part of the grassroots effort fighting to keep Patagonia free from dams. Soon, we were writing grants, finding sponsors, assembling a team and planning our expedition. By February, Rios Libres was born.

Our plan was idealistic and we knew it: travel to the end of the earth and explore the Rio Baker from its glacial source all the way to the sea. Then, use words, film and compelling imagery to show what is at stake and bolster the fight already well in progress in Chile. At a time when so many rivers no longer reach the ocean, this was not only an opportunity for adventure, but also a chance to experience and document a rare resource in its pristine state.

Each day of our trip is punctuated with one incredible experience after another: we encounter endangered deer, watch 13-tiered waterfalls tumble over cliffs, listen to ancient glaciers creak and crumble and drink directly from whatever water source is closest—unfiltered seeps, streams, rivers and icy pools. When we are thirsty on the Nef Glacier—the source of the Rio Baker—we simply bend down, cup our hands and drink directly from the crystal blue waters flowing under a break in the ice. After a long hot hike through thick forest, we stick our heads and bottles under a cascade of cool water flowing over a sheer granite face. It feels as if we are traveling back in time and tasting the untouched place the world used to be.

We navigate through breathtaking terrain—ice fields, rocky tundra, glacial lakes, stands of gnarled mossy trees—and we see firsthand how the damage from the dams will reach far beyond the rivers. Plans to clear-cut at least 1,000 miles of old-growth forest to make way for the longest power transmission line in the world would scar the landscape, ruin ecosystems unique to Patagonia and destroy habitat for species found nowhere else on the planet and those in danger of extinction like the condor, puma and Huemul deer.

Our journey is not just about the land and what we see, but who we encounter along the way. These rivers support a way of life that is traditional, rare and reminiscent of the Wild West. Gauchos roam the hills on horseback and people live in harmony with the land. Those we meet along our journey, fighting to preserve this way of life, explain that the transmission line will transport electricity northward to support Chile’s massive mining industry, but not a single watt will go to anyone actually living here.

The most striking character we meet is Bernardo, a gaucho who lives entirely on the land, growing food, raising sheep and making everything by hand. He embodies the same pioneer spirit that has brought us all here. When conversation turns to the dams, he sums up the concerns of many who could lose their land and their livelihood:  “What do we gain when our country sells its water, sells its land, what remains for us? I have lived here all my life and it would really anger me if one day some company came, even worse if it was foreign, and said, ‘You all have to leave because here we are going to dam the river.’”

One morning, our guide, Jonathan Leidich, who grew up in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver asks, “Why did you drop everything to come so far and put so much time and energy into the Rio Baker?”

It’s a good question.

“I came down here because I know that there are other ways Chile can meet its energy needs and I know this one—building five dams and a huge power line—is a bad idea, economically, ecologically and socially.”

The answer is true, but as I chew over Jonathan’s question, I realize that my reasons have changed. I’m no longer an unbiased biologist studying a distant dot on a map. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I have fallen in love with Patagonia, its people and the Rio Baker. Inaction is no longer an option.

I also realize that the missteps made in my very own backyard have motivated me. I live in Flagstaff, Arizona in the shadow of Glen Canyon dam and I constantly ask myself what could have been if this place had not been buried underwater. That dam stands as a beacon, reminding me of a past heartbreak and calling me to action.

I wasn’t alive when Glen Canyon was drowned so I couldn’t speak up, but I am here now. I know that without the small group of people who did make noise back then, the entire Colorado River—including the Grand Canyon—would have fallen victim to a whole series of dams besides Glen Canyon. The lessons learned there have made me (and many of us in the Southwest) unwilling and unable to stand by and allow the same mistakes to be made, even in remote regions thousands of miles away.

On the third day of our trip on the Baker, we reach the most powerful, tumultuous and inspiring waterfall I have ever seen. It’s also one of the proposed dam sites. I kneel on the jagged rocks that hug the mighty rapid. For a moment, I feel a perfect peace. Tears stream down my face.

“Enjoy it while it’s still free!” Jonathan says. “Don’t spend your time worrying.”

We do our best… but we are not carefree kids on a river trip. A palpable undercurrent of concern flows within each of us. Are we passing through country that would one day be under water? Would we look back and realize we were simply, as Timmy put it “creating yet another beautiful eulogy for what used to be?”

This idea hits me particularly hard the following day as I walk alongside the river. Although my pack is feather light, I feel an overwhelming weight on my shoulders. At one point, I step over the exact spot where 340 feet of concrete could block the furious turquoise flow of this beautiful river. My heart breaks.

Right now, the dams are still only plans on paper. The fate of these rivers—and the Patagonian people—rests in the hands of politicians who will make a decision in the next year. A national and international campaign aimed at preventing the dams and convincing the government to adopt a sound and sustainable energy policy is gaining strength. Team Rios Libres, united by a common love for the Colorado River, came to support the people who are fighting to keep Patagonia wild. I hope our efforts will help tell the story of a place that is still whole and give voice to the river, land and people of Chile.

Can we really help save one of the last wild places left on the planet? I’m not sure. I stop for a moment, harden my resolve and I walk on more certain than ever that we have to keep trying.

- Chris Kassar is a conservation biologist, guide and writer.

ACT OUT!
Rios Libres is working to keep Patagonia wild by augmenting and amplifying the work of local and international grassroots organizations. Rios Libres has produced the movie “Power in the Pristine” and a Spanish version with actress Leonor Valera, showing in North and South America to raise awareness for what is at stake. In addition, Rios Libres is using articles, speaking engagements, photo exhibits and outreach opportunities to educate as many people as possible about the issue.  To take action and learn more, visit RiosLibres.com or join them on Facebook.

Exhausted. Tight. Nauseous. Groggy. Drowning in mucus. Today was the morning of Stage 4 of the Breck Epic. From the way I feel at the start of each day, you’d never guess that my teammate and I have been wearing race leaders’ jerseys for the last three days of a mountain bike stage race 10,000-13,000 feet above sea level.

Big Breck-Fest: Ben Parsons of Team Hammer Nutrition on the Colorado Trail. Photo: Liam Doran.

So once more this morning, the sound of my alarm breaks a deep, blissful slumber. Reluctantly I peel my eyes open. Day 4, more than halfway there. This has been the hardest part each morning—getting out of bed at 5:30 a.m., but my teammate, Jeff Kerkove greets me in the kitchen without showing a speck of weariness. I slog through the morning routine, barely able to stomach a piece of toast and a single egg. I push it around, half asleep, half aware of my surroundings, hoping somehow it will look more appetizing. It doesn’t.

The early morning air in Breckenridge has been biting, even in August. I know today will be no exception, and that I’ll be shivering so hard that even grasping my Ergon grips will be a challenge. The stage ahead racks up 42 miles with 8,850 feet of elevation gain over technical alpine singletrack and steep jeep roads, and I’ll have to set a pace that will keep us in the leaders’ jerseys. I had learned over the course of the past three days that the worse I feel in the morning, the better my race goes. But I’m not so sure about today.

When I decided to line up for the first stage of the Breck Epic last August, I knew I was in for a great journey of body and spirit, but I didn’t realize how the experience would deepen my understanding of exactly why it is that I race my bike. Mountain bike stage racing was an adventure I simply had to try. When I got the word that there was a six-day race in my favorite Rocky Mountain playground, I knew it was going to be an enjoyable swift kick in the ass. The Breck Epic boasts about 42,000 feet of elevation gain over about 250 miles in the mountains surrounding Breckenridge, Colorado, and it’s arguably one of the hardest stage races in North America—yet anyone who loves long rides, high alpine views and a trying test of mental and physical strength (a.k.a. me) would thoroughly enjoy this event. I have a lot of experience with endurance racing, but only with one-day 50-100 mile events. My only stage racing experience had been the Tour of the Gila, a road stage race, which I raced 3 different times. Let’s just say that it was a humbling experience. I’m the worst roadie you’ll ever meet, but my mule-like stubbornness always gets me through.

Alex Grant and Jeremiah Bishop gut through the rain and fog on Georgia Pass. Photo: Liam Doran.

Day 1 went a little too well. I was familiar with the race course, I was fresh and giddy, and the competitive side of me took over; forward we charged. Jeff warned me not to get too ambitious, since we still had five days to go. We rode hard from the start without looking back and easily took a commanding stage win in our co-ed duo category–16 minutes ahead of second place.

For multi-day events, pacing and recovery are the most important elements to consider. I thought I had done everything right, but the next morning, I woke up, absolutely unmotivated, with a sore back and legs and no appetite. Trouble. I was also suffering from something I had eaten and was making far too many trips to the righteous porcelain throne. Mmmm.

Despite my morning issues, the show had to go on, so I swallowed some ibuprofen and Immodium, and packed some emergency TP in my jersey pocket (fortunately I never needed it). My excruciatingly sore back relented about halfway through the 41-mile stage on the Colorado Trail—or maybe I simply forgot about it because I fell in love with the singletrack. The 7,300 feet of elevation gain for the day went by quickly, and we rolled through the finish extending our first-place lead. We had a solid 30 minute lead now over second place, but that type of gain in a stage race can evaporate in one day. Nothing would be guaranteed.

Just when you think things are going your way, the entropy of the universe kicks in to remind you who is ultimately in charge. Stage 3 dominated me. My legs were barking. I began to learn that stage racing not only has physical demands, but it’s also an emotional roller coaster— I would go through phases of feeling like a superhero, then the switch would flip and suddenly I would be overwhelmed and stripped down to a raw, depressed, struggling excuse of a human being. Yet I was slowly learning to believe in myself.

Doctor Feelgood: While riders recuperated in hot tubs, The Organic Mechanics made sweet love to broken bikes. Photo: Liam Doran.

Jeff was learning how to have patience with me. When you are the slower rider (me, in this case), you are the limiting factor. All the pressure is on you. Add the team element to it, and I’d feel disappointed and guilty that I was letting Jeff down. Day 3 was pure physical and emotional detonation. As we approached the slopes of 13,370-foot Mt. Guyot, most of the mountain was consumed by a large dark cloud. We ascended anxiously into the rain and fog, wearing jerseys and shorts (of course we had left the Gore-tex jackets at the last aide station). My hands were so frozen and numb that I couldn’t tell if I was squeezing my brake levers, I was violently shivering and the blood had left my legs, making it difficult to pedal. Then came a steep hike-a-bike in thick fog at French Pass around 12,500 feet. No stopping, just moving forward as best we could. I felt mortal.

Descending was dicey—my eyes were constantly tearing up from the piercing, cold air. My perception of speed was gone. The motion and lack of visual acuity made me dizzy. My whole body hurt: my calves were on fire from pushing my bike up the side of a steep slope. I could barely stand on my pedals, and my forearms were cramping from being tight and nervous on the descent.

Jeff said as nicely as he could, “We are losing a lot of time on this descent.”

It wasn’t news to me. I was emotionally spent– frustrated, scared, tired, panicking, in a lot of pain. We got to a jeep road. It did not lend much relief. In fact, it led to another dark climb up to Georgia Pass in the rain. I had no idea how close second place was to us, and I was stressed out due to the slow pace I was setting. I tried to pedal circles, searching for power but finding nothing but agony.

Author and coed duo champ Sonya Looney is a dirty girl. Photo: Liam Doran.

I had a choice. I could give up or put my head down and tell myself that things would get better. I chose the latter, and after what seemed like forever, things did get better—the rays of sun that pierced through the clouds energized me. My legs felt lighter. Suddenly, I was raging down the trail. Sixteen miles to go, and I was reborn. Jeff had warned me about the upcoming final climb—ironically, it was my strongest part of the race. We started it with four guys behind us. The road was increasingly steeper, but I refused to get off and push. I feverishly said out loud, “I refuse to walk,” and charged up the road, full of power and determination. We quickly dropped the dudes behind us, which made me want to push even harder. I was full of adrenaline, fortitude. I even felt a little insane.  At the finish line, the tears and goosebumps overwhelmed me. We did it.

Stage 4 turns out to be a mini repeat of Stage 3 except it plays out in reverse. Despite all the morning pain (or maybe according to that pattern of a rough morning working into a solid ride), I feel strong at the start of this 42-mile stage. Ah, but I go too far. I burn every match I have with a blow torch. I bonk hard, vomiting in my own mouth, feeling every bump of the trail and searching for the finish line. It becomes yet another day of highs and lows, but we get through and over the hump.

The last two stages go much better—we hold onto the leaders’ jerseys and encounter no mishaps, excluding the tough mornings and sore start legs. I dig in to the singletrack climbs and hoot and holler swooping down. We ride so fast that I get butterflies in my tummy. I can’t hold back the giggles.

Safely in the lead, we make the last climb of the race, the backside of Boreas Pass Road,  a long, triumphant victory ride. In my pink mustache knee-high socks, I flog myself back to life and once again feel overcome by pure madness as I transform into a stubborn, snarling, unwavering beast up the climbs. I go at it with what Phil Liggett calls, “pedal strokes of anger.”

We start catching guys groveling up the climb. “This is where you stick the knife in!” I say with a panting laugh.

The Pain of Victory: Colby Pearce celebrates his victory in the final stage and an eighth place finish overall. Photo: Liam Doran.

Before I know it, we’re almost to the top. At the final aide station, I am once again laughing. I turn to Jeff with a smirk and say, “Let’s finish this up the right way” and we fly down the road and singletrack to the finish, taking home the overall coed duo win, as well as wins on all six stages.

Winning a six-day event feels more rewarding than a one-day event because I have an intimate comprehension of every ounce of energy and drive it takes to simply finish: the hundred thousands of pedal strokes, the brutal nuances of each stage. It’s like life. Sometimes it flows and you go through it shining and everything just feels easy. Other times, it’s rocky, cold, sickening and steep. You fight it at every corner. And sometimes you just enjoy it in your funky, knee-high socks.

After decades of heli-futility, a skier finally strikes paydirt close to home in Nevada’s Ruby Mountains.

Complaining that your heli skiing experiences have sucked is sort of like berating the butler for serving lukewarm caviar. But there you have it. I’m a snow pig, a shamelessly addicted skiing slut, who would do just about anything for a day on skis.

As a journalist, I’ve tended to couch my blind love for skiing as part of my profession, squeezing in snow days whenever and wherever I could on the job. But I’d never stood accountable before my heli fantasies and anted up, which is why—karmically, I believe—my quest for a great day of flying had failed every time. Until last spring.

The skiing at Nevada’s Ruby Mountain Heli Skiing was so good that I finally stepped out of the closet and paid. A base analogy might be the live-in girlfriend: Why “pay up” and marry her, when you can get what you want for free? Well, I finally got down on one knee and professed my love, and that’s when the magic happened. (Full disclosure: Much of my trip was paid for—unsolicited, I should add—in exchange for press coverage, but it didn’t get exquisitely good until I paid for extra runs.)

A former boss and editor once observed me preparing breakfast in the office kitchen after a morning of hiking for fresh turns and wryly commented, “Outside magazine: For some it’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.” If he only knew. After college I had ski patrolled winters and lead Outward Bound courses summers, in order to spend five months a year on skis daily. My cabin was snowbound and inaccessible by car, so I even had to commute on skis and developed a reverse-elitist, hike-for-your-turns, telemark phase that lasted many years. My eventual transition to journalism—and full-bore heli lust—was (in part) to enable my life in the mountains. Not very romantic, but there you have it.

I blame my mother. A globe-trotting one-time fashion model, she went heli skiing in the Caribous in the late 70s and came home raving about it. Flying and skiing!? I was in shock and dreamed of it as the ultimate indulgence ever since. But I grew up to be a dirtbag and never made enough money to pay for it.

Divorced dad showed me the potential on a sad one-up near Mammoth with Grease Monkey Heli Tours-R-Us on crusty, boney snow that my brothers and I barely survived.

A magazine assignment brought me to arctic Scandinavia to cover a skiing competition decades later, and the promise of air-borne powder Valhalla awaited. Rain, sleet and fog grounded me on the appointed day. Strike two. Vacationing in the same region several years after that, I scored a bro-deal, but that run turned into a bastard combination of the first two experiences: foggy, sleety flying and slushy, crusty skiing. Strike three.

Now I was obsessed. I harangued every editor that I knew and had many near misses (Turkey, Russia, Nepal, Colorado). But no one trusted me or my ideas enough to pull the trigger. I finally sold Elevation Outdoors on the idea of coming clean and making good on my lifelong quest. My conclusion? Block out your calendar in deep winter, then go. You need to be ruthless—with yourself and your pocketbook. Remember the no-friends-on-a-powder-day maxim?

Apply it here on a much larger scale.

Ruby, My Love: There’s not a whole lot of competition out here for the untracked.

Helicopter skiing in the Lower 48 is arguably not as pucker-inducing or stupidly bottomless as operations in Alaska or British Columbia, where the maritime climate aggregates snow and heli and snowcat operations like a spring dump (over 30 combined, at last count). But the Mountain West is also easier to get to, effectively as challenging, and just as untracked as any remote coastal wilderness. Simply put, everything about Ruby Mountain Heli Skiing near Elko, Nevada, was immensely satisfying. A quick flight to Salt Lake City and a puddle jumper (or a three-hour drive) to Elko, and you’re on skis. And the remarkable thing about the Rubies in spring is hiiting absolutely pristine corn snow and powder on the same trip. By late March, the air remains so dry and cold that by following—or avoiding—the sun we could milk the mountain for our pleasure. During my four-day stay, we maxed out the 39,000-foot total by early afternoon of the third day.

I won’t bore you with a gush of adjectives, but suffice to say, the terrain was steep and the runs long. Home run! And the flying conditions were so good that on day three, we landed on 11,387-foot Ruby Dome, something our guide had never done in five years of employment there. The ensuing 2,500-foot run on smooth corn snow across the undulating slope was a high-speed leg-burner, the snow just grippy enough for hard-banking, aggressive GS turns. Dips into the shadows down the other side of the range produced mid-winter-like, cold-snow conditions and the post-run jubilation of tracing your solitary tracks down thousands of feet.

Co-owner Joe Royer started the company in 1977, and he and his wife Francy have been operating Ruby Mountain Heli Skiing from a local ranch for 15 years. Red’s is a 96-acre property in Lamoille, a ranching community just East of Elko. Black and white pinto horses mill about, and herds of deer winter by the creek. The buildings are surrounded by humble cattle ranches, and the 10,000-square-foot lodge of rough timber and cathedral ceilings fits right in.

Navajo rugs, cowboy tack and mounted game adorn the walls. The requisite stone fireplace compliments the glass doors and picture windows facing the mountains.

Joe grew up on the water in Belvedere in Marin County, Calif., but had always spent time in mountains. He gravitated to Snowbird, Utah “for the powder,” and by 27 years old, he was already a seasoned ski patroller responsible for shooting Snowbird’s avalanche guns. On his endless drives on I-80 (then two-lanes) across the Western deserts, Joe would find himself staring at the white Ruby Mountains by Elko.

“I’d worked a little with Wasatch Powder Guides,” says Joe about the Utah-based helicopter skiing operation, the first anywhere in the U.S. “And the Rubies were just sitting there waiting for someone to come in.”

Riding Tall: When the right conditions finally arrive, dreamers can dig in and busts out the lines he has always deamed about.... over and over and over again.

The Rubies are the wettest range in Nevada, with about 300 inches of snowfall per year. “You have to be good at working in small amounts of snow,” Joe admits. “It’s never perfect, so you make it perfect.” The company has access to 200,000 acres of skiable terrain. And when the weather socks in, they move operations up the canyon to a set of yurts, and do laps in three snow cats. Sometimes conditions dictate that they shuttle over to the Independence Range 60 miles north.

“We flew 25 days in a row in two stretches this year,” says Joe, who claims he’s never been skunked.

“This is just a way for us to continue doing what we love to do,” he says. “It’s a lifestyle that everyone envies. You’re on vacation, but you pay for it in other ways.” The financial juggling act, lack of privacy, and unpredictable nature of seasonal work that lives or dies by the whether can wear on some people.

“It’s a tradeoff,” says Joe, who is also a professional photographer. (Joe shot the November 2009 cover of SKI—Robbie Hilliard spraying in the Ruby Mountains.)

“We’ve been incredibly lucky.” Judging from his quick smile and his wife’s sprightly attitude and their son Michael’s easy-going ways, it’s a tradeoff that works for the Royers. After my visit, Joe and Francy take off for Indonesia to thaw out and go surfing for six weeks.

The guides are a motley crew of former ski racers, world travelers and climbing guides—lifers in the realm of low-pay, large-fun seasonal work. “It’s the hardest job to get here. We must know you really well,” says Joe, whose guides typically serve a one-year apprenticeship. “The focus is on the client.”

The operation has a total of about 30 employees (10 guides, five housekeepers, two or three pilots/mechanics and a dispatcher) and can accommodate 16 guests per four-day visit. The helicopter they use is a powerful, French-made A-Star on lease from Classic Aviation in Salt Lake City, which seats five passengers—one guide and four guests. Joe’s efficient shuttling system ensures that we hardly ever waited to ski.

Cocktail hour in the afternoons is a lively affair, with boisterous storytelling and live music. On our visit, Joe had recently turned 65 and proudly wore a smoking jacket made of velvety Crown Royal bags that some long-time clients had presented him with.

“Thank you for coming to ski with us,” he toasts genuinely during a speech. The retired Pentagon official, Canadian investment bankers and flush business owners cheer generously.

My moment of truth comes on day three after having maxed out our vertical for the four-day package. The co-owners of a California insurance company that I’m partnered with are eager to keep flying and pay extra for the privilege.

A crossroads lay at my feet: Ski over to the group flying out, or veer to the executives and start charging—the credit card. Whenever I’m faced with the option to ski more, I ski more. And in this situation, at least, the choice cleanses my soul.

The air temperatures are significantly cooler by late afternoon and have wicked all traces of moisture from the shadow-protected snow. We make two more runs through blower powder, dropping chutes and mashing pillows, finally cresting above a frozen lake with a glacier-blue waterfall. Time stops. Joy.

That night, I look up at the huge mirror above the lodge’s pool table. It has an inlayed frame that proclaims a typical cowboy sentiment: “Ride tall—he’s always watching.” The inscription gets me thinking of the first time I felt the adult-like euphoria of freedom. Turned loose on Squaw Valley for the day, ten-year-old me made lap after lap and didn’t want to stop. It came on skis, of course. I’ve been chasing that sensation ever since and have earned my turns with sweat, paying my dues, and, now, by paying through the nose.

You get what you give. Finally, I feel like I’m riding tall. •

Philip Armour is the editor-in-chief of American Cowboy magazine and the former editor-in-chief of Outside Sweden. He’s a better skier than bullrider.

If you’re in the area January 24–29, 2011, make sure to visit the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada (775-738-7508; westernfolklife.org). Besides rodeo, cowboys are known for telling great stories and strumming guitars around the campfire, and this annual event attracts the most talented performers in the U.S. Cowboy culture may seem like an oxymoron to the uninitiated, but Western folk life is rich with tradition and history, and besides a chuck wagon cookout, it doesn’t get more authentic than Elko in January.

To book a trip

Contact Ruby Mountain Helicopter Skiing (775-753-6867; helicopterskiing.com) $4,250 for four-day packages (39,000-feet guaranteed), December–April

LOWER 48 WHIRLYBIRDS

These four heliskiing operations also run trips

in the U.S. outside of Alaska:

High Mountain Heli Skiing, Jackson Hole, WY

307-733-3274; heliskijackson.com

Telluride Heli Trax, Telluride, CO

877-500-8377; helitrax.com

Silverton Mountain Heli Skiing, Silverton, CO

970-387-5706; silvertonmountain.com

Wasatch Powderbird Guides, Snowbird, UT

800-974-4354; powderbird.com

A pre-screening of 127 Hours, director Danny Boyle’s new, squirm-inducing film about Aron Ralston’s famed story of self-amputation in the Moab desert, has the audience falling to the floor.

I am pushing myself deeply into a high backed theater chair, when I hear the unmistakable sound of a human body crumpling to the floor. On the screen in front of me is an on-going amputation—described (accurately) as the most realistic ever portrayed on film. Turning from the screen, I see an unconscious woman in the aisle. I quickly spring to her aid—just after the celluloid arm bids body adieu. My mind, on full trauma alert, welcomes the crisis, as here is someone I can help, the guy in the film, well, not so much.

Best Boy: James Franco transforms Aron Ralston's story into riveting cinema.

In 2003, Aron Ralston stunned the world by auto-amputating his right arm below the elbow after becoming trapped by a falling chock-stone. One spring evening, he clocked out of his job at Aspen’s Ute Mountaineer for a weekend solo of Utah’s Blue John Canyon. Soon, his simple canyoneering adventure turned into an unbelievable ordeal that began with scant hope for rescue and became a wait for death. The international press as well as peers divided, choosing to celebrate or excoriate him for not telling anyone where he was going and for ending up cutting off his arm to survive.

But back to the fainting woman… I was watching Ralston’s story in celluloid at a pre-screening of 127 Hours, directed by Danny Boyle, of Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire fame.

And Boyle has created an epic tale.

The film opens with an ADD-inspired montage of crosshatched scenes of arms in use, often masses in action, with hectic pacing. It belies the tempo we will soon find ourselves immersed in: a shared pulse, slowed to standstill, with throats parched and brows creased. By the time Ralston, who is expertly portrayed by meat magnet, James Franco, finally severed that last tendon to end almost five days (a.k.a. 127 hours) of imprisonment, the audience and Franco, both surprised and horrified, let out a collective sigh of release. And after watching it, I can attest that following the film’s fall release the general public will convene at water coolers across the nation to chew it over (if not faint reliving it).

But what of those of us in the climbing and outdoor communities? Camps are divided on whether Ralston is a heroic figure and testament to the potency of human endurance or simply a bumbling dolt who cashed in on a major screw up. This film will not sweeten the sour grapes of the haters nor does it necessarily lionize Ralston, but it is an advisory to ensure you tell others of your whereabouts when you head into the wild. But what most of Aron Ralston’s detractors and admirers don’t realize is that behind the stump exists a regular guy. I first met Aron when he was still intact as he bolted down from a summer ascent of Colorado’s Mt Elbert. He was alone. He paused, and introduced himself. We met again that fall and discussed climbing Longs Peak together, but by the next spring, he had became tabloid fodder.

Ralston shrewdly has not made a misstep since his stumble with gravity and a half-ton Mesozoic paperweight—starting with his silence post-helicopter rescue that kept the globe’s press hounds baying to nabbing one of Hollywood’s most coveted directors and a first class actor for his biopic. He has spun gold from misfortune. In 2004, he published the well written and received Between a Rock and Hard Place. He’s hawked by a top speaker’s bureau alongside Bruce Jenner, Neil Armstrong and Ron Palillo, who played Horshack on “Welcome Back,Kotter.” But bigger by far, even more than his cameo in a beer commercial with Burt Reynolds, is this film. 127 Hours will leave you soaked, salt caked and exhausted, thankful to be a two-arm-chair voyeur. It will also elevate Ralston’s celebrity from talk show to morning show—a task he’s well suited to as he’s bright, funny and comfortable in his skin.

After the money scene, as my prone charge regained consciousness I whispered, “Do you know where you are?” To which she responded, “I’m at Aron’s film lying on the floor.” As Ralston made his way out of his predicament on the screen above, I assisted her out the door, past the suited security (they had been hired to keep bootleggers from plying their trade by covertly spying on the audience with night vision goggles, in search of LED luminescence).

In the carpeted hall, I handed off the swooning girl to a sympathetic representative of Fox Searchlight who had couriered the reels to Boulder. As they made their way to the bathroom for a splash of cool water, I overheard her inform “Pass Out Patty” that she “was in good company and shouldn’t’ be embarrassed,” as fainting and wilting had become de rigueur at 127 Hours—out of nine pre-screenings at least nine patrons had done exactly as she did. It was then that I realized that this definitely wasn’t a “date film”— that is unless you are wooing Elvira. •

Telluride-based ski mountaineer Kim Havell will attempt to climb and ski Shishapangma this fall and you can follow updates on her training and trip at ElevationOutdoors.com. The 14th highest peak in the world at 26,289 feet, Shishapangma is a dangeorus goal—famed alpinist Alex Lowe died on the peak in an avalanche in 1999. Havell and her team, which includes Mark Fisher, Todd Passey and Andy Tankersley, will make the climb and descent unsupported and without oxygen from September 8th through October 23rd. Here’s an excerpt from one of her latest training posts:

Training and Raining
Two weeks ago, I drove up to Victor, ID to meet up with my Shishapangma team. We awoke at midnight to the sound of rainfall steadily hammering the roof of my Mark’s house. Ignoring the obvious, and hoping for a break in the weather, we made coffee, forced down peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and hit the road for Teton National Park. Our objective for the next twenty-four hours was the Grand Traverse route. It is a serious and technical climb that crosses nine of the mightiest peaks in the range, and includes more than 12,000 feet of vertical ascent and descent in 14 miles. Ascending trails and scrambling fourth class rock in the drizzle of a 3 a.m. storm is a questionable undertaking.

We trudged steadily uphill over the next few hours with the summit looming then disappearing behind the curtains of storm clouds. Lightning and thunder cracked in the distance. The stars were veiled overhead.

After climbing roughly 3,500 feet, we stopped to reassess. The weather was poor. With some careful evaluation, we decided to aim for the first summit and to keep an eye on the storm pattern. Our team progressed silently over the with an occasional stop to size up the weather.

As luck would have it, the bulk of the storm held off just long enough for us to climb another 2,000 feet to the summit of Teewinot at 12,800 feet. Then, it was time to make a serious decision. To move forward on the traverse would commit us to climbing peaks with no bail-out option for the next few hours, putting us at risk of an electrical storm and slippery conditions for rock hopping.

With some heavy pondering and evaluating, we decided to retreat. Retracing our steps back to the Teewinot saddle, we began our descent to 7,200 feet.

We made the right choice. By the time we arrived back to the parking lot, the storm had moved in. Our team had worked through its first challenge and it had been an excellent exercise in mental focus, decision making and time management. It was disappointing to not finish the route with the right crucial pieces of the right team and the right training. But, if the weather doesn’t cooperate, what can you do? And, after all, what would training be without a little bit of raining?

Want more adventure? Follow our bloggers in Colorado and beyond. ElevationOutdoors.com

The decision climb one of the premier alpine routes in Colorado without a rope is as much a battle of the mind as it is a moment of fear.

Almost no compelling arguments can be offered in favor of the attempt I made on Kit Carson last year. In fact, most logical folks would deem the trip a fool’s errand. My wife, Jen, went a step further, calling my scheme a debacle waiting to happen. In hindsight, I have to admit that she had a point.

I’ve had quiet designs on climbing the South Prow, a technical arête that cleaves Kit Carson’s sunny side like the head of a Paleolithic axe, for ten years. I first saw the route from the summit of Crestone Needle, following a successful mostly ropeless ascent of the Ellingwood Arête. Draped like a delicate thread up a rocky ridgeline reminiscent of a circular saw blade, the route demanded to be climbed, and I vowed that I’d one day fulfill the ultimatum. In the ensuing years, plans were laid, then laid low due to scheduling conflicts. Partners signed up, then faded away under the weight of their spouses and other commitments.

When I moved to Santa Fe five years ago, I thought my day on the peak—now a bit closer to home—would finally come. Instead, I just became increasingly aware of my failure, as my schedule got fuller and I had to look at the graceful sweep of stone from the highway each time I drove north for holidays and family visits in Colorado. At the start of last summer, I promised myself that I wouldn’t let another season go by without getting up the South Prow. But then came surprise assignments to the Philippines and Colombia, and my free weekends dwindled. Finally, on September 15, staring down the barrel of the vernal equinox, I realized time was up.

All of my possible partners were out of town or otherwise occupied, so I hatched a plan to climb this 14,165-foot wedge of Crestone conglomerate alone. I would leave Santa Fe at midday on Saturday, sprint up the 3,500-vertical-foot approach to a high camp that afternoon, dash up and down the route before noon on Sunday, and arrive home in time for dinner. So fixated had I become with this climb that I couldn’t see the irony of filling my free time, as short as it was, with the very things I try to escape from in the outdoors—goals, schedules, artificial commitments. With a flight to New York on Tuesday, I thought, it was now or never.

The Calm
Jen immediately objected to me doing the Prow, Kit Carson’s hardest technical rock route, solo. I wasn’t overly concerned with the difficulty as there are only a few 5.8 moves on the first pitch before the route eases a few grades into steady, low-angle climbing. She worried about the Southwest monsoon, which historically would have settled down by mid-September but continued to rake the high peaks with sporadic, but wicked afternoon storms. I argued that the forecast for my summit day called for clear skies, and, besides, I’d be off the mountain long before midday, when the weather tends to clamp down. As a last-ditch effort to dissuade me, Jen reminded me that her family was coming to visit that weekend, and they’d be disappointed if they didn’t get to see me. This clinched it. If the alternative was galumphing around the Santa Fe sights and boutiques I’d seen every time we had out-of-town company for the last five years, the only acceptable plan was to get out of dodge.

Admittedly, avoiding the in-laws isn’t the most persuasive argument for a backcountry undertaking. And thinking back on the circumstances—a route at the cusp of my ropeless comfort level, an unsettled weather pattern, a succession of work and travel commitments that had seen me climbing outside on real rock precisely two times in the previous eight months—I see how it might have seemed a madcap affair. But I had a decade’s worth of resolve to outweigh any logical niggling.

No more excuses. Forget the flaky partners. Enough with hectic schedules. To hell with reason. I simply had to go do this climb.

Though my perspective would shift in the next two days, I generally consider the greatest challenge of any adventure—especially one that’s a decade in the making—to be getting out the door.

There’s always too much equipment to fit in too small a space and that one last stop for another box of mac ‘n cheese or a quadruple Americano to make up for the sleep you missed consternating over gear. I compounded the mayhem when, in a stroke of blind, excessive optimism, I decided it was a good idea to take my weekly training ride (four hours, lots of climbing) before pushing off. Hit the trail by 5 a.m., home by 9, and that leaves two hours to pack. “Tons of time,” I told myself. “I’ll probably be early.” But by the time I peeled away from breakfast with Jen and her family, who had rolled into town the previous night, I was 40 minutes late and twitching with impatience.
Who needs coffee when you have in-laws?

Every time I step into the San Luis Valley, I can’t help but think that James Hilton got all the details about Shangri-La just right—except for the bit about it being fictional. Some 120 miles long and 75 miles across, this sweeping, glass-flat basin is a cascade of plump crops and wild grasses hemmed in by thorny peaks to the east and west and a lace of sandy dunes to the south. It’s the sort of place you’d happily come to die, or at least to try to figure out life. Lots of interesting types agree, with herds of Hindus, Buddhists, Carmelites, and UFO spotters seeking solace in eccentric little Crestone, a village of about 100 kowtowing below a string of 14ers. I could literally feel my pulse slowing from all the cosmic good vibes as I eased up to the trailhead.

Want to climb The Prow? We give you the beta to do it (solo or with ropes and partners) online at Elevation Outdoors. As well as info on other alpine classics on Colorado’s high peaks: elevationoutdoors.com/peak-exposure/

The Storm
Pack shouldered, map handy, I started up a faint, brambled trail that meandered back and forth and back across an overgrown creek before blasting straight up the valley. My legs felt like concrete pylons from riding, but I kept churning upward hard enough to make my breath ragged. I hoped to get up high in time to find a campsite and watch evening fall on the cirque. I’d even brought a book and a single beer for the occasion. It was a dry, sharp Colorado autumn afternoon, with the hot sun gleaming off the blaze of dying aspen leaves and barely a wisp of cloud in the sky. It felt like one of those days when nothing could go wrong.

That’s never a wise thought in the mountains. At around 10,000 feet, the trail surfaced from a stippled pine canopy into a broad old burn meadow with trees downed like scattered matchsticks. My eyes moved quickly from the deadwood to the sky, where tendrils of inky gray clouds clawed over the southeast ridge of Kit Carson. Already huffing, I upped the exertion level. But the going was slow as I bear hugged and hip-swiveled over toppled timber, and the dark pall of incoming weather gripped the sky. Halfway across the blow-down, the massive cold globes that signal the start of a storm began slapping at me and somehow I managed to find and slip into my rain shell without breaking my stride. At the far side of the clearing, the lightning and thunder commenced, stabbing white flashes followed almost instantaneously by deep, baritone volleys like artillery. The first salvo was so close I nearly pissed myself.

Heaving myself down the embankment to my right, the lowest spot I could find was a smallish trough between a trio of baby pines. I splayed out my body and cocked myself into the depression like an overeager spooning lover. Loamy mud pressed into my cheek, but if I raised my head out of it, a torrent of rain arced into the crest of my hood and down my back into my pants. “Squalls like this pass quickly,” I told myself. But water kept bucketing from the sky, accompanied by high-voltage explosions. I’m sure the storm would have been an impressive sight if I hadn’t had my soaking head thrust into cold, wet silt. I began to shiver. I would have traded 10 minutes in that blustery tomb for an entire year of shopping on the plaza with my in-laws.

I’m not sure how long I lay there—30 minutes? an hour?—but when the storm failed to break, I realized that I had to make a run for it. There would be no high camp tonight, no climb tomorrow. I just wanted to get to safety, maybe even home. In the gathering darkness, I tried to outrun the lightning, crossing the meadow of deadfall like a hurdler traversing a bayou full of crocs. Even when I reached the relative cover of the forest, I kept running like my life depended on it. I probably would have run all the way back to the car, but between the pouring rain and the encroaching night, I soon risked smacking into a tree if I didn’t stop and get my headlamp.

I couldn’t immediately find the light, so I had to sit down on a log and paw through my drenched bag. Raindrops still crackled on the bed of brittle leaves in the forest around me, but the sound was anesthetizing now, not menacing. The lighting was less intense, more distant. As I watched the black rain, I realized that I couldn’t continue down. Sure, I’d had a close call. And yes, a hotel bed was certain to be more pleasant than the clammy, wet condom that the storm had likely turned my down sleeping bag into. But more than comfort—and more than even climbing—wasn’t the true idea of this undertaking to find a little of the freedom and spaciousness that’s missing from day-to-day life? The question was whether this trip would be just another little box on a to-do list or an unpredictable escapade in which success hinged less on an outcome than on the sheer relish of a wide-open experience.

Grudgingly, I yanked the soaking tent out of my pack and began erecting it in the flattest spot I could find: the middle of the trail. I crawled inside and changed from my waterlogged trail clothes to some tolerably moist spare underlayers that had been stowed closest to my back. In the top pouch of my pack, my book had morphed into a cardboard anchor. When I dug down into the pocket of my rain shell, I discovered my iPhone, swimming in three inches of water. I tried to boot it up, but the phone flashed like faint lightning then whirred to an unimpressive, gray culmination. Free at last.

The Climb
At dawn, I peaked out of my sagging tent and had to rub my eyes to make sure I was seeing clearly. A fine sifting of gropple and ice varnished the woodland floor as a brisk, clear autumn morning unfolded. I wasn’t prepared for wintery conditions, but I didn’t want to risk the afternoon storms by waiting for the melt. So I took to the trail immediately, forgoing coffee and leaving the tent to dry. The snow accumulated quickly the higher I climbed, until it was above my ankles, soaking through my shoes in minutes. Crossing the tree cemetery was even slower going than the night before as I chipped out footholds and butt-slid over iced-up trunks. I reached the base of the climb within an hour.

The problem with an eleventh-hour decision to do a route like The Prow is it doesn’t leave much time for pre-ascent reflection. At a bulging swell of rock that marks the start of the technical climbing, I felt painfully unprepared for what lay above. But shreds of silvery clouds were already beginning to show to the west, so I simply placed rubber to frosty rock. With a medley of pink granite, quartzite, and sandstone baubles set in a greenish-gray matrix, the stone looks like cement studded with bubblegum balls and makes for big, solid open-hand pullling. The beginning passage was steeper than I espected so I yo-yoed the moves, gaining confidence as I learned the movement and serenity as my muscles opened. On my fourth pass, I stepped beyond the bulge, perhaps 25 feet above my starting notch, and immediately found myself hundreds of feet above the valley. I felt as if I was standing on the outside of the St. Louis Arch, with a small solid panel unfurling to the sky and nothing but spirals of air on both sides. The wind chopped at my pack as I picked my way upward, my movements more cautious than deliberate. Meanwhile, the silver plumes of cloud were morphing into smoky cords and great gunmetal discs.

After cresting a small needle and downclimbing to a notch, I took stock. My neck was tense, my head fatigued. I wasn’t climbing with my usual fluidity. I stretched out on my back in the flickering sun to collect myself. The truth, I realized as I watched billows of heavier clouds stream past, was that after so little climbing and so much travel and stress in recent months, I wasn’t really ready for the South Prow. These sorts of endeavors take confidence that comes only with regular practice, as well as time and patience. And yet here I was, two pitches gone, with a sinuous ridge leading nowhere but up. So up I went.

I felt better as I climbed, the old movements coming back to me, but the weather continued to deteriorate. At one point, I was so wrapped up in gauzy clouds that I couldn’t see beyond the 25-foot patch of rock encircling me. I reached the summit around 11 a.m., and with fog banks sloshing around jags of mountain pinnacles like whitewater froth, I didn’t hang around long for the view. I was back to the bottom of the basin by 12:30 and spied a stunning little campsite just up the trail from the spot where the storm had pinned me down the previous night. Before I turned down valley to get my tent, I erected a neat, square cairn to remind me of the spot. Some day, when I have a blank week on my calendar, I’m going to return there and spend some time camping. •

Freelance writer Aaron Gulley lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which he describes as the ultimate vantage point from which to appreciate Colorado. “We have quick access to the Sangre de Cristos, the San Juans and most of the state’s wilder bits,” he says, “But even those secluded spots are teeming compared to the wilderness in New Mexico.”

Colorado can seem overrun with sprawl, tourists, transplants and soul-sucking suburbia, but these true tales of joy and mishap in the lonesome parts of the state attest to the magic that’s still out there.

THE 14ERS
When I was twenty-one, I moved to Boulder for the summer, lured by a two-day-a-week internship and the old myth of the West. This was my first time alone on the craggy-side of the Mississippi—crossing into Colorado on I-70, seeing the painted peaks in the distance, I leaned out the window and announced myself with a primal scream—and I had no concept of what a mountain town was, nor how huge the mountains could get. Measured against my Appalachians, the Front Range was impressive enough, and it took me a couple weeks to explore beyond it.

Hiking and reading is about all I did for three months, by necessity as much as choice. I bought cheap, used boots at the Savers on South Broadway. I “borrowed” guidebooks from the over-flowing shelves I helped build at Hooked on the Outdoors magazine, where I interned, and solicited the editors’ mostly priceless advice. I ate free sample meals at the only Whole Foods that existed then and shot Boulder Creek most sunny afternoons on a found tube. That summer, as never before and never since, I was free. And that freedom was most felt above 14,000 feet.

Starting with Grays, and ending with Pyramid, I climbed five 14ers, each taking me closer to the sky than I’d been before. I’m not sure I even had a long conversation with five strangers that summer. I was a hermit, fixated on the mountains at my feet, and the copies of The New Yorker at the Boulder Public Library. I’d pore over something by John McPhee and then try to poeticize the rocks and sky as I scraped my way up Elbert. It was all very earnest, and I blush looking back now. But it was an education. The best I ever got (no offense to some great teachers back east).

There was a moment near the summit of Torreys, I remember, where, inside a cloud for a few minutes, separated from the others clamoring up the mountain, alone in a bubble of thin air, I saw my future. Or was light-headed enough to hallucinate it. Five years later, incredibly, I published a little story in the magazine I discovered at the library that summer. I saw something else in the cloud, too, which I haven’t done yet. I think I just met her though.
—Charles Bethea

Pins and Needles: Josh Smith viewing the Ellingwood Arete profile of the Crestone Needle while approaching from the Kit Carson and Crestone side of the range in the Sangre De Cristo Mountains.

THE NEEDLE
I have plenty of reasons to hate Crestone Needle. It was this 14,197-foot jag of sedimentary stone that stole my climbing virginity, forcing my first-ever open bivouac. In the process, I lost a climbing buddy, dished up some costly damage to my girlfriend’s Subaru and snapped my favorite sunglasses in half.

It was probably my own fault. Though it had always been my idea to climb the Ellingwood Arête, a blunt nose of reddish rock on the Needle’s eastern flanks that arcs gracefully up from the huddle of tarns called South Colony Lakes, I was maxed at work in the weeks before the trip and left all the planning to my soon-to-be-ex-climbing partner. I knew that my friend, we’ll call him Cliff, wasn’t as meticulous about preparation as me, but I figured it would be okay to let him take point this once.

That we arrived at the trailhead after midnight when the plan called to pull in around 8 p.m. should have sounded the alarms, especially after the rough dirt road quadrupled our one-mile approach (and left my soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend’s Outback smoking). The next morning, what was to have been a free-soloing romp up low 5th class rock—with a couple of roped pitches in the beautiful dihedrals up high—turned into 14 laborious belays when Cliff got spooked right off the deck. Still, I was savoring the glistening day until Cliff admitted, on the summit after sunset, that he hadn’t researched the descent. What ensued was a frantic hunt in the gathering darkness for the exit couloir, a hands-and-knees scramble down a rubble-choked gully with just one headlamp (Cliff had forgotten his), and the eventual decision to hunker down at 13,000 feet. I built a low wall of rocks for shelter from the screaming wind and, as Cliff and I lay down to wait for sunrise, I felt my prized Rudy Projects crunch under my weight. Those sunglasses focused my rage. On the hike out the next morning and the silent four-hour-drive home, though I should have been angry about the possible frostbite in my fingertips or what might have happened had the weather turned, I couldn’t stop seething over my broken shades.

And yet, I walked away from that weekend with a deep affection for Crestone Needle. It reminded me—as only a fierce and wild place can—of the respect you need for the mountains. That lesson has served me for years, on big walls in Rocky Mountain National Park and snowy slopes in the San Juans, probably saving me from much colder nights out and true mishap.

I went back to the Ellingwood Arête a few years later, this time with my soon-to-be-wife. We arrived at South Colony Lakes in time to sip bourbon in our willow-shrouded camp, began climbing in the pre-dawn gray, and topped out just three hours after we began. We were back at the lakes before midday, casting lines for dinner and savoring a windless afternoon in the Sangre de Cristos.
—Aaron Gulley

Touch the Sky: Towering over the traffic of I-70, Grays and Torreys are the place to start exploring the state’s famed 54 summits above 14,000 feet.

THE BOOKCLIFFS
Ever since I first stared at an atlas of the U.S. from a dorm room in Boston, I have dreamed about places like the 250 mile long swath of the Bookcliffs—massive sectons of white emptiness on the map. With nary a mountain peak or trout steam in them, the Bookcliffs call me simply because nothing is there.

Near Fruita, the Bookcliffs are famed for their rollicking singletrack. So why not explore them by bike? When my friend Lin and I finally decide to try a ride in an desolate section of them, we find ourselves surrounded by grid after grid of little wooden stakes with red, plastic flags flapping in the wind. They are the blueprint for the wholesale excavation of the desert here. The BLM’s plan for this forgotten spot is to build roads, platforms and wells all across the landscape. I knew this beforehand, but seeing it is overwhelmingly sad.

We finally reach a spot that has some singletrack potential, an old cow trail that wends between the sedimentary bluffs, when a brand-new, shiny white Dodge Durango comes speeding down the road and pulls up next to us. The tinted automatic window lowers and a silver-haired man addresses us in his best gravelly, ‘70s tough-guy voice.

“What are you doing?”
“Mountain biking.”
“Here?”
“Yeah.”
“Well the sheriff is up the other side of this hill looking for two guys pulling stakes.”
“Oh really? What are those stakes for anyway?”
“They’re just stakes.”
“Well, we’re not those guys.”
I want to spit in his face, not just for trying to play Robert Mitchum with us, but also for the business of cheap wholesale destruction that employs him and for his obvious joy in his bit role of petty dominance. It makes me want to pull up every stake I see.

On that map I used to look at, there was an odd annotation on a blank section of the West. It said. “Last herds of wild antelope roam here.” Not the type of thing Rand McNally usually cites. But after all these years, it has given me hope that perhaps there is some emptiness we can just leave alone. Perhaps there is some un-gridded mystery in the Bookcliffs still waiting for me. I promise to go back.
—Doug Schnitzspahn

Hot Turns: It’s never too late for world tele champ Michelson to taste some corn.

SUMMER SNOW
The Mennonites must have thought I was weird. The family from Pennsylvania, dressed in traditional attire, was visiting Colorado and taking a scenic Sunday drive along Rocky Mountain National Park’s Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuous road in the U.S., which tops out at 12,183 feet. Meanwhile, I was standing on the side of that road with my thumb pointed toward the sky, wearing a t-shirt, goggles and ski pants, and carrying mud-splattered telemark skis. It was June 5th.

Out of kindness or curiosity, the Mennonites stopped and picked me up. “What are you doing?” the young girl in a long dress and a bonnet asked me as I climbed into their minivan. I pointed up to a slushy patch of snow high on the mountainside that hadn’t melted yet from Colorado’s deep winter snowpack—you could barely make out our s-shaped tracks. “I’m skiing,” I responded, as if that were normal this time of year.

Like the Mennonite family, it was my first visit to Rocky Mountain National Park. But unlike them, my friends and I decided to explore the new territory by skis. We drove a car to the summit, strapped skis to our backpacks, and hiked over grass and mud in our ski boots to access a snow island in the middle of a dirt face. We linked turns down a steep pitch, on snow that felt soft like frozen yogurt. At the bottom, where the slope again reached the curving road, I rinsed mud off my skis in a streaming waterfall then walked to the road to hitchhike up to our car.

We didn’t care that at that time of year most people had long since traded in skis for bikes and barbeques. All that mattered to us in that moment was the fact that in Colorado, and especially in high-alpine spots like Rocky Mountain National Park, there was still snow to be found, if you knew where to find it. And that search—the exploration for snow, and the satisfaction of those few slushy turns—is what keeps me coming back every year. And in some way, I think the Mennonites understood that, as they were on their own quest as well.

At the top of the pass on Trail Ridge Road, the family from Pennsylvania pulled over to let me out of the car. They smiled and waved goodbye. And for that brief moment, as our journeys collided and then separated again, we seemed to understand each other: All of us were looking for a place we’ve never been.
—Megan Michelson

Brute Force: Tim Parr of Gunnison pushes onward with the Twin Peaks looming in the background. Parr was the first to cross the Leadville Trail 100 finish line in 2009 with a time of 17:27:23.

THE PAIN
My dad’s a sadist. Always has been, always will be. I still remember Boy Scout backpacking trips as a kid. He’d say something innocuous like, “It’s only uphill a little.” Four hours later, roped in, we’d be climbing up some trail. This love of pain led him to the Leadville Trail 100, a 100-mile foot race over some of the most majestic, and steep stretches of the Rockies.

To say the LT100 is brutal is like saying Reinhold Messner enjoys tramping. Asked how he was feeling mid-race, co-founder Ken Chlouber once joked, “The pain comes and goes. It came right at the start, and hopefully it’ll go by Christmas.” My dad used to hallucinate. I was pacing him late one night, our headlamps providing just enough light to keep us on trail, when he stopped and stared off into the woods. “What are those people doing?” he asked. “What people?” “Over there. They’re sitting in lawn chairs.” He was sure of it. “Dad, there’s no one there. It’s the middle of the forest at 3 a.m.” Crossing a bridge, he saw a bunch of people in the water below. Each time I assured him it was nothing, except maybe too much pain, and we continued the 100-mile shuffle. I was pretty sure it was nothing.

I’d never been one for night running, but that first year brought me over to the dark side. It was a moment on the trail between Twin Lakes and the Half Moon Campground. I’d stopped to fiddle with the tongue of my shoe, and the midnight silence—a heavy nothingness—overwhelmed me. There probably wasn’t anyone within a mile. Just me and that massive darkness. I felt that one-ness with nature that new-agey people talk about right then, and it’s stuck with me ever since.
—Wes Berkshire

In Gunnison you can find world class biking, boating and climbing just a short walk from the coffee shop.

There are few places left in Colorado where Old West and New West have come together so seemlessly. Here, you still have Cattlemen’s Days, which celebrates the local ranching culture, and true-to-life tumbleweeds occasionally “tumble” across Highway 50 come summer. Go to any restaurant and 10-gallon hats are intermingled with side-cocked flat brims; at the local banks skate shoes tread beside spurred cowboy boots. Out on Main Street you can see a harvested elk in a pickup on one side of the street, and $20,000 worth of mountain bikes roof-racked on the other. Ahhh, diversity.

Part of the eclectic mix is due to having Western State College in town, a small state school surrounded by world-class “field work” opportunities and a couple million acres-plus of public land. Students study the environment right outside the classroom door, and explore it on knobby tires, kayaks and rock shoes when school’s out. Even snowboardcross rider Seth Wescott, a 2010 Winter Games gold medal winner in Vancouver, hung his helmet at Western for a stretch.

The Gunnison River Festival

Gunnison is still true grit, authentic despite the merger of a workingman’s town with a recreation hub. You can still get your ass kicked by native Coloradans at the Alamo bar on Main St. for getting mouthy, and get it kicked again on-trail by a cowboy that moonlights as a single-speed mountain bike racer.

At around 7,700 feet in elevation, you get everything from sage-lined singletrack to blistering boulders to roiling runoff-fueled rivers to run at your pleasure. The beauty of Gun City is you can have it all without leaving town limits. Hartman’s Rocks is the gravitational pull for local and visiting mountain bikers, and there is some quality climbing and bouldering there as well.

-The Boating-
Don’t be duped by the desert-style riding and climbing—there is plenty of navigable water here, too. The nearby Gunnison Whitewater Park is on the west side of town, and is managed and maintained by the Todd Crane Center for Outdoor Leadership and the Recreation Department at Western State College. Kayakers can earn their freestyle chops on the hundreds of feet of features, while rafters navigate the frothy waters and anglers cast flies up-and-down stream. Multisport missions are the rule, not the exception. If you are going to visit, aim for June 25-27, when the Gunnison River Festival (gunnisonriverfestival.com) turns the stream into a celebration of the stream, replete with a freestyle rodeo, downriver race, kids events, live music and more.

-The Biking-
Hartman’s serves up everything from aerobic cross-country loops to technical, mandatory turns and drops that leave little room for error.  One of the best parts about Hartman’s is it dries out early in the spring due to the pureed, porous granite that layers the landscape. The riding often opens up in April and can last into November—but it can be Sahara hot mid-day in the dead of summer, as there’s little shade, so ride early or late for optimal conditions.

Many of the trails ride well both ways, and single-speeders and freeriders alike will find plenty to keep entertained … for days. Think lot of shorter trails that you can link up in endless combinations. It’s challenging at first to get your bearings and put good loops together, but there are maps available at the local bike shops, and Holly Annala’s book: Mountain Bike Crested Butte, Gunnison, and Salida Singletrack is also a great resource.

Slickrock at Hartman’s

Three rides not to miss: Rattlesnake is an expert 1.8-mile trail; it has technical slickrock features and rides easiest south to north; Rocky Ridge covers 1.5 miles and combines buff and technical riding with killer views; Wiensy’z is a mellow, intermediate trail named for local riding legend Dave Wiens, who has beaten the likes of Lance Armstrong in the Leadville 100.

-Pubs and Grub-
Hit up the Steaming Bean (thebean.com) for coffee and breakfast burritos. The Firebrand (970-641-6266) makes outstanding sandwiches. For local brews and eats, it’s the Gunnison Brewery (gunnisonbrewery.com).

-Gear-
Gunnison’s Rock ‘n Roll Sports (rockandrollsports.com) and Tomichi Cycles (tomichicycles.com) have all repair and replacement needs covered.

-Stay-
The Wanderlust Hostel (thewanderlusthostel.com) is affordable, clean, has free wireless, gear storage and central location. There is limited, low-impact camping at Hartman’s Rocks and several locations outside of town.

-Local Intel-
Gunnison Trails (gunnisontrials.com), Crank Collective (crankcollective.com), Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association (cbmba.com), Crested Butte Mountain Guides (crestedbutteguides.com)

Mike Horn completed his meandering three-college, eight-year undergraduate career at Western State and now lives in Crested Butte.

You think you know New Orleans music? Think again and listen up as one of the Crescent City’s own dishes on five bands that will make you feel a good kind of dirty.

It’s easy to think that Colorado and New Orleans have little in common. We’re at or below sea level and Y’all are…way up there. But there is a definite connection between our two communities. Mountain people generally know how to hang and they are great music fans. You like to shake the booty, as do we. Colorado is a favorite destination for myself and my New Orleans musician brothers and sisters. And every spring at New Orleans’ Jazz Fest one constantly is meeting people from out West. Now, while artists such as the Neville Brothers and Dr. John are true legends of the Crescent City Sound, there are lots of other very interesting things going on down here you may not have heard much about. Most of these bands don’t travel much, but you can see them when you come down, which I know you want to do so we can show you all the great stuff we’ve been up to in the last few years.

Panorama Jazz Band

WORLD BEAT DOWN
Panorama Jazz Band • Come Out Swinging
You say you want world music? The Panorama Jazz Band plays music from all around the globe, and every note and nuance is designed to make you shake your ass. Panorama features the classic New Orleans jazz ensemble instrumentation—a front line of clarinet, trombone and saxophone with a rhythm section comprised of tuba drum set and banjo—and their new release Come Out Swinging features everything from American swing to Klezmer to Bulgarian mazurkas. They’re fluent in every style they tackle. The new CD is a great party record, but better yet, get your butt down here and over to the Spotted Cat early on a Friday evening to witness as they throw down. Think the Asylum Street Spankers without the irony but with a well-worn passport.
www.panoramajazzband.com

FRANCOPHONIC
Wazozo • Newton Circus
Belgian-born Helen Gillet’s band Wazozo play French chansons and musettes and are, simply put, charming. Gillet sings in French while accompanying herself on cello. Daron Douglas on violin, Luke Brectelsbauer on harp and Gregory Hood on guitar comprise the rest of the ensemble. On their debut CD Newton Circus much of the material is taken from such artists as Edith Piaf and Georges Brassens, but the beauty and wit are entirely original. I don’t speak French, but I don’t think it matters. Get the Wazozo CD and put it on. It is spring. You feel deep and soulful. And whimsical. And you can love again.
www.myspace.com/wazozo

SLUDGE RAWK
Narcissy •  Narcissy
Narcissy is the greatest band in the known universe and I’ll tell you why.  1. They have the coolest band name.  2. Front man Jay Holland will play the guitar in his pants. IN HIS PANTS…3. They have songs with such titles as “Stairway To Hell” and “I Hate The South” (full disclosure: Mr. Holland is from Pensacola, Florida). Your chances of seeing this band are about zero, as they almost never play out. They do, however, have an outstanding eponymously titled CD, with another due on the Fourth of July. Jay tells me the band’s favorite outdoor sport is Arkansas Stunt F*$king. It’s a short season, but requires rigorous training. In short, super sludgy RAWK.
www.narcissy.com

CLASSICAL GRIT
The Naked Orchestra • From Pandemonium To A View Of Eidolons
There are 23 musicians and one conductor on the new Naked Orchestra CD and each one of them is indispensable. The brainchild of guitarist/composer Jonathan Freilich, The Naked Orchestra was formed about a decade ago “to see what it would sound like.” For kicks, Mr. Freilich writes operas. Most of New Orleans’ greatest creative musicians are heard here interpreting Mr. Freilich’s compositions, along with offerings by the ensemble’s conductor Dr. Jimbo Walsh and Richard Theodore a.k.a. Harry Lenz. How to describe? Mingus at a barn burning. Almost crime-jazz-y. Not for the faint of heart. The recording was made just a few days before Hurricane Katrina, and was only mixed and released recently. From a seemingly simpler time, but you wouldn’t know it from this record. Don’t be afraid. It’s fun to drive to.
www.jonathanfreilich.com

Dumpstaphunk

ELEVATOR FUNK
Dumpstaphunk • Listen Hear
You are probably aware of New Orleans’ place in the funk tradition (see The Meters, Allen Toussaint, etc.), but the gnarliest stuff coming out of this town these days is from Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk. When I hear them my face contorts into some sort of combination of fear and confusion, like I just crapped my pants on an elevator. Unbelievably tight. Singing their asses off. My favorite part is they have a sense of humor and absolutely do not give a f*$k.  Their CD Listen Hear is full-impact funk. And they are road dogs so you can go get hit in the head in person. Imagine if Sly Stone and Fishbone had a baby and lit it on fire.
www.dumpstaphunk.com

Tin Men with Hearts

TIN MEN
I play in about a dozen bands. It’s one way of staying alive without having to do something drastic like get a job. And I just happen to be a member of America’s premier sousaphone/washboard/guitar trio. The Tin Men have been at it since 2002. We do everything from jug band music to Led Zeppelin and make a pretty good amount of racket for just three guys with no drums. We have put out two CDs under our own name and are currently working on a third and have released a record of sea shanties with the Valparaiso Men’s Chorus. We are also probably the world’s best wedding band. Strange but true: washboardist, singer and comptroller Charles “Washboard Chaz” Leary served two terms as mayor of Gold Hill. Colorado. In fact. he lived in the Boulder area for many years. For those people not familiar with the sousaphone, it is a kind of tuba one hears in a marching band. Our sousaphonist, Matt Perrine, is a veteran of the New Orleans jazz and brass band scenes and is pretty scary on the horn. It’s been a few years since we’ve been to Colorado. I think it’s time we got a little lightheaded again…

Do you really think babies and breastfeeding can keep Colorado moms off the slopes?

It was skiing that made my best friend Julia breastfeed my first son Scout.

This happened in February 2002, on a Thursday, in Julia’s one-room condo overlooking the Safeway in Fraser, Colorado, near Winter Park Resort. Julia and I had been friends since meeting in Alaska five years earlier. She was the reason I’d moved to Winter Park. An instant sister, she’d gotten me a job at the local bagel shop, directed me to the season pass office, and convinced her real sister that she should let me spend the winter sleeping on her living room floor.

Four years later, Julia and I were coming off a long run of skiing our brains out while doing everything possible to continue skiing our brains out. We worked jobs with flexible hours, at or near the resort. We lived on beer and mashed potatoes so we could spend our money on more important things like more beer and climbing skins. We picked our boyfriends based largely on how well they could huck a cliff and then ski away without wrapping themselves around a tree. Somewhere along the line, two of those boyfriends took. And now, at the ages of 31 (me) and 43 (Julia), we were both recently married and the proud new mothers of two sons, Scout (mine) and Shane (Julia’s), born a scant five months apart.

Through the summer, sleep deprivation and love at first sight had kept our minds focused on our mewling, puking babes. But as the first winter of our ski-mommyhood kicked into gear, we were feeling the full impact of our progeny on our five-day-a-week powder habits.

It was Julia’s turn to watch the boys so I could squeeze in a few laps at our home hill. With Scout situated in his bouncy chair, I nearly broke the sound barrier trying to get to the resort, suit up, smash through the singles’ line, and straightline a dozen runs in the three precious hours I’d bought in exchange for watching Shane later that afternoon.

It took seven laps for the weight of responsibility to float up through my body and out the top of my head. But when it finally did, I managed to spend at least two minutes basking in the brain-freeze of powder snow billowing over my boot tops and blasting me in the face. For a few brief seconds, the unapologetic skier girl I used to be embodied the phantom-umbilical-cord-trailing mommy I now was, and it was better than any feeling I’d ever had.

And then the daydream was over. On the way back to Julia’s, I jammed the gas to sound-barrier-breaking speed again, knowing that I had kinda-sorta misled my soul sister into believing that Scout had finally started taking a bottle (the truth: He hadn’t, and it wasn’t the first time I’d lied to go skiing). I spun a half doughnut into my best friend’s driveway and post-holed to the front door. Anticipating the ear-splitting shrieks of my starving child, I stopped. I listened. And I heard … complete silence.

Inside, Julia was kicking back in a beanbag reading Allen and Mike’s Real Cool Telemark Tips,  Scout, wrapped in her puffy jacket, slumbered next to a pile of old sleeping bags. I looked around, puzzled by the maternal glow emanating from Julia’s face. Still staring into her book, she announced, “I hope you don’t mind, but Scout just had a nibble off my left breast.”

It’s irrational, of course, letting your best friend nurse the fruit of your loins. But if you were a skier before you became a mommy, you get where I’m coming from. Long before any of my friends were mashing boiled carrots, we’d proclaimed ourselves Skiers for Life. And babies or not, that’s what we’d remain.

My fanaticism began even before Scout was born, when, upon learning I was pregnant and about to double in size, I immediately co-opted my husband’s bibs. When Scout was little more than a self-rising bread loaf pushing into my spleen, I telemarked five days a week, easing off big mogul lines only when my knees began knocking into his head. With no obstetricians in Winter Park, I chose to have my maternity check-ups in Steamboat Springs (as opposed to the closer option in Denver), so my husband and I could spin post-appointment laps on Rabbit Ears Pass. I was, as they say in the ski industry, living the dream.

Then Scout was born—with bright blue eyes and no brain damage—on May 18, 2001. I immediately began introducing him to the slopes. All summer I loaded him into my front pack and hiked 1,700 feet up Winter Park Mountain, to the 10,700-foot-high summit. Battling hypoxia, I pointed out protrusions and dips in the terrain that, when snow-covered, would become jumps and secret powder stashes. Facing into my chest (where he eventually learned to nurse while we hiked!), Scout couldn’t see where I was pointing, but I promised to show him my secrets again when he was old enough to understand.

And Scout has come to understand the importance of skiing in my life, even if I’ve forced it on him. Before his third birthday, we’d skied Winter Park, Steamboat Springs, Wolf Creek, Targhee, Jackson Hole and Bridger Bowl. At six months old, he was cross-country skiing in my backpack, and at a year and a half he rode his first chairlift, screaming “Mo Dee!” and punching me in the knee pad when I told him it was time to leave. (That same day his two-month-old brother, Hatcher, got his first taste of skiing too—or at least of the ski resort parking lot, where I swilled beers with my buddies while he snored into my Goretex.) I’d bet money that Scout and Hatcher have spent more sun-drenched, adrenaline-filled family time than the sum total of people on the last 10,000 Carnival Cruises.

As much as I hate to admit it, eight years after Scout’s birth I’m not the skier I used to be. The good news is Scout and Hatcher don’t care which mold I’m trying to fit—Skier for Life or Mommy Who Skis—as long as they’re getting their ski time too. At eight and seven, they’re little rippers, sliding mini fun-boxes in the terrain park and straightlining through the bottom of the Super Pipe. When the snow flies this winter, they’ll join a dozen little “shred demons” (Scout’s term) on the Eldora ski team every Saturday, and learn to bash gates, zip through moguls, and maybe even spin a 180 off a kicker with a three-foot drop.

Meanwhile, Julia and I will use those Saturdays wisely. We’ll drive her van to the top of Berthoud Pass, where we’ll get out and start hiking, looking for the next superfresh line. Judging from the past, I’m predicting we’ll feel free and unfettered, happy that for the moment there are no mouths in need of an urgent, impromptu breastfeeding. •

National Magazine Award-winner and Backpacker senior editor Tracy Ross was never so happy as the day she was positively diagnosed with ADD (“it explains everything”). Her memoir will be published by Free Press in spring 2011.

What happens when a hard-charging mountain girl who spends spare moments training for triathlons meets a laid-back, cruiser-riding East Coast transplant who likes to bake bread?

He Said…

I arrived at the small adobe apartment we were to share—two ambitious, 23-year-old strangers from opposite ends of the country who’d landed the same outdoors magazine internship in Santa Fe, New Mexico—to find a quiet girl in a sweater. Seeing how weary I was from the road, she offered me a beer, and we joked about breaking the ice, as we broke it while sitting on the floor of our empty new living room.

Hindsight is amusing, if not entirely cathartic, with its little boldfaced clues: I remember her watching me remove the rusty red Schwinn from the cheap rack on the back of the Jeep I’d driven across the country, from Georgia, locking it next to a fancy looking mountain bike and road bike in our small backyard.

“Is that your cruiser?” the California girl asked.

I had no idea what this meant.

It had never occurred to me that one might need two or more different kinds of bicycles. Lots of things, I’d soon discover, had never occurred to me before.

Slowly, the situation revealed itself. This unassuming girl let slip that she’d captained Middlebury’s triathlon team. She did mysterious aerobic activities before work, as I lay passed out. She disappeared for entire afternoons only to return on her road bike, pointing toward the top of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains, some 10,000 feet high, when I asked where she’d been. She also drank a lot of tea. I was unnerved and, being a masochist, intrigued.

Eventually, after a long Tuesday night of wine and nicotine—I provided her first cigarette—I went on a short morning run with her at 7,000 feet to repent for the previous night’s excesses. It was brutal. I struggled to breath. I choked up strange fluids and dripped slime from my nose. It was painful, and yet exhilarating. It felt something like love.

A few months later—almost four years ago now—I found myself competing in a 12-hour mountain bike race in Gallup, New Mexico, on a cherry red K2 Apache that didn’t belong to the same species as any bike I’d ever owned before. I purchased it mostly so that I could spend more time on the trails around Santa Fe with this constantly active girl. By then, we’d crossed our own intimate Rubicon and consummated a secret office-roommate relationship.

I managed to surpass most reasonable expectations at this race, actually beating her time on one lap of the 13-mile course (she had one teammate and I had three). But the satisfaction of finishing the race paled in comparison to the look on her flushed, mud-flecked face when it was over. Endorphins, I discovered, are a potent aphrodisiac.

It was at that moment that I became an adventure sports enthusiast.

Two years before meeting adventure girl, I had thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail during a “break” from college. I thought that this 2,174-mile walk put me in pretty elite company, if not on a career path. But I was falling for a girl who, before long, would win the title of best telemark freeskier in the world. (I’m still not entirely sure what that means.) She respected my plodding achievement, but it felt like the sort of respect a tenured English professor has for a quirky student who has managed to read the entire dictionary.

Once ski season started, I saw less of her. At that point in our lives, she’d won more ski races than I’d spent days on snow-covered mountains. (This is probably still true.) So while she ripped, I typically stayed at home: reading, baking, and learning ski jargon online. Everyone prayed for snow but me.

Fortunately, our first winter together was a dry one, and adventure girl and I hiked a lot together around New Mexico. By summer, we’d tackled Wheeler Peak, the tallest in the state. Soon after, we argued our way up Mount Princeton, in Colorado, only to light-headedly make up/out on top—courtesy of those endorphins again—in the gathering clouds.

The argument was related, as I recall, to the difficulty of the hike, and how I marched ahead, without waiting. I was secretly proud of finding adventure girl’s limits. The role reversal, however, did not suit her. As I pig-headedly pushed forward, spurred on by the shock of being out front, she seemed to purposely slow down. The distance between us grew. She threatened to turn around. I said fine, cruelly calling her bluff. Looking back, I wish that I’d simply waited. Somehow, our relationship had become a competition. It didn’t help that we’d already competed against each other for a job at the magazine. (She’d won, and bought her own place.)

On that same trip, we said we loved each other—and despite the petty arguing, it was true—while camping outside Aspen. My sleeping bag ripped sometime during the night, and we woke up, laughing, under a layer of goose down. She made coffee on the backpacker’s French press she’d given me for my birthday, and we drank it together in our sylvan glade. If a relationship is a mountain, this was our peak.

The biggest problem we seemed to have as a couple was that I couldn’t ski very well. At one point adventure girl said to me, “If you were a skier, you’d be perfect,” and I pretty much believed it. I never asked to ski with her, mind you, and she never tried convincing me to come. We understood that our relationship worked better off the slopes than on them.

For her second birthday in Santa Fe, I gave adventure girl an antique cruiser that she’d been eyeing. I’d purchased it after weeks of haggling with an irascible bike artiste. It was, she said, the most thoughtful gift she’d ever received. It was probably the most thoughtful I’d ever given. Now we both had cruisers, and we cruised.

For my next birthday, she arranged a trip to Moab, Utah, where we’d planned to run a half-marathon—my first—along the Colorado River. The race was called “The Other Half,” and we’d trained for months, both separately and together.

The childish competitor in me wanted to not just break two hours, of course, but finish before my girlfriend. It didn’t occur to me, fatally, that we could finish hand-in-hand. We ran beside each other for the first 12 miles, and then I suddenly took off. The final mile was downhill and I let my long legs go, crossing the finish line a few seconds ahead of her. When she caught up, the look on her face conveyed none of the attraction I’d expected. Just surprise.

The next day, during the long drive home after a long night of dam-burst frustrations, we decided to spend time apart. A few months later, missing her, I asked her to come back. We’d broken up on that drive, she said. And she was just getting over me.

More than a year after adventure girl finally left Santa Fe for a job at a skiing magazine in Colorado, I went to see a telemark-ski-porn flick in which she starred. In a mass email weeks before, she’d written, with characteristic understatement, “Enjoy the film! You may even know someone in it….”

And so there she was on the big screen: smiling beautifully, carving endless, graceful turns down a mountain. I cheered loudly, unexpectedly, as she passed by one final time. And then the theater was quiet, and I left.

—Charles Bethea

She Said…

A woman scowled at us at the trailhead. Maybe it’s because it was nearly 1 p.m. when we left the car and started walking uphill toward 14,197-foot Mount Princeton—an unreasonably late hour given Colorado’s tendency for afternoon thunderstorms at high elevations. But we didn’t care. I was with my boyfriend at the time, a guy I’ll call Bread Baker for reasons that will become obvious later. The sky looked as blue and clear as a swimming pool, and Bread Baker was confident we could tag the summit and be back well before sunset.

By 4 p.m., we were still trudging to the peak. A long knife-edge ridge and a massive scree slope stood between us and my first-ever 14er. I was officially higher in altitude than I’d ever been before, and my lungs felt tight and choked.

“Is that a storm cloud over there?” I asked hopefully while pointing my finger toward a friendly looking cotton ball in the sky.

“We’re totally fine,” responded Baker. “Just keep moving.”

For the next 30 minutes, I pointed my eyes at the rocky trail below me. Occasionally, I glanced up, disappointed to see that the peak still looked like a faraway pyramid. I sipped water and nibbled on bites of a Clif Bar, but neither helped the fact that my breath felt as constricted as if I’d been a cigarette addict for a decade. And my head started to ache with the dull pain that I sometimes get when an airplane takes off from the runway. For a while, I kept pace with Baker, whose lean muscles and 6-foot-tall frame were built for this kind of task. But eventually, I lagged behind, getting crankier and more impatient. The distance between us steadily grew.

I wasn’t used to being the slow one. And the role-reversal put me in a foul mood.

The day of that hike, Baker and I had been dating for about six months. Although we both shared a passion for the outdoors—it’s the main thing that brought us together in the first place—we approached it differently. Namely, he liked things slow and scenic: He’s a long-distance hiker who took a semester off from college to walk the entire length of the 2,175-mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. I like my sports fast and action-packed: He fishes; I whitewater kayak. He plays Frisbee in the park; I enter triathlons.

On the trail, the gap would grow wider. All I wanted to do was hop on a downhill bike and charge back to the car. All he wanted to do was meander and smell flowers. At least that’s the way it seemed to me.

About three months into our relationship, my grandmother had come to town for a visit. I wanted to introduce her to my new boyfriend, so I took her to the house that we shared. Bread Baker was in the kitchen, covered in flour and, you guessed it, baking bread. He was flattening the dough with a rolling pin. My grandmother was smitten, of course. I don’t know what won her over. Was it his poetry degree from an Ivy League school, his taste for fine wines, or his tennis skills? No matter, he is simply the kind of guy a grandmother loves.

And for many months, he was the kind of guy I loved. Initially, our relationship flourished through adventures we shared together. We drove eight hours to Phoenix, Arizona, for the weekend to catch a Michael Franti concert and spend a night camping on the rim of the Grand Canyon. We went to Moab to run a half-marathon by the Colorado River. We tried to appease our differing interests through compromise. He bought a mountain bike and learned to navigate the twisted trails near our home in Santa Fe; I practiced my berry cobbler recipe. But eventually our adventures created a riff that I knew we’d never overcome. On a ski trip to Crested Butte, he avoided taking a single run with me. He wore borrowed skis and stuck mainly to the groomed slopes. I made tele turns down the expert-only back bowls. I convinced him to sign up for a 12-hour mountain bike race—he on a team of four, me on a team of two. I rode for six hours that day, grinding out fast laps on a dusty trail in New Mexico. He rode for three hours, and drank beer and tailgated the rest of the time, and still said his legs were tired at the end of the day.

There was an obvious and painstaking inequality in our action sports performance. And it was the opposite of most mountain town couples, where the guy sets the skin track and the girl follows behind.

I’m all for women’s liberation—but the truth is, most men can’t handle it when women beat them at things. Especially sports. And even though Bread Baker was better than me at many things—including writing, which we both do for a living—there was an uneasy imbalance. He seemed stripped of his macho confidence when I’d beat him down ski slopes and singletrack. And I felt weird, too. Although Bread Baker stimulated me intellectually and emotionally, I wanted someone who could push me athletically, too.

And yet, on the trail headed toward the summit of Mount Princeton, I was the one lagging behind. For perhaps the first time ever, we had reversed roles: I was relying on him to lead the way to the top. Bread Baker’s style—methodical and tame—was so contradictory to my high-speed, adrenaline-junkie attitude that until that moment I’d failed to see the beauty of his ways. I scratched my way slowly and painfully into the thin air and eventually reached the apex of the mountain.

At the summit, my grumpiness lifted and I took in the 360-degree view of southern Colorado. I looked over at Baker—he stood tall with a regained sense of confidence. I knew he wanted to say “I beat you!” but he kept his mouth shut. I kissed him with every bit of energy I could muster. And you know what? It took my breath away.

—Megan Michelson

Illustration by Jeremy Collins/www.jercollins.com.

As usual, Greg grimaces when I tuck a cell phone into the lid of my pack. “Do you need to check your stocks?” he chides. “Call your mommy?” This is just the mildly annoying banter of a longtime climbing partner, but then he says something that hits home: “I go into the backcountry to escape from all these phones, and here you go bringing one along.” True enough, I think, but you’re partly to blame.

Late winter, several years earlier, Greg had suggested an attempt on the central buttress of Taylor Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. This 13,153-foot mountain looms above the Sky Pond cirque, and its east face is one of the biggest alpine walls in the park. The hike to Taylor’s summit along the Continental Divide is easy, but the direct route up the east face is rarely climbed, and neither one of us had heard of anyone doing it in winter.

We left the Glacier Gorge trailhead at 4 a.m. with heavy packs, crampons and two ice axes apiece, a 70-meter rope, pitons, cams, ice screws, food and water—and no phone. Seedlings were already poking through the warming soil in my garden at home, but crusty snow still coated the ground at 9,000 feet. We clicked into skis a few hundreds yards from the car and didn’t take them off until we had climbed above Sky Pond, four miles in and 2,500 feet higher.

Caching our skis, we cramponed up a snow gully with a short ice step, then traversed a broad snowfield below Taylor’s East Face to a boulder where we left our packs and extra food. It was 8 a.m. and already warm. We packed light for the climb: a few energy bars, a single water bottle. The route appeared to be straightforward snow climbing linked by short rock bands. We figured we’d be on top by mid-afternoon. The rock steps, however, required surprisingly difficult mixed climbing, ice tools and crampon points scraping for purchase in shallow fissures. And the ramps where we’d expected to move fast were laden with sugar snow—unconsolidated knee-deep crystals that were perilous and exhausting to plow through. As the day warmed, we nervously eyed the pillows of wet snow clinging to the rocks overhead. If they fell, we would be wiped off the face like scraps from a cutting board.

By late afternoon we had reached a sloping snow ledge below a final headwall. We were only 50 or 60 vertical feet from Taylor’s flat summit, but the face was plumb and there was no obvious line through it. We’d already been on the move for about 14 hours. Dull gray clouds filled the sky. We’d have to move fast if we wanted to top out before dark.

———-

Chris, my wife, was expecting my call any minute. When I’d described our plans for the day, I had told her we’d be home by early evening. We had invited friends over for dinner. No problem, I said. I’ll be home, showered and have plenty of time to help set up.

Coincidentally, our friends had already called to cancel the dinner plans, but as the evening stretched on, Chris’ annoyance turned to worry and then fear. Around 9 p.m. she called Greg’s wife, who said she wasn’t too worried; Greg often got home late. Unsatisfied, Chris called a friend, who in turn called Rocky Mountain National Park. After some back-and-forth with the dispatcher, a ranger said he would drive to the Glacier Gorge trailhead and see if my old Subaru was still there.

Some time later, the ranger called back and said he’d found my car at the lot, dusted with new snow that had begun to fall. The ranger had brushed off the window and seen a cell phone lying on the front seat. He said there was nothing else they could do until morning. If we hadn’t returned by then, they’d begin a search effort. This was reasonable, but it was not what Chris wanted to hear. A couple of hours later, she called our friend again, in tears, and he struggled to reassure her that Greg and I knew what we were doing, that, really, there probably was nothing to worry about.

———-

After nearly three hours of attempting various routes through the headwall, Greg traversed back to my belay stance and said dejectedly, “I don’t know, bud—I don’t think I can do it.” I studied the sloping ledge at our feet. It wouldn’t be difficult to stomp down the snow and arrange a bivouac. But we had little food, no water, no shelter and a storm was forecast to move in that night. I had to take a look for myself.

A line of broken granite flakes zigzagged up the vertical wall left of the belay. From the highest foothold, I stretched to the right and cammed the pick of one axe into a crack. With a sense of desperation, I swung onto the axe and, somewhat to my surprise, did not fall. It was now pitch dark. Above was a slot choked with wind-packed snow. Digging with my axe revealed more cracks, and I struggled upward a few feet until I could reach up into the snowy slot. As if a sluice gate had been thrown open, snow crashed down onto my head and shoulders, knocking my glasses to the side of my face. I pushed them back into place with one gloved hand and kept digging until I could heave my body up into the crack. A few yards higher, I swung my axes into the frozen turf on top of Taylor Peak and hauled onto the summit.

Throwing a loop of rope around a rock protruding from the tundra, I pulled in slack to belay Greg. It was after 10 p.m., and snowflakes had begun to drift through the still night. Despite this, I felt a flood of relief—now I was sure we would make it home. I just wished I could call Chris to tell her that.

———-

Over the past decade or so, cell phones have helped save many injured or lost climbers and hikers in Rocky Mountain National Park. When a man fell down the icy Lambs Slide gully on Longs Peak, impaling his neck with his own ice axe, the climbers who came to his aid discovered a phone in his pocket and called for medical assistance that saved his life. A rock climber who had badly broken his foot halfway up one of the crags of Lumpy Ridge called rescuers and was plucked from the cliff face that night, instead of having to suffer until morning.

But cell phones are not a lifeline. Batteries die and service is spotty in the backcountry. Often, one side of the line is clear while the other is mired in static. If you get through to 911, your call might end up in Estes Park or Greeley or even Cheyenne, and then get routed to the park’s dispatcher, and eventually to a ranger. Meanwhile, your bars may vanish. A hiker who got lost in the remote Mummy Range several years ago called rangers and described his general location, but then his calls stopped and it took searchers three more days to locate him.

Had we been in real trouble on Taylor Peak, a phone probably wouldn’t have been much help. Thanks to my wife, the rangers already knew where we were climbing. But that night a two-day snowstorm moved, and if we’d been hurt or unable to climb that final pitch, it easily could have taken rescuers several days to reach us from above. By then, it’s no exaggeration to say we might have been calling home only to say good-bye, as Rob Hall famously did from below the summit of Mt. Everest in 1996.

Like many climbers, Greg feels that cell phones are not only an intrusion in the backcountry, they’re also a crutch that may weaken one’s urge for self-preservation—the attribute that ultimately keeps mountaineers alive. He cites the time-honored climber’s code of personal responsibility and laments stories of hikers calling for helicopter rescues because they’re too tired to walk home by themselves. If we’d had a phone on Taylor Peak, he might say, would we have worked so hard to breach that final headwall, or would we have just called for help and then waited for a rescue?

And here’s another question: Where do you draw the line? If you’re going to carry a cell phone, why not a satellite phone, which can be more reliable in the backcountry? Shouldn’t you carry a personal locator beacon, with which searchers can be alerted that you are in trouble via satellite and begin a search to pinpoint your position? Or does erecting an electronic safety net erase the whole point of wilderness climbing, inviting the overcoddled, risk-averse world into the heart of the backcountry?

In principle I agree with Greg. I treasure wilderness climbing’s opportunities for the escape, for that energizing measure of risk. But there’s another factor: When I’m out there I know how things are going, good or bad, while my wife and friends at home can only wait and worry. After Taylor Peak, it feels irresponsible to leave my phone in the car. I don’t carry it so I can call for a rescue (though I certainly would if I needed help and could get a signal). I carry the phone so I can call my wife when things are going just fine, so I can say, “Don’t worry. I’ll be home soon.”

——

We coiled the rope, walked down Taylor’s northern slopes, and then turned to down-climb a steep couloir to the east, toward Sky Pond. At the base of the wall, I felt utterly drained. The adrenaline of the climb and those scary hours below the summit had faded; exhaustion had set in. It was after midnight and thick flakes swirled in the beams of our headlamps; we couldn’t see more than 30 feet.

The wet snow collapsed as we skied toward the car, and we fell over and over. Greg was far ahead as we skied over the frozen Loch. Less than a mile from the road, I decided to jettison my pack and those frustrating skis, and just post-hole toward the car. I could come back for the gear in the morning. But Greg was waiting near Glacier Knobs, and he said, “Don’t be silly, you’re not going to want to come back.”

We reached the car at 3:30 in the morning. I plugged my cold, dead phone into the cigarette lighter, and as we neared Estes Park a few bars lit up on the display. I punched our number and Chris answered sleepily. “It’s about time,” she said, cross but relieved. “Why didn’t you call?”

“I didn’t have my phone,” I said. But now I always do.

Dougald MacDonald is associate editor of The American Alpine Journal and author of The Mountain World

Your guide to the best women’s gear and goodies for a little extra warmth on Valentine’s Day

When I met my husband (then a telemarking dirtbag grad student at the University of Washington), I had never downhilled a day in my life. In fact, it wasn’t until we moved to Colorado a few years into our relationship that I knew: Either I learned to ski or snowboard, or I’d spend lonely days cooking vegan casseroles in Boulder. Un-uh. Fortunately for me, my guy was a patient, unflustered teacher (who encouraged a girl to skip alpine altogether and go straight for the teles). So I learned to ski. And before I knew it, I had pledged all of my free winter weekends to him, from here until eternity … or at least until knee surgery.

So, listen up guys. This Valentine’s Day, show your main squeeze a little appreciation for all of the love she shows you on and off the slopes (or trails, if you don’t happen to be skiers or snowboarders). Flowers are a nice start, but if you want to take it to the next level, read on.

———-

Lolë Cuddle Sweater

Built with a comfy, well-fitting blend of acrylic, cotton, nylon, wool and lycra, this sweater from über-sleek, Montreal-based Lolë will make her feel all warm and fuzzy, whether you’re around or off for a day of adventuring with the guys.

Best for: The girlfriend you want to move in with.

[singlepic id=53 w=320 h=240 float=]

$100; lolewomen.com

———-

Cloudveil Hoback

A marriage of Gore’s superlight and breathable Pro Shell on the outside and warm, airy Primaloft insulation on the inside makes this active jacket warm enough for long lift rides yet light enough for a backcountry tour.

Best for: The ripping girl with cold feet.

[singlepic id=48 w=320 h=240 float=]

$495; cloudveil.com

———-

Karhu Jil

A few years back, while other ski companies were making cute pink-and-sparkly telemark skis that were too soft and wimpy for women who actually knew how to ski them, Karhu was offering the Jil. The latest version continues to put performance over pink, and at 124-90-113, they handle pretty much any Colorado terrain—from bottomless pow to tight trees.

Best For: The girl you go tumbling after.

[singlepic id=52 w=320 h=240 float=]

$575; karhu.com

———-

Ibex Pez

Comfortable, versatile, hooded and made from snuggly New Zealand merino—this reversible vest keeps up with a girl’s changing moods.

Best for: The girl who can’t make up her mind.

[singlepic id=51 w=320 h=240 float=]

$135; ibexwear.com

———-

CW-X Women’s Insulator Expert Tights

Athletic gals of all types will love these form-fitting, insulated tights that make use of a phase-changing material that adjusts to keep legs at just the right temperature.

Best for: The girl who hits the trail no matter the weather.

[singlepic id=49 w=320 h=240 float=]

$95; www.cw-x.com

———-

Garmont Electra Women’s Telemark Boot

Four easy-to-adjust, anti-icing buckles and a perfectly fitting, women-specific thermo-moldable liner make this the boot for the aggressive, knee-dropping gal. Remember the old Secret deodorant slogan, “strong enough for a man but made for a woman?” A woman who rips, that is.

Best for: The girl whose appetite for steeps takes your breath away.

[singlepic id=50 w=320 h=240 float=]

$680; garmont.com

———-

Smartwool Women’s Sport NTS Crew and Bottom

This base layer is soft, warm and all about performance. It’s really not all that difficult to make a woman happy.

Best for: The girl who takes it from first chair to last call.

[singlepic id=55 w=320 h=240 float=]

$80 crew/ $80 bottom; smartwool.com

———-

Chocolove

Boulder-based Chocolove’s bars are smooth and rich (sound like you, dude?).

Recommended flavors: Chilies and Cherries in Dark Chocolate or Hazelnuts in Milk Chocolate. Remember a chocolate bar is worth a thousand bad pickup lines.

Best for: Girls you meet on the gondola.

$3–$4; chocolove.com

———-

Merrell Spire Peak

This classy boot packs the style to strut without slipping on slick Aspen cobblestone and keeps toes warm with waterproof leather and Polartec insulation.

Best for: The girl who looks good in skirts.

[singlepic id=54 w=320 h=240 float=]

$155; merrell.com