It is Summer!!

Hey Friends, it has been a few since I have last posted. I was exploring great things week after week but my life took a short tour away from the crazy. I had a few failures with some great mountains and some great days but I just did not feel that they deserved a full post. I am new at this and would like your input though. If you feel like I could spend more time on something, please let me know.

I would say that the craziest adventure that happened this last little while was my attempt on Pyramid Peak. This is one of the biggest and stunning mountains in Colorado. When I first viewed Pyramid it was when I was living in Aspen. Some say it is easier in the winter because the rock is bonded by frozen water. The winter brings other difficulties like risks of avalanches, weather, and a longer approach.

This mountain is number one on my list at the moment and I will make another attempt with in the near future (next season). This trip began with a 4 hour road trip after work on a friday and it ended the same with 15 hours and 18 miles of non-stop hiking, climbing, splitboarding, river crossings, bushwacking, split skiing, and pain in the middle.

It was a great day and you should check out my partner Mike Bean's website http://www.throughpolarizedeyes.com/ , he has a great write up of our trip. Following our attempt at Pyramid, Mike and I discussed a second attempt for a few weekends, but the window was too narrow.

In the last few weekends I was able to have a great ski friend arrive into town. I was amp'ed to get him out in the CO snow, especially this winter. The second he showed up into town from Seattle, I was ready to have him hiking any one of the awesome ski lines that I have hit this season. I was torn between the Silver Couloir, Cristo on Quandary, or the Berthoud tour. I had done the tour with him last year and I wanted one big line. Might as well grab a new fourteener while we were at it, so Cristo became the decision. This day was very cloudy with horrible weather and no photos. We did trigger a decent slide that caught me off guard. I knew that there was some fresh snow but I did not think it was consolidated. We were getting winds from the direction it faced so I felt no wind loading, maybe even a bit blown out. The top felt blown out and we dropped in on ice. We set up a safety zone before the location where I had witnessed a small convexity in the past. With the flat light it was hard to see any convexity but I still choose to ski cut where there was one in the past. The crown ripped through the top of the run to about a foot depth, it ran to the bottom 2500 feet below. I was able to trigger it and be above it, once it ran we had rough skiing and were required to play the game. We leap frogged safety zones and there was no opening up our ski lines. We reached the bottom and skied past a few avalanche chutes until we were finally able to be free and clear. This was a learning experience and one that reminds you that nature is still the boss. On this day a few of my friends also had issues where nature fooled them in a balancing act where mistakes can not be made. The front range backcountry snowboarding community lost a team member on Torreys Peak this same day, I would like to send my regard to his family.

As the season is winding down, there has been some hard times for friends and some awesome times with friends. I will continue riding in the mountains through the summer, but currently there are no scheduled plans. I will be getting some gear reviews up on the site for the upcoming season if you are looking to buy some gear this year stay tuned. Also there will be some rock climbing, skateboarding, ski scouting and random crazy missions. Hopefully some extreme tubing! Oh and I got some new art work on my body . . . I will show you once it is finished in a few weeks.