Enjoying Inside

I attempted to go skiing this morning at the Village. After skiing 2 runs on the lower mountain the entire mountain shut down. An avalanche came off the headwall and hit the restaurant at the top of the gondola, blowing out a wall, some windows and covering the entrance to the ski patrol office. Thankfully, everyone is okay. I think we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to the JHMR ski patrol for risking their lives on a daily basis just so we can all go out and play in the snow. I really hope that mountain management isn't pressuring them to get the mountain open. It's just not worth it.

Anyway, I headed home immediately after the mountain shut down, knowing WYDOT is bombing Teton Pass by helicopter later on. Nate is going to sleep over in Jackson so he can make it to work. After driving through multiple cleared debris paths (all natural slides) on the drive over to Jackson this morning, I decided to wear my beacon for the drive home. Am I paranoid? Probably. But, it's been a few freaky days here in Jackson Hole....

Please, everyone BE SAFE out there. I think that means stay home. Rent a movie. Paint your toenails. Clean out your closet. Enjoy the day at work. Just stay far, far away from avalanche terrain. Mother Nature has the upper hand right now and we should all be humbled enough to stay home and let her run her course.

In the meantime, I'm going to ride the trainer, walk the dog, read a book and maybe even take a nap! I'm also going to start planning my upcoming training trip to Tucson. It's looking good:

NWS Tucson, AZ

This Afternoon Sunny Hi 70°F

Tonight Mostly Clear Lo 39°F

Tuesday Sunny Hi 72°F

Tuesday Night Mostly Clear Lo 41°F

Wednesday Sunny Hi 71°F

Wednesday Night Mostly Clear Lo 41°F

New Year's Day Sunny Hi 69°F

Thursday Night Mostly Clear Lo 41°F

Friday Sunny Hi 68°F

Indoor Training

With all my jibber-jabber about skiing lately, I guess the logical question is am I training at all for mountain biking? Yup, sure am. A lot. All the nordic, telemark and backcounty skiing I do simply adds to my aerobic base. My trainer rides are therefore short and to the point.

Training essentials: fan, towels, powermeter and computer for movie viewing.

Eric has come up with a great winter training plan for me. So far, we're concentrating mostly on my raw power. All my power testing has indicated that I'm good at pumping out consistently high watts for 5-8 min. but my short bursts of power are pretty pathetic. Luckily, training this weakness makes for highly entertaining trainer rides. I've been running, too. Maddy the dog is pretty happy about that. I'm also doing some sort of strength training on a daily basis, most of which I can do from home with these simple tools:

Bosu ball, kettle bells and power balls. Good times.

The DVD library.

2 more weeks on the trainer and then it's off to Tucson for 2 weeks. Mid-winter training trips help motivate me to ride the hamster wheel in preparation for the real road and dirt. With the endless snow and the high avalanche danger limiting our ability to get out for backcountry tours, I'm already craving the warm desert sun.

Merry Christmas Powder Hounds!

Ahhhh, Christmas 2008-the best day I have ever had on skis in my life. I think I'm still in shock. Jackson Hole got 39" of 4% uber light powder in about 36 hours. Nate and I were lucky enough to get over Teton Pass right before they closed it down for a full 24 hours so we could ski at the Village. The avalanche danger was extreme, a first for the 8 years I have lived in Jackson Hole. The drive over was harrowing, but I had my face stuck to my new iPhone (the best xmas present ever, thanks hubby) while Nate braved the driving conditions.

Village Road mid-storm

It was snowing SO HARD and the avalanche conditions were so extreme that the majority of the mountain never opened. The Jackson Hole ski patrolers are saints in my book. Even though the tram never ran and the gondola didn't open until about 1:00, they did an incredible job getting at least some of the area open in some of the scariest conditions I am sure they have ever seen.

When we arrived we walked right past the optimistic hopefuls in the mile-long tram line and chose to ride waist deep snow through the singles line at AV all morning. By 1:00 we were toasted and ready to go home when all of the sudden the gondi opened, the boots went back on and up we went!

Nate, thigh deep. Keep in mind he's 6'3 and wearing fat skis!

Now I love mountain biking, but there's just something about powder skiing that hits a unique euphoria button in the brain. Cruising down a slope in chest deep powder is a feeling that could never, ever get old. It was so deep that Nate and I skied with beacons and packs and never let each other get out of sight. It was the kind of day that if you fell into a tree well or simply fell at all, it would be really easy to get buried and suffocate. Hehehehehehe....

After endless over-the-shoulder powder laps, we tried to drive home to get to a Christmas party. But, no dice. The pass closed at 4:00pm so we stayed slope-side at a friend's condo in the Village for the evening. Our neighbor Bill, another pass refuge, ended up there as well, so we spent the evening sharing stories of the epic day over an amazing Christmas dinner of sushi and saporro. The Village set an all-time record of the most amount of snow in the shortest amount of time (3" an hour at some points) and Bill (who's been skiing the Village for 30 years) said it was the best day he's ever had there. Now that's a very merry Christmas!

Early Christmas Present

Christmas has come early to Jackson Hole and Santa has brought us powder once again. Today is the 2nd day in a row of 12" of new. The weather has gone this way the last few years in a row: no snow and then all of the sudden the hoses turn on and don't turn off for weeks. The weathermen are forecasting another 2 feet in the mountains on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day :)

With the avalanche danger being too high for a relaxing day in the backcountry, we're off to the village. The airport closed yesterday, so Nate's clients couldn't make it in for a lesson today. I skied out there yesterday and the place was empty. It was a treat to ski a foot of new before the holiday crowd arrives.

For the snow junkies out there, here's a great website to track how all the ski resorts in the country are doing for snow. Looks like a LOT of folks are getting an early Christmas this year!

School is Out, Winter is ON!

My blog went dormant for a while for a good reason. There wasn't anything to report! Unless of course you find me sitting on the couch for hours and hours a day, working away on graduate papers interesting... Last Friday, I sent off 35 pages worth of final papers and have been rewarded with 3 weeks off until my next class.

Within 30 min. of submitting my last paper, Nate and I were out the door to Teton Pass for my first ski of the season. Just putting together my gear, checking my batteries in my beacon and layering up had me giddy and practically bouncing off the walls of the living room. Although the skiing wasn't amazing, I was just tickled to be out there with my two most favorite ski partners:

Nate and Maddy. Snow=Smiles

The next day was a totally different scene. It dumped all night and day, so we waited until mid-morning to head out to Windy Ridge. We had a great group to tour with and laughed the whole way to the top. Now, some people would question why in the world would I want to climb for 2 hours for one run when we have ski passes to one of the best areas in the country. When you're blasted in the face with uber-light powder and haven't crossed a single track the whole way down, it all makes sense. There's as much fresh powder skiing out there as you want to work for. Plus, the peace and quiet of the backcountry is simply intoxicating.

A big winter storm is supposed to hit starting late tonight and will hopefully add another 10"-12" to our skimpy base. The backcountry and Targhee are skiing well, but the Village is so darn rocky that it takes a lot of snow to fill it in. The plan is to wait for it to accumulate a bit in the morning, do some storm skiing on the pass tomorrow afternoon and then go to the Village for the unveiling of the new TRAM!! Finally. Music, fireworks and who knows what else will get us all psyched to give the new cars a try this weekend. After 2 years of having to ride 4 different chairs to get to the top, the magic box is back!

Of course, I am still training for biking. More on that later....

This could be huge

Did anyone catch this article in the NY Times this morning?

Obama Pledges Public Works on a Vast Scale

The highlight: Obama said " he would invest record amounts of money in the vast infrastructure program, which also includes work on schools, sewer systems, mass transit, electric grids, dams and other public utilities."

Wow. This could be huge. It caught my attention because having worked in the bike advocacy non-profit world for a while, I am fully aware of how little attention bike-friendly street design gets from both state and federal departments of transportation. It just doesn't occur to most DOT engineers and planners that including a bike lane and a sidewalk in a street design should be automatic. It most cases, DOTs pretty much focus on moving cars around faster. Period.

I have great hopes that if we all keep our eyes and ears open when these massive transportation funds become available we can avoid more streets and highways that look like this:

Instead, if we demand that bikes, pedestrians and cars are all given equal attention in street design and community planning, we can see a lot more things like this:

These kinds of facilities make for happier, healthier and more connected communities. There's no reason that all the asphalt has to benefit cars only, right?

Desperate times

Nate took this shot today from the Apres Vous chair at the Village. Yikes. It may be time to burn some skis in sacrifice to the snow gods...

Milking It

As I last mentioned, we've been able to eekk out a few final outdoor rides this season. Although this makes the skier in me unhappy, the biker in me couldn't be happier.


Nate and I opted for a ride in Horseshoe Canyon on Thanksgiving Day and were very happy we went. We were a little late getting out the door, so we ran into some mud on the front side, but everything in shark's belly and probation was frozen solid.

We were so psyched with the novelty of riding in late November that we went to Thanksgiving dinner at the cycling junkie's house and bragged about our ride. This led to leaving the house at 7:30 Saturday morning with Dave to do it again. As it had snowed a little bit more, we had a wild 2 hour ride around horseshoe once again, delighting in testing how fast we could corner in snow drifts.

But, as of yesterday, it's game off. The season has officially turned the corner. We got 6" of snow in the hills yesterday. Nate's been training at the 'Ghee and the Village all week and my first trainer ride of the winter was yesterday. It's all good. Besides, I just got these mounted up (thanks, nate) and can't wait to put them to use.

I got me a pair of Black Diamond Joules for this year-yaHOO! Both Nate and I skied on these Black Diamond O1 bindings last year and loved them. The touring feature certainly muffled the cries of all our AT pals who constantly ride us for teleing instead of alpine skiing on a dynafit setup because fighting the spring is slower. Uh-huh....

Although they don't quite measure up to Hammerheads from a power/performance standpoint, they make skiing in the backcountry SO much easier. Twenty-Two Designs (made right downthe road in Driggs, ID) is planing to release a limited number of their version of a touring binding this winter. As I mostly ski backcountry and rarely find myself on hardpack, I am very happy with the O1s.

Okay, all we need is some snow...