It’s mating season in the High Country: all around I see the blossoming of new, survive-the-cold-of-winter romances, as well as (in my case) the bidding adieu to love past and passed. The stakes are high and our hearts, like a sketchy Colorado snowpack, are a veritable battleground of subtle yet dynamic, and powerful yet mysterious energies.

Last week I went for a tour with my friend Monica, who was in town to take her Level I avalanche course. As usual, the chug-a-chug rhythm and aerobic endorphins of steep skinning induced a good, philosophical heart-to-heart chat: my recently lost relationship, her recently budding-but-complicated relationship, relationships past and what we learned, relationships yet to come and what we hope. We climbed fast and between rapid breaths we chopped out the big questions of our day: “Why…doesn’t…he…just…tell me…” and  “Maybe…she…needs…more…stability…” Over water and snacks, we had more continuous conversation: “I’m just not sure where this leaves me…” and “What are you looking for?”

What, indeed?

Second Bowl: The open face with the dispersed trees slid about 200 vertical feet below us as we stood on top.

As Monica and I topped out on Snodgrass Mountain, we decided to refocus [Read More]]]>

Monica, enjoying a beautiful, introspective tour.

It’s mating season in the High Country: all around I see the blossoming of new, survive-the-cold-of-winter romances, as well as (in my case) the bidding adieu to love past and passed. The stakes are high and our hearts, like a sketchy Colorado snowpack, are a veritable battleground of subtle yet dynamic, and powerful yet mysterious energies.

Last week I went for a tour with my friend Monica, who was in town to take her Level I avalanche course. As usual, the chug-a-chug rhythm and aerobic endorphins of steep skinning induced a good, philosophical heart-to-heart chat: my recently lost relationship, her recently budding-but-complicated relationship, relationships past and what we learned, relationships yet to come and what we hope. We climbed fast and between rapid breaths we chopped out the big questions of our day: “Why…doesn’t…he…just…tell me…” and  “Maybe…she…needs…more…stability…” Over water and snacks, we had more continuous conversation: “I’m just not sure where this leaves me…” and “What are you looking for?”

What, indeed?

Second Bowl: The open face with the dispersed trees slid about 200 vertical feet below us as we stood on top.

As Monica and I topped out on Snodgrass Mountain, we decided to refocus our energies and turn on our avalanche goggles. We headed for the east bowls which we anticipated would still be soft and have a few inches of fresh from the night before. We skied up to the top of the locally-dubbed Second Bowl (conveniently placed between First and Third bowls) and checked out the steep 38-40 degree entrance. We’d felt nothing but stable snow so far: fresh, soft powder on top of a firm midpack that was bonding well with January’s old snow. It would have been tempting to just jump right in, but the steepness of the pitch and the shrubby aspen trees poking out (good trigger points) raised my hackles a bit. We decided to dig a snow pit for assessment in a flat spot jammed tight between the roll over to the bowl’s headwall and the trees.

We looked at layers and performed some stability tests, and the snow seemed surprisingly stable. Pits can be notoriously misleading though, because of a concept called “spatial variability.” What a layman might translate to: “Dang snow ain’t the same ever-where.” Seems like a “duh!” right? Well, even a couple meters away snow and the stability of all its layers can be drastically different.

Unfortunately, the light crapped out on us just as the snow slid, so the details are hard to see. That's the 65 cm crown face in the center, and my tracks to the tree that triggered the slide.

Case in point: after refilling our pit, I post-holed about ten feet to our south to get a peek at the steep rollover of the bowl. I didn’t leave the flat top, but I still held onto a tree for security. I noticed that the snow suddenly changed. The top dozen centimeters were wet, and heavy – perfect for snowballs. I scooped some up, squeezed it, and threw it at the slope below – just a friendly “Take that, Mountain!” Then I got a bit stuck in my post hole, and asked Monica to come pull me up, which she did, and as we took a couple steps back towards our packs, we heard a soft humph…swooosh! The whole bowl, about 15 feet below us, was ripping out. We watched a huge powder cloud ride toward the valley and flow like a white river onto a flat, treed bench. That wet snow had gotten heavy enough through the day to slide on top of all the brushy willow trees which had weakened the snow pack below. Spatial variability.

Monica and I looked at each other wide-eyed and buzzed. “Can we just hug for a minute?” I asked her. “Yeah, let’s,” she said. We took a couple deep breaths, and then went and found some shadier, low-angle glades to ski on. The rest of the day we assessed why it wasn’t dumb luck that we hadn’t dropped in. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t, but it still shook us up that we had even considered skiing that bowl. Hell hath no furry like siding snow and broken hearts.

We Midcountry residents tend to be a nomadic bunch, not only in place, but also in spirit (and maybe the two things are not so different). So, in one place (either physical, emotional or both) we find a deep, meaningful solid love connection. And yet, a mile or a month later, we are wallowing the sugary tree wells of love, face planting through sun crusts, watching our entire mountain crumble with destruction, and we yearn for the next fresh pow stash.

Monica, enjoying the next fresh pow shot. We did end up getting some good, safe turns that day.

A few days after skiing with Monica, I was chatting with yet another Midcountry friend about relationships: mine, his, the usual. “I find that I’m easy to love in Yosemite and Indian Creek,” he was saying to me. “And then there’s everyday life with me, when I’m in an office and I’m not at my happiest, and I get frustrated easily with things like slow computers. And then my partner starts wondering, ‘who is this person?’” And I knew exactly what he meant: Spatial variability.

I recently parted ways with a loved one, and I can’t help but feel like my instabilities (like changing towns and mountain ranges every four months and going incommunicado in the backcountry for weeks at a time) contributed to some fear about and distrust of our future. I can’t be sure – I find emotional cause-and-effect as nebulous as avalanche forecasting – but I wonder.

To Monica and all you other Midcountry Bumpkins post-holing around in love, we gotta hang in there. Got a Midcountry love story to share? Comment away. And remember: Be careful, because in the continental High Country, no matter how good things look, there’s almost always a weak layer deep, deep down. Depth hoar. Sad but true.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

I beat Level 2 of Avalanche Education last week. The end boss was real hard. I had to get all funky and whip out an up-down-left-left-A-B combo, front flip over the avalanche path of death, and then memorize about 12 gazillion codes and acronyms, BIWWWI (but it was well worth it). ILAT (I learned a ton). And I got to splurge on some new fancy, SST (snow study tools).

I couldn’t have asked for a better learning environment. In Crested Butte, the trailheads and field labs (a.k.a Sick gnar pow slopes) are only a 5-minute drive from the classroom. It’s the next best thing to a hut trip course. Plus, CB finally got a bunch of the white cold stuff that makes our world go round – that’s right, snow. Good old fashioned frozen water that falls from the sky. So we got to tromp around in the backcountry measuring the weather and digging snow pits while the second-largest slide cycle I’ve witnessed boomed, whumphed and rumbled all around [Read More]]]>

Snow geekery at its finest. Note the shovel placement to keep those centigrade dial stem thermometers nice and accurate. Is that a 90-degree corner? Why yes it is. Thank you for noticing.

I beat Level 2 of Avalanche Education last week. The end boss was real hard. I had to get all funky and whip out an up-down-left-left-A-B combo, front flip over the avalanche path of death, and then memorize about 12 gazillion codes and acronyms, BIWWWI (but it was well worth it). ILAT (I learned a ton). And I got to splurge on some new fancy, SST (snow study tools).

I couldn’t have asked for a better learning environment. In Crested Butte, the trailheads and field labs (a.k.a Sick gnar pow slopes) are only a 5-minute drive from the classroom. It’s the next best thing to a hut trip course. Plus, CB finally got a bunch of the white cold stuff that makes our world go round – that’s right, snow. Good old fashioned frozen water that falls from the sky. So we got to tromp around in the backcountry measuring the weather and digging snow pits while the second-largest slide cycle I’ve witnessed boomed, whumphed and rumbled all around us. And, since Colorado pretty much has the sketchiest snow pack this side of the Milky Way, we got to see plenty of scary layers in the snow.

Nor could I have gotten better teachers. Jayson Symons-Jones and Steve Banks, local AMGA-certified guides did a great job. Despite having traveled all over the world to places with simpler snow – Alaska, the Alps, etcetera – they haven’t forgotten how to read a sassy ol’ ready-to-beat-you-down Colorado snow pack. In fact, Jayson’s company, Crested Butte Mountain Guides, is the birth place of the American Institute for Avalanche Information and Education curriculum that has set the standard for avy ed in the U.S. (that’s the country below Canada, with the smaller mountains). Yet another reason to choose CB for avalanche ed.

Jason Symons-Jones, Crested Butte Mountain Guides owner and lead guide, demonstrates a professional-grade hole in the snow.

When the skin track is this deep, you know you're in for the goods. And some avalanche potential. At times the walls were up to my ribs, and a kayak paddle would have been more helpful than poles.

The upside to this new perspective I have on avalanche awareness is that I feel more confident interpreting our snowpack and making safe decisions in the backcountry. And, of course, we got to play with our beacons a little. To any snow geeks out there, I highly recommend it – way more in depth than the Level I. Level I classes seem generally aimed to teach you some rules of thumb, teach you how much you don’t know, and ultimately scare the fecal matter out of you. Level II focuses on when, how and why to bend the rules of thumb based on what’s actually happening in our snowpack. The course also establishes professional observation guidelines, so it’s a great choice for any outdoor professional working in the winter.

The downsside has been that I’m starting to drive my roommate nuts. I have a new 10x loupe that I use for looking at pretty snowflakes, but that’s not all I use it for. Here’s a typical morning exchange these days:

Me, hunched over a pile of dirty dishes at the sink: “Allen, would say these are decomposing BLPs or an SS lens?” I hand him the plate with a centigrade-graduated dial stem thermometer and loupe on it.

He groggily feels about for his coffee bag in the freezer for a moment before noticing me.

“What the…Are you high on Lucky Charms again?”

“You know, decomposing Baked Lasagna Particles, or a Spaghetti Sauce lens? I’m leaning toward the MLPs because the surface temperatures last week averaged in the high 50s, which is rare for our house, and leads me to believe the oven was on a lot because you were baking. Plus, I got a TT-E-SP in the top millimeter. What do you think? Actually, maybe I should take a T20 measurement just to be sure, and do a couple ECTs to see if we can get it to fracture.”

Let’s hear it from any of you snow geeks out there! Where does your obsession lead you? You can tell us in the comment form below.

Would you call that R2-D2, or C3-PO? Maybe OB-1? The class stops to check out one of the many new snow avalanches we saw that week. Squint at the background for a while - it's there.