Those snow plumes just below the Mighty Death Star are the snow we'll be riding on next weekend when Paradise Bowl opens up (Goddess willing).

Resort skiing is the epitome of the midcountry. One minute you’re cruising silently through the woods without another soul around, and the next you’re sitting on a mechanized lift, 30 feet in the air between one guy with jeans and a Dallas Cowboys parka on, and another guy sporting a neon purple onesie. And you’re all chatting on cell phones.

Crested Butte Mountain Resort  opened their chairs on the day before Thanksgiving. By the weekend two lifts, 64 skiable acres, and 4 strips of snow were available to ski bums and tourists alike. But, in end-of-the-road Crested Butte, most of the early season riders (like me) are skiing on employee passes. And schralp we did. Nary an inch of corduroy remains; nary a convexity has been unaired. The park rats are jibbing to their hearts content on fun boxes, rails, even an old truck tire. Knee droppers, knuckle draggers, sit skiers and two-plankers are carving where the snow is soft, sliding where it’s icy, and smiling in the lift line.

Ra takes down Ullr in the second round. Meager coverage at CBMR.

Last year I lived in CB without a ski pass. Sure, I hiked for plenty of turns in the easy access backcountry, and generous friends helped me with comp passes and discount tickets once in a while. But I felt I was missing out on some important social experience that happens when skiers sit for turns. And, being a 24-year-old bachelor, social experiences are hugely important to me.

This year I’ve gotten a pass by volunteering one day a week as a “Bumble Bee,” also know as Mountain Safety. We wear yellow vests on top of dark colors, carry a radio, and spread safety like pollen wherever we go. I think of myself as a good Samaritan on skis. “Need a courtesy ride down, ma’am? Sure thing. I’ll radio that right in.” I watch the posted slow zones, help little groms put their gloves and helmets back on, and call in ski partrol when I come upon an injured rider. The pass also gives me some free days at other restorts in Colorado, so I’m stoked to check out Breck, and ride at my alma matter, Ski Sunlight.

Don't let the menu de esqui mislead you; only four runs open.

I’ve been up to the ski area three times now, and I’m relishing the scene. All around me are happy humans living diverse dreams.

Take the Dude I rode the bus with this morning, for example. Dude barely runs down the bus as it’s pulling away from the grocery store stop, puts his fatty twin tip park skis in the rack, and rushes up the steps. His ski poles are strapped to his back pack, and they tangle in the bus’s roof handles as he heads for the bench. He wrestles himself free and sits down across from me. He’s a skinny kid with bright baggy clothes, shaggy hair and an iPod on. His eyes are wide and he’s breathing hard.

“I just walked from CB South!” he tells everyone on the bus. (He means Skyland, I imagine.)

“How long’d it take you?” another rider asks.

“Well, it’s about one and a half miles, so about 30 minutes.” (CB South is actually about 7 miles away, while another community, Skyland, is about 1.5 miles from town).

Paradise Bowl. Word on the street is, the ropes drop on Friday.

I look at his shoes. He’s got house slippers on.

“Did you try hitching?” I ask him.

“Yeah, no one picked me up, man.”

“Bummer. Were you smoking a cigarette or walking a dog?” I’ve found the key to hitching in CB is to be doing neither of these things with a thumb out.

“Nope. Oh well, some exercise is good,” Dude says, opening up a water bottle. He takes a big swig, and gulps it down. “At least I got my Tang! Gotta get that vitamin C.”

The Patagonia-clad free-heelers next to him scratch their beards and look nonplussed. They could have made the walk in half the time, at least, with or without Tang.

Dude and I chat all 15 minutes of the bus ride up to the mountain. He’s new to town, he tells me excitedly. Just surfing a couch until he can find something permanent. When I ask him where he’s from he says “Well, Phoenix, kind of, but I’ve just been staying with friends all over. Bumming, you know?” I learn why he’s so skinny: Dude has been living on noodles, Tang and V-8  for months. “The carbs I got down,” he says. “Carbs are cheap and easy. But fruits and veggies? Those are tricky when you’re on the move, ‘cause you gotta refrigerate them, you know?” I know dude, I know. L-T-D, Brother.

Tuning the ol' schtick. Just because the runs are few, short and flat doesn't mean a guy can't go shred, right?.

The novelty of riding the four runs of man-made snow quickly wears off, but another novelty never does and never will, I imagine: that’s the novelty of sliding. Really fast. Downhill. Or, as fast as blue and green runs allow, anyway. While the skiing isn’t great, I’m thankful we’re not riding on congested white strips of death like they have in Summitville. And the limited terrain leaves plenty of room to chill out, enjoy the sun (it hasn’t snowed in over a week), and discuss the really important things in life. For example: I pulled out my snowboard last Tuesday and took some runs with my friend Molly. While we were strapping in at the top of the lift, the topic of sickness came up.

“This sickness is unparalleled,” I said.

“Totally unparalleled,” Molly replied in her Midwest accent.

“I mean, nothing is in anyway parallel to this sickness.”

“It’s like, fully perpendicular.”

“Yeah. Not even like, 70 or 80 degrees or anything. All other sickness is 90 degrees perpendicular to this sickness.”

“The corduroy is parallel though.”

“True. That sickness is parallel.”

Then we rode down Houston – southern tourists’ favorite green circle – for the bajillionth time and hopped back on the lift.

Molly's got a party ON her pants.

The unparalleled parallel sickness. Rose blooming from outhouse midway up CBMR. Someone out there really does shit flowers!

Such are the existential questions of the late fall in the Rockies.

Last winter near Crested Butte.

The question may seem like a wash: it’s all adventure recreation so it’s all good, right? Sure, I’d buy that. But, on the other hand, the two endeavors are diametrically opposed: North and South; Superman and Lex Luther; PBR and Martinis. When skis meet snow, friction is my private enemy number one. I spend the night before buffing out each scratch, filing burs from my edges, applying the perfect coats of wax. All day I strive for glide; I dream of flying over, under, through, into and out of powder, or along a well-packed track.

If I’m flying while I climb, well, something has gone wrong. I’m about to be dangling (hopefully uninjured) from the sharp end while my belayer smashes into the bottom of the cliff. Friction is my main addiction while I climb: jamming hands in cracks and cranking fingers into sharp pockets; smearing, edging and stemming the feet. It’s all about the grip.

That's me on Friday's Recess at the Nautilus in Vedauwoo.

But when it comes to ascending and descending, it’s all just sending isn’t it?

So the answer to our original oh-so-beautiful problem really comes down to a matter of spirit: shall I pull down or shred it up? Fight for my right or go with the flow? Slow and elegant pain, or adrenaline speed floating?

Last week I said both. On Sunday I hiked for beautiful powder turns on my first ski day of the season and then cragged in the sun on Tuesday.

Such are the answers of our time.

Mason Daly, getting jazzed for the year's first turns.

Sunday morning I picked up my friends Mason and Paul at the crack of 10. Mason and I soaked in the sun on one of the finest coffee-drinking porches west of the Mississippi before loading our skis, poles and other tools of the trade into my truck. We drove to the Washington Gulch trailhead, strapped in, and headed out into the blue-bird day. Snowmobilers whizzed past us to go ski the farther mountains with deeper snow. Cross-country skiers with dogs followed in the packed tracks. We headed off the trail, into the woods to fight our way to the top of the hill.

Late November skin tracks are vicious. One second we were breaking trail through the week’s powder dump, and the next moment we’re sliding backwards on pine duff or edging into deadfall tree trunks. As Mason, Paul and I wound our way through the evergreens to the ridge of what locals call Coney’s, we often considered stepping out of the skis to boot pack up.

Two things crossed my mind frequently:

Anyone who follows this skin track is going to be like, ‘what the F were those guys thinking’?

And, Damn, I hope we find enough snow to not break our legs on the way down.

Touring towards powder. Slate River to the left (west), Washington Gulch to the right.

Eventually we gained the ridge above the trees and toured along wind crusts until we found a moderately-sloped open glade that would drop us back down into the valley. We stripped skins, ate a snack, layered up and then entered a gentleman’s debate about who should drop first. Paul had gotten his first turns the day before, I had skied the line plenty last season, so we decided Mason should have the honors. And honor it he did: a dozen unobstructed Champaigne turns.

I went next but should have gone last because I made two turns and immediately lawn-darted myself into the shallow snow pack. As I shook the snow off of myself and straightened out my goggles I knew I’d been too timid: I was afraid of picking up any speed because of the leg-break logs lurking beneath the surface. As I relaxed into the bouncy knee-drop rhythm that I hadn’t felt since April, I put the reluctance behind me. The snow was deep enough to play. Hooting and hollering the whole way, the three of us leap-frogged each other into the bottom of the valley. Pole taps, “Sick dude!”s, “Yeah buddy”s, skins on and we toured back to the car. First turns of the year!

Paul begins the ceremonial ripping of the skins at the top. No where to go but down, down, down.

The first day is all about getting the kinks out of the system: repairing blisters on the tour home.

Paul and Mason skating to the car on snowmobile tracks. Gothic Mountain looks on.

Monday. Work. Enough said.

Tuesday. Climbing. Not enough said.

Squeezer bugs? Check. Rock knockers? Check. Clipper-doos? Check. String? Check.

Paul and I headed down to Gunnison last Tuesday to climb at what I call Mini J-Tree, more popularly known as Hartman Rocks. Large-crystal granite domes and spires provide 360 degrees of climbing on balancy faces and skin munching cracks. Neither Paul nor I had climbed more than a handful of days since last fall, so we went to the Buddah’s Belly area to belly up to some short 5.8s. We endured the 30-second approach, dropped our gear, and marveled at all the solar warming happening on the south face of the rock feature. We’d left Crested Butte in single-digit temperatures that morning.

After deciphering the fuzzy guide book pictures, we stacked the rope, racked up and began scrambling up the sickness. All the pitches were around 70 feet with solid rock and a mix of face and crack climbing protected by both bolts and traditional gear. We swapped leads and got to know each other as climbers, this being our first day on a rope together and all.

The first real sass the rock threw at me came on an unnamed 5.8+ with sparse gear near the top. Three feet below my feet I had equalized two C3s (each with only two lobes engaged on dubious crystals) and a few feet above my head I had equalized one super dicey micro-nut with a somewhat less dicey micro-nut. Near my knees I had feebly tried to sling a chicken head, but without a hands free rest, getting a runner around the runner-length chicken head felt more like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic than actually protecting myself.

Paul cleaning the anchors on top of Buddah's Belly.

I shook out one hand, then the other more times than was really necessary or effective (same with reaching in to my chalk bag) then finally got up the peace and strength of mind to make the two tenuous moves up to a big jug. From that two-hands thank-god hold I hauled my shaking body whale-like onto the low angle top of the climb. I clipped the chains and Paul brought me home. The runner around the chicken head pretty much fell off as I lowered and I cleaned it on the way down to save myself the shame of seeing it sashay down the cliff, still clipped to the rope.

To finish the day off, we hopped on the crag’s namesake, Buddah’s Belly, a 5.9+/5.10- that navigates a short roof and a steep, juggy prow. As I looked at it from the ground, I became more and more confident I could climb it. I saw rests. I saw the bolt clips. I saw success. 15 minutes later I squealed “Take!” with a draw at my waist and began a series of climb-hang climb-hang, characteristic of any steep climb I hop on. I can technique my way through the balancy and even run-out climbs right off the couch, but the steep stuff never fails to punish me.

I finally bouldered my way from bolt to bolt, clipped the chains, and gave Paul a shot at it on top rope. On two of the moves his feet cut out completely and he admirably star-fished into the air with only one hand on the wall.  Sharma, meet Paul.

Paul, rapelling past the "jugs" that lead out of the roof on Buddah's Belly, 5.9+

After relaxing in the sun for a few minutes we retraced the epically-short approach to the car and drove to Gunnison for $1 fish tacos and a microbrew at the Gunnison Brewery. Then we drove back up valley to the land of snow and skiing.

Suuuuuuper hard approach.

Mason Daly, imagining what it'd be like to dyno 20 feet.

About ten days ago I drove out of Crested Butte in a full-value, winter’s-here, lock-the-hubs snowstorm. In my mind and heart I surrendered: Okay, no more t-shirts, no more lizard naps in the sun, no more climbing on rocks. Having not had much of a summer, I was bummed (I spent most of my summer months above 11,000 feet, often times on snow, and then up north to Alaska).

Then, after a week-long Outward Bound course in Leadville with a group of Expeditionary Learning high school students from Denver, I drove home to a surprise: dry ground, warm air, bright sun. Except for two days this spring, I hadn’t rock climbed for a year, so I was eager to milk the late Indian Summer for all it had to give. While ski season has officially started (many of my neighbors are already skiing in the backcountry), I, for one, like to pace myself. I have 6 solid months of snow season ahead, so I’m going to snuggle up to the rock while it’s still warm.

Skyland

I had heard all last winter about the Skyland Boulders in the aspen trees below the west-facing cliffs of Mount Crested Butte. Then the house-sized rocks were well guarded by deep snow drifts (good for high-ball falls, I suppose) and the friction was a little too good (i.e. below-zero temps equals fingers just freeze to the holds regardless of crimp strength equals unfair advantage). On Monday I headed out on the pink-pedaled mountain bike I’ve had since 8^th grade. I met my buddy Mason and we pedaled the 15-minute single-track approach from town, which happened to be the first time either of us had done anything close to mountain biking in years.

Later, as we rested cross-legged in the year’s last short-sleeve sun, I was reminded of why climbing is so much fun for me: The pragmatically pointless pursuit of holding onto tiny things and getting a good scare from gravity illuminates a certain freedom to me – the freedom growing out of the notion that maybe life is one big Cosmic Joke and somewhere Buddha and Jesus are laughing a big-bellied laugh, and play and fun are the key to the lock. And in the light of that freedom, humor just spills out of and all over everything.

Jacob Wagner on the High Times Boulder. Mount Crested Butte supervising from afar.

I hate to toot my own horn, but toot! toot! I have to admit I was looking good that day. I’m not an avid boulderer, but from what I gleam from the climbing rags (are you taking note, Urban Climber?) fashion counts extra-extra on the short climbs. My fashion gurus these past weeks have been urban teenagers — those remarkable souls brave enough to come to the mountains and actually do all the crazy stuff we Outward Bound instructors ask them to do (like dangle off cliffs from strings the size of their pointer fingers, then sleep on a tiny foam rectangle in the snow).

Mason, negotiating the approach's balancy crux.

Before mounting my bike on Monday I tucked my pants into my half-tied, tops-splayed, knee-high Sorel approach boots, per the constructive feedback I got from some of the youngsters last week: “Yo, perro, you gotta tuck that shit in,” they tell me. And “Damn, Cisco, you’d get beat up rolling into my school like that. Why you gotta tie that shit so tight?”

Why, indeed, young friends? Why, indeed?

It’s not just about style, mind you. On the sensible level, the loose fitting boots keep one from going anywhere quickly as well as working too hard (both traits I strive for). And they’re easy to slip off at the door, which I do a lot of. Obviously it keeps my pants cuffs from snagging in the bike gears, and pants-tucked-into-boots also provides specific boundaries as to where one can walk. For example: shall I walk through that field of knee deep snow? Ah hells no. My boots are loose, open, and vulnerable to snowflake penetration.

See how that works? It’s sweet. Never have to walk through a too-snowy field again. Deep down I yearn to own a pair of un-scuffed Timberlands to wear all up in da club. The Sorels will suffice until then.

Late fall bouldering footwear: Down booties (any excuse to wear down booties!); Sportiva high tops, 1/2 size too big for wool socks; and for the mud, Sorel approach boots (pants tucked in fo shizzle).

Pedal pedal pedal, push push push, climb climb climb. The approach to the boulders reminds me of my college days when I’d bike up to the cliffs and boulders at Horsetooth Reservoir on Thursday afternoons to give the intellect a break (holla at you FoCo readers; my goal here is for someone to write “holla back” in the comment board below. Please help my dreams come true. Please?).

Like Horsetooth evenings, the light at the Skyland Boulders was magic: low angle rays that make all the grass yellows, rock reds and sky blues ooze; the kind of light that makes the land go on forever and maybe– just maybe — parallel universes are possible after all.

You know that light? Yeah, that light.

We warmed up on High Times boulder, a highball with V-0 face climbing opportunities on the north side and V-hard overhanging sloper opportunities, like J-Crack, on the south (I don’t like the term boulder “problem,” which implies to me that something is wrong with the rock; I prefer boulder “opportunity”). A mutual friend, Jacob, arrived as Mason and I warmed up and joined us on the sickgnar.

Much to my delight, an aspen tree provides the 5.2 a cheval down climb.

Junk on the trunk: descending from High Times Boulder.

The tree grows close enough to the boulder to provide a chimney/off-width opportunity (hey, give me a break, I don’t live near Vedauwoo any more, so I have to take what I can get). After descending from a warm-up opportunity, I decided to give ‘er a shot. I fist-stacked at the tree-rock constriction, got my feet high, pushed into a chicken wing out of the stacks, wedged my chest in between the tree and the rock, and began the palms-down, road-runner-smears offwidth grunt fest. I find French accents help me in the wide stuff:

Exhale, palm push, knee bars, extend tongue for balance, inhale, repeat.

Me: “Le fist stack, eh, uum, le chicken wing! Ha hah! Crimpé? Eh! Ya! Crimpé!”

Mason: “Dude, are you okay over there?”

Me: “Ah! Eh! Uh! Sending ze gnar!” (I had made it about two inches up at this point, and was nearly exhausted).

Jacob: “Do you want a spot or a crash pad or anything?”

Me (French Ninja): “Hi ya! Le pelvis jam! Trés bon! Je suis perdue!”

Le Etcétera. (Most real French words I know come from Manu Chao songs).

I took 20 minutes to climb 15 feet, and I topped out completely spent. I laid down on top of the boulder with that sour, stomach acid off-width taste in my mouth.

Sternum jam = hands and foot-free rest...ish.

If this is a FFA, I name the opportunity “My Aspen Jammed.” I say old-school V-0. To get down I went and wrapped my legs around the aspen for a fire-man’s-pole descent. Mason and Jacob were soaking in the sun so I went to sit by them.

“Can you imagine those long offwidths in Yosemite?” I asked, having never been there.

“Yeah,” said Mason. I got scared on one of those this summer. Like, widening 95-degree chimney with no pro.”

“But you survived, eh?

“Yeah, ‘cause I downclimbed and bailed.”

Mason spots Jacob on the left High Times opportunity V-3+. Mason later hiked it...or he at least made it up without having to turn the gravity down at all.

“Better bail by down climb than bail by helicopter,” I said. We stared up at the skeletal aspen branches in silence for a while.

“I’m not ready for snow yet,” Jacob said. “I wish it would just dump 5 feet on the mountain’s opening day, and be just like this until then.”

“That’d be sweet.”

“I’m starting a book club this winter. You guys want to be in a book club? It’s called UNIVERSE book club.”

“Whoa, Universe, huh? Will you have T-shirts?”

“Yeah, It stands for Understanding New Information Via Everybody’s…um…I didn’t make it up. Give me a minute.”

“I’m going to Hawaii in April,” Jacob continued. “April’s like purgatory here. It’d be great if you weren’t here all winter, and just showed up for April.”

“All the big lines would be in,” Mason said.

“Right now I’m reading about show girls and sorority girls,” I said. “A Larry McMurtry novel about showgirls in Las Vegas, and this investigative journalism piece on sorority life – what a bizarre universe, man.”

When not philosophizing about sorority life, Jacob loves to muse over the chalk on the ity-bitties. "Does anyone actually hold on to these things?" he asked mid-climb.

Jacob stood up and his eyes got really wide: “Totally bizarre. I worked a few challenge course groups of sorority sisters, and they’d show up and be like, ‘…and this is my House Mom and my Big Sister and my little house cousin…’ and I was like, ‘whoa, what is the meaning of all of this?! They have like their own chefs and everything.”

“Yeah, they have this whole hierarchy structure. It’s wild. You and me, we’re GDIs.”

“GDIs?”

“Yep. God Damn Independents.”

Jacob bobbed his head in understanding.

“I rushed for a fraternity,” Mason said. “Then I said, ‘no way,’ and bailed.”

“My brother cooked for a sorority house, I think. He did it to meet girls, I think, then decided it was not worth it.”

We stared at the sky for a few minutes. Jacob stretched. Mason fiddled with his shoes.

“Hawaii will be nice in April,” Jacob said, smiling, lying back down on his back, chalky hands behind his head.

“Understanding New Information Via Every Reader’s Sense of Everything,” I said. “That’s the book club.”

Eventually we mustered up the gumption to go climb more on the south side of the High Times Boulder, then we wandered through aspens, between the lean-to hobbit homes built out of deadfall against mossy boulders to the The Wave boulder. When our forearms were throbbing and refused to soften, we hopped on our bikes. We coasted home through the yellow grasses, purple-topped willows and the infinity light of evening in the upper Gunnison Valley.

Wild Kingdom: Deep in the heart of the Rocky Mountain Savanna, the male boulderbiker prowls his territory. The prominent hump he develops over his spine indicates his readiness to attempt dangerous feats in order to impress females of the species.

Navigating the magical forest in search of more rock.

Operation Seek Joy: Mission accomplished.