Avalanche Course and The Season of Giving

We finally got to put those avalanche transceivers to use! Last weeek we took a 24-hour Level 1 Avalanche  course through Bryant Mountain Nordic Ski Patrol and Colorado Mountain Club Boulder (Boulder Mountain School). The class had about 30 students and 20 instrcutors. We did 8 hours of classroom instruction and 16 hours of field instruction between St. Mary's Glacier and Berthoud Pass (both in the Front Range).

Sean at St. Mary's Glacier

Our field days were exhausting, but also a ton of fun. And we learned A LOT. More important than learing the search and rescue techniques was learning how to read snow and weather patterns for clues of potential avalanche danger. We know how to take the right steps to hopefully avoid the situation all together. This is particularly helpful since a) Colorado has the highest number of avalanche fatalities in the country, and b) avalanche fatalities are more likely to happen to 20-30 year olds...

Sean and an instructor working on the snow pit

tap test

Saturday and Sunday (the field days) consisted of practicing beacon use, emergency rescue scenarios and digging/analyzing a snow pit. I found the rescue scenarios to be the most helpful and the most fun. The instructors had buried wet suits filled with snow, some with beacons and some without, and we had to find them and dig them out in a timely manner.

We are now certified by the National Ski Patrol and will probably take the Level 2 course in the not-too-distant future.

30+mph winds and snow during Saturday's field day

On Monday night a group of my friends and I prepared dinner for a local homeles shelter called The Delores Project (http://www.thedeloresproject.org/). The Delores project serves homeless women in Denver. It opens every day at 4pm and closes again at 8am. Women are served snacks in the afternoon and morning and dinner. All dinner is donated and all servers are volunteers. A few of us had served dinner for about 50 women in November and we will go back to serve the food we prepared last night. It is always more fun to volunteer in big groups and both cooking together and serving others helps get everyone in the holiday spirit!

baked ziti for about 65 (menu also includes green bean casserloe, brownies, applesauce, clementines and a big salad)

the prep crew relaxing

Deana and I shopped and organized the group- and we're definitely doing it again.

all of us

Giving Thanks

This Thanksgiving reminded me to be thankful...

for great friends to spend the holiday with

for delicious high-calorie food (thanks mom and dad!)

for a cozy 4-season tent that makes the winter nights a little less cold

for my wonderful husband

who stays out in the cold to boil snow

to make hot water bottles for our sleeping bags

and who puts our wet, cold boots (in a tarp of course) in his sleeping bag overnight

while I get to stay warm in my sleeping bag

who finds water for us along the trail in places I would never consider

and who makes me laugh by eating this at 7:30 in the morning

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you're preparing for the next round of holidays without too much stress! Miss you all :)

CMC Hike

Sean and I joined the Colroado Mountain Club (CMC) a few weeks ago in order to be able to get into a less expensive Avalanche course this winter. Being a member of the CMC has a ton of benefits outside of trainings- including access to the CMC library, tons of weekly trips organized by trained leaders and classes on all sorts of mountaineering subjects. We took our first trip with the club this weekend to James Peak via the St. Mary's Glacier. The pictures below were taken by another member of the club- our fully charged camera wouldn't turn on because it was too cold out...

 That is the trip leader standing in the middle there. The rest of us are switching from snowshoes to boots before getting on the glacier.

Even with a group of 11 being on the mountain is a solitary experience

Beautiful day- but the 40mph winds made it seem much colder than 30 degrees!

This is called Jamaica because it is the only place between treeline and the summit where you get away from the wind for at least a moment

Jamaice on the way down

So much easier with the wind at your back- and the snow not hitting your face

All in all it was a good, quick day. We were the youngest ones there by a longshot, but it is always nice climb with veterans of the mountains...we always have something to learn and they definitely had some wisdom to impart.

Beautiful Denver

Sunrise outside of our apartment last week. Pretty! And yes, we hung our flags back up- they fall a lot.

Oh Craigslist, How I Love You

2 Reasons that I love Craigslist:

1. Phillies vs. Rockies Game III Division Series.

Game 3 was supposed to played on Saturday, October 10th, but because of a harsh cold that came through the game was postponed until Sunday night. This was great news for us- we found someone who had planned on being in town for Saturday night but couldn't stay so late on Sunday. He sold us tickets via Craigslist and we got to go on Sunday night! The game started in the mid 30's but dipped to 23 degrees by the time the game ended at midnight.  It was quite an experience being fans of the away team- we would stand up and scream and yell only to realize that everyone was staring/yelling at us. Of course the Phillies ended up winning the game with a run in the top of the ninth inning. They also went on to cinch the division and conference titles. So it's BACK to the World Series for the second year in a row!!! And I am definitely banking on a repeat victory.

2. Avalanche Transceivers

The very same day we scoped out the Phillies tix, Sean did a search on Craigslist for Avalanche Transceivers.  This helpful piece of backcountry insurance is notriously expensive and was the last missing piece of our winter exploration set. We each have shovels and probes, but we haven't been able to splurge on buying two transceivers. Amazingly, we found a man in Colorado Springs selling TWO transceivers for way less than the standard cost of one.  This simple addition has revolutionized our options for getting out into the mountains. Ideally we will never have to use them, but now we have them just in case.  In the mean time we are driving our neighbors absolutely bonkers by testing them out at home.

Think there are enough warnings on these things?

This picture is unrelated, but cute.

ditto!

escape the city in the Rocky Mountain way...

Colorado has a beautiful autumn- but if you blink you will miss it. We were lucky to see the golden aspens while they were here...and are just as lucky to see snow back on the Front Range peaks visible again from Denver.

We went to Snowmass last weekend-a four hour drive from Denver that stops about 10 miles north of Aspen. The long drive was absolutely worth it on many levels. First- the drive itself is gorgeous, traveling through Glenwoos Canyon and Independence Pass.  Second- this part of Colorado has massive mountains and long stretches of trail that let you get truly deep into the wilderness. On Saturday we had a wonderful walk through the yellow aspens. Overnight, not two full weeks after fall officially arrived according to the calendar, winter announced her impending arrival.

Snowmass Creek

Bear Bag

The winter storm that kept us up on Saturday night covered the ground with a light snow (no big deal) but the wind knocked down a ton of trees along the trail (including a very scary close call with a tree bending over our tent!) The storm also made our plan of attempting a summit of Snowmass Mountain out of the question. It can be frustrating to drive such a far way with summit plans only to have the weather ‘ruin’ them- but our trip was an amazingly good time just as it was.

Tent in the morning (notice the leaning tree)

Scray Tree! The brown patch is where our tent was.

Log jam we used to cross Snowmass Creek- slippery with snow!

much easier on the way back...

Big Pines that fell during the night

Dragonfly on the trail

Sean at Snowmass Lake (Snowmass Peak in background)

awww :)

Wrench 1, Sean 0

Hike on the way back

I can still smell the leaves...

We were in the Elk Range- which is where Sean spent his Colorado Outward Bound trip and where we had planned on going when we came out to Colorado on vacation last June (a plan that was again thwarted by weather…but in June!) It has a totally different feel to it then a lot of the areas we have been in – it definitely felt like we were back out east with the rain and forest based hike. In all we hiked about 16 miles through both Aspen and Pine forest ending at Snowmass Lake. The massive peak set behind the lake is Snowmass Peak, not Snowmass Mountain. With the weather as it was we were never even able to see the Peak we had planned on climbing. Looks like it will be a whlie before we have another chance as the snow conditions will have too high of a risk for avalanche danger pretty soon.

Why we turned back...