Winter Park Weekend

A few weeks ago, our friends Jon and Eve (and kids), joined us for a trip to Winter Park. We stayed with our friends Steve and Maureen at their house in Winter Park. Steve was called away on business at the last minute, but their daughter and her family, along with 2 dogs and 2 guinea pigs, kept us company. If 11 people sounds like alot, that's because you haven't seen the house:

Chez Weick was easily big enough for the crowd.

We drove up on Friday night, and skied at Winter Park on Saturday.


Saturday was pizza and a whole lot of wine. On Sunday, we went cross-country skiing at Snow Mountain Ranch, before driving back home.

Daring Raid!

I came home a few weeks ago and heard noises in the dining room. When I investigated I found Bunny and Llama up to no good.


They had tied their scarves together into a climbing rope, and then moved a chair and some books to get a higher reach. Where were they climbing?

As you can see from the photo below, they were attempting a daring raid on the liquor cabinet!

Fortunately, Bunny's arms got tired, and I was able to stop them before they drank our stash.

Ascent of the Kustosberg

The weekend after my last post we went away to Winter Park. After that, 2 conferences kept me in Palm Springs for almost a week. Then I spent the bulk of this weekend setting up a new laptop for Dorinna (and cleaning up 2 old computers). Enough excuses?

The day before the Oscars, Dorinna and I hosted a dinner party for a group of international business partners who were in town for our user's conference. 1 Dutchman, 2 Germans, and an Italian joined us for... Mexican food.

The next day 2 of the Europeans flew home, but the rest joined me for a mountain expedition (or should I say Bergtour?) Our two pairs of snowshoes went to our friends Gerald Kreuwel and Christian Kustos. I brought my tele-skis, which worked well enough.

My plan was to hike up to the top of Montgomery Pass. I like the fact that treeline is less than 2 miles from the road. Here are Christian and Gerald at the Baumgrenze.


Well, we hiked up to the pass and looked up at the ridge extending in front of us, cleared off snow by the constant winds. Christian, eager to do some real mountain-climbing, convinced us to keep climbing to a small peak topped with a radio tower. It's actually in the middle of the picture above.

My bad cold really slowed me down, but we made it to the summit. The map shows this as an unnamed peak, so I have dubbed it the Kustosberg (Christian's last name is Kustos). Here's a shot of Christian at the top, looking in vain for the cross that tops just about every significant peak in the Alps. Nokhu Crags and the Never Summer Mountains are in the background.


It had been a few weeks since Colorado got any snow, so skiing conditions on the way down were an interesting mix of crusty ice mixed with patches of soft powder. It didn't bother the snowshoers at all, but with skis it was fairly (ahem) thrilling.


This was Christian's first trip to America, so it was fun showing him some of our Colorado landscape.

Bunny and Llama at the Oscars

Here is a photo of Bunny and Llama making their red-carpet appearance at a friend's Oscar party.


I hope to put up some posts soon on what the humans have been doing at Das Haus von Ruh. In addition to multiple ski trips, I've also had the biggest work conference of the year, plus a bad cold. The next Austria post is about 1/2 written, and I have more ski pics as well. Stay tuned...

Somebunny Loves Me!

Yes, I received a Valentine from our friends Bunny and Llama:


For Valentine's day we skipped work and went skiing at Winter Park. Conditions were packed powder, quite a change from the deep backcountry powder of the past few weeks. I took advantage of this to focus on skiing faster, and on curving my upper-body into a "C" to get a better grip for my edges. Weekday traffic was very nice-- we got there in just under two hours. Oh, and the lift tickets cost $20 with our 4-pack.

I'm hoping to write up and post another episode from the "Austria Vacation Log" over the weekend. But the mountains are getting another foot of fresh powder tonight, so no promises...

The Sacred Trees

On Sunday, Dorinna and I set out to ski "The Sacred Trees", a secret Telemark ski spot up in Cameron Pass. We had a dry week in Colorado with lots of wind, and I figured that above-treeline spots would probably be windblown, so we headed for this spot. It's a slope that is tree-covered and sheltered. The trees are fairly widely-spaced, so the skiing in still easy. (This is often a great spot to visit when avalanche conditions are bad, although they were fine on Sunday).

Unfortunately, the secret spot is a little too secret, and we weren't able to find it. We skied another slope where the trees were quite a bit tighter. The snow was deep enough that we were able to maneuver around them however. We dubbed the spot "Purgatory Glade."

Below is a shot of Dorinna on the trail to our secret spot. When you notice the railings on this snow-covered bridge, you have some idea on how much snow we've gotten this year.

Deepest Backcountry Snow EVER

Last week I joined a bunch of friends to ski Montgomery Pass, a backcountry spot up near Cameron Pass. It was without a doubt the best snow I've ever seen in the backcountry. Untracked waist deep powder all day. Every turn I took sprayed powder snow up into my face. I did two runs on the main slope, shown below.


We then moved to a second slope, called "Mr. Big". This was a longer slope, but the snow wasn't as good, so after two runs I moved back to the main slope for two final runs.

Nokhu Crags in the background- same mountain as my previous post

I have never been more tired as I skiied down the hiking trail back to our cars. Thankfully, conditions were good, and it was possible to slow down in the powder alongside the trail.

My friend Dean took some footage with his digital camera. By 10:30 the next morning he had built a ski movie on his Mac and posted it to the web. He did a really good job- definitely did more to sell the Mac than any Apple advertisement I've ever seen.

Avalanche Class

Immediately after returning from New York, Dorinna and I took an avalanche class, along with our friends Sara and Rick. The class was at the Mountain Shop, and was taught by instructors from the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. On Wednesday night, we had a 3-hour classroom session, and on the following Saturday, an all-day field session. It was a cold day up in Cameron Pass, especially since we spent alot of time standing around and listening to the instructors. We practiced with beacons, and dug a number of snow pits. The prognosis was good, so we got one nice run through thigh-deep creamy powder.

Nokhu Crags

Trip to NYC

The weekend of January 21st saw us in New Jersey for Maria's baby shower. We spent the weekend with Dorinna's family, then went to NYC on Monday. We took the train into Penn Station with Dorinna's Mom, then rode the subway to the Guggenheim museum. Unfortunately, they were between exhibitions, and only a small number of rooms were open while they tore down one exhibit and constructed another. We did have a good conversation with one of the guides about modern art, including this piece by Kandinsky:


After leaving the Guggenheim, we took the subway over to the Museum of Modern Art. After a fruitless search for pizza (How can you NOT find pizza in New York?????), we spent the remainder of the day viewing the collections. Here are some of our favorites:

Starry Night, Vincent Van Gogh


Christina's World, Andrew Wyeth


Dorinna spent alot of time at a special exhibit of Odilon Redon


And I (somehow) learned to appreciate Jackson Pollack:


We ended the day with dinner at Blaue Gans (Blue Goose), a German restaurant in TriBeCa. It was a busy day, but we had a great time, and we both became "experts" on the NYC subway system.

Oops- Time for a New Car

Back in mid-January, we lost the Rav4 to a stretch of icy road up in Cameron Pass. Nobody was hurt- the car was pretty well designed, and the passenger compartment was intact (didn't even trigger the airbags)

The car rolled over onto its side, and was mostly flipped over when it came to a stop.

We replaced it with a Subaru Outback.