Skiing was Great today!

We woke up to some wind and 26 degrees.

Before we left the condo deciding a few runs at Keystone was going to do the trick, the temp had dropped to 17, and kept heading south for the time we were out.

Mostly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of snow showers. Areas of blowing snow. Very windy. West winds 35 to 45 mph with gusts in excess of 80 mph above timberline. Temperatures falling into the 5 to 15 degree range by 5 PM.

Frostbite warnings for us, we both had a couple white spots that we took care of fast enough. 2 runs, one warming stop, and back to the condo.

Hourly Forecast	6AM	12 Noon	6PM	12 Midnight
Temp. | Dew Point	21 | 12	20 | 3	10 | 3	7 | -2
Wind	24 mph WSW	19 mph West	18 mph West	11 mph West
Humidity	64%	54%	70%	61%
Chance of Precip.	0%	70%	70%	10%
Cloud Cover	64%	51%	55%	13%
Conditions	Chance of Snow	Partly Cloudy	Partly Cloudy	Clear
Sunrise & Sunset	7:24 AM 4:49 PM

Source: National Digital Forecast Database View Detailed Hourly Forecast

Calming for the evening:
Mostly clear. Very windy. Lows 2 below to 9 above zero. West winds 25 to 35 mph. Gusts up to 60 mph decreasing to 45 mph after midnight.

So Karyn and I headed for the Gym. She got her swim workout, and I went to the weight room. Just love that Copper Mountain req center.

Finally time for the red raspberry pie cookoff

We've been listening to Barb and Dad heckle each other for years about how good their red raspberry pies are. So we finally got a chance to have a cook off!

We showed up last night at Russ, Becky and David's place in Dillon for the event. Russ' friend Brian showed with his chips in tote and BPR in hand...

Russ filled in the blanks with Swiss Chard, Spinach and Gruyere Gratin. Here he is hard at work in the kitchen.

Time for the Pie! The competition was for standard red raspberry pie. Both options came with French Vanilla ice cream to top. Both were full crust top pies both fresh from the oven that afternoon.


Karyn kicked in a third option but did not compete for the top spot. She offered up Avocado cheesecake with Walnut and red raspberry sauce.
The damage was done. Dad's pie, nothing but scraps.
Barb's pie, nothing but shrapnel.


It was a great feast! Thanks everyone for contributing and especially to the competitors in the cook off!

The Twin's First ski day!

Sperry and Laura decided to take the twins out skiing.

I picked up some video, but didn't collect any from others for this clip.

Enjoy

Christmas dinner.... with the Smiths!

Since the snow at the hut was so poor we decided to go home and crash Christmas dinner at the Smith's house!

The Browns and Smiths have been sharing Christmas dinner together since Tucker was in Junior High (20-ish years ago). They were neighbors in Michigan and now have moved to Boulder. I had my first Brown/Smith Christmas dinner in 2000 (in Michigan!). So.... 12 Christmases later we have managed Christmas Eve or Christmas dinner together for 11 of those!
In true Smith style the neighbors were invited and everyone welcome.

Tucker and Catherine plated the turkey.

Catherine made gravy in Bill Brown's absence.

And, as traditions go, we went home with 2 new xmas ornaments for our tree!

Photo Card

Merry Christmas! If you haven't gotten the card... this is it!

Have a great holiday season!

Sparkling Snowflakes Christmas

Turn your favorite pictures into personalized Christmas cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

Xmas Hut 2011

Merry Christmas!!!


As most of you know (maybe?)... we go to a backcountry hut every year for Christmas. We have been doing this for several years now.

This year we went to Fowler Hilliard Hut - which burned down in 2009 so this is one of the newest in the 10th Mountain Hut system.
It was VERY cold but a fun trip in! There hasn't been much snow though so we came out a day early (12/25). Tucker couldn't get his sled into the hut due to lack of snow so he turned around about 2 miles into the hike in to return home to get a backpack, :(

To our surprise he put his Jeep to work and met us about 1.25miles up the trail from where he had left us! I had my 'hut buddy'!!

He left the Jeep on the trail where he met us

and skied in the rest of the way with us (plenty of snow up high). We had great meals

and laughs and a puzzle......

There were great views.....
We took some pictures and left the hut early on Christmas morning...

Pheasant hunt 2011

Finally got some video editing working on my PC.

It has been cold...

Handsome is trying to get warm on the floor register...  it was 8 degrees outside. 

Riding's not over!!!

Ahhhhhh

As traffic was building on I-70, Karyn and I had some different plans... We stayed around the house to catch up on some missed summer activity time.

The temps hit 60 at noon, so we hopped on our bikes.

You know with the solstice less than a month away, we've got to get home early. I tied this up in 2 hours.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Yep, this started out with a quick ride home from the mountains, somewhere in the middle we bottled some home brew.

In the end, thanks Levi and Sarah, we ended up at the Browns for the turkey dinner.

Uneventful, but we did fry turkey. Perhaps one event was that this was the best cooked fried Turkey I've made. Hope everyone enjoyed!

Jeanie got all the pix, as you can imagine my hands were full with the turkey...

La Fondue?

Monday Sacha and Jen showed up, visiting on a family trip.

I'm not sure how they got things sorted out to grab a hotel in Keystone for the few days they were here, but that didn't stop us from making some turns!

Wednesday after Karyn got off work we headed up to meet Jen who was managing the family.

Sacha, Karyn and I got a few runs from 4:00-5:30 before she got free to hang with us.

I'd say we took one more run, but we didn't... This run consisted of Gondola rides and some Fondue. A small surprise for Jen, but she loved it!

We had a short spell sitting in the stopped gondola on the ride up, but was recovered with free hot drink coupons. They told us we couldn't get 'hot apple pies' with the coupon... Somebody should have tried.

With this delay and the second bottle of wine, we didn't make it back to the front side for the ski down, but no one cared much.

Basin the old fashion way!

Skiing at the Basin.


The storm rolled in while we were driving over, they didn't claim any snow yesterday morning, but you could tell the conditions had improved with the fresh snow. We showed up at noon after driving from Vail.



High winds had taken out the power. This was old school. The lifts were open running on Diesel, and they had 3 options for lunch.
Brats
Hot Dogs
Cold Sandwiches

The lady at the cash register was using one of those old school credit card slides. Chunk chunk...

I said, "it's a good thing we still have this old equipment around for times like this..."

She said "I've never seen one of these before today."

The bar was still open... CO2 still works when the power is out!!!
Karen and Tony joined us. Alex too, but the pic didn't.

This past weekend or Halloween 2011

Halloween was 'celebrated' once on Saturday night for a dress up party -


Saturday and Sunday mornings we got in our first ski runs of the season (well, mine... tucker went the previous weekend as well but thought that 2 weeks out of foot surgery would be pushing it and I, instead, waited for it to be THREE weeks out from foot surgery). The skiing went well but crowded.


We celebrated on Monday night for our 'anniversary' - before an actual signed document that meant we were 'married' (yes common law marriage doesn't lend itself well to anniversaries...) we had to pick a date. We chose Oct 31st. It was the first date that I remember thinking Tucker might actually like me - of course, I was on a date with another guy but that is a whole other story ;)

We walked up to our favorite neighborhood restaurant... had dinner and walked home. Good enough for us. We do tend to be low key, after all.

Bike trailer trip 2 to Irvine

The trailer is working much better after the redesign.

In this pic the trailer is loaded with ~45 lbs of gear.

San Rafael Swell

Elizabeth started talking to us about riding in the San Rafael Swell in Moab this spring.

Well we did some checking, and set up the trip for this fall. Turns out there really ended up being only three of us, and Karyn down with foot recovery, two riders.

We had a great time, Friday night in Green River. Late arrival for us due to travel from Denver after work. Elizabeth was out the day before and warmed up the hotel room for us.

We woke up to some rain, so we didn't hurry out of the hotel, but got to camp around lunch. Just north of the campground was a spot with some Rock Art, so we checked that out.






Elizabeth and I left Karyn in the tent, and rode up the jeep trail next to the river and checked out the great views. We stayed at the San Rafael Bridge campground. Not too many spots, but we were the first ones in, so we got the best spot.



only 3 more sites filled while we were there, one of which the group site.

Check out Window blind peak.



The morning views were spectacular as the sun rose.



Sunday we went north to check out "the wedge" some single track. More to come, These pix are on the gopro, that's going to take some work...