Cutie Pie

I know that Valentine's Day was over a week ago, but I had to post this picture that my sister-in-law posted of her daughter Lucy. She is adorable and has this long tuft of hair on the top of her head that can evidently be molded into anything. Doesn't she look like Cindy Lou Who?

Turns Earned

Our last day in Utah we decided to go explore some of the backcountry outside of Alta ski resort. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the views were awesome. The snow was, well, variable. We skied in everything from powder, to corn snow, to corn snow with a breakable crust on top. Yeah, the wicked breakable crust on tele, we both had some great wrecks. We did manage to ski pretty decently considering the variable snow conditions. It was a great day to earn turns.

Bryan on the way up

The view into Brighton ski resort

The view into Little Cottonwood

The final climb up the ridge

Devil's Castle in the distance

You can see the tracks where someone skied this, crazy

Our route down: interesting corn snow with or without a breakable crust

Bryan headed down, like a pro on tele. He took off so fast I had a hard time getting a decent video of him.


Me on the descent. Unfortunately, right after Bryan stopped filming, I had a good wipe-out.

Lander the Powderhound

The first thing that Lander said when we got off the ski lift was "I need to go make some fresh tracks" and off he went to make some "freshies" off the groomed run. Bryan and I stared at each other in confusion and then shrugged and figured it was normal behavior for our off-spring. Somehow Lander has gleaned information from our conversations that the only snow worth seeking out is powder. He is a total powderhound. Hey, it's never too early to learn that important truth. We all had a great day at Alta. Lander would try to go off the main trail as much as possible and Bryan and I took turns sneaking off to Devil's Castle. The family that skis together, stays together.

Lander hitting the "freshies"

Yuppie Skiing

"I don't think we fit in here." That was exactly what I told Bryan as we rode the gondola at Deer Valley resort this morning. I have never skied at a resort that has a gondola. I have never skied at Deer Valley, mainly because the tickets are horrendously expensive and it's what I call a "destination resort". This translates to tons of people in $2000 ski suits that will only ski when it is sunny and the runs are groomed. I knew this since Deer Valley was rated the "#1 ski resort in North America" by various ski magazines and their criteria on what makes a resort "good" are the number of salons, clothing stores, restaurants and stores that sell $2000 ski suits a resort has and not important things like expert terrain and annual snowfall. After three hours of riding numerous lifts and gawking at multi-million dollar homes we finally found a pocket of good snow that of course, you had to work to get to. But, it was sooo worth it. Oh yeah, and the only other tele skiers we saw, were on ski patrol. Figures.

Riding the gondola, wow I feel like a rock star!
Dropping into Daley Bowl from the corniced ridge

Me coming down Daley Bowl

Happy Single Awareness Day

When I was in high school and college I thought that Valentine's Day was the lamest holiday ever. I pretty much still feel the same way now. I did in fact call it Single Awareness Day, or S.A.D., I mean that is what it really is right? I will admit that it's really fun to buy stuff for Lander and make it fun for him and that is so much fun, but Bryan and I don't buy into the whole flowers, dinner, blah, blah, blah. Call me unromantic, whatever. Bryan asked me what I wanted for S.A.D., I told him I wanted to go to Utah. When we arrived in Utah on Thursday our friend Phil asked me if Bryan had a romantic date planned for us. I told him that if his idea of romance was going to Alta to shred the gnar, then yes, we did indeed have a romantic date planned. And that is exactly what we did. There had just been a recent dump of snow and while most of the good runs had been tracked out, we managed to find some awesome powder stashes, but we had to work really hard to get to them. They were totally worth it and hey, tele skiers are supposed to work for their turns. Bryan skied his 7th day on tele skis and was skiing way better than I did on my 7th day on tele, jerk :).

Here is Bryan coming down East Greeley Bowl



We started doing the traverse into Devil's Castle. It was an awesome area to ski, but it took about 20 minutes of traversing and climbing on your skis to get to the good snow. The most amusing part of the traverse was watching two out of shape college girls who had drunk too much beer at lunch hurling chunks on the side of the trail. They were way worse off than we were having just come from sea level.

On the traverse in Devil's Castle, the most awesome feature at Alta

We realized after several exhausting traverses from the west side into Devil's Castle that there was a traverse in from the east side that was a lot less tiring. And the snow? It was deep and barely tracked. This was where we spent the rest of the afternoon. This is me coming down the stash we found, so much fun.


I can't think of a better way to celebrate S.A.D.. Thanks honey for the good times, I love you!

Panorama

We took this panorama picture a few weeks ago on our hike to Cape Horn. It was a rare sunny January day in the northwest. Hmm, haven't seen one of those days in a long time.

Snowed In

So all the fun snow we received on Saturday turned into a mess on Sunday and made it impossible to get out. Yes, we skipped church (incidentally a lot of church meetings were canceled in Utah as well due to snow so we weren't too far off). Evidently, so did everyone else that lives out here in the sticks with us. It's strange because most of our ward lives in town and doesn't get snow, just rain. I am sure that they think we are all complete wusses. Our road is almost impossible to drive on with the foot of snow we got. The thought of a one mile trudge up the road to our house on my skis in a skirt after church didn't sound too appealing. We actually spent the day trying to dig ourselves out and thanks to my neighbors Reuben and Dave and their tractors, the road was drive-able by Sunday afternoon. There was still quite a bit of snow on the road and I had to use some of my long lost 4wd skills to get back up it on Monday, but it was oh so much fun :)

Bryan and the kids building a snow cave

Sunset

Alpenglow

My Monday project: dig out a tire track in our driveway so we could get up it. It was an awesome 2 hour upper body workout.

Winter Wonderland

Today Bryan and I lucked out. Lander had a 2.5 hour birthday party which left us with a bunch of free time to ourselves. Since it was pouring rain in the valley we decided that going for a bike ride was not on the "A" list of things to do. Slogging around in the rain on the bike is something that I personally am getting quite tired of. However, it was dumping snow at our house. After a more than precarious drive over to Landers friends house we headed up to a a dirt road by our house that is now covered in about 3 feet of snow. Donning our skis and snowshoes we headed out. It was perfect. The road is closed to motorized traffic during the winter (i.e. no stinky, noisy snowmobiles) and it was quiet and serene. I could have stayed out there for hours. Unfortunately, we only and about 90 minutes since we had to stop and help a bunch of people out who a) never learned how to drive in the snow, or b) think that mini-vans will go up the steepest, snowiest road in Washougal. It was a good time, and a really good work-out. If anyone ever wants to come up snowshoeing or XC skiing, give us a call.

Bryan ready to go

Me at our turnaround point

I love the winter, but the flowered skis give me warm thoughts

Our track in, it was pretty deep

When we picked up Lander this FJ Cruiser got stuck on the hill we had just come up and had to be towed by a 4 wheeler. No comment.