The Flail

Chute skiing elegance: choked up on the poles, with ice axe in hand, flail arms and legs in all different directions.

Let's break it down into an action sequence:

Its my dance cycle.

(photo credit for above 3 ski pics: Eric Dacus)

The call of the chukar down the coulee

When I was young I used to hunt pheasant, quail, and chukar. I downed many a pheasant and quail, but the chukar always eluded me. Chukars are smarter. You hear them rustling in the bush, but they don't flush easily. They draw you in, you follow their movements as they descend off the plateaus and down the ravines, hoping they'll flush eventually. But before you notice, you're in the bottom of a scrubby coulee. Skunked by their siren call, and you gotta hike all the way back out.

We weren't hunting chukar today, but figuratively they were calling us down the coulee, lap after lap of light dust powder on facet crunch.



 And we had to hike all the way back out. That's as far as the metaphor goes. More fatigued every time, but we didn't mind.

The Five-Thousand-Foot Trench

Bell's Canyon is a quiet place, far away from the crowds of Winter.

Up to two feet of new snow, mostly at the lower- and mid-elevations, kept the world out.

Peering into Coalpit from upper Bell's was another world---frozen cold, quiet, barely a gust of wind.

All the way up 5000 feet. Digging the trench. 

Slowly.