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.

Stay classy, Colorado

Colorado is a beautiful place, but there's not much snow there at the moment, leading residents to visit Canada or someplace....or maybe Utah:

We feel bad for Colorado. One of our dear friends moved there, but he can always visit Utah to reacquaint himself with the fluff. Here he is, saying hello to an old friend.

When asked by a fellow tourer we encountered where he skis in Colorado, our friend exclaimed "Utah," to which the tourer nodded in agreement.

And boy was it hammering:

So Utah's doing all right, but its still early season:

Utah is known for the "greatest snow on earth" but its a little known fact that it also has the greatest brush on earth. Really, this shot skied remarkably well....

But coverage on the whole was good. Check the contrast in turns. Mine's the middle one.

Low-angle rooster tails all the way to work---can't do that in the CO front.

Lone Grizzly

I made this stupid video by holding my point-and-shoot camera between my fingers and my ski pole. The terrain was low angle south facing slopes in Grizzly Gulch, so the avalanche danger was low. There was a few inches of powder in the afternoon, after a early day at work. It was a fantastic day. A great little session by myself, fiddling with a camera while skiing. Obviously people do these videos much better with the GoPros, but whatev. And I clearly need to hold the camera more upright while descending, but again, this is amateur hour.

Anyway, the whole point of this exercise was to portray what a day of touring in the mountains feels like. I hope you enjoy:

Music credit: (1) Breakbot---Baby I'm Yours, and (2) Steve Earl---Johnny Come Lately

And I leave you with this:

The manner of mountains in times of neglect

Lots of hiking in the mountains.

Since late June I've logged 200k of vertical towards my arbitrary goal, mostly from running/hiking in the mountains. So I'm on track for logging the 365k in a year, but I'm actually closer to a half-million, but we will see how that goes as Winter arrives...

The mountains in a neglected season: As a creature of habit I usually only visit the mountains during choice times, but my arbitrary goal is leading me to explore and observe natural environs in all conditions, being adaptable and attuned to wonderful surprises everywhere. Mud and rocks, snow and slush, half-frozen in-betweens. Wet boots.

Kessler Peak Fog.

White Pine dusted white.

The first big dump of the season put nearly 4 feet of powder over mostly dry ground this last weekend.

And there you have it.

The Joy of Marginal Gains

The Pheifferhorn: parking lot to summit in 1:33:55. Previous best time: 1:38---about a 4% improvement over a month of training. First off, that time is not going to win any medals, given the known record time is around 1:05---about 40% faster than my best.

No matter. I spent all Summer mountain running in the Wasatch with one expectation: cover a lot of cool terrain with the engine running high. Over the course of the whole year I guess my top sustainable split time on mountain terrain improved about 20%. My main proving ground for speed is Wire Peak, where I was first clocking in times around 42 minutes, then inching down to a sub 35-minute time recently: exactly 20% improvement.

Knowing how marginal gains work, I bet another season of directed training at the same effort will yield 10% better time, perhaps less. That would net a 1:25min Pheifferhorn time, or a 31.5 Wire Peak time. Time will tell.

The Year of the Hike

I don't know where the idea got started, sort of organically I Guess, but after a few hikes here and there, we got some momentum.

 It started with a trip to Dog Lake on Father's Day, followed quickly by a trip to Willow Lake:

And then a few fishing trips to Cathryn Lake:

And then it really got going with hiking the White- and Red-Pine drainages with their onerous 2400 vert each. With new jobs and all the pressures that come, we wanted to be anti-goal this year. Then ironically we made our hiking into a goal to visit all the major lake drainages of the Central Wasatch. We needed Desolation, Broads fork, and Maybird to finish off the list....

We did Maybird this weekend to check the last box.

This was cause for celebration:

Maybird may be the most majestic with the Phiferhorn looming over the diminutive lakes.

Imogen was psyched seeing the Phiferhorn---she knew its legend, but had not seen it up close till now.

Our girl is getting big. Most of the lakes in the Wasatch require 2000+ feet to achieve in 3-5 miles. Hauling a 35 lb toddler with water, food, diapers, and clothing was onerous. This hiking adventure will not be repeated next year since we have not found a way to stop her from growing.

And our final tour of the Wasatch Lakes was punctuated by the yellow aspen leaves of Fall. The snow will fly soon and this year's hiking adventures will end. Desert Season will start soon and new touchstones will have to be felt out, milestones reached. Just off the top of my head, I think Imogen needs to see some Anasazi ruins and petroglyphs, or maybe ruins from other pioneers of the desert who are longer living but must be imagined, specifically in the mind of a little girl.