That drug is snow, and my paraphernalia are pairs of rockered, K2 Sidekick skis and Scarpa Shaka boots. For the last time this ski season, I let the click of my boots locking into my ski bindings waft through my nose and circulate down into my lungs so as to initiate that high I constantly crave. I felt my chest warming and expanding with every step up towards the top of my run. And finally, at the height of my high, my legs went numb, and all my thoughts exploded like fireworks that lit up my eyes and left only a S-shaped track as physical evidence of my indulgence.
For the last block break of freshman year, most CC students embraced the emergence of the spring sun by rock climbing in Indian Creek, white-water rafting on the San Juan River, or sand sledding at the Sand Dunes. In my mind, though, there was still plenty of snow on New York Mountain for one last multi-day backountry ski trip. With that in mind six friends and I used the credit four of us had received from our failed attempt to stay at and ski out of Hidden Treasure Yurt during 5th block break with CC's Outdoor Recreation Club (check that story out, here!). Since I was in Serbia for the majority of 7th block, I in no way was involved in the planning (very unlike me, I know). Before I left for Serbia, I said to my friend Kaitlyn, "I expect to come back, put my skis and pack in someone's car, and go skiing without having to figure out any details. That's your job."She succeeded in everything but the simplest thing: making sure that someone was planning to pick me up from Loomis, my dorm building. I sat in the Loomis lobby for an hour calling everyone on my trip with little success in responses until finally I was told Jarod, one of the drivers, had gotten lost on the 2 minute drive from his dorm to mine. How? I have no idea. Regardless, at 5 PM on Wednesday, we drove to Alicia's house in Denver where her parents sent us all into pasta and chocolate cake-induced comas before leaving at 4:30 AM for Eagle, Colorado.
From the trailhead in Sylvan Lake State Park, the skin up to the yurt was six miles, four of which are road-grade before reaching the 'town' of Fulford (this town is only accessible by snowmobile in the winter and has about four houses). During the first four miles, the sun beat down on our backs, and reflected off the snow at our faces. My six friends and I trekked up with ease, laughing in disbelief that we were covered in sweat in t-shirts while skiing from the heat. When we stopped for lunch, the creativity CC fosters came out in the crazy tortilla-sandwich fillings some people chose. And when I say creativity, I mean putting every ingredient we have for sandwiches, inside the tortilla. So basically people ended up with PB&J, summer sausage, cheddar cheese, and Nutella sandwiches. At that moment, I knew I had to cook or at least play an integral part in cooking meals. I will never settle for Elf spaghetti.
At one point, my friend Xan went to dip a piece of tortilla he had already taken a bite out of in the Nutella. A centimeter before the tortilla touched the chocolate-hazelnut god-sent, I screamed, "XAN NO DOUBLE DIPPING!" I maintained a straight, stern face until Xan was just about fully hidden in his turtle shell. I ripped the facade away and started cracking up, whereupon the entire group collectively sighed in relief. "God I thought you were serious," Xan said. "I knew you couldn't actually get that mad." So for the rest of the trip, people would randomly yell "NO DOUBLE DIPPING GUYS!" It was even used as an album title on Facebook. Nothing is more legit than Facebook official.The ease and laughter of the first four miles quickly ceased after passing through Fulford. The trail from Fulford splits into three, all of which are unmarked and difficult to decipher. After spending an hour prodding through each with too-heavy packs, we just wanted to light the fireplace and curl up in our sleeping bags at the yurt. On one hand, we were thankfully our educated guess was correct. On the other hand, we wished we had never skinned those two miles and 1,000+ vertical gain. We switchbacked on steep paths through a thick forest of Aspen trees, all of which were naturally engraved with illuminati eyes that seemed to be staring at us tumble to our near-physical defeat. At the five mile mark, we transitioned from spiny Aspens to bushy conifers holding the last piles of snow of the season. Our packs felt like cinder blocks and legs like melted Jell-O. With every step I would pray for Jaqueline, who was about 30 feet in front of me to yell "Land-ho!" or some type of sign of success. Just as I thought I was going to collapse, I heard the songbird sing. I skinned at what felt (but definitely wasn't) a sprinter's pace, threw my pack down on the porch, and collapsed on my bed.
The next morning, after coffee, black tea, eggs and bacon (with Sriracha and Cholula of course!), and a quick yoga session to wake up dead legs, we skinned north for twenty minutes on an established trail, then headed up east up a much steeper grade until we reached treeline. We didn't have a plan from there before hand, but what do you expect, we're college kids! As soon as the pines disappeared and I caught sight of the first false summit of New York Mountain, I knew I was summitting. I had fresh legs and zero desire to ski the crusted slush in the trees the sun had yet to soften. I would've gone alone for all I care since the avalanche danger on our (the west facing) side of NY Mountain was close to zero. On the other side, though, was a cornice that extended at least 25 feet runs along the entirety of ridgeline up to the summit. With the amount of wind the summit gets, I bet if I had tapped it with my pole it would've broken and caused a small avalanche on the east face of the ridge.
The west face of NY Mountain at this time of year is by no means run-of-the-year material. Wind blown divots and hard pack make for a chattery, technique driven ski down to treeline. We didn't expect much else and didn't really care much either since we were still enamored by the expanse of Colorado mountain ranges surrounding us for the next two days. Right above treeline was a six foot drop Arden and I had scouted on the way up. Arden launches off of anything so I knew it'd be perfect for the both of us. About 20 yards above the drop, Jarod, Arden and Xan all drove their poles into the snow to get speed. From my point of view then, the drop was extremely abrupt and the landing looked as if it would shatter my knees. Though it didn't shatter his knee, Arden did bite through the tip of his tongue. I'll do it on a powder day sometime.
Once in the trees, the top layer of snow had turned to soft slush through which we made tight, quick turns. During each of our four laps in the trees, I kept finding little mounds and lips off which to jump, confident that I wouldn't hit a tree upon landing. Looking back, the combination of the intensity with which I approached my technique and the giddy enthusiasm with which I approached most everything else was something quite special that I think the blend of warm weather, great friends and skiing brings about.
When we got back to the yurt, we proceed to take a million more semi-pornographic pictures and then got down to business to find more firewood. The sign inside said the firewood was under a tarp under the porch. Okay, fine in the summer, but when there is four feet of icy, crusty snow blocking any entrance to below the porch, it's kind of an issue. Thankfully a requirement for any backcountry skiing are shovels, so, most of us only with shirts and underwear on at this point, we started digging. It was kind of like digging someone out of an avalanche because one of us would shovel/hack at ice until we were too tired, then switch. Finally, when there was a hole just big enough to fit a person, we stopped and silently nose-gosed to see who would venture down into the abyss. Since I was one of the smallest, I volunteered. I went back inside, put snowpants, my shell, a headlamp and my ski boots on, grabbed my shovel and ice axe, and crawled into the darkness.
I found the tarp, but the edges were also under two feet of snow and completely frozen to the ground. Great. So for the next twenty minutes, I sat hunched over switching off between chipping away at ice with my axe and shoveling the shards that had hit me in the face upon breaking out of the way. The longer I worked, the more aggressive my swings got out of pure anger at the people who thought it was a good idea to keep all the fire wood in the winter under the yurt. I broke a small piece of the tarp free from the ice and managed to stick my arms through the 1/2' x 1 1/2' hole and grab a log. Oh, but of course the log was too big to fit through the hole. So, another ten minutes of now-vicious axing and I finally yelled up to Kaitlyn in between heavy breaths to come grab the logs.While I was doing this, Xan and Alicia were making up songs and guitar chords about my adventures. According to Xan (even though it's totally true), I was making an alliance with the sasquatch that lived under the yurt. Turns out he was the one that, once I got a big enough hole, handed me the logs. At one point in the video of Xan singing, you can hear Alicia say in a worried whimper, "Guys, we haven't heard anything from Liz in a while...I hope she's okay." Yes Alicia, I'm fine. Furious, but fine and ready for someone else to chop and build a fire with the wood I spent a half an hour getting.
The rest of the night I was mom. I made sure all of my little ducklings ate plenty of pasta, had the proper amount of hard cider, beer and whiskey, and got tucked into their sleeping bags with a warm fire still blazing. I haven't played mom since high school, and trust me, I had a blast watching these goons prance around a tiny yurt.
The spring skiing-must out of Hidden Treasure Yurt is White Quail Gulch. The gulch is prone to avalanches the rest of the year, but with the more stable snowpack and shorter cornices in the spring, the extreme conditions are minimized. We skinned up on Saturday morning to the saddle at the top of the gulch that overlooked the same valley as the New York Mountain summit, hopped off a baby cornice, and swung our turns around the left and right sides of the half-pipe-like gulch. I went first, set the left boundary and skied about 20 yards further down than we had agreed on. The snow was just too consistently soft for my skis to ever want me to stop. They're part of my addiction, so I had to listen.
All the snow below treeline was crust over dust, so we called it a day at 2 and celebrated our last epic run with more beers, hard cider, and whiskey, and Cards Against Humanity. Cards Against Humanity, if you don't know, is like Apples to Apples but incredibly politically incorrect. For the prompt that said what did Michael Jackson think about before he died, Kaitlyn put down children with ass cancer. Yeah, it's that politically incorrect, and many times worse. I'm honestly not even comfortable putting in my blog what my pride and joy of all time at Cards Against Humanity is. It's just too bad. But so good. And would've been equally as great as children with ass cancer to wrap up yet another wonderful block break.The next morning, we flew down the first 2 miles we trudged so slowly up on the skin out. Some parts were pretty sketchy since they were steep, in tight trees, and complete sheets of ice. Obviously that thought didn't occur to me until later, because I straight-lined most of the way down. Once we got to Fulford, we had to put skins back on for what Kaitlyn called a "5, 10 minute skin max." 5, 10 minutes my ass. Even though 30 minutes of skinning on a very low grade slope is by no means a difficult task, the mental challenge of just wanting to get to the car now that we left the yurt was and always is the biggest obstacle for me. Once the slope angled downward, I threw off my skins expecting to fly down the rest. Life is just never that easy though, oh no. Because of the slushy snow, my skis stuck to the snow, so I ended up pushing and skate-skiing most of the way. Again, it really wasn't that physically challenging, but the car was calling my name so loud.
Blueberry, Blackberry, Rhubarb Pie
Adapted from Call Me Fudge
1 pie crust
1 1/3 cup granulated sugar
4 tbsp cornstartch
2 cup rhubarb, chopped
1 1/2 cup blueberries
1 1/2 cup blackberries
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup oatmeal
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp butter, cold and cubed
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Mix together sugar, cornstarch, rhubarb, berries, lemon, cinnamon and nutmeg. Pour in pre-prepared pie crusts (uncooked).
3. In another both combine brown sugar and oatmeal. Mix in cold butter so that the mixture resembles a crumble. Distribute evenly over top of the pie.
4. Cover the edges of the pie in tinfoil so it doesn't burn. Cook for 50 minutes to 1 hour at 425 degrees F or until the filling is set. Let cool for 10 minutes.
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