Whistle Pig 27Feb16

Kala and I attended the "ribbon cutting" at the Whistle Pig Brewery - really this is just day 2 of an extended opening celebration. It's a pretty decent venue with outdoor deck, nice big bar and a real in-house kitchen. We had the Session IPA and Mosaic IPA; it was decent but a bit masked by the forward malt. We also tried the Red, which was flat. The burger and fries were outstanding. They were having opening WE blues with the tapping system which limited what we could taste a bit. Weird thing is that we sat next to Keith at the bar, he's the brewmaster at Nano 108, who talked our ear off, and encouraged us to get over there. Whistle Pig, as Greg reminded me, is homage to the marmot, who holds this as his alternate name, a righteous one I've heard often above treeline... still, a bit of an odd name IMO.

Rod Before Ride 26Feb16

I managed to get to the PT for some late winter rainbows. I just went for the AM; while the water clarity is improving and the weather was nice, the water is still cold above Valco and the pace was still pretty slow. I saw only a couple fish as I moved upstream so didn't do well sight fishing. Yet, I caught some smallish ones like this one, on the red blood midge. I didn't really see any redds being built as yet but expect that soon. There were some grey-brown midges hatching. Afterward I rode a ~15mi loop and then hit Old Chicago to watch a lacrosse game and enjoy some New Belgium Citrtadellic (tangerine IPA) - nice Friday.

Ok, the embarrassing truth is that I yet again crunched an x bike into the garage. My Wilier is toast. I took off my bike rack Thu to drag the camper home and repair it all for the coming season. That part was done fine but I used the car top bike rack and did not follow protocal and bury the garage door remote. Grrr. I have a new Fuji frame coming which will accept all the componentry from my current wasted bike... every time I do this I get a bit cheaper frame, since I don't deserve better. Sheesh.

Breck Black Belt & Other Stuff 23Feb16

I was able to catch a couple recent storms over Summit - first a 5"er at Keystone which was like pushing mashed potatoes after the sun came out, then some XCD in Eagles Nest Wilderness, then today a 7"er at Breck. I earned the "Black Belt" and "Local's Secret" by skiing the righteous lifts: Chair 6, Imperial, Kensho and T-Bar. Snow was decent but as usual at Breck, a bit overstated. Still, I found the stashes and fresh tracks off T-Bar and Kensho. On the way to Broken Compass ~2pm I knew I needed to eat beforehand and found a very good place in N Breck called SoupzOn. It was tiny and sold good soups and breads and is very right priced... try this independent shop after skiing. My BC effort the day prior was later in the afternoon but I was much more effective on the tiny ups - in shadows my stick was good but in sunshine the slop was slippery on the new boards - still working it.

11 Mile & Brew Tour 14Feb16

Greg and I hit 11 Mile Canyon of the South Platte on Valentine's Day - yeah, we'd celebrated with our wonderful brides on the day prior. It was pretty nice in the AM, arriving at 9:30am, with sun and 40° or warmer but we still bundled. The AM was super slow and I never caught a thing and returned to the car. Greg persisted and landed four nice 'bows (he'll have to submit the pics for those)Submitted!!!,
from 12:30-1:30pm, around the corner and downstream of the last bridge. Red #22 top secret midge was his most productive weapon. There was clear evidence of the cutthroats and rainbows building spawning beds but we didn't see fish on them yet. We left after lunch and a growler of Greg-O-Pliny (very tasty) when the wind and clouds blew in. We followed the fishing with an IPA brew tour of COS starting at the Smiling Toad and tasting a couple of their four IPAs. The Toad is a salt of the earth, hard to find brewery in the backwater Cheyenne area - it wasn't crowded but there were 15 people. We moved into town and found the Triple S brewery. Here we could not stomach the IPA and the only worthy beer was the Porter. No one was there but the location, site, marketing, furnishings, paintings, and the like were nice - I can not see this place surviving at their burn rate unless they modify their brews. We moved to Brewer's where the best new to us was Elevated IPA from La Cumbre (Albuquerque) - super west coast citrusy; there were a couple folks there. We capped the evening at Storybook where we enjoyed a happening crowd, several dogs and both the Gnomish and Beer Wars. Yeah, the gaudy clad waitress photo-bombed our selfie.

Movin' On Out for XCD 04Feb16

I sucked immensely yesterday on the new XCD (cross country downhill) gear. I knew I needed downhill practice so I went to Keystone to run Schoolmarm and get my tele turns back. Unfortunately the day was 4° and overcast and the groomers were slick - I couldn't find any pow' on slopes I could navigate in my gear. I set off down from the gondola and was pretty sketchy the entire 3.5 miles + 2200 ft. Plus I was cold. My turns sucked and I biffed plenty. It was disappointing that my years of tele skiing didn't just return in a flash... but I hope it was the conditions mainly and the new gear some. Little to no resistance on the binding toe makes driving the ski into the snow a challenge; it feels slippery and hard to center my balance - especially when its cold hardpack. With a tele binding I could've driven the ski much harder. Today was much better - on the trail as I was able to ski out as wanted on broken trail snow and return with some forays into the powder, with turns. I went out from Buffalo Cabin TH and back for just several miles but my phone (and Strava with it) died so no evidence or pics but this starting shot. The weather was great and the gear was a blast this time... whew.

Three Inch Icicle & Explaining Epic 02Feb16

The dumpers on Colorado turned to cold today. 9° is chilly but at least there was no wind. I prepared for cold this season with some new BD Guide gloves - a smidge stiff from all the insulation but recommended if you don't like mittens, like me. Those Leki attachments are tech I chose to interface with my poles years ago after I suffered a skiers thumb sprain for 6 weeks - they'll release the pole under undue pressure. I chose to not go to Vail for the deepest stuff and hit my local Keystone stashes today. It started nice enough in the Outback woods and bowls - found plenty of untracked areas but the book was right at 6" at Keystone - cover was just that unless I found multi-day misses by prior skiers. That's cool, I lapped Cat Dancer to exhaustion a bit. It was still awesome though the chill built a 3" icicle on my stash - I didn't notice but some younger lift-mates took to comment and asked "how?" - I mentioned "I breathe." At Baker's I met a guy at the bar who was marking off a bucket list item to spend a season in CO. He was like 70 and divorced but the cool part is that he and his daughters live in Liberty, PA and they were previously ski instructors at Oregon Hill, where I first ever skied; small world. Regarding bucket list items and why go epic... here on my EpicMix screenshot it's shown - not the days or the vert but the fact that I hit 4 different mountains on consecutive days skiing. Colorado is so cool.