Back To The Rockies 14Jan23-19Jan23

With a nice storm pending I headed to Summit, despite it being MLK day weekend. A number of friends were there or inbound so I was ready to ski with them after a month near sea level. Wise? Arrived Sat PM, as did Matt DB, and DD and we met for a beer at ORB. Tasty 6th Anniversary hazy IPA. One & done... tomorrow is a ski day. We discussed NZ fishing a bit and notable was a gift from Matt to his Dad of 1500 new ties in a cool box. ORB was packed AF as it was a Jerry Day celebration with outdoor company booths and new brews.

Since I was stag, I did get to listen to loud music on the Nest Theater before retiring ~ Sweet Pill was awesome "live." There wasn't any new snow Sat night or Sun so I stayed at the Nest for some surprisingly close NFL Wild Card games... Bolts blew a great chance but the Lawrence comeback was amazing ~ Jags could be trouble. On Sun night-Mon we did get some snow and Steve & Richard and DaveS & I all met at Keystone for a day of shred. Good to see & ski with folks again. I picked up "Last Chance" on the way home.

I dined fine with Steve & Richard on a great meat loaf and fresh salad ~ always a bonus. I slept well with somewhat achy quads - given I haven't ridden a bike or skied in a month, especially up @ 10Kft. Tue was another dry day so I passed on the skiing. It's worth wondering why again I am growing out the 'stache, now an infant handlebar, but grooming and icicles are an issue.

Wednesday was epic... we'd laid a plan to hit Keystone no matter what happened as to snowfall overnight, but as we awoke, Keystone reported 10"! Keystone almost never wins the overnight but did on this occasion. DD & I and Steve & Richard met up with other of the "Minneapolis Mafia" like Scott & Glen at Mtn House Free Parking and snagged some early chairs... even the ski down to Montezuma (from the top of Peru) for the summit ride foretold of great snow and skiing ahead. We completely enjoyed runs all over Outback all morning... most often leaving fresh tracks in knee deep powder. The trees are just really good @ the Outback. The conditions were some of the best we've had in a couple years and it wasn't even crowded despite the KS "win." My fortune to ski with DD mid-wk was simply due to his needing to handle issues at his home here in Silverthorne. There were issues he managed but he was pleased to be able to catch the big fluff with us during a weekday. What a blast. I refused to hike to North Bowl but Bro Brown & DD were all about it. Everybody but me heads to their main homes tomorrow.

Kala's on the inbound... woohoo. I took care of a broken zipper on my Arcteryx ski jacket. One's just gotta have YouTube and be fearless. The main zip on my jacket broke off its loop & puller yesterday (yielding no good way to zip or unzip). I looked up the zipper product and got replacements on Amazon in the cart, but then thought "I have gear with this part # probably" and found some pieces I didn't mind debilitating. I first attempted to simply replace the missing loop and puller but doing so often destroys the loop ~ well, anyway, that's what I did, and it would not click down into place. So, my 2nd attempt was to pull the entire slide piece off of existing clothing and then find a way to get it on the ski jacket. YouTube again aided in showing the "hacks" to remove a slide from an existing zipper and put it on another one (one has to burn/clip off the stops). I found another piece of old North Face stuff sporting YKK 5VS zippers and extracted the slide in tact. I then hacked the #5 top "stops" and removed the old slide and installed my retrieved one. Some paracord to complete the pull and voila; it is as good as new.