No One In Wonderland 21Feb14

The new Kensho chair dropped me at 12.3K ft elevation on Peak 6 @ Breck. My new Liberties led the way. I took the ridge-line to and though the trees early since #6 wasn't open yesterday and the snow was fresh... then I had designs on steeper tera. I dropped lonely into Wonderland, dodging some wind-swept mank and rock outcroppings but caught piles of spindrift on the leeward sides and slid smiling through the trees. I looped that gnar all day with "my" lines being "the" lines, all 15K, nobody in Wonderland. I lost my glove to the wind on the selfie and had to ski an "inappropriate" line to retrieve it and I did once lose a ski on a hard stomp on hard stuff and cascaded down 100 yards... fortunately the loose ski mostly followed. Wind was up but it and the traverses were worth it. Colorado is so cool.

22Feb14 & 23Feb14...Follow up to looping gnar at Breck's #6 on Fri was two days at Keystone. Saturday was awful... I got there late on a cloudy, cold and windy weekend day and had to take the shuttle from north lot... wasted time in the bus and on the mtn as the new snow was nil, the weather was crap and the base was crusty. I took 3 runs and went home. Sunday was sublime however with Keystone being the weekend snow winner at a reported 6 inches overnight and sun shining and 24 degrees on my back. I went early to get a real River Run parking spot then looped Outback hiking to North Bowl for multiple runs in 6-10" of fresh off a nice steep cornice. Caught some stuff on Dercum like Cat Dancer too. Colorado is so cool.

Slow But Satisfying 19Feb14

The PT was chilly but calm this morning as I ventured upstream from Nature Center parking @ 9:15am. The 2nd and 3rd weir-formed holes yielded some rainbows on blue wire & peacock herl Ninja-like midge and the blue Nothing Subtle midge. The nice hookjaw 19" fish here was one of 'em. Didn't catch anything on ObiJuan worm (weight) or Cheeseman Emerger. I was 2nd person there but it ultimately filled up and I missed having a go at two favorite spots. Fish were in the tailouts of deeper holes. I moved up to Valco after lunch but it was crowded too and I didn't fish long and did nothing but review the structural changes/additions, which seem almost complete. Weather was decent in the PM and I am looking forward to the inbound snowstorm (but not the raging winds).

Shucked Up BWO Emerger 02Feb14

I studied Jim Cannon's use of snowshoe hare and Richard Strolis's "shucked up emerger" stuff and created a BWO emerger pretty close to Strolis's with a few twists. I'm hoping this new fly in the box will bridge the cycle from the RS2 emerger (which is usually submerged for me) and the BWO duns. It's to be fished in the film and while I have CDC-based BWO emergers created last year, I'm needing one to get dry more quickly, hence the snowshoe hare. Ingredients... olive thread on Klinkhammer hook, 6-8 strands amber Z-Lon trailing shuck, olive goose biot abdomen, olive ostrich herl abdominal collar, partridge hen legs, aligned snowshoe hare foot "wing," olive BWO superfine dubbed thorax. I'm hoping there'll be a lot of swishy stuff (partridge legs and ostrich) hanging down in the water to be attractive. Again I goofed up the background.

Documenting the Elite 31Jan14

Who knew documentaries and elite flyers had come so far. Kala and I were hunkered down at the condo under two feet of snow when I wasn't skiing and caught up with some documentaries. We sought elite human situations on the planet and found three good documentaries worth seeing. The 1st is Birdmen; less than 40 people on the planet dawn birdsuits and do proximity flying at over 100mph... unbelievable. I had no idea we'd come this far. The 2nd is Jiro Dreams of Sushi; Jiro is a sushi master with the most expensive restaurant in the world - 30K Yen for one meal with Jiro. The 3rd is Somm; there are less than 200 master sommeliers in the world, a level achieved only upon passing a grueling test of wine history, regions and tasting. My net is that the humans are amazing and many documentaries have become very good. These are all on NetFlix Enjoy.

 

RoboBWO 28Jan14

I'm making progress on the hackle stacker technique. Here's my goose biot body, ice mix thorax, BWO which I call RoboBWO. Olive thread on #101, with medium dun hackle fiber tail and hackle and olive + peacock ice dubbed thorax. I tied some with floss bodies too. These will be my springtime BWOs... hope the ice flash thorax is an attraction not deterrent, but confidence is good as last year it worked OK in the caddis. Sorry for the weird changing background, I forgot to put up the backdrop.

Perfectarita 26Jan14

Many iterations are often required to devise optimal solutions. I've adjusted margarita contents and assembly nearly every batch, at least in small increments. The work continued from Phoenix, to the Baja, to the Yucatan to Colorado. While my most recent prior stop stood a 5 year test of time, today I arrived on an entirely different plane. Today I built some Perfectaritas for Kala and me; these were inspired by a quest for heat in the cocktail and some chilies in the crisper. Simple but so excellent... 1 part lime juice (3 nice limes make 1/3 cup for a double batch), 1 part Cointreau, 2 parts Hornitas Plata (Patron Silver would be fine), 1 TBsp of agave syrup, and the juice of one Serrano pepper... yep. Halve and squeeze limes first into shaker then use one lime rind to rim the glasses and dip them into a salt mine, double the mix with Cointreau and then double that mix silver tequila; top it off with the sugar. Mix with a big spoon. The key is getting juice from a Serrano. Prep Serrano(s) by cutting off stem and slicing full length in half and removing all pith and seed material. Might need to cut these halves in half lengthwise for next step, depending on spoon size. Place peppers skin side up on the big spoon and then crush down on them evenly but completely (with another spoon or muddler handle or whatever) without pulverizing them... see the juice flow out (it might get sucked back into the pepper some, no worries). Once all pepper parts have been crushed into the spoon, put all the parts and the spoon itself into the mix; stir and steep and then remove the pepper chunks. Shake well and serve over ice in the salted glasses. Enjoy the stellar, lip-smackin' sweet, hot, acid.

Tailwater Midge Emergers 25Jan14

I'm nearly done topping off the tailwater midge box. Here are the favorites  for springtime: (L to R) 1) Dave's olive green vinyl KF Flasher (olive thread on 2487, olive vinyl rib with XS copper wire overwrap, 2 or 4 strands Krystal Flash wings, olive superfine dubbed thorax), 2) Coffin's Smethurst Midge Variant (rusty brown thread on 2488H, stripped peacock herl body finished with Sally Hansen's Hard as Nails, olive Krystal Flash wings, thorax dubbing of mostly grizzly hackle underfur but some peacock herl fuzz from stripping process and brown superfine, tied both with and without mercury glass bead), 3) Dorsey's mercury bead head, flashback black beauty, 4) Dave's red glass bead head mojo midge emerger (red glass bead and black thread on 2487 with XS copper wire overwrap, 50% of a strand (4 threads and flash) of Madeira Glamour as wing, thorax dubbing of black superfine mixed with black peacock ice) 5) Craven's olive JuJu midge. Still need to tie some cream stuff but the olive, black and browns are done and I have plenty of red.