Copper Climb With Kala, Frisco Surprise With Mike & ORB 03Sep20-04Sep20

Kala and I rambled up to Copper on the rec path on a glorious day preceding the holiday weekend.

Michael Marinick came to Summit to visit his daughter and spent a day with me riding on our new trail system in the backyard. It was a blast and great to see Michael again. I was on the rigid MCR so got bounced around quite a bit - but Michael was riding an ancient CoMo himself so all's fair. Of course we hit ORB for lunch and IPAs afterward.

Kala & Phoebe - Awesome 31Aug20-02Sep20

Kala & I reconned the steep side of the Mayflower - Gold Hill loop on 31Aug20 (from Clinton Gulch); it was approved traverseable. Kala marked the entry to the downhill, sometimes deemed hard to find (not so much). We found the Clinton Gulch to Gold Hill route easily followed and easily climbed/descended - the cutoff Clinton to Mayflower via a trough path  was also approved, so we could just take one car on "loop day."

I caught visibly some dusting on the 10 Mile Range where we'd return, on my return from Vail Valley on 31Aug20.

The Phoebe Bridgers Visible X Red Rocks concert Tue night was spectacular. I have no idea if they were at Red Rocks or not, or even near there - images of the area were included but could've been green screened. Phoebe's done a lot of green screen recently so that might've been practice. No view of empty RR stands were ever panned into the shot. She started with Motion Sickness and then performed the Punisher album basically, in very sharp stead with the entire band. The sound from the ~90+min concert was completely superior - though some set changes included sounds like studio echoes to me. Where was Phoebe last night? Uh, who cares, it was excellent... especially on the Nest Theater built "exactly" for this purpose.

I recovered from concert euphoria on Wed AM with a plan to complete the Mayflower - Gold Hill loop with Kala. We did that on a glorious late summer day in the10 Mile range. This is an easy hike of <5mi with <1200ft vert, but with great views of multiple alpine areas, wildflowers in summer, snow in winter & spring and so on. Recommended. Of course we hit ORB on return, the poke tuna is awesome as are others. In The Steep DDH whatever (today Nelson and Citra)... Summit is the coolest.

UPDATE... The Visible X RedRocks Phoebe concert is now posted on YouTube for all. Recommended. I realize that the "stage" was built on the stands at Red Rocks now and that all was copacetic.In addition to Punisher, Bridgers played my fav boygenius song, Me & My Dog - but not as cleverly as at Fordham University. She finished with the brilliant The End Is Near and Scott Street. So good.

GR8 Day On The Gore - 2X Triple! 01Sep20

Wow, what some cooler weather can do. I jumped the divide among some dusted peaks - our first snows of the season - and dropped inrto Vail Valley for some fishing. Despite very (almost too) thin flows on Gore Ck today I was able to score a triple, twice over. In a bounty of ~20 fish on the Gore today I scored 6 rainbows, 2 cutthroat and the rest browns. The double cutties enabled a double triple - my first ever. Not only that but I caught the biggest rainbow I've had there @ 17" (some raptor previously had its tail) as well as another fat one, the biggest cutthroat @ 17" and a really nice male brown sporting pre-spawn colors @ 17" (weird image as he jumped from my hands on display). What a day! I caught a fall BWO hatch during which catching was most awesome on the #20 black DCEZWD40 and a #22 merc head RS2. The weighted PMD took some browns as did the #14 black & tan chubby. I caught two shooting under the bridge. Best day I've ever had on the Gore and it did not start that way, at Dawg Pk as I lost a nice 'bow making me think I'd missed a chance at a triple. I moved down to the West end of Vail but left pretty quickly as there aren't many good holes there. I started to score more and bigger fish at the Gore mouth section but did best above the bridge in the several holes there. The Gore is a bit of a fickle lady but when I align with her needs - woohoo.

Advanced Purple May Reign, Killers New Album, Frisco Bonus Deal, Going Premium On OpenSnow & Digital Streaming Update 30Aug20

As August wanes we finally are receiving weather in the Rockies. WooHoo, the smoke and fires are getting knocked down a bit. We're in Summit through the LDWE and PM showers have allowed some advancements and investigations. In anticipation of fall BWO action on the rivers I have tried to advance the rudimentary Purple May Reign BWO used last spring. Fall BWOs are smaller, say #20-#24 vs #18-#20 of spring, and I have begun to see them hatching in small bits. The Advanced Purple May Reign enjoys a new colored tail and thorax which better match the coloration of the fly overall, purple baby. Here's the recipe, tied on a TMC 2488H - you know how to do the rest...

The Killers just dropped a new album called Imploding The Mirage. With having heard Vampire Weekend's new stuff and collaborations, the Killers retooled and this album is better than the last by far IMO. They may miss guitarist Keuning who's dropped out but they scored Lindsay Buckingham for tracks - and there's a number more collaborationists who make the album keen. I like Blowback - seems like classic Killers. Worth a listen for sure, especially if accompanied by some Toppling Goliath brew (little deference to my Iowa friends).

I just scored the "Love Frisco" discount cards - with ORB on the list of spots to use it, how can I not do a 25% discount.

With DD's help and knowing Vail's new policies requiring me to reserve my ski days, I invested in the All Access versions of OpenSnow & OpenSummit. I need the modest additional powder visibility and I appreciate the new layers for smoke and temps in OpenSummit.

Finally, in the digital streaming realm, I am trialing Google's new YouTube Premium and Music Premium. Sure I eliminate ads but more importantly I can access a higher quality audio feed (still just 256Kbps AAC though) than with regular YouTube. It's OK but not life changing and I sure wish it were even better. Yet, the boys auditing my Nest Theater house sound were very satisfied with it using regular YouTube feeds. Hard to know yet whether the $11/mo for the modest change is valuable enough for me. More importantly is that I found the price paid artists for each song streamed, by Google, Spotify or whomever - man it takes a lot of plays to make money at $.0004 per play.

Hops Sensory Training With ORB 27Aug20

Kala & I attended the special Outer Range Brewing Hops Sensory Training offered to the 250 Summit Club members. It was an online zoom meeting with the Cleghorns (Lee is an ORB co-founder and is the master brewer and Emily, his wife, did administration during the meeting). It was excellent and a lot more fun and informative than we'd imagined it could be. I'd received a packet of 7 packets of hops prior to the training, along with my Golden Ticket allowing me and a +1 to enjoy a day of drinking & dining at ORB.

ORB is acknowledged as one of the very best in the country. They are especially expert in hazy IPAs which some call New England IPAs. Folks from all over the world come to Frisco to work with Lee on collaborations, which are canned and kegged for transport to home turf, and of course offered right at ORB, till they are gone. We are lucky to have them in Summit. DD and I joined the fairly exclusive Summit Club last December, and have enjoyed its benefits since - this new event was in lieu of a big party we'd expected in the fall hops-harvesting season but Covid 19 dampened everyones' spirits for that and this was an innovative alternative. Hosting the show was Lee Cleghorn and his wife Emily (I forget the name of the music guy but he's from ORB too). We started by learning about hops farming, production and the supply chain and a lot more about how ORB specifically behaves on selecting, contracting and using hops. Fascinating stuff including that ORB:

• Buys 42.5K pounds of hops annually in producing 5K barrels of beer - much higher % than most other brewers (given the focus on hazy IPAs). He contracts years in advance and selects hops after visiting cultivators; if you don;t, you get what's left over.
• Doesn't use much hops in the boil but uses lots at lower temps in a whirlpool and during dry hopping - which they do relatively early.
• Ignores IBUs and alpha acid levels in hops for the most part (AA ranges from 2%-25% and somewhat helps determine bitterness of beer) and depends on taste.
• Uses pelletized hops exclusively (as do most brewers) except for fresh hop creation where the cones themselves are used.
• ORB uses a lot of oats in their hazies; ORB primarily use British pale malts in most of their beers; ORB mostly cultivates and uses their own yeasts from originally British and American strains 

We then moved on to the crux of the meeting - hops sensory training. We cracked open our special packets of pellets and partook of the smell (not taste) by crushing pellets in our hands and releasing the essential oils captured within. The music guy gave us 1 minute per hops variety (where Kala and I smelled and discussed) and then Lee led a reveal of his sensory perception of the variety and provided other details on the strain. What's remarkable is how many of the beers I drink employ hops only  recently cultivated. Here are my "tasting" notes coupled with Lee's primary observations as well as some emblematic beers he's made with the varietal - I must say, I have been fortunate to have tasted almost all of these.

• Mosaic (2012 US) - manky trees, pine shrubs, blueberry-mango [Blocks of Light & Two Pound Tent]
• Wai-Ti (2011 New Zealand) - dirt, ginger, apricot, lime [Steezy & Drenched]
• *Talus/Experimental HBC 692 (2020 US) - chocolate, dried roses, citrus, sage [Valley Views]
• *Citra Cryo (2008 US/Yakima) - citrus, tropical flowers, grapefruit [In The Steep] - cryo means immediate immersion of hops into deep freeze and allows more essential oil per pellet ~ so much so in fact that Lee uses 50% less hops if he gets the cryo version
• Hallertau-Mittlefruh (pre-history/Germany) - herbal, earthy, spicy [many hazy-juicy IPAs use this also thier Kicker pilsner]
• Nelson Sauvin (New Zealand) - white wine, papaya (very high thyols in fermentation) [Wheelie Nelson & Future Of Parties]
• *Strata (2009) - pine, dank, strawberry

Tomorrow we vote on the 3 hops to be brewed into a Summit Club DIPA. What a gr8 time. 

UPDATE... The votes are in and my voting must've counted a lot as as you can see from the original post above, the 3 hops chosen were exactly my votes too!

 UPDATE 11Oct20... Tasting the Party Alone Together was awesome. One for the ages.

The Arkansas River Headwaters 27Aug20

I dropped into the Ark headwaters downstream from Leadville on a nice day, but after a storm yesterday that dirtied the water a bit. I fished upstream from the first big bridge crossing and was just the 2nd car there - the first car might've been there all night as it was covered in dew and he needed a jump. I caught a number of browns like those shown. I didn't see a lot of hopper sign or even other bug sign on the river and the floating top fly worked just once. I even decided to go nymphing exclusively late AM. Best flies were the BHDCEZWD40 in black and a peacock prince nymph. The area got pretty crowded around noon so I headed back to Summit for lunch and to meet up with Kala. A good, but not great, day... even Periodic Brewing in Leadville was closed - so a stop at ORB for a hazy & tuna poke with rice tots from Bird Cafe was in order; heck it's better anyway.

Tonnage @ Ten Mile Trashes Two Weight Tip 25Aug20

That's a lot of alliteration all. Smoke blew away by AM in Summit so I headed to 10 Mile Ck below Copper seeking another season triple. Didn't happen as I could not catch a brook or cutthroat and I even broke the tip off my 2 weight and had to hike back to the car. I did have a good morning of many fish @ both Copper and Officer's Gulch sections of 10 Mile. Chubbies brought 'em up and BH caddis and BHDCEZWD40s brought 'em in. I am awaiting some bigger water and bigger fish but Dog Days are tough so I'll take it. My new found rod making (and repairing) will be tested anew.

UPDATE 13Sep20... My now practiced rod building allowed me to repair my drc#1 with a new tip. No performance hit really - loving the 2 weight on smaller streams so I'm glad it's back in the quiver.