Harvesting Corn, Adventure & Small Humans

Many good things have happened over the last month, many challenging.  And I can sense the tide settling down just the slightest, which is great because life is about to get a whole lot wilder in the next year!  But before we cut to the chase, perhaps a short recap of the end of the Skimo season and the beginning of whole other kind of season.

When I last checked in I was in the middle of a solo, man living out of a Honda Toaster, skimo race bender taking me from the Wasatch to the tippy top of Mount Crested Butte.  In between was an awesome mix of catching up with old friends, recruiting for RIDGE, and creating some amazing sponsorship relationships with Dynafit and Camp/Cassin.  I’m still humbled that I’ll get to race and adventure next year with healthy support from two of the best hard goods companies in the world.  Well, if you read the last post, you know I was ever so anxiously waiting to see if a continued week of tapering, a whole season of smashing myself, and a week of trying to bump up into the high country would work out in my favor for a personal best at US Ski Mountaineering National Championships.  Good news, it did!  I had pretty exceptional sensations during the whole race and really tried to save myself from going too deep in order to finish strong.  I definitely felt a little rusty on the whole first climb and it was exceptionally icy and miserable.  However, the racy skiing conditions and added technical via ferrata along the Guide’s Ridge played to my favor and I managed to find myself following very few ski marks in the dusting of new snow that fell over night.  Incredibly I came through the finish line in fourth place, just off the podium, and Jon Gaston who has won pretty much every event this year (though not this one, Max Tam got him in the final) was not in his street clothes all ready!  This was a huge success for me and left me feeling incredibly thankful and accomplished for sticking with it and coming to the realization that I can (almost) keep up with the fastest in the nation.  After a celebratory beer or two, Dave Hoffman, my partner from the previous weekend and an all around great athlete and I lined up for the technical teams race Sunday, which was my birthday.  It was another blue bird day and there wasn’t much I’d rather be doing than moving around on the snow and climbing mountains in such a beautiful place.   We had a pretty good race together and I was anxious to hit the road and get home to the wife and the real life.  Although I will admit it was awful hard to drive by the turnoff to Moab…

Well fortunately after one whole week of the real life, it was back to Utah for an instant immersion into spring.  Jen and I had the wonderful pleasure of getting to ride and camp with The Sir Joelsy for the better part of a week in and around Gooseberry Mesa in St. George, Utah.  We had exceptional weather and after a few years of making this the spring destination, we were able to link some really enjoyable loops that weren’t too hard on Joel’s recently splintered metatarsal (poor guy broke his hand while cleaning his bike for the big trip).  We also met up with the Couser’s and French’s in Zion for a day of canyoneering down Mystic Canyon.  It was quite comical hearing that Jen, who had never rappelled before, ever, had spent all evening googling and researching how to rappel, canyoneering, Mystic Canyon and had fitful dreams of falling to her death.  Well, we were in good hands and the six of us had a splendid day hiking, rappelling, and plunging into cold pools making our way down to the Narrows of Zion.  Such a fortunate little treat amidst our spring break.

(photo courtesy of Noah Couser Photography– readying to rappel down into the Narrows)

After a week of sun and bliss, we made it back to Flathead just in time for a good ol’ fashioned dreary spring day.  A classic welcome home present from this little slice of heaven.  I dove headlong back into working at the FD and coaching at RIDGE, and had the first world challenges of deciding whether I should be putting in a little refresher training block for the Shedhorn Ski Mountaineering Race at Big Sky, or get my butt into riding shape.  Per usual I tried to balance both, which really just short ends both sides, but heck, it’s more fun.  The Shedhorn served up a 9000′ race course complete with fixed roped climbing, thousands of feet of steep bootpacking, ripping down the Big Couloir and Three Forks (two double black d chutes that are way radder than anything I’ve raced on in the states), filling rattling descents from 11,000′, and winds averaging 57 mph gusting to 89 along a high exposed ridge.  Needless to say, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Ski Patrol of Big Sky organized and put this race on under their own banner with permission from Big Sky Ski Area, there’s no way this thing would be as epic as it was.  Just over 4 hours of racing up and over the summit twice in crazy weather left everyone with an experience to write home about, or at least to blog about.  I felt surprisingly great and battled with J. Marshall Thompson for second (ultimately falling to third) while Tom Goth took home the W.  Can’t wait for this one to blow up next year.  It will not disappoint.  It’s basically the Rut, but so much more fun considering we ski down chutes and bowls as opposed to trying to run down ridiculously steep choss and grass. Here’s a link to a cool promo vid the guys did for building stoke.

And finally, that brings us to the present.  Thursday David Steele and I set off after shift to go give a try at one of the peaks that I have stared at for decades dating back to when I worked as a wildland firefighter for the Swan Lake District after graduating high school.  My buddy Nerdig and I would gaze at the peaks all summer wishing we could ditch the chain saws and pulaskis and head for the ridges and summits of the Swan Range.  As I drove home from Big Sky last weekend dodging the 50-some deer along the highway, I decided this was the spring to climb and ski that bad boy.

(stumbled on to this easy traveling road after an hour of brush bashing under cursed breath, Swan Peak is dead center, skied off the summit to the sunny saddle just left of the summit)

True to Don Scharfe form, we were given beta that we’d be on the summit in approximately “3 hours”.  Wrong!!! It took us a solid three hours just to get the point of being able to take skis off our packs and start trudging over logs, creeks, and following massive grizzly prints through the snow.  That was still 4500′ below the summit as well, so needless to say we had some vert to gain.  My first glimpse of the summit turned the light bulb on that perhaps this day might be a little bigger than I suspected.  As we started scaling the peak we quickly donned ski crampons, which we both agreed are a true “game-changer”, as opposed to some other things in life that unnecessarily deem the same status (things like kale, alternative butter, no-glare lens coatings…etc).  Our approach brought us to a beautiful little elevated basin with this unbelievable sluice box that channeled directly to the peak.

(you’re in ski crampon territory now son!)

(there be the line, a diagonal, off camber fall line mix of powder, ice, and wind-board)

The going got really fun after we dug a pit a few hundred feet below the summit and decided that we would not be center punching this line today.  We clung closely to the rocky, fluted ridge line and were oh so tickled that we hadn’t decided to toss out the crampons and axe as ballast back at the car.  We scurried across a gully that had certain fall and die consequences and both of us came to life getting to put our sharpened skills and mental fortitude to the test.

The summit was as always rewarding, and quite chilly.  We fiddled around with some treats and snapped a couple quick photos and then swallowed our pride and down climbed back to a place we both felt comfortable with finally putting our skis on to use them as God intended as opposed to carrying them uphill like we had for the last 6 hours.  The ski was actually quite fun as it did serve up some delicious soft powder and some challenging firm crusty stuff.  From about a 1000′ below the summit, we skied soft, sun warmed powder sitting atop a firm base through the magnificent alpine bowl laying west of Swan’s summit.

We enjoyed our turns, and certainly were happy to have lugged skis up in order to ride them down, but we both agreed that the climb was the true gem of the day.

(David scrubbing some pow for a knee shot)

(Me enjoying the fruits while the tracks above show our route.  Bigger snow year could tempt a guy into some pretty wild lines on that back drop eh???)

The trip out was quite uneventful.  We found our shoes we had stashed in a tree, still managed to miss Mr. Grizzly, didn’t fall into any creeks, and found a much friendlier way back to the car.  It was a full day in the office, and I was glowing and continue to glow from it.  Although that could be because I forgot to wear sunscreen on the sunniest day of the year… ouch.

And home I went to my wife who also was glowing, though her glow is from the small child that she has been carrying for the last 13 weeks.

SAY WHAAAA???

Yep, we’re pregnant.  It’s wild, and more challenging that Swan Peak by any stretch of the imagination.  But I’m hoping the reward will be all the sweeter.  More on that later.  Cheers!

Parting Shot-

Jen taking the little one out fer a rip eh!