Get high, ski far

For Thanksgiving this year I joined Erik, Elspeth, and Emily in a quest to go find snow. We saw some good reports from West Yellowstone, but Elspeth in particular was not terribly excited to head back out to those trails, so she floated the idea of heading to the Winter Park/Granby area in Colorado instead. Even though it is further South, they are at a much higher elevation (9500+ ft) so there is fairly reliable early season snow.

As plans came together we decided to spend most of the week in Breckenridge where some of Emily's Uncle & Aunt own a condo they were willing to let us stay in. Even better they invited us to Thanksgiving and fed us and everything!

We made the trek out to Greeley, CO on Saturday. It had snowed heavily in Southern Minnesota and Iowa the night before (16 inches in some areas) and the roads were treacherous. We saw over a hundred cars in the ditch as we made our way south to I-80. After we hit the Nebraska border things cleared up though, and it was smooth sailing after that. A U of M ski team friend Graham Baird lives out in Greeley and put us up for the night. Then we only had a few hours of driving to Frisco where we were greeted by a bright and sunny day for our first ski. The trailhead was just over 9000' and it was apparent right away that this would take some getting used to. I've been at this high of elevation a couple times, but never for an extended period of time, and never with the goal of putting in many hours of endurance training. The snow cover was thin, but the trails were holding up well, and it was a wonderful day to ski in a t-shirt.

The Peninsula trails of Frisco Nordic

On the car trip there was some comment made about male bloggers posting pictures of half naked girls on their blogs (I don't remember why this was a topic of conversation, but it was a long car ride. We also read an entire used tractor catalog we found at a gas station in Nebraska) so I felt like I was pretty much required to put up this picture.

Snow, Mountains, partially clothed women, all the makings of a great ski trip

The town of Frisco with some mountains in the background

The Frisco Nordic Center with a nice backdrop

Skiing at Frisco

 The Frisco trails were fun and featured a long, sustained climb that was right on the edge between double pole and kick double pole range, so it was fun to try one of each and see how they compared.

The next day we went to check out the Breckenridge Nordic center. They had two areas of trail opened, but they weren't connected, so we skied the lower section in the morning and the upper section in the afternoon. The lower section only had about 3k of trails, which seems like a lot now that I've been making many loops of the 1.6k of snow available at Hyland.

The trails at Breckenridge Nordic, not a bad view

Breckenridge Nordic lower trails

The town of Breckenridge nestled in the valley

There were ridiculous houses right on the ski trails, and a steal at only $3 million!

The lower Breckenridge trails were pretty easy skiing and were well groomed. The upper trails, well they were a bit less friendly. The first day out there the grooming wasn't bad. The trail climbs rather steeply right from the parking area so I settled into a decent rhythm and climbed, and climbed, and climbed. Every time I thought I would get a break the trail would decide to start going up again. When I finally reached the top 30 minutes after starting I had climbed nearly 900', topping out at 10,890' of elevation. My legs were a bit shaky at this point, and the thin and somewhat icy snow made me a bit apprehensive to try the downhill with the small warning sign about very steep sections. I decided to ski around and climb it first to see what I would be getting myself into. When I got around to the bottom I decided that not trying that descent was an excellent decision. The hill drops 400' in a half mile, over 14% on average, and topping 30% for some sections near the bottom. Then there is a sharp right hand turn with no banking or warning at the bottom. Even in perfect snow conditions I would not want to try this descent, and I've tried some pretty crazy downhills. To put that 30% in perspective for midwest folks, the wall at the far end of the Hyland trail only hits 22%, so imagine going down that climb, but steeper, nearly 5x as long, and making a sharper turn at the bottom than what the Hyland hill has. Craziness!

All told in a 9 mile ski I climbed over 1500', about the same as a 30 mile rollerski at Afton.

The upper Breckenridge trails

Elevation Profile of an Upper Breckenridge ski

On Thanksgiving we got in a morning ski then headed to Conifer to join Emily's family for a Thanksgiving meal. After a little bit of trouble finding the house (which was actually cleverly disguised as a barn) we had a wonderful evening. It was snowing pretty heavily most of the evening and everything looked spectacular!

Friday morning we headed up towards Granby to ski at Devil's Thumb Ranch. There was more snow here than in Breckenridge, but they were still dealing with the fresh snowfall, so not all of their trails were open or groomed. I skied many of the trails that had only been rolled however, because they were fine for classic skiing and the groomed trails were mostly flat along the valley floor, while the not as well groomed trails climbed up the edges of the valley and were far more interesting. It was easier for my ego to handle being out of breath and needing frequent breaks if I was climbing vs. skiing flat, well groomed trails. I got a picture of a barn that reminded me of the very photogenic barn on a gravel road around Northfield.

Another photogenic barn

 Knowing that Saturday was our last day of skiing I pushed myself pretty hard on Friday. Plus there was only the one day to see as many of the Devil's Thumb trails as possible, so I had to cover as many as I could. I ended up with over 45km, my longest single day. That night we stayed at the YMCA Snow Mountain Ranch. If you are planning a ski trip, this is definitely the place to go! The room was very reasonable, downright cheap even considering it included a ski pass and a free breakfast at the dining hall, and there is skiing right out of the patio door. It was a gorgeous full moon, and I could see the lighted trails from our room, so I eventually decided to sneak out for a night ski. I decided to classic ski and was absolutely thrilled that I did. The tracks were Pisten Bully groomed, rock hard and super consistent. Kick was effortless (at least as effortless as anything at 9500') and the tracks just felt FAST! I brought a head torch with, but had it turned off most of the time because the moon was so bright. It was cold and completely calm, absolutely perfect night skiing weather. Everything was just gorgeous black and white in the moonlight, bright enough to see the mountains looming in the distance, and the sky was a wonderful tapestry of stars. I skied for an hour before I thought to look at my watch, and decided I better head back before the other folks started to worry about me. This was without a doubt my favorite ski of the trip.

Snow Mountain Ranch

The next morning the beautiful hard tracks were covered in a couple inches of new snow, and the going was much slower than the night before. I got a nice leisurely skate ski in with some fun climbs and some descents that would have been quite exciting in faster conditions. The highlight of the day is when I skied through a section of trail that had obviously seen some four legged traffic. I saw where the tracks dipped off the trail, and sure enough, there were a pair of moose just chilling down in a marsh below the trail. They were a little ways away, but I got a decent picture, good enough to identify them by anyway. They were just hanging out, so I didn't stay to watch too long, but it was fun to come across some legit natural beasts (from a distance)

Moose, Moose Moose Moose!!

I ended up with about 24 hours of training, around 250 km of skiing, for the week. It was wonderful to be on natural snow with such beautiful scenery, and should serve as a good base for the rest of ski season.