Ouray, Telluride, Silverton and so much more!

 Earlier this month I was was able to coordinate a little three day winter vacation to the southwest part of the state with my good pal Dusty Buck .  Over the coarse of  our roadtrip Rusty and  I accomplished  a solid amount of Ice climbing, Beer drinking, Hiking, Hot Spring soaking, Camping, Snowboarding, and general Exploration. The  greater
Telluride/Ouray/Silverton area turned out to be a big frozen playground and D. Buck and I took full advantage of our time off.
The trip started with a 7 hour drive across Colorado. We left Boulder after getting off work  around 10 PM , we promptly shoved  my Yakima roof box  full of gear in the back of  Dusty's truck. It proved  to be much easier to store gear in the box in the bed of the truck than to move all of our gear into the cab each time we left the truck parked.We threw in a couple of snow skateboards for fun as well as a bunch of emergency gear and food  that turned out to be super useful later on.After driving clear down to Ridgeway we pulled of on a side road to find a place to bivy for a few hours. In a coffee fueled, sleep deprived stupor we managed to high center the truck in  muddy ditch at 5AM. We spent the next 2 hours of the morning  trying to dig, jack,rock and spin our way out of the hole that damned us. After finaly flagging down a commuter we were able to yank it out with a tow rope.

First light after digging out the truck.

Having not slept for a full day we pulled into Ouray and couldn't even think about climbing, we were beat. So we passed out in the car in a pull off  a few minutes up Red Mountain pass. When we awoke the truck would not start. We began to wonder if we had done some unseen damage during our  muddy ditch fiasco. A dude in a truck gave us a jump and the car fired right up. I think Dusty may have slept with his foot on the brake, draining the battery.Semi rested we went into town and picked Tim's brain at Ouray Mountain Sports, to find out where the  good ice was. Filled with info and excitement we drove up to the Skylight area, famous for its gnarly ice and mixed routes.

  

Dusty Buck and Trusty Truck

We saw some guys dry-tooling some uber hard roof stuff, then  parked, geared up  and hiked in to a climb known as "Chockstone", for obvious reasons. Coincidently we ran into my front range buddies Rob and LauraLynn with  whom I had climbed 10 days prior at the Moffat tunnel Ice flow. They were at the same route we were nearly 340 miles from home. what a small world ........eh!

Swing, kick,kick, swing, kick ,kick!

We climbed for a couple hours before descending to the car. Rob and LauraLynn had done the steep  second pitch of  "chokstone" and came down shorly after us. We gave them a ride on the tale gate down Camp Bird road to their Prius. We shared a few stories and took turns pulling from a bottle of scotch. Dust and I headed down to town for a brew at the Ouray brewery. Owned and operated by ice climbers, Ouray Brewery has some great beers and a super fun mountain town atmosphere. I was glad to go back after visiting last year during the Ouray Ice Festival. While drinking at the bar, we met this gold miner who was an "explosives expert". He had one good eye and a crazy prosthetic hook on one arm. It reminded me of  a grappling hook, like batman. We never asked how he lost his hand. He told us that  ,as  climbers, we should go up to the high mountain ridges in the area  with metal detectors and scout out deposits of gold that have been exposed by erosion. The idea sounded plausible enough to me.

Crusty Buckknife Ice Mining in Ouray

 That night we drove around Mt Sneffles  and into Telluride. After meeting up with my aunt Mary  for a Carona  at her  Art Gallery / minibar, Kamruz,downtown. We jumped on the gondola with a couple bottles of amber ale  and went to mountain Village to check it out and, you guessed it, have some more drinks. We popped in on a chrismas sweater party at "Tracks Cafe and Bar"  and whitmessed some awsome costumes, none of which I  managed to photograph. One of the best things about the gondola is that you dont have to opperate a vehicle to get home safe. Dusty was beat and passed out at the gallery while I went down to the New Sheridan Hotel with Mary for a nice  chat and  one final drink. I woke up fairly hungover and hit the Steaming bean pronto for a couple dirty chai teas. Altitude doesnt help a hangover . A fact I always seem to relearn the hardway. As we drove tword Bear Creek to go climb for the day, Dusty's truck died in an intersection. We pulled it off to the side and proceeded to try everything we could think of to get er runnin again. We had it towed 7 miles out of town and had a mechanic take a look. I stayed in town and ate  pastries while checking out gear shops. Dusty went with the truck.  I met one of my personal heros,Jon Miller, at Paragon Sports. I had seen a film the year before at Neptunes Mountaineering about the Ski the Himilayas project. I  was really inspired by the film and was able to call Jon out on his fame. He is a super cooll guy, full of vigor and curiosity, both good traits for  a climber .
Turns out there  is an emergency shut off button in the passenger side foot area. Dont ask me why. The button was reset and Dust came to meet me. We were tired from the ordeal but still wanted to check out bear creek. We'd need  to bring headlamps.......so we packed up, again, left the car parked and hiked upbear creek . An hour and considerably less sunlight later we stood at the base of a huge curtain of ice 200 feet long  50 to 60 feet high,ranging from semi steep to dead vertical.

I chose to lead  up some fairly easy terrain Id call WI2, and a bushwak factor of 3 for the chest high powder aproach.Four screws later we slung a couple trees and abseiled the vertical section to top rope a bit. It was cold and snowing, everything had a fresh foot of snow and crust on it. This made for lots of debris and a super wet experience.

 I feel like these photos kind of yin and yang well , they give a good look  at the contrasts in light, mood, and feeling. Dusty took his final laps in the dark before breaking down the anchor and having a good rappel.

Tobin   Photo:Dusty

Dusty  Photo:Tobim

After freeing our selves from the deep snow we crawled into a cave behind the ice and chilled out for a bit before leaving. It stopped snowing and the sky was full of stars .
We husled down the trail into town to catch up with Katie from the paperchase and chow down some pizza and ale  at Brown Dog Pizza. Our team the" Ice miners"came in dead last in bar room trivia. oh well, we still had a good day! After driving to nearby Placerville, CO we prepared our gear for  our next wild higs and lows. Tomorrow we Snowboard at Siverton Mountain. They had been closed for the previous week and had received somewhere in the vicinity of 20+ inches of snow. An avalanche beacon, shovel probes and previous back-ountry experience were all pre requisite to even purchasing your lift ticket. Basically, Its serious!
The next morning the sun appeared nearly an hour after we had hit the road. A cloudless day and perfect road conditions made the drive from T-ride to Silverton a snap. As soon as we parked the car it became obvious  we were surrounded by our own kind. By that i mean outdoors-men, gear junkies, powder whores and generaly bad-ass mountain folks. Firing up our beacons we headed up the lift for the first turns the mountain had seen in weeks. This meant a lot of fresh powder for everyone.

Peace on Tiger Mountain

We made six runs through out the coarse of the day but my body felt like it had been more like 10 or 12. Some of the areas we explored were: Cabin, Tiger bowl, Concussion trees, RiffnRaff and the Bowling alley. If you havent had the chance to check out Silverton Mountain Iwould highly recomend it. Our 10 hours at silverton ranks as one of the top 5 Ski days in my life!After shmoozing at the bar/ ticket office/ lodge tent thing we headed back to the truck. As our luck would have it, we couldn't get er fire up. Luckily after trying a few things we reset the button by the passenger side foot area and she fired  right up. Luckily this was the last of the car trouble we would have on this crazy trip. We called it a day and left Siverton, driving back over red mountain pass a straight to Orvis Hot springs just out side Ouray. This is another awesome destination that I would recommend to anyone. We paid a small fee to pitch our tent behind the hot springs area and had the opportunity to soak (clothing optional) out our tired muscles for a few hours. We stayed in the lobster pot (110F) for as long as we could before moving on tho the swimming pool sized main spring. The difficulties we had encountered seemed to melt away as we became more and more sedated. In sharp contrast, the clear calm night saw the temperature drop to about 0 degrees. even in our tent everything froze that night, including my eyelids.  I had left my wet swim suit out for the night  in the back of the truck. It had frozen into a stiff Frisbee that dusty and iItossed around for a bit after breaking down the tent. We had some coffee and hit the road back home. Our trip was over but the memories lingered in our mind for weeks after. It all seems like a dream.........but it was real!