LFP

LFP = Lyra F. Pierotti

I have long been wanting to take a road trip to Colorado. Through the years, I have encountered many people from the state of fitness. From super strong clients on mountaineering trips to daring skiers on Mexico's volcanoes, Colorado seems to produce a great number of outdoor enthusiasts. And with North America's highest concentration of fourteeners, it is no wonder.

Dave and I joined some friends from Bishop, and a former client (now friend) of mine from Golden, Colorado, for a week of ice climbing in Ouray, and decided to take another week or two afterward (before the winter trips ramp up!) to get some of our own climbing in: professional development, if you will.

The Ouray ice park is a great place to get strong, hone your technical ice climbing skills, and for me, a great place to get some practice leading on ice. But just as with the climbing gym, it soon comes time to move beyond the ice park.

We headed out to Skylight area, a roadside ice "crag" with several multi-pitch ice climbs. It was a beautiful day, so many of the climbs were taken. We spotted a curtain of thick ice on Chockstone Chimney, and headed to the base.

Ice can change dramatically from place-to-place, year-to-year, day-to-day, and even hour-to-hour. The ice we found here was nice, a little less chandelier-like, a little less shattery, but with the top in the sun, quite a bit drippy. A few laps each was enough to wear us out, craving a big meal of pasta and sleep.

After several days of ice climbing, I needed a rest day. Refusing to sit around with ample opportunity for adventure in Colorado, Dave, Rick and I headed up to Red Mountain Pass near Silverton, to go ski some...

LFP = Lame Flat Powder.

Dave was very proud to discover another use for my initials. Ha ha. Ha.

But lame it was NOT! Excellent quality, fluffy soft powder, all under 30 degrees (there was "considerable" avalanche danger reported, which in avi lingo means "natural avalanches possible, human triggered avalanches probable," so we stuck to low-angle snow, least likely to slide).

Rick, in addition to being a very solid, efficient ice climber with excellent technique, is also an elegant telemark skier, and former professional photographer. With a beautiful blue sky and striking white mountains all around, he was snapping away all day.

The snow was so stellar and the terrain so mellow, that we just couldn't stop skiing. For some reason, the mountains in Colorado seem fore-shortened when compared to the Sierra Nevada. That peak in the distance is really only a 30 minute skin-track away. Perhaps it is my eyes that are calibrated to a much larger relief -- in the Sierra Nevada, your trailhead can be at 6000ft and your peak at 14,000ft. In Colorado, you would start at 10,000ft or so.

So we kept going, up and down, up and down... and before I knew it my "rest day" had turned into merely an exchange of muscle groups. And we couldn't have been happier.

Seven days straight of activity, and finally I find myself in a nice warm coffee shop in Ouray, with a huge roast beef sandwich I still can't quite seem to finish.

Maybe I should get back to work on that...