Fade to White

12/20/12

Figured it'd be good to get a post in since the Mayan calendar is ending. Like a lot of places (except the northwest & parts of Wyoming & Montana) we've had an exceptionally warm and dry fall. In fact, at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, where they've kept detailed snowfall statistics for the past 40 years, up through the first week of December, we started with the warmest dryest December in all 40 years. So, I took advantage of that and rode the mountain bike for an extended period of time, which was quite enjoyable. I figured if I kept my bike rack on my car long enough, eventually it would bring the snow. I also used the nice weather to climb a few mountains that would otherwise be a much more harrowing adventure. 

Over the past 10 days or so, we've been lucky and finally got some snow around here....about 24" in town and upwards of 5 feet in the surrounding mountains...you can really tell that its eased people's nerves a bit and everyone seems happier now. Miranda and I both are loving it here so far, and we'd encourage anyone interested to come and visit us!

Scrambling at Hartman's in beautiful 55° weather in December. Guess we'll just enjoy this!

Alaskans in the crowd: please disregard this photo....but anyone else would be quite entertained....we were walking along on a nice afternoon hike in the aspens, and I walked almost straight into this  (within 15 feet) fuzzy guy before he woke from his semi-hibernated ? nap. He slowly got up, looked back at me, and lazily half druggedly walked up the hill a few meters and then sat back down....looked back at us, and eventually very slowly strolled away in no hurry, quite dazed. It was a fun encounter to see a bear so out of it. 

 View from Gothic looking down valley towards CB

Some fun bc ski runs....not on this very warm, dry early December day.

 These will be really fun once we get some snow.

 Nearing the summit

 Ski run in spring? I had a friend who was skiing down this with a buddy, he fell, slid nearly 1000' before stopping and walked away with a couple scratches. Yikes!

 Lichen it!

 Another "I'm trying to figure out this camera" look

 Nice clouds keeping the mountains in a mysterious rolling fog

We took advantage of the resort's manmade....they actually had much more terrain open than I could have imagined. Miranda's learning to ski this winter, and loving it so far!

 haha

 Winter arriving....

 Its snowing finally!

Better go find a Xmas tree...we had to xc ski for a couple miles to get onto national forest, and then proceeded to do 3 or 4 laps around a particular meadow while we looked for just the right tree.

 Fun day....

 Our precious...

 We gotta drag this semi heavy 9' long thing back a couple miles through the unbeaten path.

 I think Miranda's happy to be here.

Checking out the partially frozen creek bed

 Nate & Chad getting really excited about our ski to come

Pretty deep for our first day out this season.

 Nate and I skiing back down the semi-flat skin track on a high-avalanche day.

So soft & buttery

 Nate couldn't be happier

 The Amaryllis in full bloom.

Merry Christmas! 

Thank you Ullr!