February 20, 2010 - Todd and I had a chance to go skiing today at the Chestnut Mountain ski area near Galena, Il. Here are a couple of photos and an interesting movie of some of our ski tracks. The first photo is of me going down Warpath. I took my GPS along and measured my speed at 36 mph. Not very fast compared to those Olympic downhillers! But going that fast was an absolute blast!. The second photo is one of Todd coming off of one of the lifts. The photos were taken with my phone, so they aren't very good.

I've also included an image of our GPS track for the day. If you count all the runs, we made a total of 33. Not bad for 6 hours of skiing - we were tired at the end of the day.

The other interesting thing is this movie using Google Earth. The movie shows three of our ski tracks using a Google Gadget, and is courtesy of Run Saturday, a web site for saving GPS tracks etc. from your outdoor activities. Very cool!

January 7, 2010 - Tycho and I had a very successful trip to Colorado over the past two weeks, including some time at the Winter Park ski area and a backcountry ski tour to the Jackal Hut near Camp Hale on Highway 24 north of Leadville, CO.

When we arrived, the snow wasn't all that good, but we got a couple of feet of fresh during the time we were out there, and the skiing turned out great! I had a new set of Salomon Lords that I got to use for the first time on this trip. I set them up with a pair of alpine bindings, and they worked out most excellently! For the backcountry skiing, I used some old favorites, my K2 Heli Stinx telemark skis. The climb up to Jackal Hut went well. We had 4 miles in with about a 2500 vertical foot altitude gain, for approximately a 12.5% grade. It took us 5 hrs and 20 minutes to make the trip (with ski gear and ~ 50 lb packs). Greg and I had done this hut before, and we beat our previous time significantly. My best recollection is that conditions were similar in 2005, so I must be getting in better shape as I age! I know that's not true, because Tycho climbs much faster than I do, but its a nice thought anyway... Sometimes I wonder though, as I'm definitely the oldest guy I see at any of the huts we do.

When we reached the hut, the scenery was beautiful. We had an outstanding view of the continental divide, including the huge peak Mt. Massive and six other 14'ers. We could also see an old molybdenum mine. Outstanding!

The snow was very unusual at the hut. There was about 3 feet of snow on the ground, but it was completely unconsolidated due to the cold temperatures. So there was no base, and it was difficult to ski without hitting rocks or other debris that you couldn't see. So we spent a major part of our ski day doing jumps on a ramp that previous hut occupants had built. Lots of interesting crashes to see in the video we collected, and a couple of very nice landings as well. I learned pretty quickly that I'm not cut out to be an Olympic freestyle skiing competitor! But it was still a tremendous amount of fun!