Shaking the Snowglobe

Imagine a gorgeous hot springs immersed in the high desert. The Eastern Sierra towers to the West, the White Mountains to the East. There’s a full moon shining a bouncing, somehow colorful and kaleidoscopic light onto every surface feature and cloud in the sky, but yet not quite bright enough to drown out the starry…

Nick and I awoke in our climbing gym hotel, and quickly shoved ourselves back in the car to head to Deer Valley. Fortunately the hotel had a 7am cafe, so we left with coffee in hand, smiling as we guessed at what the resort might be like. My understanding was that Deer Valley is where…

This was our final day in Colorado. I woke up, unpacked and repacked the car to fit in Nick’s skis and duffle bag, and said some goodbyes to Nick’s mom Katherine and lovely Frisco. My parents will be glad to hear that I was told, “Your mama raised you well”, and was given fairly high…

A quick aside, the reason the last post was called “early bird gets the bacon breakfast burrito” was because by the time Nick and I got to the takeout stop, the owner Brooke was cleared out of all the bacon burritos. I think I just didn’t mention that anywhere in the post. Nick’s Dad Mike…

Nick and I planned a ski tour for this morning. Originally we targeted the Silver Couloir off of Buffalo Peak, one of the fifty great ski descents of North America as arbitrarily chosen by the writers of this book. It did look epic, but last night a storm rolled through and dropped off 5+ inches,…

I finished up my book Tracking the Wild Coomba, a pretty epic memoir about Doug Coombs, one of the first major free skiers and extreme mountaineers. The book was pretty inspiring, as the author literally tracked down Coomb’s life across the world by visiting every place he lived, skiing the lines he created, and speaking…

I did wonder if at some point throughout this roadtrip whether I would catch some sniffles or otherwise come down with an illness. It was so far so good, but this morning I woke up in the Dulchin’s Colorado Ski Lease feeling deeply nauseous: food poisoning seemed like the culprit. I questioned my decision at…

I was sad to leave Taos this morning, but what an amazing ~six days, they completely flew by. We had a pretty relaxing night of burgers and watching Wedding Crashers, which I forgot is hilarious. Vince Vaughn kind of carries that whole movie, even though it has Christopher Walken, Bradley Cooper, Owen Wilson, Rachel Mccadams….he…

Today was fantastic – a cold, cloudy, harsh morning on the mountain melted into a warm, sunny, bright afternoon. Everyone is feeling satisfied. Perfect time to drop our mad cool ski video.

I’ve found it a bit harder to write posts while being in Taos. We’re just having too good of a time! Everyday has been a blue bird ski day with great conditions on the mountain, followed by a gourmet meal prepped by Michael back at the house and a kaleidoscopic sunset viewing from the hot…