This trip was 5 years in the making. Last time I tried for the Grand, my friend Glen and I headed up with 50% chance of weather, and what we got was 4 straight days of constant rain and thunder storms. There was maybe 1 or 2 solid hours of reprieve for 96 hours straight. To top it off, we had a bear encounter in the national forest around Shadow Mountain. We heard an agitated growl outside the tent in a thunder storm – Glen had his Glock 40 cal locked and loaded, myself a measely bottle of spray. We exited the tent, guns blazing and heard/saw the silhouette of a massive figure run in to the woods, followed by the crunching of trees. We took an uncollapsed tent, tied to roof and drove back to Denver dejected. We never even made it to Lupine Meadows TH. Keep reading…
When you think about it, skiing is kind of a ridiculous activity (as are most that don’t involve hunting, gathering, constructing a shelter, building a fire or running from saber tooth tigers). Add in a helicopter that flies you to the top of a mountain and it becomes the most ridiculously awesome activity on the planet. Ok, so maybe I embellished a little there, but it’s freak’n rad, and if you enjoying skiing or boarding in the least little bit I highly recommend you do it at least once in your life. Keep reading…
Life gets real when you turn 30. Some people decide to grow up sooner than others, but I chose my 30’s as the time to start facing facts. After 8 years of pissing my money away to landlords around the state of Colorado, I finally buckled down and bought a condo. It was refreshing to finally have a place of my own, but thanks to a feet dragging seller, a lender underwriter who undershot the closing costs by 1200$ and a depleted bank account – I was forced to cancel a 2-week trip to the John Muir Trail in the Sierras of California. Keep reading…
I’ve been intrigued by Mount Moran ever since seeing a trip report about it on TGR years ago, then reaffirmed by a pic from a plane included in Chris Davenport’s “50 Classic Ski Descents of North America”. The draw is obvious from the start – an approach on a canoe across a lake in the Tetons to a campsite along a shore and a 6000 foot vertical ski line in the heart of raw nature. In my opinion, that’s a must do for any ski mountaineer, or any mountaineer period. Keep reading…
