RMNP Gives Up Its Dead

Searchers in 1983. (Hey, I had those snowshoes!) National Park Service photo.

The remains of ski-mountaineer Rudi Moder, 28, missing since he disappeared in Rocky Mountain National Park in 1983, have now been officially identified.

Actually, they were found last year, but the huge Cameron Peak Fire and then winter got in the way of recovery. 

Modi disappeared while on a solo trip in February 1983, when he started from Cameron Pass and headed into the park.

Since his camping gear was located during the initial search, but not his body, it looks as though he was out on his skis, perhaps scouting a route, when an avalanche caught him.

Who Will Make Me These Old Skis?

Skis from 1300 years ago (Secrets of the Ice.)

I have always enjoyed messing around with old cross-country ski gear. In high school, I picked up some World War Two-era ski boots as used by the famous 10th Mountain Division. These boots were fearsome—they must have weighed five pounds apiece. 

As for their skis, you would be better off siding your house with those planks rather than skiing on them.

Nevertheless, I do intend to be one of the last skiers in Colorado with bamboo poles. I am on my second pair. The first pair was recycled as trekking poles.

Lately I've gotten into the Altai skis, using a long stick.

But forget about those. These are old skis. Prehistoric skis! From the Secrets of the Ice website:

We have found [in Norway] the best-preserved pair of skis from prehistory! Back in 2014, the Secrets of the Ice program found an exceptional pre-Viking ski, 1300 years old, at the Digervarden Ice patch in Norway. The ski was complete, including the binding – one of only two skis from prehistory in this condition. Ever since, we have monitored the ice patch, hoping and praying for the second ski of the pair to melt out. Now it has happened! The new ski is even better preserved than the first one! It is an unbelievable find.

"Fate of the owner still unknown" says this Science magazine article.

The skis, which would have been used as wintertime transportation tools, were extensively repaired, a sign they were too valuable to easily replace. They’re not identical, suggesting a set cobbled together from other pairs. And although researchers once thought the skis might have been lined with fur on the bottom for grip going uphill, a wide groove running down the center of the newly recovered ski would have no purpose if it was covered—suggesting fur wasn’t part of the design.

The find leaves one big question: What happened to their owner? Perhaps, the long-ago skier took them off to hunt and lost them in the snow, the researchers speculate. Or maybe an early skiing accident left the hunter too injured to descend to safety from the frozen heights. In that case, the ice might hold yet more surprises.

The researchers who found them say,

Another possibility is that there was an accident. Maybe the skier fell and destroyed the toe bindings in the fall? The skis could no longer be used and were left behind. An argument against this explanation is that the skies must have had a significant value. One of them had repairs. In addition, they have holes at the front which would have made it easy to drag them behind in a rope when exiting the mountains. So why leave them behind when they could have been brought along and repaired in the lowlands?

Perhaps there was an accident that left the Iron Age skier dead or seriously injured? Is the skier still inside the ice at Mount Digervarden? This is probably hoping for too much. What we can say for sure is that we have not seen the last finds from the Digervarden ice patch. We will be back.

You can read about the first Digervarden ski and other ski finds from the ice here.

So who will replicate them for us throwback skiers? Yes, I am thinking about winter. Just a little.

Summit County Skier Sets Vertical Ski-Mountaineering Record & Where to Get Colorado News

Grace Staberg, left, of Summit County, skins uphill with Nikki LaRochelle on Copper Mountain, Tuesday morning, April 27, 2021, near Frisco. (Hugh Carey, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Earlier this week, Grace Staberg of Summit County, Colorado, set a women's American record for climbing 56,153 vertical feet on skis in 24 hours, reports the Colorado Sun.

Starting at 9 a.m. Monday, the ski mountaineering superstar and 2020 graduate of Summit County High School skied up and down Copper Mountain more than 21 times. Paced by a team of friends  — a sort of Who’s Who of Colorado ski athletes — she climbed from Copper’s Center Village to the top of the Storm King lift at 12,441 feet.

I am impressed. But at that age you do have energy. I can remember my modest accomplishment of climbing Mount Hood (the easy way, up from Timberline Lodge) after tripping on LSD all the previous night, getting only a nap in the back of someone's car as we drove from Portland. I was 20. It seemed normal.

The Colorado Sun — not to be confused with the Colorado Springs Sun, a daily newspaper published 1947–1986 — is a "journalist-owned" news website. With the Rocky Mountain News gone, the Denver Post a shadow of what it used to be, etc. etc. etc., it's one of the few choices left for statewide coverage. 

For $5/month, the basic level, you get a daily Colorado news digest.  I do it. It's not astounding — pretty much the usual stories about the usual suspects from the usual MSM viewpoint. But you can counterbalance that with Complete Colorado, a statewide news-aggregation site with a crankier, small-l libertarian bent.

The Science of Trekking Poles—But This is Science You Can Ignore, If You Like

Photo credit: National Park Service

Some people love trekking (hiking) poles. The authors of the guidebook Don't Waste Your Time in the West Kootenays: An Opinionated Hiking Guide opined as follows:

[After a strenous month of hiking research] both of us developed knee pain. The next summer we used Leki trekking poles every day for three months and our knees were never strained. We felt like four-legged animals. We were more sure-footed. Our speed and endurance increased.

On the other hand, they also reported the reaction: "So where are your skis. Ha ha ha!" 

An article at Outside sums up the research and also gives the contrarian view:

On the other hand, the Switzerland-based International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation sounds a more skeptical tone, suggesting that using poles too much will sap your balance and coordination, thus raising the risk of accidents in situations like crossing ridges that are too narrow for poles.

In other words, poles make you weak! Do you vant to be weak? Or do they make you a sure-footed animal? 

This article on PubMed summarizes the research. 

Interestingly, pole users burn more calories. That could be a good thing (you're hiking to control your weight) or a bad thing (your food supplies are running low). 

You do protect your knees — but, retorts the Mountaineering Federation, the joint stress is good for you. (See also this.)

As they say on the Internet, your mileage may vary. 

Hopeless moderate that I am, when carrying just a day pack, I often carry just one pole, thus gaining some balance but keeping a hand free. The last time I was deer hunting in rocky country, I stashed the pole at one point along the trail in. Not having it was another reason to slow down, and slowing down is a Good Thing (TM) when you are hunting.

In a related issue, I will admit to saying something snarky the first time I saw somone snowshoeing with ski poles — especially as she was in a flat meadow. It seemed like belt + suspenders overkill. But I will admit that ski poles are a help when side-hilling in Rocky Mountain powder.

It's just that I always think that if you're on snowshoes, you need hands free for tools — rifle, saw, whatever.

Is Lip Balm Bad for You?

Lip balm distributed by Colorado Parks & Willife.

A friend was visiting Denver from northern England earlier this month. I urged her to bring sunglasses — just tell your European friends that Denver is slightly south of Naples, and they will understand — and also lip balm.

Was I wrong about the lip balm?

Living in an arid climate, I think of chapped lips as normal. I rarely put anything on them except sometimes in the winter.

Now, in the ever-changing world of health advice, some people are saying lip balm makes things worse.

Lip balms provide only temporary comfort, and some types can make scaly lips even drier.

That's because, in part, when the thin film of moisture from the lip balm evaporates, it dehydrates your lips even more. "It starts a vicious cycle," Dr. Leah Jacob, an assistant professor of dermatology at Tulane University, told Live Science.

I grew up with Chapstick commercials featuring the dashing competitive and freestyle skier Suzy Chaffee (born in Vermont but who attended the University of Denver), whose nickname was "Suzy Chapstick" because she was that brand's spokesmodel in the 1970s. (She later endorsed only "all-natural" products.) So this is hard news to take.

Susy Chaffee at Squaw Valley

Additionally, lips don't have any hair follicles or oil glands of their own. Instead, the oil from glands around our lips provide moisture. Licking your lips or applying a thin gloss, balm or anything out of a tube to supplement that moisture may sound like a good idea, but it can be the worst thing you do for them because it can lead to further dehydration, Jacob said.

Some lip balms contain ingredients that can be irritating or drying. Menthol, salicylic acid, cinnamic aldehyde and peppermint flavors are all culprits, Jacob said. "A lot of people don't have any problems with these ingredients, but people with sensitive skin or allergies may be more sensitive to these on their lips, as well," she said.

But can she do a "Suzy contortion spin," as shown?

End of the Season in a Mountain Town

M. and I went over to Westcliffe Friday night to watch a movie in a real (and historic) theater.

Westcliffe is not a ski town, not a river town, not a mountain-biking town. When its one ski area, Conquistador, finally faceplanted too many times and shut down in 1993, the town gave a collective yawn and got on with its real industry, building mountain mini-mansions.

There are a bazillion photos taken looking west down Main Street toward the Sangre de Cristo Range, all variations of this one:

Add more a few more trees, neo-historic streetlamps, paving, and diagonal parking,
and you have the Westcliffe of today.

It occurred to me as I sat on a street bench across from the Jones Theater that you could pick up the whole place and set it down in, say, Phillips County—only with neo-historic streetlamps and a "dark skies" ordinance. The two counties' populations are about the same, and the buildings would fit right in.

The only difference is that almost no one is building mini-mansions all around Phillips County, thus supporting numerous small construction firms. On the prairie there is maybe less talk about agricultural "heritage" and more actual agriculture.

Walking down Main Street, it seemed like every third retail space was for rent and almost every restaurant for sale. Chappy's, our favorite bar for Westcliffe visits, was "closed for renovation." I hope that's not a euphemism.

The Chamber of Commerce types want more economic activity. Factories? In all these towns and small cities the refrain is, "We don't want our kids to move away." But guess what, the kids are going to move away.  Maybe some will come back later and find a way to make a living. Most will not. (Did I go back to Del Norte or Rapid City? Nope.)

What you can get in a place like Westcliffe:

• First-run movies
• Hardware store merchandise (the Ace store is pretty good)
• Carhart clothing (at the hardware store)
• "Western decor" items
• Paintings by local artists
• Grass-fed beef
• "Lowest-common denominator groceries" (M.'s phrase)
• Hiking boots 
• Firearms
• Automotive repair
• The rural health clinic

What you cannot get:

• Auto parts
• Books
• Other clothing
• Appliances
• Specialized medical care
• All kinds of other things that send people "down the hill," leading to much Facebook angst about road conditions

Then there is the new but growing Amish population (buggies at 8,000 feet!) who have a different set of shopping needs and probably rely sometimes on mail order from Gohn Bros. or wherever.

So there is much complaint about how retail businesses (except hardware) cannot succeed with a season that is only four months long.

On the other hand, there seems to be little desire to be one of those resort towns with a different manufactured "festival" every other weekend throughout the year. The argument goes around and around.

But the views!

Out of Asia, Always Something Old

Float like a snowshoe, glide like a ski

At 145 cm, Altai's Hok backcountry ski
is about the same length as my old Army
-urplus trail shoe — but the Hoks glide, some.

When it comes to outdoor sports, Americans tend to favor gear over technique. We want to ride or ski on what the racers use, or what the pros use. "I know that this $1,200 fly reel machined from unobtainium alloy will make me a better angler!"

I chuckle a little at the converts to tenkara fly-fishing with their newly learnt Japanese vocabulary, because I think it is just the 17th-century English fly-fishing that Izaak Walton would have recognized — but with contemporary high-tech materials.

Yet I appreciate and support the minimalism of tenkara. A rod, a line, a few flies —go do it! It really works.

Getting around in the snow.

I have owned snowshoes since my teens, then got cross-country skis in my twenties (I wish that I had started sooner). 

Both let you move through snowy landscapes (not too steep). Both have long historical pedigrees. We identify snowshoes with North American Indians, but they were also used in Stone Age Europe. They are what you make with stone tools. 

With metal tools, you can cut and shape boards, giving you skis. Archaeologists suggest that skis were invented in Central Asia, but maybe they were invented independently in Scandinavia.

In a century, ski touring bindings went from simple straps that you slip your toe under (why Finns wore boots with turned-up toes) to these (or fancier). Synthetics largely replaced wood.

Ski like a Mongol/Tuvan/Kazakh/Siberian

Even as tenkara gets rid of the reel and the long fly line, a new Asian-inspired approach to ski touring takes a middle road between snowshoing (slow, utilitarian) and Nordic skiing (faster but trickier on steep slopes).

Some skiers are even getting rid of ski poles and returning to a simple stick, like these guys:

Or, more appropriately, like these guys — contemporary skiers in the Altai Mountains.

Contemporary Altai Range skiers. OK, I do see some ski poles there. (Photo: Alta Skis)

Formed in 2011, with offices in the US and Canada, Altai Skis revived the Central Asian style of wide skis with skins permanently attached. Their first model, the Hok (from Tuvan for "ski"), comes in just two adult lengths, 125cm and 145cm (and a 99 cm kids' model). It has metal edges and a permanently installed nylon skin with waxable Ptex tips and tails.

If you're more of a snowshoer at heart, you can buy bindings that fit any winter boot. If you come from an x-c ski background, you can get regular or cable 75mm three-pin bindings or adaptors for other styles, like NNN.

And for forty bucks, they will sell you a Tiak ("stick") if you can't make your own.

The problem with skiing here in the southern Rockies is that good snow and gentle terrain does not happen often enough. To get good snow, you have to move into more rugged forested areas and break trail. Lots of people use snowshoes with ski poles, which seems silly on level ground but helps when you're in powder on a slope.

After decades of flipping between speed (x-c skis) and flotation (snowshoes), I learned about the Altai Skis and bought a pair of 145cm Hoks (They also have a slimmer, faster backcountry model called the Kom,with fishscale waxless bottoms.)

I put three-pin cable bindings on them, because I have the boots, and in a nod to old-school skiing, have been using some old bamboo poles. I always wanted to be the last guy in Colorado with bamboo poles. One day I will cut a pine stick though; skiers with sticks do have an archaic silhouette. The stick is for balance and braking, but does not give the diagonal-stride push of the ski pole.

I took them out for two short test runs along the Sangres and then yesterday for a two-hour trip along the base of the Sawatch Range. My first thought was "Comfortable! I can go right into the trees with these."

The first two trips were more for familiarization and adjusting bindings. Yesterday I alternated between following a marked trail and going into untracked snow, up to knee-deep with some wind crust in places.

The Hoks certain held me up better than my skinny skis as I moved from soft snow to crusted powder to packed powder-and-ice. But unlike with snowshoes, I could get a little bit of a glide. Breaking trail is always work no matter what you use.

I have not yet used the Hoks in fresh deep powder, but an opportunity will come.

• • •

About that headline: The Romans used to say, "Semper aliquid novi Africam adferre" (Out of Africa, always something new.) They in turn got it from the Greeks, but to them it had the connotation of "Out of Africa, always something weird."

Aristotle, (384 to 322 B.C.), referred to the proverb in two of his books, Historia Animalium and Generatione Animalium, to explain the wild mélange of animals in Africa. He wrote that many of the animals unique to Africa were strange hybrids, suggesting that the lack of water forced the animals to meet at watering holes where they mated indiscriminately with one another.

No Farms at Chaco Canyon, Off-Road Vehicles, Lynx Surprise

A "great kiva," restored but roofless, at Chaco Canyon

¶ All boats, snowmobiles, and ATV's in Colorado have to be state-registered. Proof of ownership is required, but the state is fairly flexible about documentation.

¶ Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico is the site of a collection of ancient "great houses," multi-room dwellings. They were not built simultaneously, and it is unclear how many people actually lived there. And apparently they did not grow their own food, so apparently it was backpacked in by the Anasazi equivalent of serfs.  Or maybe they were willing pilgrims.

¶ With typical feline nonchalance, a lynx surprises skiers at the Purgatory ski area in southwestern Colorado. 

UPDATE, Jauary 10, 2017: A sad ending to the lynx story.

Skis versus Snowshoes, Neolithic Style

(Photo credit: The Telegraph.)

I tend to think of skis as a Eurasian invention, while I associate snowshoes with North America. Well, I am wrong.  Proto-Italians worked out the "bearpaw" design more than 5,000 years ago.

Here is an older post about the "true" birthplace of skiing, but the photo link is dead, because this is the Internet.

Blog Stew with Sunflower Seeds (You'll Like Them)

¶ You could use this fancy online tool at the Cornell ornithology lab to find the best food for your favorite winter birds. Or you could just put out black oil sunflower seeds because almost all the cold-weather birds like 'em. As one of the local Auduboners once told me, "They're like ice cream for birds."

¶ The US Forest Service takes a step back in its tug-of-war over water rights with ski areas operating on national forest land — which is a lot of them. Durango Herald reporter Joe Hanel writes, "The Forest Service has tried sporadically for years to get legal control over snowmaking water rights, because of worries the rights could be sold to real estate developers or others not interested in using the water for skiing."

That, yes, but also conservation groups like Trout Unlimited have worried about ski areas drying up streams for snow-making.

¶ Workers at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico recently found a large new room. They are calling it Halloween Hall, whether for the date or for the multitude of bat bones in it, I am not sure. Photo at the link.

What Killed the Russian Skiers? (2)

The torn tent at the skiers' campsite

Five years ago I first read of what is sometimes called "the Dyatlov Pass Incident" and was thoroughly creeped out.

This article offers another telling and more photographs, but the mystery remains. (Note: the page is "safe for work," but some networks may block the overall Vice.com website.)

If the tent was struck by an avalanche, how did they get out? People have died under relatively small amounts of snow — a foot or two — when it was heavily compacted.How come the skis used as tent poles are still standing if an avalanche swept over it?  And was that even an avalanche-prone slope?

Wouldn't experienced backcountry skiers who survived an avalanche have not reconstructed their camp as best they could?

I keep thinking that the radiation readings might be misleading, not the real issue — but that is just conjecture.

M. wonders if they did not eat bad mushrooms. That seems as possible as anything. Since it was February, someone would have had to make an error while picking mushrooms in the forest the previous season, then bring them along in dried form to be reconstituted and cooked in a stew or something. That could possibly explain the apparent delirium. Maybe.

Colorado's Retail Cannabis Producing a Legal Patchwork

What is happening in Colorado with the new legalization of retail cannabis sales is starting to resemble the situation when states had "wet" and "dry" counties. Counties and cities are all making different decisions, e.g., Pueblo County's acceptance of a large growing operation.

¶ The mountain town of Westcliffe turned down a proposal (PDF file) to use an empty industrial building for a growing operation that would supply retail outlets in the ski town of Breckenridge. 

Those sybaritic ski towns, right? Keep 'em high and happy.

¶ Yet Aspen, most sybaritic of all, is located in Garfield County, which has said no to both growers and retailers. The Aspen Times accused opponents of "paranoia."

¶ Touristy Glenwood Springs proposed a marijuana-sales moratorium. So did less-touristy Cañon City.

I could go on.

Meanwhile, people who proudly got medical marijuana cards (a lot of them young men in their twenties) suddenly are realizing that the cops can go traipsing through those records.

The other big problem is money and banking. Banks have been reluctant to handle marijuana dispensaries' cash because doing so illegal under federal if not state law.

"The mere acceptance of the deposit is literally the very definition of money laundering," explained Don Childears, President and CEO of the Colorado Bankers Association.

Dispensaries, therefore, end up trying to places to put all their cash, and piles of cash attract criminals.

Federal legislation has been introduced to remedy the problem, but has not yet gone anywhere.  All states with medical marijuana plus Colorado and Washington with their newly legalized recreational use face the same problem:

In all 21 of those states, federal laws are creating criminal and regulatory barriers to banks and credit unions, prohibiting them from accepting licensed marijuana growers, retailers and dispensaries as customers.

The federal government has the big stick, and the political journal Roll Call reports that President Obama's thinking "hasn't evolved."

Previous post on growers, "Making Money in a Mountain Subdivision."

We've Got to Get Out of the House

Fisher on the Mineral Belt—10,606 feet.

First, load up everyone and drive to Leadville to find ski-able snow. (Not shown, M. and Shelby). Ski until tired on the perfectly groomed and completely free Mineral Belt Trail. Yes, it was snowing sporadically.

 

The "State Highway Department" is now a bar, actually, like Phil's Radiator Service down in Pueblo.

Drive back down into the "banana belt" of Buena Vista, where the long-declining downtown is starting to recover as an entertainment district. 

Supper.

Have some "New Mexican pizza"—a basic pepperoni pizza plus roasted green chiles — at the Eddyline brew pub in the "New Urbanist" South Main area. Also drink some amber lager.

  

 

Stop for a cocktail at the new Deerhammer micro-distillery in downtown BV. Consider attending the Ark Valley Libation Society event in Salida, where all the micro-brewers and distillers will be represented, but decide that we're tired and the dogs need to be fed.

How I Spent Last Weekend

I could describe it, or I could just embed Eric Lynn's video. Hmmm, which is harder?

Mountain Snow Pack, Feb. 1, 2013 — What It Looks Like

Here is the map . . .

Click to embiggen.

. . . and here is what one of the tan areas looks like.

On the east side of the Sangre de Cristo Range.

Yesterday I had some x-c ski and other snow equipment to test in advance of an upcoming overnight trip — will this boot work well in those bindings, and that kind of thing.

So M. and I drove off toward the Sangres looking for snow.

The last time we had gone up this road in winter time was February 2009, and we parked her Jeep about halfway from this spot to the green timber and skied up from there.

This year I was driving on up into the timber, partly on dirt and partly on ice and corn snow, until I came to the end of "easy 4wd conditions," parked it, and got out the gear that I wanted to test.

At least I came away with some ideas about how to modify those climbing skins to fit on these skis. I have been feeling awfully house-bound lately.

All snow pack maps are here.

Bad News from Mountain Gazette

If you have been picking up free copies of  Mountain Gazette at your favorite high country coffee house, store, etc, or if like me you subscribed, those days are apparently over.

A recent letter from from MG speaks of a "pause" in publishing and a "next iteration of Mountain Gazette."

None of this sounds too encouraging.

Subscribers are being offered T-shirts and/or bumper stickers.

Skiing Aspen When It Was (sort of ) Affordable

Skiers on the bus to Aspen. She brought her corkscrew.

A photo gallery of skiing and après-ski at Aspen and Snowmass in 1974, commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency and collected at the Denver Post.

Two Nights in Snow

You come out of the mountains after just a three-day trip, go into a cafe, and everyone is so clean. But it is a mountain cafe, and they do not care that you are not so pristine and that you have been sleeping in your clothes.

RIGHT: An attempt at an artistic shot of my shadow while skiing to camp, pulling a pulk.

More than a dozen employees, freelance designers, and "friends of the family" of a small, Colorado-based outdoor-products company gathered for an annual winter rendezvous in Summit County.

Items under discussion included short-staple synthetic insulation, tent and pack design, the intricacies of bar-tacking, other companies that had gone before (reaching back to Holubar and Gerry), the effects of Jameson's whiskey on conversation, hunting, the reality or not of Bigfoot, cross-country skiing, the relationship of the sexes, sources of digital-camouflage fabric, weather, differing designs of axes and hatchets, and why it was better to be in a tipi with 0° F. (-18 C) temperatures outside instead of the most luxurious ski condo in Breckenridge.

This bottle of beer (left) attempted to escape the camp but died of the cold on its path to freedom. Foolish bottle.

Short-term nomadic camp in the White River National Forest

Also, we ate. The menu included venison, green chile, potica, tamales, homemade Spam-and-egg sushi, hot dogs, breakfast tacos, elk sausage, cheese, homemade burritos, biscuits and gravy, and machaca. A good Southern Colorado-northern New Mexico blend with Hawaiian accents.

I became enamored of a Swedish splitting axe that I do not really need, but it was so elegant.

Afterwards, I always wonder how even though it takes much planning and the assembly of food, gear, etc., produced in many different places, even a short trip into the woods like this feels more real and vital than daily life.

Silent Snow

I went by one of Colorado's "lost" ski areas today. There was plenty of snow, but the tow has not operated since 1984.

Montana Corgi Survives an Avalanche

A couple from Bozeman were cross-country skiing near Cooke City, Montana, when an avalanche carried away Dave Gaillard, 44. His wife survived by clinging to a tree, but their dog was presumed lost.

Only he was not.