Sneak peak at Bradford Washburn Museum

The Bradford Washburn American Mountaineering Museum in Golden offered a sneak peak to Colorado Mountain Club members last night. Local Bill Brown was nice enough to send us some pics from the evening. Click here to see his gallery (which also has some snowshoeing shots.)

Snow finally centered on central mountains

Almost all winter storms slamming into Colorado have focused their fury on the southern mountains. Silverton and Telluride would get so much powder they could hardly open. Wolf Creek has snow this season you can measure in stories instead of feet, but Breckenridge, Copper and A Basin have only been logging just a slightly above average winter, with steady snow, but no big dumps. Today the pattern changed. Silverton is reporting two inches. Wolf Creek is reporting 3. Meanwhile, Summit County Resorts garnered about a foot. Monarch, between the two regions, seems to be getting it from every side. If you're skiing this weekend, it will be good. Gods speed.

Newsman skier hits tree, dies

Saw this on KOAA:

The skier who died at Keystone Resort on Wednesday has been identified as John McWethy, 61, a retired correspondent for ABC News. Witnesses say McWethy was skiing fast on an intermediate trail when he missed a turn and slid chest-first into a tree.

ABC News President David Westin said in a statement that McWethy and his wife moved to Boulder after retiring to be closer to ski slopes and golf courses.

McWethy had been ABC News' chief national security correspondent. He was in the Pentagon during the 2001 terrorist attack.

This marks the seventh skier or snowboarder to die in Colorado this season. Two snowboarders have been missing since Jan. 5 and are feared dead.

The new Out There company car

This bad boy is for sale locally on Craigslist.
M29C Weasel. Runs perfect, very little rust. $5,000.00 cash, firm.

What a bargain, but I have a feeling our company mileage reimbursement wouldn't cover the costs.

You go, Wolf Creek

The little family-owned ski area just emailed this pic as a reminder that they have 36 feet of snow to date! This is shaping up to be a record snowpack year in some parts of the state. Wow!

Hmmmm...

My wife told me at breakfast she had a dream that barack Obama had come to Colorado Springs, and she had agreed to show him around. They did The Incline together by headlamp, which he said was "pretty cool."
Now, knowing that left-leaning well-educated women under 30 are all pretty much in love with Obama, and that my wife has a love-hate relationship with The Incline, what kind of omen is this?

A Basin goes 100% wind power

Arapahoe Basin anounced a switch to offset 100% of its energy use with wind power through Renewable Choice.
To celebrate, the Basin will hold a Climate Awareness Day Saturday, February 9, 2008. The ski area will spend the day partnering with local and national companies focusing on educating the public on alternative energy sources as well as other environmentally friendly practices.
The move is part of a growing trend in the climate conscious ski industry. Copper and all five Vail resorts now get their energy from wind.
What I'm waiting for is wind turbines at the ski areas. Lord knows places like Breckenridge are windy enough.

Sometimes the biggest news is the most obvious

As video games replace outdoor activity,
interest in nature could declineWASHINGTON: As people spend more time communing with their televisions and computers, the impact is not just on their health, researchers say. Less time spent outdoors means less contact with nature and, eventually, less interest in conservation and parks.

Camping, fishing and per capita visits to parks are all declining in a shift away from nature-based recreation, researchers report in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read more here.

Campaign 2008 -- a lack of skiing

I've been waiting for one of the presidential candidates to hop on skis for a photo op. They had plenty of chances in the New Hampshire and Maine primaries. Plus, with Super Tuesday upon us, they could have bolstered their support by self-interested borgeois fitness types by strapping on the boards in the Rockies or Sierras.
Sure, it could be a disaster. The last thing you want is the AP to run a photo of you face planting in the snow, or worse, doing knock-kneed wedge turns, but in 2004, we had plenty of on-the-snow-action. John Kerry spent five days snowboarding at Sun Valley. Howard Dean, former governor of an icy, but legitimate ski state, let it be known that he was an honest-to-god ski bum in Aspen, skiing about 80 days while drinking and smoking pot in 1972.
But Obama, Hillary and McCain are all mum on the subject. Even Romney who lived in Michigan, then Massachusetts, hasn't broken out the boards.
Maybe losers like Kerry and Dean (who I like, but is still a loser) scuffed some of the luster off the allure of appearing on snow.
Or maybe it just doesn't matter. Certainly the current commander in chief hasn't garnered much of a bump in the biking crowd by riding around the ranch on his Trek.

Big, fat flakes

I was the only one climbing the incline yesterday afternoon at about 4:30. It was one of the most magical winter days this year. No wind. No sun. Just a close blanket of clouds muffling all sound and dropping light clusters of snowflakes as fat as June miller moths. They were so big and airy that instead of dropping straight down, they meandered, finally falling in a light fluff.

Unfortunately, the fluff covered some serious ice. On the way down I slipped and almost squashed my chiweenie.

Keep it fun, keep it clean

That's the motto at the Winter Park terrain park.

Did you see the story "Shrediquette" (great headline) in the Denver Post about bad etiquette on the slopes? Read it here - and for a laugh read the comments, too. Wow, talk about touching a nerve!

Dave was down in Taos over the weekend, where some riders were embracing the resort opening the lifts to snowboarders and others were aghast.

Montezuma Bowl

Gazette photographer Christian Murdock sent us these picks from yesterday at A Basin's Montezuma Bowl. Looks sweet. The snow is hitting some of the southern mountains pretty hard. Get out there.

Good grub in Montrose

I've had my troubles finding a quick bite to eat when passing through Montrose on my way to or from the San Juan Mountains, but I've finally found it!

El Dorado Bakery and Cafe,

970-249-8880
221 Colorado Ave.

It has great European-style pastries, good sandwiches on homemade bread, and a small number of New Mexican lunch plates by the owner (who is from Albuquerque.)
The owner recommends calling in your order when you get cell service on the way into town.
Any other suggestions?

D.O.W. breeds super trout

For the first time since whirling disease decimated most naturally reproducing rainbow trout populations throughout Colorado more than a decade ago, new strains of rainbows have reproduced naturally in the Gunnison River and in ponds located along the Frying Pan River near Basalt.
Colorado Division of Wildlife biologists are hopeful that the successful natural reproduction will lead to re-establishing wild, self-sustaining rainbow trout populations in Colorado where whirling disease has precluded wild rainbow trout recovery efforts.

The fish, a cross of the Hofer rainbow trout and other rainbow strains that are used for stocking, appear to be resistant to whirling disease, and also takes young river otters' lunch money.

A few more shots from the Western Slopes

A couple more shots from my "Western Slopes" road trip from today's Out There section. If you missed my earlier post on the trip, here it is.

Silverton guide John Shockley. He's an avid Hesperus fan, BTW.

Skier transport at Silverton. This thing was like a clown car - there must have been 40 people sardined in there. Crazy. I was sitting on the dash and Shockley was trying to push some guy out the door.

The view from the top of Alberta Peak at Wolf Creek. That's Tim, Wolf Creek local, enjoying the scenery. Tim says he travels like a squirrel - stuffing his pockets with nuts and berries to survive a day in Wolf Creek's side country. I just thought I'd share that with you.

Crocs for everyone

Need a new pair of Crocs AND want to help someone put shoes on their feet?

The makers of Crocs, up in Niwot, have an answer. They're launching SolesUnited, asking for donations of worn-out shoes to be recycled and turned into new ones.

The company started donating shoes about a year ago, creating them from scraps left over from the manufacturing process. Now, you'll be able to drop off your old Crocs at certain retailers and they'll be sent back to the Croc factory and used to make new shoes. Cool.

SolesUnited shoes have slight design tweaks to differentiate them from traditional Crocs. For example, shoes recently sent to Malawi didn't have the back strap.

Shoes also have been sent to Chile, El Salvador, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. The shoes are noted as being created from recycled plastic and are can’t be sold.

But a similar shoe will be sold in the U.S. as a fundraising tool.

Kittens and the warrior

Here's that cool, winning Chinese team sculpture from the snow sculpting competition up in Breckenridge. (Silly me for getting those lights in the frame!) It really is awesome. Even more impressive is that it's the work of two guys.

And here's the kitties! You can't see in this shot, but the eyes are clear ice, with the slit pupils marked in them, and there's a clear, icy charm hanging from the upper kitten's collar. The stringlike snow in the foreground is a bit of yarn, dropping from a spool the kittens are playing with. The sculpture was called Spoolin' Around.

Anyone been up to Breck since the weekend? Are these chilly artworks just puddles of icy water now?

Big snow extends Monarch's season

Monarch Mountain announced that this year's closing date has been moved to April 13, 2008. The last day was going to be April 6, 2008 but due to a record amount of snowfall in December and January the season they added a week . Total snowfall for the two month period has been more than 259 inches. Average for the year is 350.

This I love...

The Gear Junkie is at the Outdoor Retailer show, where he discovered Merrell's new do-it-yourself puffy jacket.

The jacket comes as an empty shell, a semi-transparent white nylon piece with its insulating areas open and free. Stuff with whatever insulating items the wearer desires. Just zip open the long pockets and stuff in crumpled newspaper, dead leaves, Styrofoam packing peanuts, lead shot or whatever else. The model above appears to be stuffed with plastic newspaper bags, which could make it an ideal coat for responsible winter dog walking.

Available: Fall 2008; will come in a men’s and women’s version

Price: $99

Missing snowmobilier thought to be dead

BRECKENRIDGE (AP) — Authorities say one of the snowmobilers lost in the snow-covered mountains west of Denver is dead.
The other two men in the group are recovering at a Glenwood Springs hospital this morning after a National Guard helicopter spotted their campfire last night.
Craig Morris, of Florida, and Murry Melloni of Littleton told rescuers that John McKibben of Kremmling died sometime Monday night.
Crews are planning to resume a search this morning to find McKibben's body.
The three men failed to return Sunday night from a planned one-day trip. Rescuers says cell-phone text messages the men sent helped find them.