Today was day # 35 of skiing this 2010-11 winter season. My goal is 80 days. Why? Because I need mileage to become a better skier and keeping track of the days inspires me to get out on days when I might not be motivated.

After a few setbacks this morning, I finally got to the cross country trails at 2pm. Now I understand why nordic skiing is a morning thing. It’s been unusually warm for the past few weeks and there has been no snow at all. The sun and the warmth has taken a toll on the snow still clinging to the ground. Back country skiing has turned to absolutely miserable bumpy hard icy ick unless your timing is exact and you catch ‘corn.’ Resort skiing is a slip and slide. So cross country it is.

In the shade, the trails were icy and seemed like they hadn’t been groomed in days. In the sun, it was slushy. My light and thin skis were thrown off by both of these conditions. Halfway through my first lap, I stopped daydreaming about being on my bike and realized that I was getting everything I needed from my ski excursion- solitude, sunshine, fresh air, and a work out. It’s still ski season and it will snow again soon.

Just a quick update on the garden. The self-watering containers are almost complete. They’re made from re-purposed plastic 55 gallon drums. The only part we had to purchase is FRP- only 1 sheet though for roughly 8 containers.

All of the plants are still inside under the lights.

• Tomatoes: The plants are 7-8 inches and looking really healthy.

• The Rutabagas, Parsnips, Chard, Brussels, and Kale are all sort of mixed up. We planted anywhere from 1-3 seeds in each little seed starter. The delay in moving them outside caused them to grow more and need more room than expected. We were sort of concerned about them being too “leggy”/spindly, but we’ve done some transplanting and I think they’re going to be just fine.

• The other seeds (lettuce, carrots, etc.) are not supposed to be transplanted so we’re waiting until the containers are ready and can be placed outside to start these seeds.

• The Aero-Garden: We started growing herbs in the aero-garden back in December. The marjoram took over and pretty much turned into a bush. It has since been transplanted. We’ve re-planted basil seeds 3 or 4 times yet it won’t grow. So, no pesto here. Chives and Parsley are the only ones left.

• Additional plants I’ve acquired: I heard that mint was a beast to start from seed so I purchased two mint plants- one regular and one chocolate mint. They each cost $2 which is the same as 1 packet of mint leaves at the grocery store. So, I figure as long as we get 1 grocery store packet out of each mint plant then the rest is bonus. Also, I picked up a wheatgrass plant along the way. I tried adding it to one of my smoothies, but the blender is not the best tool for wheatgrass.

The Delay:

I thought that the plants would for sure be re-located to outside by the end of May, but we had snow storms on April 28 (at least 6 inches), May 10, and now May 21-22 (4-5 inches). To be fair, this is not the norm for this area and we do live at 7400 feet, but still, it’s May!!! Last summer, in Gunnison, CO, I was hating life when it hailed in June, however, right now, it’s 30 degrees warmer in Gunnison than it is here in Tahoe.

Those three words meant nothing to me until this winter.  When I first learned I’d be skiing this winter, I developed an irrational fear of falling off of the lift.  I’ve gotten over it for the most part.  Back country skiing avoids the lifts all together.  So how does it work? Well, this is how I would have explained it to myself before actually doing it.

A note about equipment:  Back Country skiis tend to be wider (for powder) yet lighter. Also, people usually use lighter boots than they do when skiing at the resorts. There are also way lighter bindings for the backcountry. The weight savings adds up when you start doing a lot of vertical.

First, you put these things (“skins”) on the bottom of your skis sort of like a band-aid.  They hook on one end and stick to the bottom of your skis.  These magical things allow you to haul yourself up a hill so you can then ski down.  And all of this without the use of any machine other than your body.  This is what people did before lifts, I suppose. Basically, we use different bindings which have a rotating heel piece. On the way up, your heel is not attached at all which allows for a sort of walking motion. (similar to a classic nordic stride, I think).  I’m still no expert.

Skinning has a pretty steep learning curve, I’ve found. The little hairs on the skins catch so that you don’t slide back down. The key is to keep your weight back. This is totally counterintuitive and hard to make your body do.

Second, someone “breaks trail” and puts in a “skin track.”  This is the trail which in some cases is used by many many people to get to the top.  My understanding is that the skin tracks around Lake Tahoe tend to be steeper than in other regions. Anyhow, you make your extendable poles fairly long and trek along up the trail. At the switch backs, you get do turns. These turns take a few tries to master. If you’ve never done it before, imagine only have your toe clipped in and trying to turn your alpine ski by lifting up your foot and turning it 90 degrees.

As the trail gets steeper, you turn up the heel risers on your bindings so that although your heel is not attached, as you shift weight from one foot to the other, your heel has a higher platform to rest on. This makes it seem less steep.

Third, after reaching the summit of wherever you are skiing, there’s the transition. This involves ripping the skins off of your skis- usually in one swipe, just like band-aids.  Usually, you get quite warm on the way up and so you’ll have to put on a jacket, hat, gloves, etc. for the way down.  Next,  you adjust your equipment: shorten the ski poles, adjust the heels so that your boots will lock in, put your boots in ski mode, tighten the boots, etc.  Finally, goggles and helmet seal the deal.

Fourth, ski down- usually in deep powder with very few other tracks. Sweet!!!

Fifth: Repeat! If it’s a short climb or you have all day, you get to do laps. Just transition back to “uphill” mode.  The advantage that skins have over band-aids is that they are re-usable which is nice considering how expensive they are

I admit to having an on again off again relationship with blogging.  But, I’m back!  After the mini-road trip adventure in Sept/Oct 2009, I’ve been spending my days in South Lake Tahoe.

This winter, I learned a lot:  how to co-exist with snow, how to ski, how to knit, what a non-judicial foreclosure is, etc.

I was lucky enough to stumble into a work situation which allowed me to ski a lot– I’ve logged 73 days so far and I might not be done yet! While it is May 9th, this means nothing to Mother Nature who is still threating us with winter. I saw snowflakes this morning.

Keeping up with my sustainability obsessions, there have been exciting developments this winter: 1) a home-made compost bin made out of re-used materials 2) a grey water catchment system made out of re-used plastic 55 gallon drums 3) a mini-garden.  So far, there are tomatoes, parsnips, leeks, rutabegas, etc. They’re only 4-5″ but we’re hopeful that we’ll be getting them outside in self-watering containers soon. And watering them with the water from #2.

I didn’t realize how much the cold weather was getting me down until I ventured out to Auburn this past weekend. With 3 big snow storms in April this year, Lake Tahoe seems to be on an extended winter plan. All around the country, spring has sprung. Snow has melted, flowers bloom, and temperatures approach the mid 80′s. While it was really fun to ski 18” of powder last week, I’m ready to move on to spring.

I tried to force the change of the season by highlighting my hair in an attempt to pretend that I, too, had been out by the pool or beach and my hair was in fact “sun-kissed.” Unfortunately, you can’t induce face serotonin absorption. The only measurable result was when my boyfriend asked me how I got zebra stripes in my hair.

In Auburn, I set off on my mountain bike sporting a tank top, shorts, and the whitest legs I’ve ever seen. Hours, miles, and miles later, I found myself floating. I could almost feel toxins seeping out of my body as sweat dripped down my face. After riding, I went to the grocery store still covered in mud and with a perma-grin. My blood seemed to circulate in a more vibrant fashion. My veins were pumping away at full force. I’m sure that the excellent biking accounted for some of my bliss, but the fact that it really was t-shirt weather, made it all that much sweeter.

Driving back to Tahoe, both my dog and I had our heads out the window as we wound our way up and down curvy hills. On one section of Hwy 49 the trees formed a canopy and I realized that I hadn’t seen so much green foliage in months and months. I passed vineyards and houses on hills with beautiful grassy yards. I couldn’t resist the strawberry stand on the side of the road.

As we approached the final destination, the windows seemed to inch themselves up a little more every few miles. Finally arriving at 7500 feet, I put on a long sleeve shirt while still glowing and then I began to wonder- where to next weekend?

Leaving CO and heading to UT

Who knew there were still dinosaurs in CO?

During my last morning in City of Rocks, I ate breakfast to the sound of hunters shooting towards the RV. Not Cool! After getting rained out, we loaded up and headed to Boise.  So far, Boise has been uneventful yet relaxing.  It has been great to visit my cousins who live here. I haven’t seem them in a year or two. We’ve been doing some more RV organizing and preparation for the motorcycle leg of our journey. We went into the city yesterday to run errands and work out.  There is a really great (and big/long) trail system just on the edge of the city.  The  perfect weather and great scenery made for a spectacular run yesterday.

I’m starting to learn the down time and prep time are really valuable but often overlooked.  Today’s project is getting my photos under control so that I can try to get some posted in my blog.

I woke up this morning still fully pumped from yesterday’s amazing climbing day.  I realized after a few pitches that I was mentally taxed and I probably wasn’t going to make any progress today climbing.  It sounds kind of silly but climbing takes more mental capacity than one would think.   I love being able to clear my schedule, clear my mind, and devote a whole day to climbing.  It’s hard to put time limits on climbing especially when dealing with all the gear involved with trad climbing.  That being said, after 4 or 5 full days, I needed a day off.

The day really sort of fell apart so I’ll just continue with some info about City of Rocks: It’s the first desitination climbing area I’ve been to in the US. It looks exactly as it sounds like a city where instead of houses, there are rocks.  There’s a 5 or 6 mile road going through the park and it’s not in particularly great condition.  Almo is a very small town. Oakley is a shade larger but it is 11 miles away.  I would reccommend stocking up on supplies (food, etc.) that will last for your whole stay because once you get established in the City, it’s hard to motivate to leave.

Camping in the City is $12.72/night. Reservations (mandatory on weekends) are an addition $6 (one time fee, not per night).   Some of the campsites are really sweet. There are 2 water points and a few bathrooms around.   If you are on a low budget, there’s BLM land around the outside of the park where the camping is FREE!  We ended up parking the RV on the corner of the entrance to the park.  We planned to move it to a better spot, but somehow never got around to moving it.  We arrived in the middle of the week and saw it go from desolate to crowded pretty quickly.  There are around 64 campsites so it gets  busy on the weekends.

Not to far down the road is the Castle Rock Park.  There’s amazing sport climbing there and it is not crowded at all. I think they charge $4 for motor vehicle entry. We parked down the street and rode our bikes in. All of the trails are well marked and beaten in which makes for easy approaches.  Castle Rock is well worth a few days.

Both City of Rocks and Castle Rock offer a ton of easy to moderate routes.  Evan was convinced that the grading was made easy to sort of promulgate the idea that this is a beginner friendly destination.  His found “proof” of this in his climbing folder. He had torn out pages from some magazine years ago with Castle Rock routes.  There was one that we had climbed that used to be 5.7 and now it’s 5.8.   I was enjoying my ego boost from being able to climb “harder” stuff. Oh well! I try not to get caught up in the grading anyway.

For no special reason, I decided that today I was going to climb 10 pitches.  I like to think of pitches as little pieces. So some routes just have one and some routes have up to 35.  The great thing about multi-pitch routes is that it’s easy to get in a groove and just keep going.  It’s especially easy with sport climbing because clipping to the bolts is so much faster than actually placing gear.

The morning started off well with made from scratch banana pancakes.  I became a bit depressed while listening to NPR and making sandwiches. Of  course, it was a program about health care and one girls struggle with cancer which pretty much reduced me to tears.  Apparently she had to remain a full time student to continue to reiceve health care benefits. Her mom eventually was able to change the law which I consider to be pretty amazing.

After a few pit stops, we finally got on the first route at 11:15am. I was slightly peeved since I woke up at 8am and somehow it took 3 hours to get going.  But, I dutifully trudged along clinging to my goal.  I started out leading on the first pitch of a 3 pitch route.  I like leading because I feel like more of a real climber-even if the route is fairly easy.  That route knocked of 3 pitches. Then we did a 2 pitch fairly painless route.  There’s a region in Castle Rock called “Crack House.” We went over there hoping to do some crack practice, but we quickly realized that the granite here is amazing because it is so featured and we should take advantage of that.  So back to the sport climbing area…..

At this point, we were 8 pitches in with 2 more to go.  Usually, I only get to 5 or 6 pitches in a day, so I was starting to lose steam.  Fortunately, we had prepared ahead of time and brought some yerba mate for an afternoon pick up.  Since we had been climbing pretty easy all day, Evan wanted to step up and do some “classic” routes.  The first one was called “Shock and Awe.” All routes have names some of which are crazier than others.  This route was great because it was a really long pitch which included a mix of steep jugs (really big holds) and some technical face climbing.  My weakness is definititely slab/face climbing where with tiny holds and tiny feet.  Although it was almost at my limit, I made it up.

Finally, our last route of the day was another challenge.  It is called “Red Rib” since it is on an arrette (a side edge) of a huge formation.  I made it past the first move and halfway through the second before loosing my grip and slipping off. I was so mad because I had made it through but fell off because I was leaning out instead of leaning in to the rock.  Mentally, I channeled my frustration into determination. I had to start all over again, but I knew I was going to make it the second time.  The route was really long and it was more challenging than the last one.  At one point, the hand holds were non-existant and the feet holds were not so great either.  Somehow, I pushed through and made it to the top.  It was the perfect ending to a great day.  A was a little shaky about rappelling on two ropes tied together by the “Euro Death Knot.” But, I made it back down.

Feeling accomplished and satisfied, we made it back to camp around 7pm.  What ensued was a frantic rushing around the kitchen in an effort to prepare Indian food for dinner. Ah, yes . The perfect end to the perfect day…..