Road Trip Re-Cap
According to google, that’s 1300 miles on the car in a mere 6 days.
Before I get into any details, I want to apologize for the lack of pictures. I took exactly 2 pictures on this whole trip, and they were of the fog that descended on me on Porcupine Rim, so they are pretty much grey and uninteresting. I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t really in the photo mood. So it goes.
Even though pictures are worth a thousand words, you’re just gonna have to deal with 1000 words instead, and paint one beautiful mental picture with those words.
Tuesday – Headin’ Out
I rocked a half-day at work, and rolled up to zion by sunset. Met some friends up there from college, and commenced some beverage indulgence.
In the rain.
No matter. I eventually set up the tent, and crashed out.
Wednesday – Wetday
I woke up, realizing that not only had it rained all night, but that my trusty tent of 9 years is not the most waterproof structure anymore. The fly leaked a bit, which pooled on the inner layer. It seemed dry until I pulled something out of the gear loft, and SPLOOSH, all the water dumped out.
It was still raining all morning, so I pulled the plug on zion and headed north to Salt Lake City for some mormons and skiing.
Well, scratch that on the mormons, but definitely the skiing.
Thursday – A Proper Thanksgiving
After commandeering the couch at Mike and Alicia’s place on wednesday night, I hopped out of bed, waxed some skis on their porch (I swear, that white stuff I swept off the porch was snow. . . ) and headed up to Alta with Mike.
The runs were fun, nothing spectacular, and not much fresh (an inch, maybe), but a much needed first day on the skis for the year. I did a bit of off-piste skiing, and immediately regretted that decision as I tromped back out of a sparsely covered gulley. Oh well.
That evening we rocked over to a friend of Mike’s place for some dinner. I demonstrated how to carve a turkey (isn’t that one of those “100 skills everyone should have”? maybe not.), and I gorged myself sick on turkey, gravy, potatoes, salad, stuffing, and whatever else was put in front of my face.
Yes, I had seconds. And yes, I had thirds. And yes, I still ate 2 pieces of pie after that.
They had a 20 lb turkey for 5 people, what was I supposed to do?
Friday – Moab
Friday morning I was up and out with a mission to make it a 2 sport vacation. I arrived in Moab at 11:30, hit up some sort of sandwich covered in green chili at the Moab Diner and headed to bottom end of the Porcupine Rim trail.
It was a foggy, cold day, so I suited up with a long sleeve jersey, and threw a pair of winter gloves, a skull cap, and a windbreaker in the pack, and headed out. I was starting late, but had my eye on the complete porcupine rim loop. For those unfamiliar, this is a 15 mile road ride to the trailhead, and then the 15 mile trail back down. I knew I was running short on time getting started at 1pm, so I laid the hammer down and made it to the trailhead in just under 1.5 hours.
I got to the top of the major climb on P-rim, and dug into my pack to put on some warmer clothes. . . Only to find that I left the jacket in the car, and what I thought was a skull cap turned out to be a balaclava.
They’re both black and say “GORE Bike Wear” on them and I was in a hurry, I can’t be blamed.
I sat there for a moment pondering what I would look like wearing orange shorts, a red long-sleeve jersey, black windstopper gloves, and a black balaclava while bombing down P-rim on a singlespeed.
Quite the sight, I’m sure.
Luckily, the sun started burning off some of the fog, and I headed down (with the balaclava in reserve). Didn’t want to startle anyone, ya know.
I ended up flatting my front tire twice (stupid nanoraptors), but still made the complete loop in 3:45. Moving time was 3:15, and the two flats cost me about 1/2 hour (I wasn’t particularly moving fast changing them). Pretty freakin’ fast.
Must have been the outfit.
Saturday – Silverton
I rocked out to Silverton friday night and met up with J-money and Rocco at the prestigious Triangle Motel. We made it up to the ski area for opening day saturday morning, and had a fun day of skiing. Even though there were only a few runs open, there were so few people there we had fresh powder all day.
The only problem was that under the fresh powder, there wasn’t much base to be found. We ended the day with smiles from the powder and gouges from the rocks. I took a couple good hits when I got off course partway down a run and ended up in a nasty gulley that didn’t have much snow in it.
Even though I came home with a couple items to take care of on the skis, Rocco still wins the prize for most impressive. He actually had a rock embedded in the base of his snowboard.
Like I said, a little work with a PTEX candle and a scraper is on the dockett.
Sunday – Consolation Prize
The plan for sunday was to lick our wounds, and bootpack that day. Unfortunately, the weather had other plans, and the winds were raging when we made it up to the mountain. They pulled the plug on the lift for fear that somebody would have to quickly learn how to fly if they tried to ride the thrashing chairlift, and so I, as well, pulled the plug.
After receiving a nice t-shirt for making the trek up to the mountain on sunday, I tucked tail and headed back to flag.
That just about catches us up, now doesn’t it? In the end, I got 2 days of skiing, a day of biking, a couple days of driving, and a helluva good time.
1300 miles ain’t that bad, right?
p.s. In case you were wondering on the 1000 words in exchange for a lack of pictures, this brings the count up to 1056, enjoy.
