Abenteuer in Südwesten Colorado!

Adventures in Southwest Colorado!

This weekend took me to sunny and beautiful Montrose, Colorado. Situated amongst the San Juan mountain range of southwest Colorado, it is in a perfect location for outdoor activities. An hour or so north of Ouray- the ice climbing mecca of North America, an hour from Telluride- an epic ski destination in itself and completely surrounded by public lands offering more to do than time can allow! Montrose really has a lot going for it, the only item missing is an extensive public transit system so one does not need a car so much! I have been staying with a wonderful couple whom I found on Couchsurfing, if you don’t know what this is check it out here: http://www.couchsurfing.com/

My first day here I had an awesome opportunity to see Grand Mesa National Forest. Located an hour north of Montrose, it is one of the largest flat top mountains in the world at over 50 square miles and at elevations ranging from 10 to 11,000 feet! It hosts quite a unique subalpine ecosystem up there, with spruce and fir trees as well several dozen small lakes. At this time of year it was completely frozen up there and we could walk out onto the lakes easily- albeit carefully (-;

I traveled with a fellow couchsurfer, Amanda Harrow who is touring Colorado and the west after spending some months working in Denver on an election campaign. She was kind enough to drive us up there, which turned out to be much longer than it looked on the map (this happens all the time to me here in Colorado- the distances are deceiving!) She accompanied me on a hike where we could not find the trail, so instead we bushwacked a bit and made our own trail through about 4 inches of snow.

The next day our wonderful hosts took Amanda and myself on an epic adventure that culminated in a nudie soak at Orvis hot springs. We had a late start from Montrose, after corresponding silly delays from all of us. Telluride easily made up for that though! What has to be one of the coolest Colorado resort towns I have seen, Telluride is surrounded on 3 sides by massive imposing mountains.

It is easy to see why Telluride is so famous the world throughout for its pop culture, the main street features great shopping, a free gondola takes you to mountain village (where the ski slopes begin), there are numerous festivals throughout the year and the food was absolutely outstanding (try the fish tacos from the stand- outta this world!). I could talk about how cool Telluride is and how much I want to live there all day, read about it for yourself here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telluride,_Colorado. We paused for a group photo of the couchsurfers, from left to right it is Robyn, Rob, Amanda and myself:

Next we embarked for Ouray, home of the infamous ice climbing festival held every year in January. Passing through town, we simply HAD to pause for a chocolate break. Anyone who has been to Ouray knows about Moose’s chocolate. I devoured chocolate in more forms in such a a short amount of time than I would care to admit (on here atleast (-; ), but fresh chocolate is clearly one of the finer things in life. Moose’s has a variety to suit any taste and I might recommend the scrap cookies- a surprise flavor in every bite! Also, an insider tip- wait for when they pull the cookies out of the mini-oven, ask for a glass of milk, devour slowly and deliberately, then walk on clouds as you exit (-;

Outside Ouray to the south we stopped to see box canyon, where the top ice climbing action is held and where a stretch of perhaps a quarter miles is “farmed”. A pipe runs along the top of the narrow canyon and water is dripped through a series of nozzles that makes for perfect ice conditions- including opportunities for dry-picking (mixed ice climbing on rock with ice tools). Just to stand there and see the world class material simply blew my mind, fully knowing the world’s best climbers would descend on Ouray in a little over a month, it was an inspiring moment. Just recently metal structures were built to better able people to view the climbers- that is me standing on the big one which is probably for the press.

More information can be found here: http://www.ourayicepark.com/ The quality of the ice was a bit disappointing (lack of ice any ice actually), but the weather has not been contingent for snow or ice in this part of Colorado lately, sadly enough )-

Moving on from Ouray we continued south along the “million dollar highway”. At the start of the highway is a cool sign proclaiming:

The 23 mile highway was supposedly called this because it cost that much per mile to build, we worked it out in the car to be $9.47 per square foot. It was really an engineering marvel that I would venture to claim rivals the autbahns of alpine Austria. I wonder how much it cost to build the Großglockner-Hochalpenstraße? It is quite a famous alpine road snaking around the highest mountain of Austria. The photo below is of Bear Creek running under the road and flying off the mountain side- gives you an idea of how big the dropoff is and how difficult it was to build this road!

We drove for a while along the million dollar highway and managed to make it to the flat part, called Ironton, before turning around with nice thoughts of hot springs. At Orvis hot springs I had such a relaxing time, whew! The water felt great, wearing no clothes felt great and having a nice conversation with an older gentleman about the history of mountaineering in Colorado was nice. An hour and a half spent in varying pools of hotness, we had to put our clothes back on, kind of a sad moment after being free for so long. Sorry, no photos from Orvis (-;

First ski tour of the year!

Last night brought us here in northern West Virginia a lovely sugar coating of snow! In Morgantown I stepped out to the car to be greeted by 2 inches of snow and lots of ice to clear. I had some paperwork at the University, so I went to take care of that only to find no one in the office. With that I knew I had my chance to go big, Coops style (-: Skis, boots, poles, hot tea and Ipod shuffle loaded in the Volvo I headed up to Coopers Rock State Forest.

After a quick 20 minute drive I was pleasantly surprised by not a sugar coating, but full-fledged powder conditions! At about 2,200 ft (675 m), Coops is distinctly higher than Morgantown and as so gets blessed with much more snow. The average depth during my ski tour was perhaps about 4 inches, though in some places it was as shallow as 2 inches or as deep as 6 inches in drifts. There were no other skiers today either, a bit strange, but perhaps not because it is a Tuesday and most have to work. I took a moment to rig the camera on a stump to shoot this Kodak of me (in ankle pow!) on the trail:

I skied from the front gate near Intersate 68 to the overlook via the roadside trail. I am not sure how long it was, perhaps 6 or 8 miles all together- enough for a fun, mid-week, mid- morning ski tour (-; The view from the overlook was stunning. I arrived to find the clouds had cleared and to take this photo from the overlook block looking down the Cheat canyon:

After a rather agonizing tour back to the car (the inside of my heels were rubbed raw from the ski boots) I made quick time back to Morgantown in time for a brief meeting with my advisor at WVU. I had previously scheduled a meeting for the morning to discuss jobs in Colorado. I hope our area gets more snow and more ski tours come soon!

My roomate's super cool Blog

Hannes, my colleague and friend from Austria has a blog too! If you can read German and are interested he blogs about his experiences here in the states. Hannes and his girlfriend Doris are both exchange students from Austria studying at West Virginia University for this fall semester. His blog can be found here: http://hannes-in-america.blogspot.com/

If you cannot read the text, that is no problem! He is an outstanding photographer and has really done a nice job cataloging his trips with Doris all around the USA. This weekend they will go to see parts of New England and Canada.