Ann scores a free lift ticket today, so I climb the ski basin while she practices her turns. It’s a clear, gorgeous day with just a little wind up high. I make two laps, and my fantasies of a third by moonlight dissolve when Ann and I collapse at the bar after the lifts close.…

The walk from Rancho Viejo to Second Street is pretty nice, especially at sunset. After dark a very cold wind picks up and gives me rubberface.

The Pajarito web site says the area has lots of new snow, but it’s closed. Since I don’t need lifts on the split board, I head up anyway. When I get there I see a lot search and rescue vehicles. Someone tells me a snowboarder has been lost since yesterday, and to keep my eye…

We had to break the rules to enjoy this nice little ski outside Salt Lake City. Little Cottonwood Canyon is mostly National Forest land, but in the winter the two campgrounds close and the ski areas take over. There is a parking lot at the White Pine trailhead. We get away with parking there overnight,…

We’ve sworn off lift tickets, and instead invested in alpine touring gear for Ann so she can accompany me when I go out on the split board. Yesterday we tried to find a practice hill in the foothills of the Owyhee mountains, but higher temperatures and winds had removed the snow already! So today we…

Downtown Boise has lovely trails that run along the Boise River. Even on a cold, icy day we see joggers, ducks, geese, wading fishermen, and a very busy little Downy Woodpecker. Also filed at EveryTrail.

Big fat flakes keep floating down and piling up. Santa Fe doesn’t frequently get inches of snow at once in town, and the roads can stay bad when it happens. Yesterday we stayed holed up in the house, but we can’t stay couped up today. Ann decides to venture to the office, and I’ve been…

Today’s outing is part of two experiments. One is to find good outings that are fully human powered – gasless from the doorstep. Back in 2001 I used to see how far into the Front Range I could get from my apartment in Highlands Ranch in a day on my mountain bike. Recently a Dirtbag…

A wind tears through Idaho Springs as if the Sasquatch and Paul Bunyun decided to have a contest to see who could blow the town down the mountain first. We’ve procured a lonely parking spot at the Indian Hot Springs Resort. We seem to be the only ones willing to pay to endure the wind…

We crossed the Continental Divide Trail in Silver City, and today we find it again at what must surely be one of its most remote road crossings, New Mexico highway 12. We stop long enough to recall our concerns at the time, dry springs, injured feet, and the lure of Pie Town in the north.…