Should I Stay or Should I go Tour

[cat in january]

Arrived home yesterday at 4:30 am. Unpacked car, walked to the Atlantic and looked at my favorite view. Crashed to wake and see snow falling, covering everything in white. It was a good winter.

A week ago at just about this time I was dropping my wife off at the Phoenix airport. We had hiked the Escalante Route in the Grand Canyon for a 5 day back pack and then lounged at the top. While there I reserved the first unguided day of the season at Silverton.

A week ago new snow greeted me as I stopped for the night on Lizard Head Pass. Woke to 4 Fahrenheit temperature and drove past Telluride and these other amazing mountains to Crested Butte. Wednesday and Thursday at Crested Butte was great with winter snow conditions and almost the whole mountain open. It had been a low snow year so picking around rocks and skiing over quite a few was required, but man was it fun. Last run on Thursday had me as the first one dropping in to the Banana and the snow had drifted in nicely as I was the first in-ummm.

That afternoon I ran into Capulin Overdrive in the parking lot as I was gearing up to tour Red Lady and he was getting his snow bike (think that is what it is called-whatever it is called it sure looked fun) off loaded.

April Fools Day at Silverton was a perfect last ski day for the trip. Sunny skis on cold powder for the first non-guided day of the Spring. Flew down Cabin for my first run and ended up skiing 9 runs altogether. Great day and great vibe at the hill.

Will update in a week or two with photos, but for now here are the numbers:

80 days and 80 nights
13,500 miles
37 nights in the car, 15 nights with friends, 10 nights in huts, 13 nights in hotels, 5 nights in a tent
29 days touring and 30 days riding lifts
8 days with the wife including a 5 day backpack in the Grand Canyon
Starting weight 174, finishing weight 151
Mags who reached out and made parts of this happen priceless.

[DasBlunt]

sweet TR.
All you need next time is to build an igloo, adding to, huts, hotels, tents, cars, friends....

[babybear]

wow I hadn't really tuned into this epic trip until now- well done!
sorry we missed you on the Jackson leg but looked like a really fun trip

[Danno]

FKNA!

[Mofro261]

Hey cat! Didn't catch this thread earlier. Great to meet you on that tour around Stevens in Feb with Norseman and Zbo.

Sounds like a FKNA stellar trip all around.

[cat in january]

Thanks all.

Baby Bear would have been great to meet, but Jackson treated me well.

Bobby it was a hard day when I choose to go South to the sun of California rather than Tuesday at Alpental.

Mofro that was a nice tour around Zebo's back yard,

[capulin overdrive]

Yup, met Cat on the Kebler trailhead. We were parked within a couple spaces of each other and got to chatting, figured out he was a mag from his BBI sticker!

Shame you didn't get to go farther back in. Guess we should have tied a rope to the bike!

Holler if you ever make it back in CO, if dates worked maybe we could get you on a sled and get you into some better terrain.

GPS send you up 10 to hyw50, or you stay on 160 through Kansas?

[cat in january]

^^^^^Sounds good.

Funny you should ask about the gps. Left Silverton and it had me almost all the way down to Durango when it had me take a left turn followed by two rights. Road looked familiar and then saw a second thing I was sure I had just seen. Reset the gps twice, but it still brought me back to Silverton so an hour down and another hour back-guessed it was the gps April fool's joke.

Traveled highway 50 through Kansas.

[mtnbiker/boarder]

Cat glad ur trip worked out so well. Super cool for sure looking forward to seeing your pics
Congrats again

[Vt-Freeheel]

Good to see you're back safe and sound. 174>151, sounds like you need a sammich. Not much snow left around these parts, although it seems winters back. Maybe we'll get a few turns in.