This ended up being one of the most extreme adventures to date, though certainly not by choice. “Look, Nachos!” was the battle cry. Ice axes not only chipped into ice and clung onto rocks, but also smashed into faces. Snowboards were used for bobsledding and skeleton racing. One of us even tried to use a snowboard as a sail, sliding backwards down the hill on her back, snowboard thrust into the air. Bathroom floors were tilted making toilets hard to sit on, and Eagle’s Nests existed in imaginary worlds. Our Montero couldn’t resist shaking its bootie and performing a donut on a two-way road, and Judy almost got squashed by a reckless boarder.

Whew! This little trip turned out to be quite an extreme adventure, much more so than we would have liked. There were a total of 8 of us in this group. Aaron, Sean, and John took an earlier flight from SD to Montrose, rented a Grand Cherokee, and got to Ouray about 3 hours ahead of the rest of the group, which consisted of Ryan, Patty, Bob, Judy, and myself. We ended up with a Montero, which was a good thing since it was a good deal larger than the Cherokee. We stopped at the City Market in Montrose to get some breakfast and lunch food, and then headed toward Ouray where we met up with the rest of the gang at Buen Tiempo for dinner.

Look, Nachos!
The food at Buen Tiempo was good. Sean donated $1 towards charity and we all got to see the waitress throw and stick a dollar bill to the ceiling using a tack, some tape, and a few quarters for weight. We had all decided that we would not talk about Ryan’s diesel ordeal, but the topic inevitably came up over dinner. Fortunately, Bob quickly exclaimed, “Look, Nachos!”, thereby alerting us to the presence of half-eaten nachos on our table. This exciting discovery quickly diverted our attention away from diesel Land Rovers.

Don’t Slide off the Toilet!
We stayed at the Box Canyon Lodge. right across the street from the Victorian Inn where we stayed last year. The Victorian Inn’s advantage is that they have a free breakfast while the Box Canyon Lodge does not. Aaron, Sean, and John took the smaller condo while the rest of us took the larger one. There was a mini-fridge in the bigger condo, but it wasn’t quite large enough to fit all the things we had just bought at the market. We ended up using the outside balcony as a natural fridge for our milk, OJ, apple juice, and other drinks.

One of the things about our bathroom was that it had an incline to it. You had to walk uphill into the bathroom and when you sat down on the toilet, you actually felt gravity trying to pull you off to the side. We spent the rest of the night getting ready for ice climbing the next day with Judy and Patty graciously providing their tool assembly and sharpening services.

Saturday was unbelievably warm. Even Judy thought it was warm so it really must have been. Ryan, Aaron, Sean, and John went early to set up the climbs while the rest of us had to wait until 9 AM for the rental shop to open. Renting took a bit longer than we hoped since we had to get everyone’s crampons adjusted to the boots we were renting. Soon, however, we had everything rented and adjusted and were on our way down into the canyon.

The First Casualty
It was incredibly crowded in the climbing area. The early group had set up a good variety of climbs, some just ice and others mixed (rock and ice). Aaron was the first casualty of the trip. His ice axe popped off of a hold and struck him in the face. Aaron gave Ouray a bit of his blood in exchange for a nice little mark on his face.

That night, we went to the Italian restaurant Bon Ton for dinner. It took a little while to get our food, but most of us were happy with the end result.

Slipping, Sliding, and . . . Crashing
The next day we were off to Telluride for some snowboarding. All of us were going to snowboard, even Aaron and Patty. It had snowed slightly the night before and was lightly snowing in the morning so we were looking forward to some good conditions. Aaron drove the Cherokee along with Sean and John. I drove the Montero with everyone else. Most of the road from Ouray to Telluride was in good shape, but unfortunately, not all of it was.

Somewhere along the 62, the roads were visibly covered with snow. On one section of the road, the Montero lost traction and fishtailed to the left. There was a large van approaching in the opposite direction, which was not a good thing. The vehicle then fishtailed to the right at which point we were dangerously close to the oncoming van. We then fishtailed once again to the left, spun about 180 degrees, crashed the rear bumper into the mountain on our right, and spun another 180 degrees (360 degrees total so that we ended up facing the direction we were supposed to be), at which point the vehicle finally came to a stop on the side of the road. Everybody was shaken up, but fortunately, no one was hurt. Things could have been much, much worse so we were all very much relieved. We got out to look at things and it appeared that the Montero’s rear bumper was damaged pretty good. The road was iced up pretty good as you could slide around easily on it; it was definitely a dangerous section of road. The Montero was still drivable so we continued on to Telluride.

Most of the group had to rent snowboards. The rental shop there only had boards with Salomon step-ins. These bindings absolutely sucked. Patty had problems with her bindings being loose not only with her boots, but also with the board. Even after disassembling the binding and the board, we could not get it tight.

Free Comedy and Entertainment on the Slopes
One of the highlights of the day was provided courtesy of Patty. We were all assembled at an area where there was an easy trail to the left, and a slightly steeper trail to the right. Patty decided to take the easier run down, took a spill, fell over the edge onto the slightly steeper trail, and proceeded to slide backwards down the hill on her back with her feet and board in the air. She must have slid for perhaps 100 feet down the mountain. It was quite an amusing sight. Apparently, she really wanted to go down that way.

Yet Another Barely Averted Catastrophe
Later in the day, tragedy almost struck again (the day’s going well, no?). Bob and I were uphill a ways from Aaron, Ryan, and Judy, trying to watch Patty and provide her with some tips. A group of 4 snowboarders stopped near me, the leader of which appeared to be a resort worker. He had a red jacket and from their conversation, I guessed that he was giving lessons to a small group. I heard him say something like “You’ll be getting 7-8 feet of air . . . give me some room before you go.” So I got up and decided to follow them since I wanted to see this jump and watch them go off it. Well, it turns out that Aaron, Ryan, and Judy were sitting in an area that was, unbeknownst to them, the landing area for this jump. The leader of the group took the jump, went over Aaron’s head, and landed right between where Ryan and Judy were sitting. His board just missed Judy, but it did slice her Nalgene bottle and her Gore-Tex pants. Had she been sitting even just a few inches more to her right, the results could have been catastrophic. Whew! Yet another disaster barely averted.

The rest of the day on the mountain went better although we were never able to get Patty’s board adjusted right. The good thing was that she was able to get a full refund on her rental. Telluride has a pretty good snowboard park, complete with rails for beginners. Aaron, Ryan, and myself tried to do some slides with varying amounts of success.

The Imaginary Eagle’s Nest, an “Excellent” Dining Establishment, Yet Not so Excellent
After the day was over, we met up and cruised into Telluride (the town) for dinner. We ended up at the Eagle’s Bar. Apparently, this restaurant was formerly, in some imaginary world, known as the Eagle’s Nest. Ryan claimed that he had eaten at this place when it was the Eagle’s Nest and that he had had some kind of meat dish that was “excellent”. The Eagle’s Nest may very well have been good, but the Eagle’s Bar left much to be desired. It was a long while from the time we ordered our food until we actually got it. This was primarily due to the Chicken Adobo, which is what Ryan and Bob ordered and what was part of the salad that Patty and Judy ordered. We were told that they had run out of the half-chickens used for the Chicken Adobo, but that they would use chicken breasts instead which would “taste exactly” like the regular dish. This would have been acceptable. However, the chicken certainly did not taste like Chicken Adobo. In fact, it didn’t taste much like anything at all. It was seemingly just chicken grilled with no seasonings or marinade, and grilled too long since it was pretty dry. Some of it was like eating chicken jerky. Of course, they totally forgot Patty’s order which helped cap off her wonderful day. For Patty, Telluride became known as Helluride.

The manager apologized for everything and offered us free desserts, which were actually very good. We all got to sample cheesecake tempura, mousse, and vanilla ice cream with bananas in a slightly alcoholic sauce. The rest of the evening was, thankfully, uneventful.

We woke up the next morning to snow, cloudy skies, and gusty winds. My wrist was hurting from falling the previous day in a failed rail slide attempt so I decided I wasn’t going to ice climb. Patty, Bob, and Judy decided the same. The four of us packed up our things and drove out to watch Ryan, Aaron, Sean, and John climb. The weather actually cleared up and it turned out to be a nice day, much to Judy’s dismay. We watched them climb for a while then went to see the lower canyon where there was a climbing accident the other day when we were climbing. Supposedly, a large pillar of ice had fallen off injuring either the climber, the belayer, or both.

We had lunch at a coffee shop in Ouray and then started back towards the airport. Since we had some time to pass, we decided to kill some of it at Wal-Mart. We were soon back at the airport where Patty and Bob had some fun rolling around on Bob’s Behemoth (not THAT Behemoth!). We experienced some pretty bad turbulence on the puddle jumper from Montrose to Denver. Our layover in Denver consisted largely of consuming all the extra food that we had. Between wheat thins, lunch meats, rice cakes, pita bread, potato chips, cookies, cheese, muffins, and apples, we actually did a pretty good job of eating all our extra food.

The flight from Denver back to SD seemed really long because at that point, we all just really wanted to get home. To cap off our bad luck on the trip, the airline got Sean’s bag mixed up so he wasn’t able to get his stuff with the rest of us. Despite all the misfortune, however, everyone still had a great time and already looking forward to next year. That is, of course, if Ryan decides to invite us again.

Check out the pics and movies.

Posted by Roger at 4:55 pm.