Day 1: Early, Early Birds
The crew left for Ouray on Friday, Jan. 31. Aaron, Sean, and John took the early flight out of SD and boy was it early. Their flight was at a god awful 6:15 AM which means they had to wake up around 3:30 or 4:00?!!! Aye Carumba! The rest of us took the much more reasonable 11:30 flight.

Broken Bags and Bad Karma?
When we reached Montrose and got our bags, Bob and Ryan both noticed that their suitcases were broken into. Ryan had a lock on his bag that was basically cut off, and Bob’s suitcase actually had its closing mechanism broken (though we didn’t know it was broken until the return flight). Such is the world these days thanks to Osama and friends.

We reached the Thrifty rental car desk to get our rental car. Not sure if they recognized any of us, but it certainly wouldn’t be a surprise if they did. After all, we were probably the only Asians ever to pass through the little town of Montrose and not only that, we, or rather I, crashed one of their vehicles last year. Our automobile choice was either a Montero and a Durango. Ryan had to blurt out that the Montero was bad karma, but the people helping us didn’t seem to hear. We ended up going with the Montero anyway because it seemed a bit bigger and thus better able to fit 5 people and gear.

Buen Tiempo
The weather had been warm so the roads were in good shape. It was around 6:00 or so when we arrived in Ouray. We stopped by our room at the Victorian Inn (was the wallpaper always this ugly?), dropped off our stuff, and met up with everyone for dinner at Buen Tiempo. It was quite a large group that included not only the early birds Aaron, Sean, and John, but also Bill and Diane. Brian was also meeting us at the tail end of his two week ski safari. The food was OK. I got some kind of pork cordova dish (or something like that) that was mediocre.

Room arrangements consisted of Aaron, Sean, John, and Brian in room 109, Judy, Patty, Bob, and myself next door in room 110, and Bill, Diane, and Ryan in room 112.

Day 2 - Ice Climbing for Most, Snowboarding for Two
Aaron’s hand was still injured so the night before so he tried hanging by his ice tools on the monkey bars to see how they’d feel. Unfortunately, they didn’t feel that good in the morning so he decided to go to Telluride and dragged John with him. The rest of us went climbing.

Ryan, Sean,and Bill went early to set up the climbs while Patty, Bob, Judy, and me had to wait until 9 AM to rent our boots. Judy’s boots didn’t fit that well - they were kind of big - but unfortunately, they were out of the next smaller size.

When we got down into the canyon, the first group had already set up some climbs. The crowds were much better than last year, probably because the weather was relatively warm. This year, Judy got the first casualty award with a small cut on her nose. It was pretty minor and you could barely see it but it was there nevertheless. Ryan had some fun destroying an overhanging curtain piece by piece, bit by bit, ensuring that nobody could try that same climb after him.

Slow Cookin’
For dinner, we met up with Aaron and John at Bon Ton. Ouray desperately needs some more restaurants as we are forced to hit the same restaurants year after year. The Telluride snow report was that despite the meager base (only 40″) and warm weather, the conditions were actually pretty decent. Most of us had forgotten how slow the service at Bon Ton was - our entire dinner probably took over 2 hours! Prior to getting our food, we stuffed ourselves with the fresh bread (which Aaron and Sean battled over), and listened to Ryan explain his self-concocted email acronyms. Hey There Handsome was cleverly disguised as Hope This Helps. Everyone had a hard time figuring out INAL until Ryan finally had to give it away: I’m Not A Leper. Or maybe it was Lawyer, I can’t remember.

As we returned to the Inn and pulled up to our parking space, Patty called our attention to some dude in a puffy red down jacket walking by our car who was, according to Patty, “quite the Mountain Man.” This “Mountain Man” turned out to be Brian, who may very well be a Mountain Man, but not exactly what Patty had in mind. Sadly, this was yet another embarrassing example of a “Patty sighting”, further casting doubt on Patty’s abilities to identify animate objects. [The first documented Patty sighting occurred during the Mammoth 2003 trip where Patty misidentified a beagle as a St. Bernard. Shortly after that trip, the St. Bernard Test was devised to measure one's St. Bernard spotting skills.]

We retired to our respective rooms and some of us tuned in to the half-pipe competion on ESPN where the commentators actually took the time to explain some of the tricks that were being performed. Despite a detailed explanation as to what a Misty Rodeo Japan Air with a Mute Grab was, we were still clueless. You’ve gotta be getting old when you just can’t understand the cool lingo anymore.

After hearing the Aaron and John snow report, Brian decided to head on home even though the weather report was indicating some fresh powder for the next day or two. He was probably feeling a bit homesick. At any rate, we bid this rugged mountain man adieu.

Day 3 - Boardi . . . errrr Riding at Telluride
Brian, after his recent travels to the great ski resorts of the West, had informed everyone the night before that “boarding” is not the proper way to refer to act of snowboarding. Anyone who’s anyone knows that you go riding, not boarding. Boarding? Like c’mon dude, that’s SOOOOO UN-cool!

About 5-10 minutes into our drive to Telluride, Sean realizes that he had forgotten his snowboard boots. Sean’s a pretty bright guy so he was able to quickly assess the situation and conclude that riding would be very difficult without his snowboard boots. He’d have to retrieve them. As their vehicle headed back towards the Inn, we pulled over to the side of the road to wait. We had Ryan’s snowboard in our car so we’d end up waiting for them at Telluride anyway. So we just decided to pull over to the side of the road and wait for them to come back. Fortunately, there were some horsies on the side of the road to help occupy our time.

Aaron and John’s snow report turned out to be accurate. Despite the relatively warm day, shallow base, and lack of fresh snow, conditions were not too shabby. We took several runs through the airGarden terrain park where they had some fun little rails, some flat box tops (about 2 feet wide), and a pretty nice half-pipe. On the way to the park was a fun little whoop-dee-doo section, supposedly set up to help skiers with their mogul skills. It was kind of fun riding through it, but you had to go at just the right speed, especially on a board. On Ryan’s first attempt, he was going a bit too fast, lost control, and crashed. On subsequent attempts, he went too slow and ended up stuck behind the first hump and unable to get over it.

Sean and John weren’t up for the park and took off while the rest of us went through the park a few times. Bob got a bit ambitious and tried a rail slide (perpendicular to the sliding surface) on one of the box tops and promptly took a hard landing off the left side of the box on his tail bone. Ouch! Later on that same run, he took another pretty hard tail bone fall while in the half-pipe. Not to be outdone, Aaron banged his knee pretty good while trying to slide on one of the mini rails.

At the end of the half-pipe were two pretty good sized jumps. Aaron was quite fond of the one on the left and was able to get a good amount of air off of it. My attempt suffered from a lack of speed as I didn’t quite clear the table top and landed hard on the flat.

It was evident that a storm was rolling in as it soon began to snow, often pretty hard. We hoped for it to continue and dump throughout the night. The weather forecast was actually predicting snow for the next two days. As the lifts were about to close, Aaron, Bob, Ryan, and I did race laps up and down the Village 4 lift, trying to squeeze as many runs in as possible before it closed.

“All About Mongolian Grill”
After the day was over, we decided to check out a Mongolian Grill that was supposedly in town. Sean declared that he was “all about Mongolian Grill.” With a proclamation like that, how could we not check it out? We drove into Telluride with map and address in hand, but when we finally found the address, it had a “closed” sign on it. There would unfortunately be no Mongolian Grill that evening. Bummer.

Carnivorous Inclinations
The roads in town were pretty icy so we decided it would be best to head back to Ouray and eat there. We returned to Ouray, put our stuff away, showered and changed, and then drove into town. We ended up at the Outlaw, a restaurant with a strong carnivorous inclination. Clearly it wasn’t going to be one of Aaron’s favorite places, and interestingly enough, the rest of us weren’t that fond of it either. Several people ordered steaks which were, by and large, on the dry side. It was fun nevertheless as we were able to all be seated at a big round table in front of the window. There were some mysterious table bobs which turned out to be the crazy antics of Bill though he never quite fessed up to it. John got some beer spilled on him by the waitress, but was quickly consoled when a new beer replaced his spilt one.

Day 4 - Fresh Powder!
We awoke to what looked like at least 6″ of fresh snow. We still had to decide whether to go ice climbing or riding. If it snowed all day today, then tomorrow would be really good so it might be better to go ice climbing today and riding the next day. In the end, we decided to all go to Telluride and Aaron and John would not be able to ice climb this trip.

The roads to Telluride looked precarious. Slow driving was in order. When we finally got to Telluride, conditions were excellent. We had an awesome day, mainly riding up and down the Prospect Bowl 12 lift. Conditions were great - we truly lucked out considering the general conditions this year. Aaron, John, and Sean had to cut out early around 2 PM to catch their flight.

Towards the end of the day, we came upon 3 really good jumps. The first was a nice little drop off into some fluffy powder right off the right side of the catwalk. The next was another drop-off which, if hit with enough speed, could launch you pretty good. The final one was a really good practice jump for beginners. Unfortunately, I was able to show Ryan the last jump only on the last run of the day. He attempted it, launched off his toe edge, and promptly made an intimate introduction of his face to the snow. Though it probably wasn’t very fun for Ryan, it had great entertainment value for onlookers.

Patty, with bindings that actually stayed attached to her board, did much better this year. And Judy’s shaping up to be a speed demon, even with that immovable rudder arm. All in all, we all had a great day and lucked out with some great snow.

After the lifts closed, we drove into town so that Patty could buy a magnet. She ended up getting one that said Helluride, more appropriate for last year than this one as she actually had a good time this year.

Day 5 - Second Casualty and Chicks with Picks
That’s Picks with a “P” mind you. It was a cold day, especially in the iced canyon. I had given my rope to Brian to take back and Sean had left so we only had one rope to use. Patty and Judy went with Ryan to learn how to set up an anchor for a climb while Bob and I went to Ouray Mountain Sports to rent the climbing boots.

Ryan became the second casualty of the trip as he introduced one of his ice tools to his lip. Patty decided that she would focus her creative energies into creating an ice/snow sculpture. Her creation started out as a snowman, but never quite turned out as intended. When that happens, it’s often easier to change your intention so what started out as a snowman soon morphed into Jabba the Hut. For an ice sculpture of Jabba the Hut, it actually didn’t look too shabby.

After climbing, we headed back to the Victorian Inn to change. Our luggage was sprawled across the parking lot. A bunch of the Chicks with Picks were there and for some reason, one of them was wearing these super-high, bright red, platform shoe thingies. They were just having fun with it as it was clear that it was some kind of joke.

Driving back to the Montrose airport, we decided to have dinner at McDonald’s. Our airport experience was kind of comical. There were perhaps a group of 5 people manning the luggage check-in point, mainly just standing around watching us load our luggage. It turns out that the Montrose airport now has a 50 lb luggage maximum so I had to transfer a bunch of stuff out of Behemoth (it weighed about 70 lbs) to get it within the required weight.

Soon after checking our luggage in, those same 5 people left and went through a door. Moments later, they appeared again, this time donning maroonish sweaters where they assumed their positions to check us into the boarding area. Protocol was strictly followed as they once again checked our IDs even though we were pretty much the only ones in the entire airport and they had just seen all of our IDs not more than 15 minutes ago. It was comical watching these people in action as they took themselves much too seriously, making sure all the rules were followed strictly by the book with no exceptions.

While waiting in the boarding room, Bob was informed that his luggage latch mechanism was broken and that they would have to strap his luggage down. Apparently, they had broken it on the flight there.

It was pretty late by the time we got back to SD and we all just wanted to get home and go to bed. Ryan wanted no part of that, however. He had forgotten his club lock key and could not drive home. I ended up having to drive him all the way to BFE (the E’s for Escondido for those not in the know) to retrieve the key. On the way back, we decided to stop at Roberto’s since by then we were both pretty hungry. Fatty Roberto’s food at midnight. Ahhh, the memories . . .

Despite the little mishaps of the trip, it was still a memorable one. Especially now that it’s captured permanently with electrons. Here are the pics.

Posted by Roger at 8:13 pm.