March 5, 2009

Last Sunday, we all divided into our expedition groups to try out skiing in the backcountry. Our instructors smeared us with zinc and sunscreen, then helped us put skins on our skis. We soon realized how skinning and skiing are very different experiences. We trudged along slowly, but we appreciated the skins when we started climbing up hills and they kept us from sliding backwards. We finally made it up a series of hills, de-layering a lot in the process. Then we tried to take the skins off of our skis in order to go downhill. This led to a couple of hilarious incidents including a chain of human dominoes that ended with four girls sprawled on the snow, covered in skis and poles. When we finally got our skins off, we put them in our packs and skied down. This also led to a little craziness, as more than a few skiers had close encounters with the trees. We quickly realized how different backcountry skiing is from skiing on groomed runs.

By the time we skinned back to HMI at the end of the day, everyone had gotten the hang of skinning and we all felt more comfortable with the idea of winter backcountry travel. After a hard day's work, we all went out to an acoustic guitar concert in Leadville. Everyone enjoyed themselves so much that the next night’s table order for who could go first at dinner was determined by who did the best reenactment of their song “Full Circle”. The performances were hilarious and involved lots of interpretive dancing. All in all, Sunday left us feeling tired, happy, and above all eager for the upcoming winter expedition.

Speaking of the second expedition – it is going to be quite different than traveling in the canyons. For starters, we will be winter camping in the Mosquito Range outside of Leadville for eight days. We will be traveling through the mountains on telemark skis, using the aforementioned skins to tour uphill. We will be spending the first night under a tarp enclosed by snow walls. We will then build "quigloos" to live in for the next several days. Piling snow into a huge mound creates the shelter; we then let the mound freeze over night while we are in our tarp shelters. The next day we ski back up to the quigloo village in order to dig out our shelters. The average daily mileage for the expedition is around two miles, but there will be plenty of digging to keep us busy even though we aren't traveling that far. Plus we need to get used to carrying sleds and still staying upright on our skis! We are all definitely looking forward to our exciting second expedition and expanding our knowledge of backcountry skiing.

After a busy three days of classes to start off this week, we spent today preparing for our winter expedition! While we are all a bit anxious about the cold weather, we are all filled with excitement for the upcoming nine-day journey. Prep day included many things that we did for the last expedition, one of our favorites being rationing food. The difference? This time we packed a lot more food since we will be burning so many calories! We brought a little over 2 pounds of food per person per day! We packed hot chocolate, lots of cheese, and bacon, all the while dancing to IPOD playlists and discussing the tasty meals we will cook in our snow kitchen!

We also spent some time organizing our gear and learning how to pack our backpacks. Unlike our previous expedition, for this trip we do not have to worry as much about fitting everything in our packs because we carry our food and group gear on sleds. We also don't use as may compression bags because as our instructors told us from experience that it is not easy to stuff your sleeping bag into a tiny sack with puffy gloves on at 7 in the morning when it is 5 degrees outside!

As part of our preparation, we all tried on the various layers of foot protection that we will use to keep our toes toasty warm when we are around our camp. First we have the wool socks- one or two pairs depending on how cold our feet get. Then we put on the ski boot liners, which are very warm. Over these we put fleece booties, and lastly we put on Neo-booties, which are unlike most booties any of us have ever seen. They are super large to go over everything else and they look like they are part of a spacesuit. While we may joke about them now, we know that we will be so thankful for their warmth when we are on the expedition!

Sled packing was another fun part of our day. Each tarp group has one or two sleds depending on how many people are in the group. We learned about the importance of separating our food from our fuel using pots and pans. After all, no one likes white gas in his or her pasta! We also made sure to balance the weight out so our sled won't tip over as we traverse across snowy roads and herringbone up steep hills!

In addition to the shovel that each of us is carrying on our packs, we attached a big shovel to the top of our sled. It has become more and more clear to us as we have prepared for the expedition how much shoveling we will be doing! One day during AMX this week we had a competition to see who could shovel the most snow off the playing field into a giant pile. One team, creatively called the "Estrogen Snow-packers" due to the lack of boys, won for having the tallest pile.

Rocky Mountain Semester XXII will check back in after many snow-filled adventures in the coming days!

By: Sarah Bates, Henry Winship, & Mackenzie Naert