Pivotal Moments

It is a great feeling when you can truly say:

I'm not sorry I met you.
I'm not sorry it's over.
I'm not sorry there's nothing to say.

That is all.

Horseshoe Mountain in the Bag, Plus My First Snow Kitchen!

That's us at the top, squinched up against the wall of some ramshackle, falling-down hut trying not to get too pounded by the howling wind, since the ridge wasn't super wide and true to Colorado form the leeward edge/side was a huge, scary cornice. The wind was strong, and it was COLD as it screamed up from the valley from Leadville, but other than that the weather and conditions were pretty idyllic.

I am trying to get into the Colorado Mountain Club's basic mountaineering school in order to facilitate my summer Ptarmigan Ridge traverse plans and also to raise my coolness quotient a bit--no one can deny that a girl who knows how to wield an ice tool and tie a bowline blindfolded in 10 seconds flat is pretty sexy, after all. But I am a little late to the party, and there are all these hoops and prereqs to jump through first. I think my waiver from trekking school should be granted, but I also have to go on two qualifying outings to prove that I have the mettle to hang. Thus, I pleaded my case onto this Horseshoe climb last Sunday and this coming Saturday.

9 of us gathered at the (apparently) renowned restaurant The Fort, where you can find all sorts of western game and other traditional fare for a pretty penny. We sorted ourselves into carpools and headed out the 285 to South Park, which is not a town like the cartoon (that would be Fairplay, where the creators grew up) but a huge kind of grassland surrounded by mountains. There are lots of these features called parks here; a Middle Park, Winter Park, etc. We drove as far as the road in would allow, which was 1.5 miles shy of the trad trailhead. Which meant that I think by the time all was said and done we did around 16 miles and quite a bit of elevation gain too--and for 202 feet that thing wasn't quite a 14er! Rats. Oh well. It is still an iconic mountain that is quite distinct from just about anywhere in South Park. Can you guess why they call it Horseshoe? (Blogger is not playing well with others at the moment--I may have to add images later)
Update: here it is!:

Apparently you can do a bunch of 14ers in one trip here--the only other I remember by name is Sherman, and Cameron which doesn't count because apparently there has to be a loss of 300 feet between peaks to count as separate peaks. It was harder than I thought it would be, until I realized I wasn't eating enough and I insisted on eating half of my sammich even though we were still about an hour away from the summit. I felt a LOT better and started climbing better too. The snowshoes stayed on the packs even though there were plenty of spots where we were postholing up past our knees and the depth hoar was making me use bad swear words, but the cuts of the old mining road we were following were always just up ahead in sight, so we gritted them out.


Most of the way we were pretty sheltered from the wind, and I didn't realize how lucky we were until we climbed up high enough that we weren't protected anymore and felt like I was leaning at an angle as I slogged up the last mile or so of trail. Not surprisingly, the top was pretty much bare rock/talus/shale on the windward side, and I got to see up close what the avy people mean by the term "wind loading". I don't remember the exact statistic, but Colorado gets significantly more snow built up from wind than actual precip.

We stopped at the hut at the top for a quick bite, then down again before anyone got too cold. I wanted to stop and sign the register and take more shots from the summit, but my fingers felt like they were being crushed in a vice just from a few gloveless moments in that wind and I just wanted to keep moving. We took a slightly different way down, which included a nice glissade that was gentle enough to not require an ice axe--really fun! Once we got down to the main road section I put my head down and trekked, I get barnsour when I'm close to the car, yes I do. Plus the pads on my big toes were beginning to hurt--it was a long way to hike in snow in feet and boots not yet broken completely in. But I love my ZOMG Bootz!™ Ditto my brother's Patagonia DAS parka and expedition weight balaclava.

The day before was the first winter camping class outing. We schlepped out to some place called East Portal south of Nederland by a big huge railroad tunnel. Nothing remarkable except it felt like it took forever and the guy sitting next to me was possessed of a quite heady bouquet of halitosis and BO that almost made my eyes water and definitely wonder if I could get away with cracking a window on the grounds with windy road was making me carsick.

There were quite a few of us there, and despite all of us marching up and down and all around a large, flat-ish clearing several times, we couldn't get our compressed snow platform to set up very well, even after heading over to watch a presentation on the wherefores and why-nots of tent pitching and deadmen. Still, with the guidance of Instructor Dave we planned a simple straight-ish trench with a counter on one side and seating on the other. While half of us dug it out, the other half of us tried to excavate blocks of depth hoar, which if you don't know depth hoar is this kind of faceted snow that does. not. adhere. to itself, making sculpting, building, or snowballs a lot harder. Plus Dave told us to take our snowshoes off and of course we were still postholing all over the place and trying not to lose our balance as we kept sinking into the sugar snow carrying our loads of snow blocks on our shovels.

We managed enough to build a short windbreak, and finally settled down to fire up the stoves and make our lunches. My little food pouch cozy with the orange flames was a huge hit with the instructors, as was the Mary Jane's Farm. Then we learned how to melt snow without burning it (which is possible, shit you not, if you just put a pile of snow in your pot and stick it over the burner.) Then after what seemed an interminable time of trotting around looking at other groups' kitchens, we were trotted over for one final exercise-- finding out what happens when you drop your stove in the snow. A guy with an MSR Reactor got his stove lit first--me with my little Jetboil came in second--we could have taken Reactor Guy if we better understood it was time trial to get the things lit and not ready to cook a meal. Oh well. The need for a redundant fire source was a point well taken.

Health Insurance

Officially sucks the root, sayeth me. As a long-time patient who fortunately almost never has to deal with using it, and now as a practitioner who's gearing up for all the super fun times to be had waiting out the sign-up processes, figuring out the stupid quirks of individual insurers, and the non-stop hilarity that ensues from having to submit your claims 2-4 times, simply because you are an LAc and not an MD, DO or PA.

I have a lot of potential posts about healthcare policy, reform and the like, for later, once I get the practice somewhat going and plans for PA school well under way. For now, I'm feeling the resentment of being relegated to everyone's secondary or even tertiary tiers of care networks, which basically consist of discounting your fees and requiring so much submission of superfluous paperwork you wonder if it's worth it. Yeah, I'm working on my more long-range plans to get my own self-paying patients in my door, but that will take time--right now, referrals will only come from DPM if I can bill directly (no dice with submitting your own superbill, sadly). Some systems of care leave us out entirely (I'm looking in Medicare's direction, although the Hinchey Bill is apparently up for consideration again, and since we have fewer or at least a different assortment of douchebags in Congress, it might finally get passed this time around. I don't feel like getting into a cost/benefit analysis of joining a system that is presently collapsing under its own weight right now as it is nearly 2AM and I'm tired, but in terms of access and parity this would be a huge boon).

I'm harumphing off to bed now. Besides scheduling another job interview for next week and figuring out how to fill out 45-page insurance network applications, and writing more marketing copy than you can shake a checkbook at, I have to figure out where I can get a PPD test on the cheap, and get all my warmest gear together for tomorrow's snow camping outing. Cross your fingers the mild weather (by mild I mean no lower than 0º and no wind at night) holds! Pictures and trip report to follow, I promise.

Winter School, Part 1

It is a strange thing to go from knowing your local roads and trails (at several levels of zoom!) so intimately to knowing almost nothing, and almost no one to show them to you. I'm not even sure where all the different areas of trails are, which makes research a titch more challenging. I'm slowly acquiring an assortment of guidebooks and topos (did you remember to put some in my crampon care package, James?!), but I'm realizing that winter throws in another wrench of unknowns and potential danger factors I know nothing about being a spoiled, SoCal princess for lo these many years. Even my time living up in San Fran was more straightforward than this. I can't tell you how many times I've found a loop that sounds exciting and challenging and has everything I'm looking for in terms of distance, climbage and freedom from hordes of stupid people, only to realize... holy shit, that there might be some avalanche terrain. And/or what do I do if weather comes in that makes it so hard to find my route down I don't?

So, I signed myself up for a beginner's avy class. The AIARE level one class from CMS required backcountry skis which I don't have [yet], so I went for the offering from the Colorado Mountain Club instead. Ethan and Ben from the Colorado Avalanch Info Center gave two days of outstanding classroom lectures on snow science and how to spot trouble spots, and then we all headed out to Jones Pass to try our skills at digging snow pits and performing rescues, 'cuz we learned that by the time SAR comes to dig you out you're probably dead, even if you survived the initial slide. You have to rely on your mates, which means be extra, super thoughtful about just who you venture out into winter backcountry adventures. We set out from our cars and tested our transceivers to make sure they all transmitted and received, and then set about practicing locating transceiver duffel bags the instructors hid for us, including scenarios where we didn't know how many burials there were.

Next we got into two large groups and took turns coordinating a rescue with multiple unknown burials, only this time we had to get out our probes and shovels and dig the duffels out. We spread ourselves out in a line from one end of the bottom deposition zone to the other and started hiking uphill, looking for signals and calling out numbers to the leader. I got lucky and happened to be standing practically right on top of a burial where I started, but it took at least 15 minutes to find the actual location with the probe and then dig it out from at least 4 feet of snow. It was easier on us, too, since the snow we were digging out hadn't actually slid and required minimal chopping with the shovels to get it out. One of our instructors said that in his Level 2 class they actually buried his instructors (with radios and avalungs of course) to simulate the rescue. The rest of our group dug out the other burial and off we went to dig a snow pit.

Snow pits give you and idea of how the snow is layering, and how well those layers are sticking together. In practice, if you were worried about a slide you'd find a slope similar to the one you were going to be crossing, dig out a cross-section of it and then locate the hard and soft layers, and test whether or not they sheared when you put different weights and directions of force on them. Our slope turned out to be fairly stable, except in the tree shadow. Afterward we had fun jumping on our Rutschblock test column to fill it all in so as not to make a hazard for snowmobilers, which weren't too much of a plague that day but ugh. Do not like.

And now? I feel like I know just enough to be really wary of where I go, because I know just how quickly ugly things can happen. But I also know better how to keep myself out in the first place. And to make sure I take competent and well-practiced buddies out with me!

Next week, I learn to build snow caves and kitchens and all kinds of cool shit you can only do when camping in the snow at the CMC Winter Camping School. W00t!

Sugar Lumps!!!

Fucking outstanding.

Great Shao Yang Winter of '09

At least, everyone here says it's atypical and ridiculous, what with record heat alternating with record freezes. I last left off kvetching about flying to LA. It has now been 3 consecutive weekends I have been home, and not had to take a class or go to a seminar. It has been glorious.

LA turned out well--Steve picked up Mikel and me in his awesome White Maurauder® and after a lovely gorge-fest at Tacos Plus we set about trying to make sure we had memorized all the exams for all the body parts. Mikel's friends collected him around 9, I got my hard drive back from Karen around 10, and Steve and I stayed up until nearly 3 studying like fiends and cursing ourselves for waiting until the last minute. But it went fine--the written exam was painless, and the practical nearly so, even being as punchy as we were. With plenty of time left until the mandatory party, we headed out to the beach and went for a walk in the 85º sun, and hatched a plan to go to the trapeze school on the pier when I come out in May for the final NBAO board exam. After the party we hiked off some of the meal at Fryman Canyon and caught a spectacular sunset on the way back to the westside for a quick dinner at Terried before dropping me back off at LAX.

It was clear and not too cold when I got in and drove home. Imagine my surprise when I woke up 5 hours later to 4 inches of fluffy dry powder all over the world! I got to shovel the sidewalks and everything. But it was beautiful--the snow settles onto the branches of the leafless trees like delicate lace and it is so, so quiet. Within 2 days it was back up in the 50's, was in the 60-70 range through the middle of the week before plunging down a yawning gradient into highs around freezing. But that week was amazing, besides enabling me to get out the Chacos and tshirts and gad about relatively naked. It also enabled a road ride in nothing but shorts and jersey and a perfect day out at RMNP. No wind, temps in the 40's, bright, bright sun, not even that many people out on our trail--pretty near perfect. I'll update with pics when I get them transferred over to the new machine--the other exciting thing which happened in LA was the death of my logic board signaling the call to the next Macbook.

I also managed to get in a trip up to Brainard to poke around but didn't end up getting much further than Brainard Lake, owing to a late start and taking the hilliest and longest route to get there. Once I started back on what I thought was the CMC snowshoe trail, only to realize after a bit that I was going in the complete opposite direction of where I wanted to go and the signed snowshoe trail I was on was not on the shitty trail map I carried. I backtracked to the dam where picking it up should have been obvious, and no--the map was unequivocally shitty. Like a good little orienteer I crossed the dam, found the parking lot on the other side and picked up the trail there. I never did find the CMC cabin, although I suspect if I'd only followed my first return trail further I'd have run right into it. I've got to get some nav worthy topos, that's all there is to it. And next time I would prefer to take the easy trail out so I could have more time to push further back to maybe even Blue Lake. Otherwise you're in the trees the whole time until you get to Brainard Lake when the terrain opens up a little and lets you see some pretty great views of the peaks around you.

Walking on frozen lakes is a trip. Skating on them is a trip too, or it is to someone who grew up without even an ice rink around for hundreds of miles. My friend Garrett took me out to Evergreen last week though and showed me how it was done. Garrett is from Rhode Island and has been skating practically since he could walk. It was a beautiful night--not too cold, no wind, but the ice was pretty rough, making things interesting. Still, I did reasonably well for it only being my 2nd time ever. I held on to Garrett for the first lap or two, we tried moving over to other sections that looked glassy but really, really weren't, and finally back on the main space I wobbled along by myself and only fell once. To my embarrassment, however, I noticed that after a few laps I could not keep my ankles from collapsing, no matter how hard I concentrated, and I kept dragging my toes which prompted a frantic kind of running step to keep ahead of my momentum and not go pitching head first onto the ice. Garrett agreed I was probably getting tired, and we headed for the warming house to sit down. Right before we got onto the ramp I went down again, this time twisting my knee, which still kinda hurts. It's been a long time since I tried to do something to do something so totally new that I hopelessly suck at it, and will until I develop that unique balance and muscle memory. But it was fun and I want to go again. And not that I didn't before, but I will really never view a hockey game in quite the same way again!