8350'-11,424'

Folks requested words to accompany the skiscapes. 

The photos were taken on three separate trips that, aside from snacks, cost me no dollars! I'm going to go ahead and describe the route in an unstuck-in-time way: 

Chocolate and yerba mate sufficiently stimulating, I hitch up the shelf road to Eldora ski resort, skin up a bunny hill, and dip off the run to the Jenny Creek trail. Skiing swift lightens the load of my pack of snacks - cans of garbanzos, limes, pepper paste, walnuts, garlic, ginger, peanut butter, almond flour pancakes - and mandolin. The Gwinn mountain hut trail climbs steeply along the backside of Bryan mountain; after a bold charge from the trailhead, my pack and I relax ourselves onto a welcoming mound of snow. High windows of the canopy cathedral let brief moments of intersection between schools of snowflakes swimming through sharp sunbeams burst out of boundless blue. 

The catwalk shuffle up and along the rim of a steep trough tips me over with feet staggered: right shoulder nearly up against the sheer wall, elevated right leg stiffening. Enchanted forest waits at the top, and a fresh dusting from the branches above lets me glide soundlessly along the undulating path, breaking out onto blank canvases of blinding white, painted only by the intricate shadows of lodgepole needles illuminated in infinite resolution. Leaving my heavy pack at the hut, I wind through pine patches and deep drifts to a windswept alley that steadily climbs up the balding head of Gwinn mountain. Near the top the long light of the setting sun projects dwarf pines onto the deep leeward lobes, inviting me over the crest of Gwinn mountain to what seems to be an old road. Sparse tree cover opens wide windows to postcard panoramas: alpine winds are traced by eddies of snow on the distant faces of Mt. Epworth and James Peak in the losing light.  

Sun high in the southern sky, I continue on the old road, gliding down the crest of a steep bank until the blank slab of Hell Hill reveals itself. I skin steadily up a shallow line, reaching Rollins pass full of sunshine and high air and primal joy. I quickly carve the mostly windswept face down to the base of the saddle, and skin back up toward Gwinn mountain.

I can't decide which way to go down from here, so I do both at the same time! From Gwinn Mountain, I glide again through the Enchanted Forest, cruise down the trench, and then make neat pizza turns on the steep and narrow Gwinn Mountain trail. As I descend the valley, the tall lodgepoles open up to a stream flanked by woody shrubs and towering aspens sending lightning into the ocean sky. Skins off, I herring bone my way up a rise until a larger hill comes into view, so I surrender, strap skins, and ski slowly so as to savor the surreal sunbeams of high afternoon. 

I am with an intrepid ski crew (a crew who knew what to do). Snow blows dense and thick: the morning sun is outlined faintly like a coin behind a sheet of paper. We follow the windswept alley from Gwinn Mountain down to the Pipeline route that leads along the ridge of Bryan Mountain back to Eldora. The crew forges on ahead while I linger and snap photos. I'm an unabashed sucker for sunny, clear, bluebird days, but skiing through a magical subalpine snow event brings a special joy of its own: field of vision is reduced, the world shrinks, and all is soft and quiet. After a tricky climb with frequent rock hazards, we arrive at the top of Corona Lift, rip our skins, and cruise classy! I slalom with the hefty mandolin pack on my back, attracting the attention of chuckling passerby. 

And here is a more practical account of present circumstances: 

Some fun lifestyle changes!
1. No alcohol! I formally gave up the booze in January as a New Year's resolution, and decided to continue indefinitely! I like mornings too much! 
2. No coffee!  I drink ~two cups/day of yerba mate brewed using a stovetop Moka pot into a concentrated green tea. I often drink cocoa or Earl Grey. 
3. Few carbohydrates! My food story is long and winding: I ate a paleo-ish diet for about two years, freegan for a year, vegetarian-ish for two years, whatever-I-could-carry-up-to-the-tiny-house-in-Patagonia diet this last year, and now a nut & seed oriented paleo diet! I'm so primal that I am excluding all potatoes, beans, legumes, peanuts, and cashews! I've been buying grass fed beef fat from Alfalfa's and making  tallow in the cast iron. 

How have these changes contributed to my quality of life? Sleep! Energy! Brain! Fitness! Any anxiety or stress I experience is directly related to legitimate life challenges, and not to poor consumptive choices! But most of all, music and art have been making tremendous impressions on my psyche! I saw a picture of a Florida flower the other day and was transported immediately to a warm, colorful mental space. Last night, I watched a fairly abstract performative lecture about the value of archival work, and the loss of knowledge that accompanies destruction of an archive (e.g. Brazil Museum Fire, flooding of the seed bank in Svalbard, melting of 22,000 year old ice cores at the University of Alberta). Although I wasn't completely able to interpret the explicit meaning or intention of every word or movement, the performance seemed to reach my subconscious in a way that didn't require cognition of any sort of structured plot or trajectory, but rather the perception of an integrated texture of performers interacting with wooden sculpture,  chanting phrases both individually and in tandem, holding signs inscribed with concise statements, a texture which naturally speaks to the unspoken parts of our minds that have been crafted by evolution, ignites an inborn instinct to mourn what has been lost and protect what remains.