Last-Minute Vacation::Colorado

With the end of our time here in SD drawing nearer [we are down to one month], we realized pretty quickly after getting back from Wyoming that if we were going to use our last week of vacation, we would have to do it soon...and it ended up being that the only week that would work for us was last week. So we called up our friends down in Colorado and headed down for a week of snowboarding, hanging out, and in the end, climbing a 14er. We got to spend a day at Loveland, a day at Winter Park, and a day climbing Quandary Peak [14,265 ft]. I also got to spend some time hanging with my great friend, Emily, and some time resting and just relaxing. It was a great week!

This is my stud of a husband going over a jump in a Winter Park terrain park. Yeah, he's awesome. I got to practice my jumps as well, but they didn't look anything like that. Mark is pulling 360's, while I'm just happy if I get a few inches of air. I'm still getting used to having my board leave the ground :).

Quandary Peak is a great novice backcountry snowboard descent, so we strapped our snowboards onto some backpacks and lugged them up most of the mountain. I used a Burton daypack, which is made to carry a snowboard from a car to a ski resort. I would NOT recommend using it as a climbing pack. It sucked big time. Mark strapped his onto his GoLite pack, which seemed to work a bit better.


We took the East Ridge route. Our day had beautiful blue skies all day, which made the temps feel much warmer than the teens that showed on the thermometer. This is Mark heading up the ridge.


Jess and Mark on the summit after several hours of climbing.

Looking down the ridge we walked up...It looks a bit narrow, but in reality it was probably about 20-30 ft wide.

We stashed our boards around 13,000 ft., made the summit, and came back to claim our ride down a couple hours later.

Jess getting ready to ride down from 13,000 ft.

We didn't follow the same route down as we took up. Eventually we ended up overlooking some pretty steep chutes that had some rocks sticking out. Mark thought we could slide down the chute, so he went first. But what he thought was a snow patch ended up being a light dusting of snow over some rock and as he slid over the rock he knocked this one loose. Luckily as it rolled it bounced off his board and not him, and I was still above him. Instead of doing the same thing, I ended up downclimbing the chute with an ice axe and we had to hike the rest of the way out to the road.

My gaiters wouldn't fit over my snowboard boots, so this is what my boots looked like after post-holing down to the road. They were pretty frozen.

Despite our little detour and climb, we had a great day. We had a great week as well. We got to the summit of a 14er with clear skies and had a great time snowboarding as well. We got to see great friends and got to relax and enjoy being together.

*Sigh* Back to "normal" for now...