Skiing in August

This past weekend the hosts of the PowderCast, Patrick Nelson and myself (Jeff Brines) decided it would be a good idea to see what skiing in Colorado is like...in August. To add some extra excitement to the day, we decided to add a few other activities, mountain biking to get things going, "ski" St. Mary's and then some golf and fly fishing to cap off the day.

Maybe it was the fact I was riding a bike that was more suited for going downhill than up a steady 17% grade or maybe it was the fact one gin and tonic turned into 2 or 3 or 4 or..., but the ride was more about suffering and fighting a heavy mental haze than anything else. Eventually, the ride ended and we began driving to the Glacier.

Somehow the traffic mid-day Saturday during the summer rivaled the worst ski traffic I've ever seen. I hope this isn't too telling of the winter commute of the coming winter.

In any case, we arrived at the base of the glacier in about an hour, strapped are skis on our packs, and began hiking. To make things more interesting, it started raining. I don't have enough East Coast in me to understand skiing in rain. Patrick on the other hand is from out east and thrives in such conditions.

It felt like a weird dream hiking around in "snow" in August. The snow I speak of was dirty and sun cupped. To give you an idea, think of a choppy high mountain lake and instantly freeze it then throw a bunch of dirt on it to get an idea of the snow's contour and color.



To my surprise there was a mini jib park at the top of the glacier with about 8 or so people playing on the 4 or so "features" they had to pick from.

We clicked into our skis and...well, I guess we were sliding and I did have skis so we were skiing but it wasn't exactly my finest moment on sticks. In fact, as Pat said, "If I didn't just hike up that with you I would have never known that was you...you looked like such a gaper!"

The fact still remained that we did ski, and that was more than a refreshing experience on an August Saturday (even if it was the hardest snow I've ever skiied)

After skiing, golf was a bit mundane but we still played out of principle. Fly fishing Boulder Creek was cool, Pat caught his first fish on a fly rod and collectively we caught about 10 fish in under 90 minutes.

A good solid August day in Colorado....I wonder what else we could add???