| Summary | |
| Owner | Greg Wallace |
| Creation Date | 2010-03-26 18:38:06 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Justin Fitzpatrick, Chris Glazner, and Greg Wallace
Chris and Greg flew out to meet with Justin in Denver and spent two days skiing at the resorts to acclimate. After some initial bouts of altitude sickness, everyone was feeling in good physical condition for the slog up to the Fowler-Hilliard yurt. With a few inches of fresh snow and warm temperatures the snow had an amazing ability to glop on to our skins. After dragging 20 lbs of snow on each foot all the way up to 11700', Justin discovered that two of the four screws holding his binding onto the ski had pulled through the topsheet! Thankfully we were at the highpoint of the day and had a short (though surprisingly annoying) descent to the yurt. At the yurt (really nice---need to pimp out the yurt at Intervale!) we fixed the problem by drilling new holes in the ski using a red hot nail and a cast iron skillet. Seriously, watch the video, it's true. The fix thankfully worked for the rest of the trip. The next morning, we descended from the yurt down into the valley and ascended back up to the Jackal Hut. The name is a portmanteau of Jack and Al, the two benefactors of the hut. Turns out that Al is actually Al Zesiger '51, the same guy who built the Z-center! The Jackal hut is really impressive with three bedrooms upstairs and a well equipped kitchen and common area downstairs. We spent two consecutive nights at the hut and had an amazing day of powder skiing on slopes near the hut. On the last day we took a quick run in the morning before heading back to the car. On the way out Calamity Chris struck again. This time he strained his tricep after getting his ski pole stuck on a tree branch. On the way back to Denver we went over Loveland Pass. At the summit Justin and Greg decided to grab their skis off the roof and ski down from the top of the pass back to the road while Chris drove back down. The skiers beat the car by about 5 minutes. |