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 Jenn Fields and her first ever trout, a RMNP Greenback Cutthroat A few weeks back I promised a friend, Jenn Fields, that I would teach her how to fly fish; on Monday it was time to do so. Unfortunately most of the streams and rivers are a beautiful chocolate brown as they overflow their banks with the spring runoff. This left just a few options, primarily being lakes. After some deep thought and consultations with the folks at Rocky Mountain Anglers, I settled on a trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park. Jenn and I checked out the headwaters of the Big Thompson and made the wise decision to hike up from the Bear Lake Trailhead to Dream lake. There was a bit of snow on the ground and the lake was still half frozen but we found a good spot to practice casting. After little more than an hour of learning (and fight big wind gusts) Jenn had progressed to a point where she could effectively cast 6 meters of line with a 3-wt Orvis Hydros; it was time to go fishing.
We ventured up to the inlet and promptly saw greenback cutthroat trout stacked up and actively feeding. I quickly realized all of the casting lessons would be for naught as this would require a downstream drift. In any case we tied on a size 18 PMD and within minutes Jenn experienced her first take. After some minor confusion as to what “set the hook” meant, Jenn fought the little beauty successfully to the bank. It was great to see how excited she was – I had almost forgotten the joy when someone catches their first trout. We caught a few more before hiking back out – with Jenn already asking when we could go again.
 The Surfboard, AKA The Floating Couch
Recently I have started taking a rod with me whenever I travel (primarily the March Brown Badden-Powell I reviewed for Backpacker and mentioned previously on Climbtrees) as sitting in a hotel room is quite boring. However at this location, Daytona Beach, I had the additional attraction of ocean waves. On Thursday when I returned to my hotel after finishing work for the day I observed surf out the window. Not big surf, but surf nonetheless. Enough to make a quick decision at least. I wandered down the beach to rent a surfboard. The shop guy asked me about my skill level; I said better than completely aweful and but below not quite good. We mutually agreed that I should grab a longboard, though perhaps it would be better described as a floating couch.
Immediately upon walking into the water I stepped on a fish; I doubt I have ever mounted a board as quickly as I did then. Next I experienced a riptide that quickly tore me down the beach and eventually tossed me out the deeper water. It was the first time I had really experienced a “strong” tide (I still have too few experiences with them to fully quantify) – and now I understand why surfers think they are a great way to get out fast. Unfortunately this one would dump me a bit beyond where almost all of the waves were actually breaking. The waves were small, with most under a 1.5 meters. Towards the end I caught one that might have gone almost 2 meters. Huge, I tell you..
I rented the board a bit before six and came out of the water around 8:30. Why did I come out? The surf hadn’t changed, the temperature had not really dropped (though 3 of my fingers were a lot more white than flesh colored). I had a porpoise or dolphin (I live in Colorado, do you really expect me to be able to tell the difference) come in to me. It was fairly dark so when I first saw it I only caught the dorsel fin coming directly towards me. Seeing as I doubted anyone on the beach would be able to see or hear me (not that it mattered, there was no one on the beach), I was quite releaved when I saw it come up again with a nice comforting marine mammal beak. In any case, it was time for me to finish up for the day. I tried getting up with dawn the next morning, but the waves were all but nonexistant. I suppose I could have tried however the prospect of riding the fins directly into the sand felt like a bad idea. Late in the afternoon on Friday the waves were barely improved so I returned the board and broke out a fly rod. While less traveller friendly than the Badden-Powell, the Temple Fork Outfitters “ The Clouser” in a 4-piece 9-weight still could be attached to my luggage with minimal difficulty (review forthcoming in the Backpacker blogs). I wandered into waist deep water (with the surf occasionally knocking me around) and attempted casting almost 90 feet of line. The last time I threw so much line was in 2005 for salmon, when I still lived in Oregon. Making it even more difficult were the 10-12 miles per hour winds; I did successfully wack myself twice with a #2 Clouser minnow.
 Early Morning Sunrise at Daytona Beach
After about an hour I felt something hit – hard. It quickly took me out into the backing. I reeled the fish back onto the flyline; we repeated this twice when suddenly the fish got a lot heavier and a lot faster – the line broke a few moments later. What happened exactly, I don’t know. Off hand I am saying my fish got eaten by a bigger fish. Maybe. At least it sounds good.
I got up Saturday morning at 3:45 to go try fishing the inland waters, from the shore and the docks. There was a fair amount of commotion in the water, but after almost 4 hours and probably a dozen flies I gave up and headed for the plane back to Colorado. While I would have thought my fishing adventures ended here, the TSA agent was concerned about how thick the fly line was and proceeded to dig at it with a knife; he said he might have nicked it. I thanked him for ruining my $70 line. Alas.
 Dan Skate Skiing at Eldora On Saturday morning Katie and I went to the Nordic Center at Eldora Mountain Resort to try skate skiing. Seeing as we had no idea how to skate, we signed up for a beginner lesson (it did not hurt that the cost of a lesson was only $9). A lesson is apparently a great place to pick up girls, or at lease the odds appear to be in your favor; our class was eight girls to two guys. Seeing as I had no need to pick up a girl, I proceed on with the falling (I had assumed that all my hockey and speed skating would have set me up for this sport but all the falling would indicate otherwise).
We had two great instructors, Anna and Jack. Anna had skiing competitively in college at Colby and Jack had been skiing for 35 years; theoretically there should be enough skill and knowledge to get us skiing. Being a little late to the lesson, Katie and I must have missed the short introduction where the instructors said do not lean back. Or maybe I just didn’t hear it. In any case, on our ski over to “the stadium” for the actual learning, I discovered that leaning backwards is a very bad idea. In fact, I must have learned this at least six times.
When we got to the stadium, Jack and Anna took us over balance, edges, and body position before setting us loose to try for a few laps. I was undoubtedly the fastest person in the class, though my advantage would almost always be tempered by my failed attempts to go faster. I believe Jack thought this was mildly amusing; he told me that I was really close to getting the form down and that I just needed to learn forward a bit more. While leaning forward did have a positive effect on my speed, inversely it near destroyed my already pathetic balance.
After a while I became fairly comfortable with the V2 skate on the right foot, somewhat less so on the left foot. I was able to unintentionally switch without thinking about it on our way back to the Nordic Center; when Anna commented on it I immediately fell. As for the V1 stride, I understood the concept but was disastrously off balance. Alas, something to strive for.
After the lesson Katie and I decided to try some of the trails. Anna recommended that we take 17th Avenue to the Meadows Loop, though she warned us that there is a “little bit of hills” on 17th Avenue. I had assumed this definition was similar to the hills we had seen during the lesson; I was wrong. 17th Avenue was essentially one long hill all the way up. By the time we got to the top, neither of us had any energy to attempt Meadows Loop. Apparently really skiing is a lot more tiring than taking a few laps before pausing to learn the next drill. Seeing as we were all but dead, we took Cheater Corner back down. Which was great, except when I caught my ski in a classic track and went down by the top of the Little Hawk lift to the great amusement of all the snowboarders. Again, alas.
While I fell a lot and felt painfully out of shape, I really enjoyed the day. I will definitely try it again and maybe, just maybe, will find the water bottle I lost on one of my many falls.
If you know me, you probably understand that I am an extremely competitive person. To the point where I can be overly competitive. Perhaps today was such a day…
 Evil RTD Bus There are some days that I really just do not want to ride my bike home from work. Today was such a day. I rode my Jamis Supernova into work (and experienced a slew of smells including a dead skunk, burning rubber, cinnamon rolls, a slaughter house, and sweat) and ran a few miles at lunch. The afternoon consisted largely of a coworker trying to dump his grunt work on me. When the day finally concluded, I really did not want to ride home so I road my bike over to the RTD bus stop. And then it happened – I saw that the bus had already passed and was a few minutes down the road. Now I wanted to blame myself, but both my watch and cell phone confirmed that the bus was two minutes early. That was all I needed; I said I was going to beat the bus home on my bike while still wearing my dress clothes (though I did have on bike shoes). I put the hammer down and at the first light I had almost caught the bus – the light was really long and the bus had to make a few stops. Unfortunately the bus made the light and I did not. Waiting at the light, the desire to win just grew; there was no way I was going to let that bus defeat me. I took off the second the light changed and never looked back. When I turned on to my street, I looked at the coming bus and threw out some obscenities regarding meeting a schedule and how pathetic it was getting beat by my cyclocross bike. Score another win for Dan. Now I just need to deal with the pit stains on my undershirt…
 Pit Stains After Bike Commute Home
On my ride home from work today, I crashed my Jamis Supernova bike on an empty, icy road. Seriously, there was no one around, which probably explains why the road was still covered with ice. Thankfully it was an “easy” crash; my rear wheel slide out from under me and I went down on my elbow. A wonderful benefit of windproof winter jackets is that they resist tearing really well, though I was not sure about my elbow remaining in one piece.
When I got home and stripped down I was pleased to see that my skin was still in one piece, particularly since I could see the crash marks directly on an old scar (from the first time I use clipless pedals on a mountain bike and subsequently spent three hours getting gravel picked out of my arm at the hospital; you know it happened you too).
 Icing My Elbow with Dale's Pale Ale Anyways, after years of athletic injuries I know the proper recovery method involves putting something very cold on the wound; I improvised with a can of Dale’s Pale Ale.
 A Better Use of Dale's Pale Ale After about 8.7 seconds, I got bored and decided on a better use of my cold object. Sucks to be my elbow.
 The Remnants of My Cooling Device Now I just need to find someone else to blame for my crash on an empty, icy road while going 25 km/hour; suggestions?
 Katie Snowboarding at Vail While we still have not found a ski house, Katie and I could no longer ignore the mountains. A few weeks back we rented a condo for the weekend in Frisco and went for our first outing of the year to Vail; it was the only mountain that had decent snow. The back bowls were not open, but it was a decent start to the season. We followed up the next morning with a few runs at Keystone, which was easy seeing as there were only a few runs open…
 View from Ski Santa Fe Over Christmas we headed to Santa Fe with the misguided conception that it would be warm there. It was not. At all. The temperatures had highs in the teens and twenties. In any case, we went to Ski Santa Fe on Christmas Day. It was really nice with a the short drive; the ski hill was about 30 minutes outside of town. It was a reminder that we should ski Eldora sometimes instead of driving to Summit county. As for the skiing, it was similar to Keystone; there were a very limited number of runs open. We skied every single one of them. And then skied them again, because what else was there to do but ski on Christmas Day! It was nice exploring some new terrain, though I would really to try some of the more challenging upper runs if I go back. I did take this very odd picture with my iPhone; I have no idea what happened to it. If you know, send me an email!
 Odd iPhone Picture - Ski Santa Fe Finally over the last week I went up twice again, once on Tuesday to Breckenridge and then again to Keystone on Thursday. Breckenridge was absolutely packed with 30-45 minute lift lines; it was not an entirely enjoyable day. Keystone was much better, both in terms of lift lines and terrain from the previous visit. The snow was fairly soft, the Outpost was completely empty in the morning, and my friends were moving fast. It was the best day of skiing so far. Hopefully the season will just get better, particularly so I can stop taking core shots on !
 A Very Barren Keystone
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