Ignoring the obvious big storm rolling into Salt Lake City, Jen and I decided to head to Ouray for three days of ice climbing. On the first day, the decision seemed like a good idea. We got in plenty of steep, hard pitches and climbed pretty well. Then we took a look at Facebook that night and saw that it absolutely puked snow in the Wasatch. But when the grass is green on both sides of the fence you can’t really loose.
Saturday night, however, the storm moved through town and dumped 18 inches of powder on Ouray and in the ice park. All that snow made relatively easy ice climbing hard to read and surprisingly difficult, but the place was as close as it ever gets to being empty, so we got in all the climbing we could stand. On Monday, despite all the good ice climbing, brushing two feet of snow off the car made me want to go skiing.
So, during the drive home I hit up Alex and Jamon about going on dawn patrol the next morning. We rolled into town after a long drive, put away the ice gear, pulled out the ski gear, and set the alarm for 5:00am, got up early, and skied untracked powder before heading back to work. I love having it both ways.
