I got up early Sunday morning on February 5th because David was meeting at my house at 5:45 AM to drive to Vail for the ski in to the Eiseman Hut. We were also picking up Matthew at the Red Robin at the north end of town at 6:00 AM. We were there a minute or 2 early but Matthew was 10 minutes late which gave use time to fill up on gas since I hadn’t gotten it done. Tom and Dave took another vehicle and Jaime drove from Boulder.

It was pretty windy when we left and it got worse as we drove north. I had thought of taking the bike rack and Thule box off but didn’t. I wished I had. At times I was struggling to stay in my lane with the wind gusts. When we got to the water ski ponds along 470, the wind was spraying the water onto the road. There was a construction message board on a trailer that had blown over. There was no construction there and they sometimes use them for high wind warnings but it was a little too windy. There was construction at 470 and I-70 and there was stuff blown into the traffic lane. I was having visions of trying to ski into the hut in white out conditions.

By the time we got farther into the mountains the wind calmed down but the skier traffic kept us going slow. We made a couple stops in Dillon since Matthew had new skis and he had forgotten his leashes. The last thing you want in deep power in the backcountry is to lose your ski. We were planning to be at the trailhead around 8:30 but didn’t get there until after 10. I almost expected the other 3 guys to have already headed up the trail but they were still getting everything together. They soon took off and had a 20 minute head start over the rest of us.

It looked like it had just stopped snowing and the sun was peaking through the clouds. It was perfect weather for skiing uphill. The trail was broken out of the parking lot by people doing a short morning ski. About the first hour is up a road along Spraddle Creek that has a pretty steady climb. You then cut across the creek and take a winter only route that goes over the ridge and drops a little into the Middle Creek drainage. I’m not sure but I’m guessing the trail wasn’t broken on this route since people that are just out skiing for a few hours seem to keep going up the road. If it wasn’t broken, the 3 guys wouldn’t have had to break trail long because I could see them on the hillside above me and it wasn’t long until I meet the first 2 people skiing out from the hut.

I passed Dave a little before getting to the Middle Creek drainage and I saw Tom disappearing into the trees as I dropped into the meadow where the route drops into the Middle Creek drainage. I stopped for a few minutes and had a snack. It wasn’t long before Dave showed up and also stopped for a snack. I took off before he was ready and after while caught up to Jaime and Tom. I skied with them for a bit before continuing on by myself. For a couple miles the trail is mostly gentle uphill in the trees along the creek. For a while there is a ridge to the left with some cliffs but then the trail goes to the right so you can’t see the ridge anymore.

After a while the trail turns back left and this means one thing, it’s about time to tackle the “wall”. It is a steep, open section up the ridge and for me it comes about 3 hours into the ski so I’m getting a little tired. I know that from the bottom to the hut takes me about 45 minutes and it climbs quite a bit. This year I was the first one up the “wall” and with the new snow it was extra hard. People headed out from the hut and come down it but their tracks were too steep for going up. Once over the wall, it gets easier but still keeps you working hard. The sign that you’re almost to the hut is an extra steep section that’s probably only 30 feet. Most years I have to side step up. This year the snow was still soft so I was barely able to get enough grip with my skins to get up it without side stepping.

I made it to the hut in 3:45 which I didn’t think was too bad of a time since the trail wasn’t as hard packed as normal. The fastest I’ve done it was in 2003 when I was really fit and the trail was very packed. That year I did it in 3:20 and the last couple years I’ve been around 4 hours. Jaime showed up at the hut within 5 or 6 minutes after I did and Tom wasn’t too far behind. We hung out for a little while and then Tom, Jaime, and I headed out to try out the snow. David and Dave had made it to the hut and Matthew came in a little after we left.

We went up the ridge behind the hut to where it drops to a saddle. We skied down from there. There are a few trees but it’s fairly open. Even though there was nice, new snow it had been packed by the wind. Not enough to get a crust but enough to make it slow skiing. It didn’t take many turns to keep our speed under control. Once we got down to where it wasn’t steep enough, we put our skins on and cut a track back up to the hut. By then David and Matthew had come out and done a short run down from the hut. There was enough new snow that the whole time we were there I only saw a couple mostly buried old tracks. By the time we left, there were tracks everywhere. Jaime and Tom went and did another short run but I thought I should save a little since the only skiing I had done this winter was a couple hours on High Drive and Captain Jacks 2 months before and that was just cross-country.

I now have the pictures from my trip to the Eiseman Hut on my website.

Today it was cold, windy, and snowy. It was a good day to stay inside. I don’t mind skiing or hiking in the cold but I’d rather not be on the bike. When I was in college, I rode 10 miles each and didn’t have a vehicle so I rode whatever the weather was. The coldest was -10 degrees and the most new snow was 7 inches. Now it’s too easy to be lazy when the weather isn’t nice. There’s a reason my friend never talked me into doing the Iditasport Extreme although I think he finished twice. It doesn’t seem it’s being held anymore. Now there’s the Susitna 100 held on part of the same course. It’s on February 18 this year and Jill is doing it and writes an interesting blog.

I’m going to go hop on the trainer and spin for a bit now. My legs are still pretty tired from skiing so I’ll take it easy. Tomorrow I’m supposed to do 7 hours on the bike but it’s supposed to be around 30 with winds gusts up to 35 mph. There’s ice and snow on the roads but it may melt off tomorrow afternoon. I think I’ll do a shorter mountain bike ride tomorrow and then do a long road ride on Sunday.

We had a great trip to the Eiseman Hut. I think this was my 7th time in and there was more snow than I’d seen there before. Hopefully in the next day or two I’ll have pictures uploaded and a write up on the trip.

One thing a trip like this is good for is dropping some weight. At night we were eating until we couldn’t eat anymore but I still lost a couple pounds. Lots of times my weight will spike back up a couple days later and then drop back. I’m not sure why but someone said it might be because of my body storing some extra muscle glycogen. The B-5 Challenge update as of February 1 has been posted. I managed to rank 2nd by a small margin. I just need to keep burning the weight off.

Today I was scheduled to just do a recovery spin on the trainer but the temperature peaked out just above 60 degrees so I couldn’t resist going out on the bike at lunch with a friend for a little over an hour. I really didn’t have much left in my legs after all the skiing. It was breezy in front of a cold front. We just made it back before the wind really picked up and the temperature dropped quickly. Tomorrow’s forecast is for a high of 28 degrees and 70% chance of snow.

Here are a couple pictures of me from my 2003 Eiseman Hut trip

Here are the details of installing the remote car starter on my wife’s van. We got it last fall from some 80 year old woman that had put 12,000 miles on in 4+ years. The only thing about it was that it didn’t have remote door lock/unlock. With 2 little kids this turned out to be a pain. Also the beginning of December it got down to -16 degrees and we don’t have a functional garage so the vehicles sit out in the cold. The one we have is in pretty bad shape and one day the 1 piece swing up garage door came off it’s track and if it hadn’t caught on some boxes I would have been flattened. As it was I only was doubled over and got my back tweaked a little.

I can never come up with good Christmas gift ideas but getting a remote car starter that also did door lock/unlock seemed like a great idea. I was in the parts store near our house and they had a deluxe remote starter for $80 and they only had one left. On the package it said it was the world’s easiest to install remote car starter. I got it but also checked one other place but they had sold out of them. My wife had called about remote lock/unlock and just that was $250 installed. I figured I had the Monday off after New Years and I could get it put in and be done with it. My first hint it wasn’t going to go well was when I went to the wiring instructions on the web and a lot of the links were broken. I couldn’t even get it to print out because they had put the wiring info in a scrolling table. They had another link to print it but it was broken. I hate when people get clever with web pages and make it hard to use. They had buttons for pictures but they also were broken. They also had buttons for notes. Now these worked but referenced other documents by a number. The web is about linking not references. The documents are by title not by a number so it took some looking to find what I needed.

I found diagrams for the 2nd start wire, the door locks, and the parking lights. The one for the door lock/unlock was for older vans but it was the same except the resistor values had changed. Monday morning I figured I’d just run over to Radio Shack and get the resistors and relays I needed. The relays Radio Shack had were 4 pin and a few of the ones I needed or 5 pins. I was also going to need to solder 5 resistors together to get the 180 Ohms for the 2nd start wire although I may have been able to get by with 2 100 Ohms. At some point I decided to call tech support because the package says they have 7 day a week support. They had a message saying they were closed but still put me on hold for the next operator. I held for a while since I was searching on the web but as I expected no one ever picked up. I spent most of the day trying to get parts but did get a few wires run.

Tuesday I did get the resistors I needed at Centennial Electronics since they were closed on Monday. I think it was Wednesday when I finally found an installer at one of the local car audio places that had a personal stash of 5 pin relays and sold me some. I then turned the bi-fold door I was painting for the basement remodel project into a work bench for wiring up all the relays and resistors. I talked to some of the hardware guys at work and they said I should shrink wrap the resistors to reduce the chance of the solder connections getting broken. These are guys that find it no big deal to design circuitry to measure the length of a network cable by the signal reflecting off the other end.

I put off actually connecting everything to the vehicle so that I could get training in on the weekends. Since I wasn’t supposed to do much last weekend after having the flu, I started back into it on Saturday. Everything seemed to be going smoothly until it came time to initialize the unit after hooking up the 2 start wires, ignition, power, brake sensor, and ground. I went through the steps they said to do and it didn’t initialize. I gave it one more try and all the gear indicator lights came on, all the dash lights, and the windshield wipers started going. I turned the remote unit off and disconnected some wires. I then tried starting the van with the key but it only clicked. Now I was really freaked out thinking I had fried some $500 computer chip. I had noticed when I had run to get something first thing in the morning that the battery had seemed a little weak. I thought of jumping it but was scared to if something was fried. I took the battery over to the parts store and after about 10 minutes the tester showed the battery needed to be replaced. Once I put the new battery in, the van started right up. What a relief!

I then tried to initialize the unit again but it wouldn’t. I then remembered I’d seen somewhere that the start wire had to be connected directly to the remote start unit for initialization instead of through the relays. Once I connected it that way it initialized just fine. I then reconnected the relays and tested it. It actually started! I then hooked up the horn so it would honk just before it started the van and can also be used as a panic alarm. It can also be used for door lock/unlock. The horn and the brake sensor were the only easy wires that didn’t require additional circuitry. The door locks went pretty smooth except it didn’t work at first. It didn’t take long with the multimeter to figure out the wiring diagram had a couple wires tied to 12V when they needed to be to ground. I found a diagram on the12volt.com that confirmed it. I also found when I hooked into the wire for the parking lights that there was a wire shown going to 12V that needed to go to ground.

It was very satisfying getting everything working but I’m not sure I want to do it again.

The beginning of December I spent 2 hours skiing High Drive and that’s the extent of my skiing so far this year. I was going to try getting out last weekend but I still wasn’t feeling up to it after the flu. Sunday I’m skiing in to the Eiseman Hut for 4 days of skiing. I know I’m going to pay for not doing any other skiing this winter but I’m still getting excited. Sleeping at 11,180′ for 3 nights should boost my oxygen uptake though. The out there blog had this picture of Vail in a post today. Yes, there is a skier in there. The Eiseman hut is just across the valley from Vail and at night if it’s clear you can see them grooming the runs.

I haven’t been up to Breckenridge this year but the Snow Sculpture Championships were recently. Other years I’ve happened to see them when I was headed somewhere. Check out the pictures. In the background of some of the pictures you can see buildings to give you some idea of how massive the sculptures are.