Ruby Mountains Part 3

Another morning and this one is the most beautiful of them all. It is Valentine's day and the Rubies have a lot of love in store for us. On this day we cover the most ground of any day. We start our day by working across boiler plate snow conditions that is impossible to get grip on. We have to be creative and pick just the right spots to step to insure that our skins grip. We quickly are looking down on Overland lake and we have 1,000 feet of beautiful bowl skiing all the way onto the lake. Above the lake is an amazing blue ice fall. All around us are long, steep lines which have probably never been skied before. You could spend an entire ski career in the Overland Lake drainage.

Yeah We got to ski this!

Epic lines. This is the kind of stuff movies are made of!

We were able to traverse across the bottoms of huge cirques and cover a lot of ground in just a short period of time. Then it was time to climb again. The sun had warmed the south facing ridge we were moving on and we went straight up it. After a lot of sweating, we reached the ridge at the top of Long Canyon and get a view of Ruby Dome and the other monster peaks of the range.

The Infamous Ruby Dome

We are now on the crest ridge and ready to move and move we did. We were practically running along the barren ridge and were driven like two kids in a candy shop. Upon topping out on a small peak we look down on the saddle and see a herd of mountain goats. Just looking at their tracks and where they had been scared me and I envy their mountaineering skills!

Mountain goats standing on the edge of the world.

We finally stopped moving when we realized that we were about to bonk. We had been moving non stop and covered over 9 miles. We found a clump of trees to hunker down behind and spent the rest of Valentine's day at 10,500 feet enjoying some classy dehydrated meals.

Tune in later for the the final day of action!

Ruby Mountains Part 2

When we woke up on day 2 feeling that the hard part was behind us. Our plan for the day was to get back up on the ridge and cruise. It ended up being another day very similar to the first. We quickly reached the ridge in the morning and found that we would have to rip our skins and enjoy some of the great Ruby powder. When we looked out over the ridge we saw nothing but impassible ridge line. Our other option was to ski down about 2,000 vertical feet, cross over 2 drainages and ski a few miles up the third drainage. Needless to say it was not what we had planned. But we did get some good downhill.

Once we reached the top of the drainage, there was a pretty large headwall. We climbed up to the pass expecting to see Overland lake on the other side. We reached the top and decided that we were sufficiently spent for the night. So we set up camp on a pristine ridge at almost 10.000 feet that gave a us great view.

Nothing beats this view out your front door

Mark chasing the sunset

We ate 2 dinners that night to help prepare for the next day and give us the much needed calories. Life just keeps getting better in the Rubies!

I would be a rich man

If I did not have such a healthy outdoor recreation obsession, I figure I could retire somewhere around the age of 35. I do not even want to imagine all the money I have invested in gear! It is an ongoing problem in life. And no matter the size of my paycheck there always seems to be a percentage of it that is budgeted to buy some climbing hardware, camping amenities or skiing paraphernalia. I do not have a solution to my problem and luckily my wife is aware of my problem and tolerates me the best she can. Over the past few years websites such as Steep and Cheap have played the devils advocate for people like me. I have a love hate relationship with it, but my wife probably wishes she could block all discount gear websites from my computer.

Here is one corner of my happy place, There is also a closet that looks like it vomited after a lunch at REI.

One of my proudest accomplishments while being a homeowner is the transformation of a bedroom into a gear room. I show it off to everyone that visits and sometimes when no one is watching, I enter my gear room, close the door and play with all my investments. I also enjoy seeing other peoples gear rooms and checking out gear that others have that are on my list of future purchases. I know I am a total nerd, but I figure there are worse habits out there. Share your thoughts on gear rooms, storage techniques or addictions to gear that you have. I would like to know if there are more people out there that share my illness.

There is no such thing as too many kayaks!