No More Blue Balls- Zuma 4/13/08

Posted: May 06, 2008
By: andylibrande
In: Colorado, Snow, Summit County/I-70 Area
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Location: Deer Creek Valley, Montezuma

Date: 4/13/2008; the day the majority of the resorts closed in Colorado

Crew: Trent Cook, Evan O’Connell, Scott Miller, Duncan Maxwell, Tweak (aka Matt Holden), and Myself

After having to deal with less then ideal weather conditions for the previous 3-4 weeks we had one day of just pure beauty. With relatively new snow all over the hills we tore it up as we explored numerous lines across all of the faces that were skiable; each of us did at least seven runs (over 42 lines for you math geniuses out there!!!) and literally skied til exhaustion.

The first run of the day happened at 9:15am and the last one happened at 4:00pm, and the result is as shown below:

Check out the picture gallery for the top 25 pics from the day: http://andylibrande.com/pictures/photos/album37

Scott launching:

Tweak cruising through:

Click the following for more action:

Duncan taking quite the fall off of a natural kicker (I am going to put this sequence into a video as it is damn funny):

The crew at the end of the day watching a view other lines:

That’s just a few of the pics the rest can be found at the gallery listed above. I have a bunch more things coming including some additional video action that should be straight crazy.

Peace.

The One Picture Teaser

Posted: April 14, 2008
By: andylibrande
In: Colorado, Snow, Summit County/I-70 Area
0

Yep. That was Sunday April 13th. The day the resorts closed.

You are only getting one pic for now…(mainly ‘cuz I have 500+ that I need to edit down).

Scott launching off a cornice between cone 2 and 3 in Zuma:

Hopefully this quells the masses. More to come…

A Little Video Action

Posted: April 10, 2008
By: andylibrande
In: Colorado, Random, Snow, Summit County/I-70 Area
0

On the way up to Silverthorne last Friday night I set my camera up to take a bunch of photos to make a time-lapse of heading up I-70. I threw it into a video/slideshow editor and came-out with this rough video; includes some nice ski/riding shots as well.

Let me know what you think via the comments section of this site:

http://www.vimeo.com/868566

The Quest for Punani

Along the gentle flow of Cherry Creek, nestled between willows and small mud-cliffs sits Punani. Over time the forces of nature have created this unique chunk of rock that contains one of the most aggressive boulder problems in Castlewood.

Simply put Punani is the first real badass boulder problem that I laid my eyes (and hands) on; it sits far from any other climbing in the area and contains a couple real smooth lines. The first time I saw this boulder it was Fall of 2005 and I was just really starting getting into climbing and bouldering; Chris had found it just a little before then and at that time all we could do was look and stare.

Flash ahead to the next summer (2006): Chris begins to really project the boulder (I still can’t get my fat-ass off the start holds), and here are a few photos from spending the day out there.

Here is what Punani looks like from below:

That day alone Chris threw himself at this problem countless times and was literally being spit off each time:

Towards the end of the day the most minor of progress was made:

Then there was a huge hiatus for 2007 bouldering in that I never once visited the boulder. I was focused on exploring new parts of Castlewood such as the 9 Live Boulder and began exploring new areas such as Three Sisters near Evergreen. On Jan 5th, 2008 I took Steve to the boulder for his first time to see the problems; even though we didn’t climb it there was the feeling that we would focus on this boulder over the next few months.

Finally the Main Event:
On a cool late evening last week (Thursday 3/13/2008) I joined Chris and Steve in the wilds of Castlewood to descend on this boulder in a evening that was eerily beautiful:

Five days prior Chris and I spent the whole afternoon sessioning the boulder with him sending Gerbil in a Chute and me finally making progress on that problem. However this night we had an intense focus on Punani and as it began to get pitch black the action really started to heat-up.

Steve at the beginning of the climb:

Next thing I know Chris stuck the crux, threw his second hand up and moved up on the top-out. Meanwhile it was 7:45pm well over an hour since we have seen any sunlight, it was completely pitch-black, and somehow Chris finished off this problem (unfortunately I have all this camera gear and still learning off camera flash so the pics are not as good as I was hoping they would be..)

Chris Storms on the Crux move of Punani V7/8 (for you sport climbers: ~5.13a); congrats!

Finally we see that it is possible…

Fully photo gallery can be found here: http://andylibrande.com/pictures/photos/album36

ZUMA!!!

Posted: February 22, 2008
By: andylibrande
In: Colorado, Snow, Summit County/I-70 Area
0

Dates: Saturday February 16th, 2008

Cruised-up to the little town of Montezuma to take advantage of the clear early morning weather. Myself with Trent, Scott and Evan took the trek to this beautiful basin where we were greeted with perfect weather and perfect snow conditions.

Full photo gallery can be found here (of course after you are done here).

Scott at the end of his line in the Steeps section. You can see how much sluff we got moving down the hill in this section. Photo by Trent.

Trent (right) and Evan on top of Big Chute eyeing out the line:

Evan cruising down the middle part of the steeps. Fun stuff:

Evan catching some air with the sled off of the Keylock Cornice (if you are curious ask Trent about where he came up with the name):

Myself coming down the first run of the day. Apparently each line is about 700-800 ft in verticle (thanks to handy GPS) and all of it was perfect. Also note the large avalanche debris fields that we had to navigate around: