Nordic ski-touring

The group (I'm taking the picture)

This weekend I was fortunate enough to be invited along on a ski trip to a private cabin. Five of us met on Saturday morning in the parking lot of the Woodland Park Safeway. We stocked up on the essentials (steaks, pasta, and red wine), then drove up along the Rampart Range until we hit a gate. Well, actually it was a huge mound of snow in the road....theoretically there is a gate under it, but I never saw it.
Out came the nordic skis (cross sountry, for those of you who didn't grow up in a northern state). From there on out, everything was under our own power. The ski in took about 4 hours on undulating trail, as we soaked up the Colorado sunshine, and admired Pike's Peak and Devil's Head Mountain. Beautiful as the ski was, we were all grateful to see the cabin....time to ditch those boots and put on my fuzzy sheepskin slippers. Oh, luxury!

Tina and her family's cabin

In the evening, we stoked the stoves up, ate ourselves into a stupor, and played at cards until we suddenly realized it was 10 o'clock. Crap! We wanted to get an early start the next day--the snow gets sticky and recalcitrant after the sun hits it. No fun to ski on. So off to bed for all of us. That's when I discovered the greatest luxury in all of cabin-dom: Electric blankets. Wow. Really wow.

After a little sleep-walking incident from Tina, we woke up bright and early. The morning sun was just touching down on Devil's Head as be started out. I skied ahead of the group and snapped off a couple shots--I'm no Galen Rowell, and my camera can't do the alpenglow justice, but here's one of the pictures:

The morning ski out

And to top it off, we rounded a corner to find the trees perfectly framing Pike's Peak off in the distance.

Sarah and Pike's Peak