Winter came early...

Hi Folks,

Well, things changed in a hurry. I had an idea, an admittedly crazy idea, to ride the 7 Summits one more time this year. I even had one friend (Gerry) interested. Then we had a light dusting of snow on the ridge and we decided to do a modified ride on Saturday. Ride the first part of 7 Summits, then down Plewman, Larch, BS, Monte Cola, and Oasis.

Here is the parking lot at the beginning of the ride.

Travis, Gerry, and Ned. left to right. Frosty, with a skim of snow and ice on the pavement.
This is at Strawberry Pass/Nancy Greene Summit, the starting point of the 7 Summits.

The initial climb is long and technical, and these young fast guys had me suffering as they talked all the way.
It was great at first but things deteriorated quickly.

We did push-a-bike for almost an hour to get to Plewman.

The Plewman descent was a lot of work too. Peg legging down to keep the bike moving and stable.

Here is a profile of the ride.

Over 5000 feet of descent.

My plan for Sunday was to get my snow's on. Lube job, brake job, and snows as it light snow was falling.

And it is a good thing I did. Monday evening we got slammed by an early snow storm.

I now had to figure out how the hell to get out of my driveway. I am on a steep hill, and it was not plowed.
I tried to back out and up but that did not work, so I did a controlled slide down the hill.
Traffic was moving at 20 kph on the Trail hill.

This is my deck when I got home from work.

Most of the roofs here are steep metal to shed snow. It dumps on my deck. In the past snow has avalanched off the roof and taken out all the railings. Anyhow, I had to get the snow off since I am worried that the wet heavy snow would actually collapse the deck (Have I told you about  my rotten deck :-)
This is how we do that here.

The rail sections are bolted so that they can be undone and swung up and the snow can then be pushed off the deck. Rossland normal!

One more pic for you.
A view of my house (the bubble) with Roberts, Granite and Red (L to R) in the background.
Granite and Red are in the Red Mountain ski area.

I will try and get a pic today form the same spot, with all the snow.

I think I will be XC/BC skiing this weekend.