Mallory’s blog

So after a couple weeks of nice, sunny, realtively warm weather, Mother Nature decided that she wasn't done with winter. It snowed for about a week, straight and oh how glorious it was! The snow has been awesome so it was safe to say the husband and I did some skiing. :) My husband skiied like a maniac for a week, but unfortunately I was stuck inside at work all week so I only had the weekends. :( I skied on Saturday the weekend before last and I got my first taste of the East Wall at A-basin. The traverse out there kicked my sorry ass because I was so out of shape, but once we dropped it I got about 1 and 1/2 turns before I fell flat on my face, leaving a nice crater in fresh snow I might add. I finished the run with some wide, but nice turns. :) Last weekend I skied alone on Sunday for a while before I met up with the husband while he was working to take a run. I ended up getting volunteered to get buried alive for one of the avalanche dogs to do a drill and come find me. It was a lot of fun!

The weather is so nice today though I have to say I am ready for some warmer weather and spring skiing!

 

Ski Tally:

Days Skiing: 20

Days Skinning/Skiing: 4

Days Skinning: 2

Apparently the BBC reckons that most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Copy and paste - put an X next to the ones you have read. If I tagged you for this note, it's because I believe that you actually may pick up a book or two every once in a while.

I've read 13.

1. () Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. () The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. () Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. (x) Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. (x) To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. ( ) The Bible
7. (x) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. () Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. ( ) His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. ( ) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. (x) Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. ( ) Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. ( ) Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. ( ) Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. () Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. ( ) The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. ( ) Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18. () Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. () The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. ( ) Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. ( ) Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. () The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. ( ) Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. () War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. ( ) The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. () Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. () Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. ( ) Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. ( ) Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. ( ) The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. () Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. ( ) David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. ( ) Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. () Emma - Jane Austen
35. () Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. (x) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. () The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. ( ) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. (x) Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. (x) Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. (x) Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. (x) The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. () One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. ( ) A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. ( ) The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. ( ) Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. ( ) Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. () The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. () Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. () Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. () Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. ( ) Dune - Frank Herbert
53. ( ) Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. () Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. ( ) A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. ( ) The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. ( ) A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. (x) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. () The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. () Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. (x) Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. ( ) Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. ( ) The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. () The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. ( ) Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. () On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. ( ) Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. () Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. ( ) Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. () Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. () Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. ( ) Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. () The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. ( ) Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. ( ) Ulysses - James Joyce
76. () The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. ( ) Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. ( ) Germinal - Emile Zola
79. ( ) Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. ( ) Possession - AS Byatt
81. () A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. ( ) Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. (x) The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. ( ) The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. () Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. ( ) A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. (x) Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. () The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. () Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. ( ) The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. () Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. ( ) The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint
93. ( ) The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. (x) Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. () A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. ( ) A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. ( ) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. ( ) Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. ( ) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. ( ) Les Miserables - Victor Hugo 

My husband has started a professional avalanche class for the next 9 days, so it's safe to say that I will definitely have some down time in the upcoming week.  :(   This weekend Endo (our black lab) and I went to A-Basin to do some long over due skiing.  Yesterday I skied the hardest I have all season, and pushed myself to ski some stuff that I would usually never do by myself.  I felt really good yesterday, and I felt like I was skiing really good so I decided to hike the ridge out to the far side, almost to the ski area boundary.  Half way there I thought I would look over the edge and see how steep it was...bad idea.  The cornice was actually more of an overhang and I couldn't see the slope beneath.  I thought, holy crap what have I gotten myself into!!  I forced myself to keep hiking, and when I got to the place that I had scoped out from the lift, I was really happy that I kept going.  The cornice was not too steep so I decided to go off of it (yikes!) and it was A LOT of fun!  I skied really well all the way down and then decided to do it again!

I got up early and skied again this morning, and brought Endo again too.  I only skied for a couple hours however, because from the hard skiing yesterday I really hurt my knee.  I might go rock climbing later...but laundry is call me first.  :(

Ski Tally:

Days Skiing: 18

Days Skinning/Skiing: 4

Days Skinning: 2

Sadly, my iPod has died.  I had one of the older ones, white with a black and white screen, and yes it only held music.  No color, no pictures, no video, yes ladies and gentleman it was an original.  The hard drive broke, sadly, and I was forced to buy a new one.  I decided on an iPod nano so it would be less weight for hiking, backpacking, skiing, working out, etc.  I didn't have much money, so I got a refurbished one from Apple.  Thank god I did though, because when it came to me it was already broken.  :(  It wouldn't charge or anything so I had to ship it back for repairs and then they reshipped it to me yesterday and it was working flawlessly!  Woohoo!  I spent the evening put music on from our harddrive, and I almost filled it up!  ha ha

The husband I went skiing (sort of) last weekend on Saturday at A-basin.  We both participated in the Beacon Bowl, an avalanche beacon competition, and hung out all day for the activities.  I entered into the recreational competition and came in with a time of 2min and 32 seconds to find one beacon buried under the snow.  The husband entered the professional competition and came in with a time of 1min and 10 seconds.  He made it to the second round, but sadly I did not :(  So I got to watch everyone else.  Everyone did really good, and the husband came in 4th overall.  It was a great day.

We also decided to renew our rec center pass (finally!) so we can start rock climbing again.  We went Sunday and I was so frustrated with how much strength I had lost.  I couldn't even do the 5.6 route!  I did do a V1 boulder problem on Monday night, but still couldn't do the 5.6.  I think I am just nervous with trusting the rope again and being high and feeling like I can't hold on.  It is just something I am going to have to work through again to get where I was before we stopped climbing.  I really do enjoy it very much though and gives me such a work out.  My forearms are so freakin sore I can barely hold on to anything, or type for that matter!  :)

I also went skiing by myself this morning while the husband was working since my boss let me come in late since I am super caught up with my work!  :)  The morning was so cold, 13 F and I was definitely not dressed properly, I wish I had had another layer to throw on.  It was not windy though, which was nice, and I got to take a couple runs with the husband before I had to head to work. 

I am going to a yoga class for the first time, I am hoping that it will help build some core strength for both skiing and climbing, and also help stretch out my super sore muscles!

 

Ski Tally:

Days Skiing: 16

Days Skinning/Skiing: 4

Days Skinning: 2

This morning I woke up and went skiing at A-Basin by myself before my Dad and family came to visit.  It was snowing pretty hard, but I got two good runs in on Pali face and another on West wall and Exhibition in 50 minutes before I had to leave to meet my family.

My Dad and family came up and we went to Mi Casa for lunch and then we went to see the snow sculptures.  They were amazing.  My favorite one was the elephant diving into a pool....but I also liked the bear looking into the camper, it was pretty intricate and definitely a crowd pleaser.  I have a feeling that is the one that will win.  ;) 

Last night I drove to A-basin after I got off work to skin up with Chris and Endo.  :)  It was really awesome with the different light that we were getting since the sun was setting.

 

 

Endo had a lot of fun running around and then sliding back down on his belly, side, back...whatever pleased him.  :)

 

This morning Winter decided to try and make a comeback.  After almost a week of spring type weather and blue skies, a storm started moving in.  :)  Welcome back Winter!

 

 

Ski Tally:

Days Skiing: 13

Days Skinning/Skiing: 4

Days Skinning: 2

The husband and I decided to hike Loveland Pass and do some backcountry skiing yesterday.  We went out the night before and I had way too much tequilla, so getting up was the first challenge of the day.  I forced myself to get up though, after some whining, because I hadn't skied since January 3rd.  Two weeks without skiing is not good, I felt like I was having withdrawls, not to mention I felt like crap because I hadn't done anything active in those two weeks either.  :)

We hiked about 1-2 miles up the ridge of the pass and then dropped in.  On our way up someone below us had written '420' in the snow, it was pretty funny. 

We dug a snow pit and evaluated the snow pack.  It was fairly stable, but we decided to try and stick to lower angle slopes just as an extra precaution.  We skied down to Highway 6 and tried to hitch hike back up to the top of the pass, but there were not really any good pullovers at that point in the highway so we started hiking up the road.  Thankfully a guy on his way up to Loveland pass saw us hiking and honked to let us know he would give us a ride home.  I was so happy!  Hiking back up hill after we had been hiking and skiing for about 4 hours was not my idea of fun.  He was a lifesaver!

We got back to the car and drove home, then I took a nap because I was not feeling to well.  The husband cooked me a fantastic meal of chicken, spinach, and cornbread and then we watched a BBC documentary of the Galapagos islands.  It was great!

Ski Tally:

Days Skiing: 12

Days Skinning/Skiing: 3

Days Skinning: 2

So far the new year is nothing to be too excited about.  I have not skiied since January 3rd and I am starting to get antsy!  I skiied on the 3rd with my brother, but last weekend Husband and I went to Denver to fix his RC helicopter, so we stayed down there all weekend.  While there we also went to see an exhibit called BodyMinds.  It was a human body plastination exhibit, which was really interesting to see.  :)

Approximately two weeks into the new year and my resolutions are already not going to well. Surprise, surprise. Seeing as I haven't done anything active since the 3rd, I would say that the whole "fitness" thing has gone out the window. I have been eating fairly healthy, however, despite the one soda I drank last weekend. :) My other resolution was about spending more time outdoors…um so far I can say I have only been enjoying the warmth of my place and the insid e pages of my book - it has been cold, and windy, and I haven't felt like doing anything the last week or so, and instead of getting over myself and getting outside I have decided to sit around and do nothing at home. I always feel so bad about not being active, but sometimes I think my body just says lets take a break. Either that or I am just a lazy person and need to get over myself quick!

The only thing that is going good regarding my new years resolutions is photography. I have been looking at lots of pictures online and trying to learn good tips about composition. In addition, I have been taking more pictures throughout the week. We have had some killer sunrises around here the past couple days and I have done my best to take advantage of them. I was not really trying hard for composition, more just trying to get it in a picture so I can remember it in the days to come. (**I will post some photos soon**)

So this comes a little late, seeing as we are already on day 5 of the new year, but better late than never I suppose. I couldn't think of anything for a new years resolution, besides the obvious (get in shape, be a better person, etc, etc..), but I felt like I really wanted to set some specific, achievable goals for the year that were in some way meaningful for me. It took me a little while, but I finally decided on a few for myself.

1. Get more into photography: I always complain that I don't have enough pictures of the things Chris and I do. For some reason I feel a necessary pull towards remembering everything we do in pictures so we can look back on them when we are older. I have taken some pretty cool pictures before, but generally they are by accident. :) I would love to learn how to make my pictures better and how to use my camera to it's fullest advantage since it is pretty old, but still chugging away! I want to try and take pictures at least once a week. This will be a tangible, mearsurable goal for myself that I know I can definitely achieve.

2. Spend more time outdoors: Many people think that I already spend a lot of time outdoors, but I don't feel like it is enough. I don't mean just skiing at resorts either…I want to go hiking more, explore the trails around Summit county, and be more appreciative of the world around me. I was watching Planet Earth last night on Discovery channel (for probably the millionth time!) and realized that we are destroying our planet at such an alarming rate that if I don't appreciate it all now I fear the beauty will start to disappear before I can enjoy it fully. So, that being said, I am going to try and spend at least 3 days a week outside doing something. Skiing, going for a walk, sitting and staring at a pull off on my way home…just something that will get me outside more than normal with the intent of enjoying nature.

3. Health: So for this resolution I decided that there are a couple things that I need to work on. :)

Fitness: I would like to try and do 3 nights a week of a small routine at my home. This does not include time I spend outside hiking, skinning, biking, or skiing. This will be a routine I do as yoga or weight lifting that will be there just to get me a little more toned up. I will be designing the first month of my weight lifting, yoga routine tonight so I will be able to follow it. Even if it is just 20 minutes while I am watching TV or listening to music, I feel that it will be better for me that nothing!

Diet: No, I will not be "dieting," but I will be eating healthier. Pretty simple, I am going to try and eat some type of vegetable or fruit for every meal, to try and get more nutrients in my body. I will also not be drinking soda and will try to drink one of my waterbottles (1 liter ) of water everyday.

Hopefully I will be able to follow these goals as I feel like I made them quite reasonable. :) Here's to a great year!