There’s a post in the Out There Blog today about the Colorado Springs Open Space Tax. Douglas Bruce has been trying to kill it because it wasn’t presented as a tax to voters in 2002. I voted for it and I really don’t remember how it was worded but it was pretty clear to me it would be costing me money. For the most part, I’m against more taxes but this is one that I get a lot of benefit from. There’s a lot of things I don’t agree with Bruce on but I think he really has helped keep our taxes down.

I certainly hope that this will eventually allow Section 16 to be bought and saved from development. Since high school it has been one of my favorite places to mountain bike. Now with a trail connecting it to the Red Rock Canyon Open Space, there are even more ride options.

I have finally added pictures of our trip last September to New York to my website. We took the trip so I could do the Adirondack 540. Julie’s aunt and uncle don’t live too far away and took care of the girls while I was racing. Her uncle drove for the 2nd lap which included the period with the worst rain during the night. We also did sightseeing around the area.

I’ve also added some of Matthew’s pictures to my Eiseman Hut trip page.

Tuesday was another beautiful day. It was about zero degrees when we got up. After eating Jaime, Tom, Matthew, Dave, and I headed down from the Eiseman Hut to the saddle to the ridge to the southwest. This is one of my favorite places to ski at the Eiseman Hut. The northwest face of it doesn’t get much sun and the trees protect it from wind so the snow is almost always really nice powder. As you get down toward the bottom of the drainage, there are a lot of big, old trees and it’s just a really pretty area.

After a run or two, Dave decided he wanted to go ski where it was more open. Jaime couldn’t stay the 3rd night. He was going back to the hut at noon so he didn’t want to drop too far down and have to cut an up track all the way back up so we stayed on the upper part. When he went back to the hut, Matthew did too to eat lunch but Tom and I just kept skiing.

Once it was just Tom and I, we dropped all the way to the bottom of the drainage. The last part of the drop is pretty steep and the trees are tight. It actually is a little hard for my skiing ability. It’s so pretty down there and the only way to get better at skiing is to push what you’re comfortable with. The first time back up to where we had been skiing was hard and slow since we had to cut a new up track.

Matthew came back looking for us and he left his initials and when he was there. It turned out he had been about 10 minutes behind us at the top of the ridge. We took a 10 minute break and ate some and kept calling for him but never got a response so we dropped down again. He ended up going and skiing with David up high in a bowl. Tom and I got back to the hut a little after 5. There was still some daylight left but we had been out for 8 hours and had only sat down for 10 minutes so we were really tired and called it another day of skiing.

Monday morning was cold but beautiful. It was -3 degrees but it’s been as cold as -20 degrees when we’ve been at the Eiseman Hut. We spent the morning skiing off the ridge behind the hut and our up track brought us by the hut every time around. We stayed more in the trees than the night before so the snow wasn’t as packed and was faster. We spent 3.5 hours skiing and then since we were close to the hut we took a nice break in the hut for lunch. After lunch we skied another 3 hours from the ridge and more directly below the hut. Tom and Jaime took one last run about sunset down toward the saddle to the southwest but I felt like I was too tired to enjoy it so I headed in.

Two couples skied out on Monday and one couple had another night so we knew we’d have a smaller group at the hut. The 10th Mountain Hut website showed the hut being full with 16 people but our group was 2 people short. This meant that a group of 2 should be coming in. I hadn’t sleep well Sunday night because I forgot to get my ear plugs out of my pack before I went to bed. The guy in the bunk above me came to bed after I had gone to sleep but he woke me up when he came to bed. He kept shining his light around and wasn’t quiet. One of the couples that left had one of the bedrooms. I went in during the middle of the afternoon and moved my stuff into it since I figured there was plenty of room. I slept much better the next 2 nights. Anyway it turned out that only an OR nurse from Vail came in by himself since the person that was supposed to come with him couldn’t.