Stop 8: Santa Fe/Telluride/Moab

How many places in this world can you ski in the morning and then climb in the evening? I now know of at least one! Thanks to a tip from another van friend, I drove down to Sante Fe to go check out the nation's oldest (and highest) state capital. I didn't really know what to expect, but was rather confused when I got to the 'city center' and didn't see any high rises, 'modern architecture', bland office buildings, or really anything that I have come to associate with capital cities. Walking around town you feel like you are stuck in a time portal for a bygone era -- and I mean that in the upmost positive way!

I was promised a ski adventure so we made our way up the local resort ~30 minutes out of town the next evening. We skinned up up to the top, capturing an awesome desert sunset on the way, and found a hiker's hut to get ready for the downhill. The hut was a bit grungy, but otherwise a welcome reprieve from the mountain-top wind and slowly I began to think about how much fun it would be to catch a sunrise ski. Being a weekday night I figured there wasn't anyone else that would come up before morning so I decided to ski back down to get my sleeping bag and food then return for a night up on the mountain. It became quickly clear that I had vastly overestimated the comfort of the bench I tried sleeping on as I couldn't move for fear of falling off, but would also regularly lose circulation and have to re-adjust. The 45 minute nap intervals were further impeded when some sort of creature (definitely bigger than a mouse) decided to join around 2am and scrummage around below. The epic sunrise and fresh tracks down the ski slope in the morning more than made up for the hassle and I ended with enough time to do another skin up before the lifts opened. After grabbing a burrito with the legendary red/green chili sauce from town, I made my way down to the canyon for some afternoon climbing where I sadly succumbed to the realization I was well out of climbing shape.

Unfortunately most of the museums were closed, but I made sure to check out Los Alamos (home to the Manhattan project) and Bandelier National Monument (where human traces from ~10,000 years ago exist with ancestral Puebloan habitats dating back to ~1100AD). Pretty amazing to have so much history and activity in one area!

A good friend from college and some friends I met on the road coaxed me to the mountain town of Telluride. What an incredible landscape! I got around to some fun days at the resort and escaped to the neighboring town of Ophir for some backcountry, but just watching the alpine sunsets would have made the trip worth it. If it wasn't for the weather (3F/-16C nights) I would be tempted to stay longer, but warm days in the desert beaconed!

The desert is hard to resist - especially on the back of weeks of freezing temps at higher altitudes. A small group of us met in Moab and made our way to spend some time at Indian Creek - climbing fun routes and towers under the much welcomed sun.