The busiest month of my life

This last month was crazy. I worked a ton, helped plan my wedding, got married, moved, wrecked 2 cars (that's right, 2), tried to keep training, lost a phone, raced 3 times, and did all sorts of other random life stuff.  A brief description of the highlights is as follows:

Dec 20, 2012 - Bachelor Party/ Wedding Dinner

How lucky am I? The morning of the 20th a group of 10-20 of us met, ate bagels and headed up one of the Honeycomb peaks.  The sun was shining, the snow was still dry and it was fantastic.  Andy and Travis had dragged a grill to the summit the day before and we were treated with a day of grilled food and skiing.

Grill master Andy

The crew

Jared documented the day in a video here.  Thanks guys, I couldn't have asked for a better party!

One hour after skiing our last run I was showered and eating dinner with Amanda and my family and a good handful of our closest friends.  No pictures yet but there's something special about getting all (most) of the important people in your life together in one room.  It's even better when they're there to celebrate you!

Dec 21, 2012 Pre-wedding Powder/ Marriage

Lars was in town and the skiing was still fantastic.  Since my wedding was at noon we figured we better go poke around for the morning and get a little fresh air to clear the mind.  Nothing to exciting but a great way to start the wedding festivities.

Posed brothers shot

Wedding morning celebration, photo by Andy

A little drama on the ride to the ceremony almost led to a ruined wedding dress but the crisis was averted and everything else went off as planned.  There are 2 things I'll never forget.  1, Seeing my beautiful wife excited to marry ME.  Who would have thought?  I guess she's quite the risk taker.  2, seeing my family and the majority of my close friends sitting together showing support.  Again, how lucky am I?

photo by Alpha Smoot

From there we ate burgers, tots and drank soda at the always classy Purple Turtle in Pleasant Grove.  The bouquet hit the floor of a fast food restaurant before is was snatched up greedily by some single lady.  Fantastic.  Best day of the year!

Soda at the Purple Turtle, photo by Jim Catano

Dec 29, 2012  Moguls on Superior

Chad, Andy, and I donned spandex and skinny skis to rally a few laps on Superior before going to work.  Skiing the south face twice car to car in 3 hours was a pretty good effort (pre nationals training). More alarming than seeing 3 fruits in full lycra suits on Superior was seeing the hundreds of tracks (literally hundreds).

A TRACKED out chute on Superior, photo by Chad Ambrose

Chad on the S. face

Jan 5, 2013 US Ski Mountaineering Nationals

Andy wrote a fairly detailed summary here. I won't rehash any of it but will say Skimo is growing in popularity and for good reason - it's fun.  Everyone that raced battled at some point.  I can look back an think of mistakes I made that cost me precious time but so can everyone, correcting those mistakes in pursuit of a clean race is part of the allure.

Coming down the final groomer to the finish I kept looking back and seeing Luke gaining. On the relatively flat finish there was nothing to do but watch him catch me.  I squeaked out a 1 second lead but may have shoved a pole in front of him during the last 50 meters, sorry Luke.  A few more thoughts:

1. Gaston and Max ski FAST
2. The entry to Corbet's looks steep
3. Always ski the course before the race if possible
4. SkiMo is getting more competative
5. Every second counts
6. When in doubt cut Luke off
7. I need to ski moguls more often
8. Training with Any and Tom works
9. I'm PSYCHED to make the US team!

Starting the booter up Corbets

Corbert's Couloir

Poor quality photo of my cutting Luke off, again, sorry

John Gaston continuing to dominate us

Jan 6, 2013 Targhee

Last year I was lucky enough to win this race.  Although motivation to qualify for the US wasn't there I felt a strong desire to try and defend the title.  We went out hard, Tom and I led the first 2 climbs and then a very poor dowhill performance left me out of the led pack finishing in 5th.   Turns out the DH matters too. Oh well, it was still a great race.  Thanks to Andy M. the race director for taking the time to put together a great course.

I started typing this a week ago and have just had the time to finish, I guess my busy month may be turning into a busy couple months...