Tales from the Hinterland: 2014/2015 edition

Well, yes, that's always the case when being pursued by something..  But in reality, I don't worry much about wolves..
It's the other humans that scare me!  

We also had SBR's trusty dog Utah with us.. Though in all honesty he'd be like a four legged maki-sushi appetizer to wolves than a deterrent.

Just back from the Warren Miller movie. One of the best from WME in many moons. Japow snowboarding and Beaver Creek race segments are worth the price of admission. I don't know why they won't do a sequence here in the Hinterlands. But I digress. People want to know about the WOLVES!

Well, first you have to see the snow chair. Complete with live deer in the background:



Then you have to look at picture of TD verifying that he actually made a turn in this sketchy snow, littered with woody hazards:



OK, here you go. Utah the wonder dog explores his wolf heritage and contemplates the tastiness of a quite-dead deer.



(To answer Snowballs' question, the wolf biologist told me that wolves move around a lot within a very large territory. There were no really fresh tracks around this kill, my guess is that it was well over a week old and they had moved on to the next project. I kept a close eye on little Utah though, he has been wolf bait a couple of of times before. Not particularly worried about our personal safety, as we are armed with ski poles. En garde!)

And finally, you get to see Telemark Dave doing the tele-mambo dance for joy as he contemplate the incoming leftovers from your Nor'easter while skiing over a beaver dam, with the dog also mambo-ing in the background:

Met up with Jeff LeCheff and Randolph yesterday to do laps at Pipeline.. It was pretty limited for good lines,  about 6-8" of dense powder on old frozen hardscrabble - lots of nasties lying just under everything, so we skied off the safer zones.  Easy Peasy until I broke a cable.  Typical.. Of course Randy, being an AT skier, smiled a wry grin.. and stuck around to do a few more laps while I booted my way back to the trail head.  At least Jeff was sympathetic enough to accompany me in shameful retreat.

Yet another Voile Charger photo bomb...

Chris wrote

Somehow I missed this the first time.  

So let's not jump the gun here... do we have any actual proof that this is SBR's yard as seen from space?

Well, all I can say is that there was, and still is a collection of derelict bikes scattered haphazardly around his shed/garage..though that pic looks like it might have been pre-Cuba.. Nothing like propping up a failed Marxist/Leninist/Maoist wannabe dictatorship with some bicycles.  SBR would be a great benevolent leader of Cuba.  Until it started snowing somewhere in the world...

Harvey wrote

So let's not jump the gun here... do we have any actual proof that this is SBR's yard as seen from space?

SBRHQ on Bing Maps. Our house on the bottom, neighbour above. Note abandoned vehicles to the upper left. Bikes are all in the garage.

No chair photo today, sorry. I went for a rather spontaneous ski after finishing up some stuff around the house and just completely forgot. In lieu of the traditional opening shot, I give you.....

Skis leaning on a post!


Said "I seen you today you was standin' on a corner,
Leaning up against a post"
I said "But I'm tired, I've been walkin' all day"
- George Thorogood (after Rudy Tombs and John Lee Hooker)

Well, sliding on the Chargers was way better than walkin' all day but the stiff, gloppy snow made for slow going. In fact the probe dog was halfway down the hill by the time I got to the crest:



Fat, rockered skis make smooth turns in this type of snow possible. Still wrapping my head around that concept after a life time of flailing! Crossing the dog's tracks isn't exactly making powder 8s - more like a dollar sign. I guess that makes them money turns!



One of the objectives of this tour was to check on the state of the deer carcass we found last week (see above). Things had definitely changed, and the dog was on high alert:



Finding a dead wolf was the last thing I expected. Not much left but fur and skin, I'm guessing there was a food fight and this one didn't do so well. All that was left of the deer were two forelegs. This was a big wolf, the tail is twice as long as Utah's.



It was difficult to investigate the scene, since I was preoccupied with keeping the dog from eating bits of pieces of the various remains. After I let him eat some deer bits we found once, and he spent two days barfing, I have decided that carrion should not be on his menu any longer. So we headed off the Utah's Rock, for more ski leaning and dog posing:



After that excitement, we slowly wended our way home, and up the creek bed. When in doubt follow the dog:

Sick Bird Rider wrote

sorry didnt see the skiis looking at the tractor

Sick Bird Rider wrote

interloper wolf,coyote? seems odd they cannibalize  their own pack

freeheeln wrote

sorry didnt see the skiis looking at the tractor

No worries, it's a great tractor. Kubota L2550, 1988 or so. Just cooling down after clearing up the three inches of car-stopping mung in our driveway.

Sick Bird Rider wrote

freeheeln wrote

sorry didnt see the skiis looking at the tractor

No worries, it's a great tractor. Kubota L2550, 1988 or so. Just cooling down after clearing up the three inches of car-stopping mung in our driveway.

see one in my future

"Mung"????
Is that some sort of port-manteau, like maybe muddy dung?  Just wondering...

I can't believe I just used the word "port-manteau".  

Telemark Dave wrote

I can't believe I just used the word "port-manteau".  

Me neither. WTF is a port-manteau? I believe it loosely translates as "wear a coat."

freeheeln wrote

interloper wolf,coyote? seems odd they cannibalize  their own pack

I was wondering the same thing. This can't be more than a week old and there is so little left. TD and I were in the same place, with less snow, last Wednesday. There was no sign of this then. Wolves can kill other wolves in territorial disputes, and are not friendly to outsiders, or aggressive young wolves threatening the alphas. "Few wolves live more than 5 years in the wild, but with ideal conditions can reach 15 years of age. Wolf populations are naturally regulated by prey density and territorial disputes among wolves."

Quote from: http://westernwildlife.org/gray-wolf-outreach-project/biology-behavior-4/

Not so much cannibalism as "OK, you're dead, we'll eat you now." It is a dog-eat-dog world, after all.

Sick Bird Rider wrote

Telemark Dave wrote

I can't believe I just used the word "port-manteau".  

Me neither. WTF is a port-manteau? I believe it loosely translates as "wear a coat."

From Wikipedia:

A portmanteau (i/pɔrtˈmæntoʊ/, /ˌpɔrtmænˈtoʊ/; plural /ˌpɔrtmænˈtoʊz/ portmanteaus or portmanteaux) or portmanteau word, called a blend in linguistics,[1] is a combination of two (or more) words or their sounds (morphemes) and their meanings into a single new word.[1][2][3] The word comes from the English term "portmanteau luggage" for a piece of luggage with two compartments, itself derived from the French portemanteau (from porter [to carry] and manteau [coat]). Nowadays the English term is a false friend of the French term because this now means a coat rack, but the French term was in the past also used to refer to a suitcase or bag for clothes.[4][5]

A portmanteau word fuses both the sounds and the meanings of its components, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog,[2][6] or motel, from motor and hotel.[7] In linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph which represents two or more morphemes.[8][9][10][11]

The last few posts are evidence that any thread can go south when the weather does likewise...
But there is hope, next year!   New Years day is lookin' good.

Telemark Dave wrote

Sick Bird Rider wrote

Telemark Dave wrote

I can't believe I just used the word "port-manteau".  

Me neither. WTF is a port-manteau? I believe it loosely translates as "wear a coat."

From Wikipedia:

A portmanteau (i/pɔrtˈmæntoʊ/, /ˌpɔrtmænˈtoʊ/; plural /ˌpɔrtmænˈtoʊz/ portmanteaus or portmanteaux) or portmanteau word, called a blend in linguistics,[1] is a combination of two (or more) words or their sounds (morphemes) and their meanings into a single new word.[1][2][3] The word comes from the English term "portmanteau luggage" for a piece of luggage with two compartments, itself derived from the French portemanteau (from porter [to carry] and manteau [coat]). Nowadays the English term is a false friend of the French term because this now means a coat rack, but the French term was in the past also used to refer to a suitcase or bag for clothes.[4][5]

A portmanteau word fuses both the sounds and the meanings of its components, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog,[2][6] or motel, from motor and hotel.[7] In linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph which represents two or more morphemes.[8][9][10][11]

Wow. That's clever. It's easy for the pubic to see that you're a very cunninglinguist. Hard to lick that. But, the instructions are under the hood. Look for the labia-l. It's written in a universal language, tongues. Afterwards, it's recommended you learn to breathe through your ears.

Not much snow your way either, Snowballs?????