Soul Gypsy

Jerry guided our way as we drove south east from Durango, sun blinding our eyes, the destination,  Taos Ski Valley.

Taos hosted the first stop of the Big Mountain Battle, in this event skiers, riders, or telewackers battle it out on a course hidden throughout the mountain.  Competitors must hit checkpoints, ski certain runs, and ride certain lifts.  First one to complete the course and finish at the base of the mountain wins.  In this even locals have the clear advantage, but Nick and I were determined to win.  We drove in on friday and instantly went skiing, we skied the day and finally at the end were able to find the course.  With good knowledge coming into the race we were ready.  It started with a running dash, 94 people charging to get into their skis and onto the course.  We battled through tired legs and ended it with brutal mogul run into the finish third.  So it still goes that local people have the advantage in this event but first place team received a free trip to Aspen for the final Battle in the Bowls at Aspen Highlands. a home town event to this soul gypsy.

Team BlueDream, comprised of Nick Malik and Kevin Frazier, finished in third with a time of one hour and thirty minuets and won a smith helmet.

The next day we decided to test out the helmets at Purgatory, Durango Mountain Resort.  But we instantly got bored and headed off into the side country (yes surprisingly there is side country off purgatory) ,we went to a sweet chute that drains into the highway.  With a few fresh inches of snow we skied the chute and called it a day, Below are pictures from the ski.

catching some air

photos by Nick Malik

The conclusion is that Purgatory sucks. End of story, my soul cannot be satisfied by what the resort has to offer.  My soul will be satisfied when fresh powder is found every day, and there are not gapers around every corner.

-Kevin Frazier

The snow was so deep that you would  lose visibility for long enough you feared hitting a tree. So you just had to do your best to memorize where they were before you went in for your next submersion. By far the deepest powder of my life and a good introduction to Utah powder snow. The Powderwhores got the whole day on film and said it was the deepest powder they had ever filmed, and I think that is saying something. Here is a little teaser from their site of the day:

I spent just over a week in Utah, during which time two avalanche deaths occured. Multiple patrollers were buried and others were buried in the backcountry. When a sketchy thin depth hoar snowpack got crushed by 80 inches of snow in 7 days, shit went down. Still it was a good trip, first time I had been to Utah since first being taken there by the Kennedy’s in about 8th grade. There were tons of great days but I found the weekend lift lines and traffic a bit agitating. I got a taste of a weekend powder day at Snowbird, powder at Alta, an average day at Alta, both big and little Cottonwood low angle touring zones and even a groomer day at Deer Valley.  We got a little touring in everyday and what amounted to tons of good skiing, although we did not get onto anything too steep due to the dangerous conditions.

Avalanche Path, this was triggered by helicopter deployed bombs.

Touring through the debris

Jonah and Jay doing work - these guys are pure awesome

Paige Brady - also pure awesome!

EPIC!

On one of the last days of the trip we headed up to the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon to get some shots in the evening light. We were at first taken back when we got up there and it was all cloudy but a hole opened and we booked it up the short skinner. Then we realized that the clouds had been the low ones seen in the picture above, it made for a great backdrop for the huck session.

Preparing for this installation has been a months long process. Choosing and ordering the materials needed, applying winter grease-burning concepts to my own material vehicle and designing what I believe to be a bomb-proof system. Installing a veg-system has not set process so every step has its own battle: how do I attach this switch, where should I run this line, what is the most efficient way to to heat the fuel.

For those of you who don’t know. Vegetable oil will burn in a diesel engine – but it has to be heated to at least 160degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature in which it is near the viscosity of diesel fuel. So the general practice is to start you car on diesel fuel, wait for it to reach operating temperature and then switch to Veg, when you turn off your car you switch back to diesel to purge the engine. So a veg system involves a way to clean and heat the veggie fuel and a way to switch between diesel and vegetable oil. I went with an entire coolant heated system, some systems use 12volt elements as well. My system consists of (in the general direction fuel flows):

1. One 80 Gallon Tank -this should give me a 1000 mile range

2. Coolant heated fuel pickup “Hotfox”

3. Water seperating “Vormax” filter (coolant heated)

4. Hose in hose fuel lines where I ran an aluminum fuel line through 1 inch coolant hose.

5. 4 switches, three of these I bought and one was stock as the tank switch on my vehicle. See there use in the schematic below.

6. Coolant heated fuel filter

7. Heat Exchanger (coolant heated)

Here is a schematic of the install: Just realized I kinda wrote all the stuff from different sides – oops.

Besides working on the veggie install we have also been building on the inside of the vehicle. Here are some pictures of the system. My friend Jerome has been helping me a lot with this project, he is a very bad ass handyman that has pretty much every skill you can imagine.

Jerome Cutting my Bed-Table set up

The end of a Hose in hose fuel line, the coolant comes out a T

The first switch that chooses between diesel and veg before the lift pump the empty ends will come into play when I splice into the diesel lines

This is a good picture of Hose in Hose set up

Heated fuel filter

Heat Exchanger - I insulated all my coolant and fuel lines for maximum heat retention

Jerome drilling the holes for the final switch, we found a sweet spot right next to the injection pump

More to come, I hope to burning Veggie oil in the next couple days. But today I’m going skiing.

Gypsy’s strive for self-sufficiency.

Fresh Rabbit Fuel Filter

Spoken by a true gypsy, “my toilet broke, but the plumber cost the same price as the plumbers tools, so I bought the tools.” It seems in this day and age everything costs money, and as a gypsy it tends to be more than one wants to spend (which is anything of course). But this is not the only reason a gypsy strives for self-sufficiency. Sometimes the shit hits the fan when no one is around, sorry, you can’t call triple A, and you guessed it you are in the jungles of Colombia being chased after by guerrillas because you stole away on of their sisters – nice one, good work. While it is easier most of the time to call the professionals; gypsy tend to operate the age-old adage, “give a man a fish he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for ever.” Gypsy’s like to eat forever (you know me!). Our current system is a somewhat nasty, dysfunctional  reliance on unsustainable practices. Reliance on others and collaboration are key to a functioning society, but I want to be ready if and when the avalanche starts. We have all changed fuel filters, oil and maintained our car (Norquist changed his suspension) and I’m currently knee deep in grease converting my car to run on Waste Vegetable Oil. But still to eat, I always have to make money, and then go to the store to find food. And god damn, I can barely keep track of my belongings. But all in time young Padawon, all in time…

Well I wouldn’t say Misto Gorge has the best whitewater around, that’s for sure. However it is a very cool gorge, and is almost like a geology field trip with some really cool different rock formations. I woke up saturday morning as most college students do with an extreme hangover. I had a hard time motivating, but from past experience I’ve found it is almost always much better to go than not to go. I rolled out of bed, loaded my kayak stuff up, and drove to meet Kurt Braunlich to do the Misto Gorge for both of our first times.

Hungover much? And no I did not get in a fight, the shiner is from Ernie’s canyon, I had an unfortunate interaction with a rock. Im pretty sure it won. Luckily ladies love a guy with a black eye.

We arrived at the put-in, my subie(Gnarcar) was looking good as usual.

Going to Bible Camp

Kurt entering the 1st of 2 sweet gorges.

There is something about kayaking that makes hangovers go away. It could have to do with the cold water splashing your face, im not really sure, but either way its like magic. We put in, and paddled a few miles of flatwater before entering the 1st gorge. We came upon the rapid above in the 1st gorge, little did we know it was going to be one of the only ones we would end up running. After we exited the first short gorge, we paddled a mile or so of flatwater before entering the next. We came upon the first rapid. After a short scout, the rapid went but had a gnarly hole that fed into a bed seive. It was a no-go. After portaging on a pile of logs, we put in and ran a manky little class 4 rapid just after. Rapid number 2 for the day. We continued downstream, the next rapid, no-go, damn! We portaged again. This continued for a while. There is something about portaging every rapid, it turns more into an extreme walking event with your kayak, certainly fulfilling the adventure aspect of the day.

Log infested portage

After this portage, we ran another class 4 manky rapid (rapid number 3 for the day)before coming to this dam, a sweet clean 12ft damn that was fun for freewheelin. We then took out above Nooksack falls, a nice 60ft ish waterfall that lands pretty hard on rocks.

Kurt Killin the Freewheel

Nooksack Falls!

We ended the day, and decided it would be one of those runs that maybe you do every couple of years, just to say you’ve done it.

Hope for rain, things are dry right now.

Railroad Earth puts it simply in song, “Been down the road a million miles, but i still got a long way to go.”  Fourteen hundred miles from our home mountains and the trip was beginning to wrap up.  With the competition over for both of us there was nothing left to do, except ski the terrain that Revelstoke, BC has to offer.  A few fellow Gypsies drove up from Washington to ski for the weekend.  We hit the resort and went directly into the great side country.  Stop one was door one.  Behind the entrance to door one was fairly sketchy on the day that we skied it.  The flat light proved to be a damper.  Jake dropped in first, causing the upper section to sluff out.  I dropped in second and uncovered a few more rocks.  Fred dropped in next, upon entering he clipped a rock and lost his ski.  Fred flipped his way down the choke leaving his ski at the drop in point and helmet cam lost somewhere in the white.  The rest of the crew was reluctant to attempt the ski after witnessing this spectacle but Stephan sacked up and dropped into the white room on his snowboard (crazy if you ask me). He then ripped the whole chute carrying Fred’s ski. Fred was shaken up, had banged his head but was without seriously uninjured, somehow he made it through the rock field and very tight dog leg unscathed. We decided that line would be a lot better with more snow on a sunny day. We were all stoked, when shit goes down but no ones hurt, you are reminded how dangerous our sports are but so amped when everyone is okay. We decided to attack the Brown Shorts. The most prominent line visible from the ski resort – and the one we had drooled over the whole trip.

The Brown Shorts Coulior

Typically brown shorts should be skied from Mackenzie peak, but Mackenzie was in a cloud so we decided to take the more physically challenging but safer route of booting up the couliour.  The hike up was in no way easy at all.  Step after step we would be sinking in to the waist, but we were still psyched. Shouting “Brown shorts, brown shorts!” whenever the going go tough. It was more than once when we doubted our ability to actually make it, the snow would get too deep but every time we found a way around it.  We were socked in at the top of the chute, but could see our line through the cloud so we geared up, and prepared for the ski or snowboard (wierdo). This was the biggest line of the season so far and it felt great to be back ripping a steep exposed line. The snow was great and we all had a blast but agreed that the next time we get Brown Shorts we will be taking the Mackenzie Peak route.

Six of us Booting up Brown Shorts

Stefan Navarette showing us how steep the hike was

Cruising! - not!

Louie Dawson joined us for the weekend - this guys is a Gypsy

Jake has Brown Shorts

After this we got a couple of runs on the adjacent South facing bowl for some out of bounds but mostly lift accessible pow turns. All in all a splendid day. We headed back to the Ski Club, and prepared ourselves for a big day touring on Rogers Pass.

Norquist Outside the Rogers Pass Discovery Center - Nice face Fred!

Rogers Pass is a ridiculously incredible place. Huge mountains rise up straight from the road,offering easy access to endless ski touring. The Rogers Pass Discovery Centre where Fred is pictured in the photo above is also awesome. Rogers Pass runs a permit system for visitors as a safety precaution. There are tons of avalanche chutes that run straight to the road, so when avalanche danger is high these areas are controlled with Howitzers, the permit system makes sure people don’t go into these areas when work is being done. Also in the Discovery Centre they have everything you would want to know about current avalanche danger or the area in general. We headed up the Grizzly Shoulder, the skin tracks starts right from the parking lot.

Starting the Trek

Heading up the Grizzly Shoulder - sick lines in the background

Kevin and Fred Heading Up - I'm drooling as I right this

Although they sky had been nicely “popped” all morning for us, as soon as we hit the ridge we got some major nega-poppage as the clouds rolled in and our original plan of skiing Little Sylvan or something (can’t remember the name right now) fell off the agenda. But we had already skinned about 4000ft so we had a good ski below us. The light was super flat for the first bit of the ski but when we hit the trees it was all good and we were amazed by the pillow lines.

Kevin

Jake

We got no pictures that do the pillow lines justice, I struggle taking ski photos – I tend to be more concerned about just skiing but hopefully will get some more next time. After 3000ft of powder and pillows we hit the road and walked a short distance back to the car. This is when I realized the car key was gone. Yes – I’ll admit complete novice, noob, gomer move. Not only should I have left the key at the car but I drove to Canada without a spare. This put us in quite a pickle as we were 1400miles from home and well – stranded. We worked out the situation to the best of our ability as we realized much worse things can happen. Our trip got extended three days and it was snowing.

Hitchiking down to Revelstoke

Waiting for a Ride

Jake Running out Yellow Pants (just down the ridge from Brown shorts)

Revelstoke Air time - took a digger going a little too big on this one later that day

Cheaaa Dog!

How much it snowed while we waited for the Key

The key finally arrived but it was hard to leave the snow and mountains that had treated us so well. But we manned up, hitchhiked back to our car and drove home – without stopping for 23 hrs. What a day. We skied 12 days in total and it was an utter ball. What a trip. If you happen to be going to Canada I definitely recommend this area. Some hilarious stuff went down with Montana police officers on the drive home but I’ll let Kevin tell you about that in private.

-Jake and Kevin

Well lately up here in Bellingham, there has been not very much snow, but lots of rain. This is good and bad because well, we want snow for spring runoff, but we love rain for the good mid-winter runs on the different sections of the Nooksack. My personal favorite is the Middle Fork, if you link the upper and the lower, it could be some of the most quality kayaking i’ve done, combining two awesome styles of whitewater. The upper consists of class 5 boulder garden style rapids with tons of sweet boofs and some big holes to punch. The lower, or the “Canyon” consists of a sweet gorge with some great bedrock pool-drop style rapids with even more sweet boofs and beautiful scenery. I couldn’t be happier when the MF is running, I skip all the classes I can afford to, and MF becomes the focus. Here is a video that shows all the major rapids on the MF over two sweet days of boating. Check it out.
Fred Gnarquist ripping it up mid-winter at high flows.

After a grueling few days bust’n ass,  finals week was reaching its end and our journey South was finally within our hands. We had originally planned to install a veggie system but due to circumstances we had to settle making the journey without. The truck we traveled in, a low-profile 1981 volkswagen rabbit truck, over packed with camping gear, books, food and other odd ends would be our gypsy rig voyager craft for the next 4 weeks of Winter break.

We had a few believers but a majority of our friends had told us we were either crazy or stupid to drive to Mexico with the current unrest between the drug lords and the government.  But being young over confident males we shrugged off their doubts and drove on east towards Phoenix with little thoughts to their concerns.  We had plans to stay with Osito’s friend at her University but he had some how mixed up Flagstaff with Phoenix. Minor details…  So we did what gypsies do best. We posted up on the side of the highway, tucked away in the bush (literally parked under a big bush) at the base of some mountain.  But however frigidly cold it was,  it was an appropriate way to start off the multi-thousand mile journey to the Yucatan Peninsula. Our university’s pampering had softened me and Damn it was refreshing to feel the elements again. Besides, on a low budget, sleeping in the open bed of the truck was something we needed to get accustomed to.

The Butt Crack of the morning came quick. Our goal for the day was to make it some 500 miles south to Guaymas, Sonora and driving at a modest speed of 55 mph was going to take a wee while.  We arrived to the modern desert oasis of Phoenix on a pleasant Saturday morning… Ghost Town. To my surprise there were vitually no peps stroll’n around.  I was convinced some Dawn of the Dead”or 28 Days Later shit was secretly unfolding. …Spooooky. After some difficulty finding a grocery store, we finally stumbled upon a farmers market, got some dank burrito’s, veggie grub and hit the road for the next journey leg.

The blazing desert sun and lack of air con in the rig hit us  hard and I was getting tired having driven since sunrise. It was time for Osito, conveniently with no licsence and mediocre  stick driving skills, (originally my theory was that he mis-scheduled his driving test on purpose to avoid his driving duties) to drive a little as to train for co-pilot.  Despite a few sketchy incidents he was gett’n the job done and I finally felt I could relax without noticeable  fear for my life.

Everything seemed to be going smooth….hahaha. We had just stocked up in Casa Grande and were on our way down to Nogales and beyond to reach the ocean where we could chill.  But it was not long after leaving Casa that the stick popped out of fourth gear again…..a fairly normal happening. Somtimes she would get pissy and pop out of gear when being pushed at speeds of 60 mph and up. I quickly jammed it back into gear as is standard procedure to only hear grinding gears. I jammed it one more time…but no avail and no 4th gear. Sweet…fuckin sweet.  If we drove at 35 mph it would have taken two fuck’n days to reach Guaymas. Slowly our vision of rejuvenating on the beach shriveled away into tension.  A few visits to some local mechanics revealed that 4th was shot and that our other 3 were bound to go soon. We had not even been out for 24hrs and the Gods were already make’n shit hit fan. It was time to make decisions and pull some shit…. and we had a few ugly  prospects: Getting the transmission fixed in the states,  possibly going bankrupt and not being able to continue the trip or risking driving some 350 miles across the heavily drug trafficked Sonoran desert…..

Growing up amidst the beautiful wilderness of Colorado and being inspired by works like Lord of the Rings it was natural that I became gripped by the QUEST. As a youngster I spent much time in the mountains exploring the rugged terrain that had once been the great Ute Indian’s.  In high school I was fortunate enough to have the circumstances and mentality to travel to South America and Asia to study for two of my four years. But exploring the world was not as epic and idealistic as I had hyped it up to be. Not to say that my experiences were not epic but I had very humanly hoped that the pain that came with such journeys could be some how transcended. Yes, I was very conscious that the trips would be intense and uncomfortable but I, like most humans tried and tried to run from the pain and hardship I encountered.  It has taken me these experiences of great pain(great pain in a very very relative sense) a lot of fortune and luck to realize that it was  my very running and inability to embrace that brought more suffering. In some respect, part of the reason for my desire to live and study in these different cultures was a manifestation of how I suppressed my pain. Although I certainly I had good-hearted intentions on one hand, on the other hand I was “questing” to prove myself as a bad-ass to the world. So in part, these quests were like burying nuclear waste. Sooner or later the toxicity leaches out into the earth (maybe not the best analogy but I hope you get what I mean). To say the least, I was addicted (and still am to a lesser degree) to great paradox of the Painless Quest and only found myself in perpetual suffering. Reality Check! Questing is a painful, arduous and often life threatening endeavor.  Just look at the great archetypal bad-asses like Lao-tzu, Jesus, Siddhartha, Gandhi to name a few.  To them, pain was just another hommie there to help them along the way. Embrace that shit for it is this type of pain that  keeps our heart beating until the last breathe……QUEST ON GYPSIES, QUEST ON AND NEVER STOP

peace,

mizairubian

The closer the dates for the MSI Revelstoke Competition the more I questioned the feasibilty of making this trip happen. We had no contacts in Revelstoke, the parts I needed for the van had not arrived yet, and both Kevin and my cars  were definitely not sleepable, not to mention neither had the ability to go over 65mph and we certainly doubted their ability to make the 1400mile drive. Of course going skiing was much more of a priority than figuring out how to go on this trip so we procrastinated until the last possible minute, this being the day before we had to leave. My dad offered us his car for the journey and I found out that an old highschool friend had moved to Revelstoke for the winter. He had no phone so I Facebook messaged him as we loaded up the car. We were keen to avoid on the road food costs, so borrowing and idea from my CRMS telemark coach Kayo Ogilby we began rapping burritos, (oops I meant wrapping but there was plenty of rapping to go along with that).

Balls deep in Burrito Construction

Lots and lots of taters

Holy Huevos!

Breakfast Burritos

The Whole Lot

Breakfast Burritos: Eggs, Potatos, Cheese

Dinner Burritos: Beans, Rice, Potatos, Cheese (and meat in Kevin’s).

32  burritos in all, my little sisters miniature dachshund in there for scale. Her name is Lil’shit, in reference to her bowel movement size and her demeanor. I tried to convince my sister to let us put her in the burritos but she is still convinced she has the potential to be the next big rapper on the pop scene (c’mon with a name like Lil’shit thats totally feasible). The cost came out to one dollar per Burrito and we possibly created the NGS (new gypsy standard) for road trips. We froze the burritos and just microwaved them in gas stations along the way. Anyone with other ideas on how to eat cheap and good on the road (without access to cooking paraphanalia)?

Road Trip Necessity (life necessity actually)

It was utterly puking snow when we rolled out of Carbondale making the beginning of the journey bitter sweet. C’mon what kinda crackpot drives away from a snow storm, seriously has to be some wires confused for that kinda actions (snow totals amounted to nothing, not sour-grapes I swear!). We caravaned with Fred until just past Salt Lake City and he split off to head back to college in Washington. Initially we planned to take a break and sleep for the night but we just kept on driving, and driving, and driving. We were basically just way too jacked up on Maté, Adrenalin and Stoke (dangerous new drug) to want to pull over. We ended up hitting the border at 3:30am jamming out to Frank Zappa. As we climbed over the top of Rogers Pass, home of epic skiing, mountains and pillow lines, we ran out of washer fluid and oh shit we are just about out of gas too. The journey down the pass amounted to Kevin coasting the car in neutral as much as possible as I dumped our remaining water supply on the windshield, which completely caked with mud every few minutes. On the final hill into town we fishtailed out of control and almost ended up in a snowbank. Happily all in one piece we hit the slopes for a half day.

We skied powder 12 for 13 days and took only one day off. Stay tuned for skiing stories!