Crustski the Clown

Hey all! Hope you are well. Last weekend I got the opportunity to try something I had never done before. The Treckers were nice enough to take me Crust Skiing. For those of you who don't know what this is: In spring in the mountains a hard crust forms on the top of the snow remaining from the winter. Early in the morning this is strong enough to hold you weight, and crust skiing is simply taking your skate style cross country skis out in the morning and skiing on it. The beauty of this is that you can ski all over place, basically where ever there is snow. So, there is no issue of sticking to any trail and you can cruise out in any meadow and just wander around and glide. We skied in Maroon Creek. Check it out:

Trecker cruising on the crust at the creek's edge:

Tele-Gliding the crust back down:

Once we got up a little higher, we skied out into the meadows on either side of the road. You don't have to follow a trail of anything. You just pick where you want to go and head over there. Nat with Pyramid Peak in the background:

Mike cruising the meadows, with quintesential Colorado in the background:

Yours truly with Pyramid:

Up past the end of the road we skied across the lake and had a snack. The view back down the valley. You can see our skate tracks leading up at the bottom of this one:


The view up:

There was a long discussion as to what we were actually looking at from our picnic spot. We later determined that we were looking at the lower reaches of Pyramid.

The key to skiing the crust is to get out of there before it softens up in the spring sun. So, we headed down, but not before the Treckers skied around the lake, and I took a few shots of them on the far shore:

Great day. Super fun. Thanks again to Treckers. Until next time: Be safe out there kids.