TOP LEAP YEAR GROOMING RE’POR FEB 29 / 2012
7″ of new snow at Top of the Pines.
San Juan Mountains Weather Forecast–Tuesday February 28, 2012–14:00
As this system moves east the back side of the trough winds will gradually shift from SW to WNW with tightening pressure gradients in the surface low. This storm is still affecting the north San Juans, but will be moving out soon with residual snow falling in the mountains tonight, then a short lived ridge of high pressure will build late this evening & Wednesday.
A NW trough with deep Pacific moisture will surge into the area Wednesday night and Thursday with another cold front dropping southeast through the area. By Thursday morning the flow/winds will shift to NW from SW as the front passes accompanied by strong winds and orographics pushing ahead of the system as the cold front barrels south into the SJ’s late in the day .
The four models I look at are not in agreement with timing, but three of the four show a good combination of moisture, orographics and storm dynamics ushering in what looks to be another decent storm. The northern San Juan’s should be favored with 6-12″ of snow.
By Friday the storm will begin to wind down as the atmosphere begins to dry out with below normal temperatures on Friday then gradual warming through the weekend.
Billy Roos Photo Retrospective
Just out of the womb.
1st ski trip to the mountains.
Billy (on left) with local homeboys.
The domestique after a hard day.
Commiserating with The Orange Welfare
RMP Update….09:44
J.Roberts archival photo working the “Ledges” above Chattanooga.
Good Morning,
Our current storm continues to funnel ample moisture and relentless fierce winds into the San Juan. Snowfall rates of 1″-3″/hour continue.
Another round of snow totals:
____________snow/h20___________________________________
Red Mtn. Pass 14” (settled)/1.45”
Molas Pass 16”/1/45”
Coal Bank Pass 20”/1.8”
Lizard Head 14″/1.3″
Red Mountain Pass continues to be closed to all traffic, thus we cannot make it to our snow study sites there. Visibility problems persist, hampering mitigation efforts on both Coal Bank and Lizard Head passes. Molas/Coal Bank are closed. Lizard Head will have spot closures for mitigation, when visibility/conditions allow.
The Story Of Fats Domino’s ‘Ain’t That A Shame’
Legendary American jazz pianist and singer Fats Domino.
Sunday marked Fats Domino‘s 84th birthday. Hear the story — which aired on All Things Considered on May 1, 2000 — behind his breakthrough hit, “Ain’t That A Shame.” Since this story aired, Fats’ home in New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. He and his family now live in Harvey, La.
Antoine Domino is the Louisiana French name for the man whose honey voice, Creole inflection, rock-steady piano triplets and basic boogie blues and love songs endeared him to the world in the 1950s, as New Orleans rhythm and blues flowed into and helped define the mainstream of American rock ‘n’ roll.
Born in 1928, Fats Domino was the youngest of eight children in a French Creole family. He grew up only a few blocks from where he lives now, downriver from the French Quarter in the Ninth Ward. Today it’s a mixed residential and industrial neighborhood, but in Fats’ youth, it was pretty much country with unpaved roads, no electricity and small farms. While Fats’ father, Antoine Sr., played the fiddle, it was brother-in-law Harrison Verette, a jazz banjo player, who taught young Fats piano.
The quasi-biographical song, “The Fat Man,” was made for Imperial Records in 1949. Like many of Domino’s songs, it was co-written by the man who Fats came to count on as a producer and arranger, Dave Bartholomew. Bartholomew, now almost 80 years old, still lives and plays trumpet in New Orleans. He’d be the first to tell you that Fats is and always was extremely shy.
Red Mountain Pass Closed
The most recent storm arrived around sunset bringing the advertized heavy snow and strong southerly winds. Winds continue to increase with last hour averages 30-40 mph, gusts 60-70.
Some snow totals of 1230 AM
Snow/h20
Monument 5″/.35
RMP 8″/.65
Coal Bank 12″/?
Snowfall rates vary from S5+ on Coal Bank to S2 in the Gorge. Lots of upstream moisture headed our way….
We are closing Red Mt Pass now.
A.M.
A Tribute to Jill Kinmont-Boothe–Thank you Dick Dorworth
Jill Kinmont-Boothe, a dear friend of ours for many, many years, passed away last week so we thought it would be fitting to post some pictures of Jill’s life.
Jill’s story has been told countless times in print and film, so this is not a place for that, but here are several photos that we’ve collected over the years. They span about 60 years of her life and show Jill before her skiing accident in 1955, her time in the Salt Lake City Hospital, her recovery, her time as a teacher, and some from the last few years.There are also a few signed tributes given to Jill influential skiers that knew her.
San Juan Mountains Weather Forecast–Monday, February 27, 2012–10:00
NWS radar at 17:15 showing the storm coming onshore. Looks juicy. Click on map for better resolution.
A building high level trough has moved down the west coast from British Columbia picking up some good moisture on it’s movement south. Last night the flow shifted to SW as the trough moved onshore in California and began pushing into the southern San Juans. Warm temps today and increased cloudiness with the approaching storm.
Models are coming into agreement with a significant winter storm for western Colorado tonight through Tuesday. There is still model differences on how far south the trough will dig, but the favored picture has the trough axis lifting into SW Colorado from Arizona. The moisture tap is limited, but dynamics should create favorable conditions as the storm lifts over the southern mountains that could bring 12-24″ of snow (above 11,000′) on favored SSW facing slopes in the first part of the storm. A deepening surface low accompanied by a cold front will enhance this snow maker. We could see high precip rates 2-4″ hr. early in the storm tonight. The second portion of the system is driven by orographic lift as it begins to cross the continental divide providing the central/northern mountains and some of the lower central valley’s with snow accumulations.
Storm snow will diminish Tuesday evening west to east as the entire system moves downsteam. We’ll see a brief lull on Wednesday then another progressive Pacific trough moves into western Colorado Thursday with a steady stream of Pacific moisture on SW flow. All of this looks good for a few inches of H20 added to our very weak and fragile snowpack surely increasing avalanche activity.
The Country Just Over the Fence By PAUL THEROUX
A SIMPLE painted sign on a wooden board — “To Mexico” — was propped near the door in the fence, but it was the fence itself that fascinated me. Some masterpieces are unintentional, the result of a freakish accident or an explosive act of sheer weirdness, and the fence that divides Nogales, Ariz., from Nogales, Mexico, is one of them.
In a lifetime of crossing borders I find this pitiless fence the oddest frontier I have ever seen — more formal than the Berlin Wall, more brutal than the Great Wall of China, yet in its way just as much an example of the same folie de grandeur. Built just six months ago, this towering, seemingly endless row of vertical steel beams is so amazing in its conceit you either want to see more of it, or else run in the opposite direction — just the sort of conflicting emotions many people feel when confronted with a peculiar piece of art.
You can, of course, also go through it, which is what I wanted to do. And there was the entryway, just past J. C. Penney and Kory’s clothing shop — a door in the wall at the end of hot, sunlit Morley Avenue.
After leaving my car at a secure parking lot ($4 a day), I showed my passport to the United States border guard, who asked about my plans. Business?
“Just curiosity,” I said. When he made a disapproving squint, I added, “Don’t you go over now and then?”
“Never been there,” he said.
“It’s 10 feet away!”
“I’m staying here,” he said, his squint now suggesting that I should be doing the same.
I pushed the turnstile and stepped through the narrow door — no line, no other formalities — into the state of Sonora, Mexico, where I was instantly, unmistakably in a foreign land. The roads were bumpier, the buildings vaguely distressed; I was breathing in the mingled aromas of bakeries, taco stands and risen dust.
Glancing back a moment later, I could not see Arizona anymore, only the foreground of Mexico — small children kicking a ball, men in sombreros conferring under a striped awning, steaming food carts.
Infamous Lie….aahhhhh…. Stretch
Rose Mary Woods demonstrates the infamous stretch that may have resulted in the erasure of the Watergate tapes.
Middle Teton Summit Register 1966
My old saddle pal Billy Roos signed in on line – 14- July, 1966 just after high school graduation…oh my…. Peter Lev’s signature is on line – 4 – July, 1966
Billy… do you have a higher resolution copy of the summit register? The one you sent me is a little fuzzy, probably like you were at the summit when you should have been swilling beer in the parking lot…….Jerry
I probably told you the story about the poor boy scout who wandered over one evening and was found the next morning passed out in a mud puddle covered in vomit by his scoutmaster and a couple of rangers. Those sort of antics were likely responsible for a decision to close the campground the next summer. Billy
View From McLouth—A View On Voter Registration by Charles Roos
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2012
They’ve set in motion a House bill that promises an expensive and wrong-headed solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. They’ve dug up an old bogeyman, “vote fraud.”
One of the bill’s primary backers is Secretary of State Scott Gessler. Gessler is, by law, Colorado’s chief elections officer and someone who ought to be encouraging more people to vote rather than fewer.
Now if this identity-card system were to become law, of course, a voter could simply show election judges a driver’s license or other government-issued photo card. But the sad fact is that a significant number of eligible voters, notably the young, old and members of minority groups, do not have such a thing.
Yes, they could spend time and money to get one. They shouldn’t have to.
The driving force behind this “identity” campaign is pure, hidebound Republicanism. And it is not really aimed at voter fraud. That’s a lie; there’s no such significant fraud nowadays..
This campaign, in fact, is aimed deliberately by white-bread conservatives at discouraging the vote of as many as possible of old, young and minority-group people who historically go Democratic.
That’s as plain as the noses on their white faces.
Charles Roos was a reporter, political editor, and columnist for the Rocky, Post, and Scripps Howard for 40+ years. He’s 90 years old and living at home. He’s always been a favorite columnist of mine over the years with a unclouded world view.
JR
TOP Grooming Re’por Saturday
February 25, 2012
Welcome Skating Skirts!
…….an early morning groom for the ladies,,,,
Enjoy…..
Thanks for the chocolate espresso beans!
Chris H
Shannon Powell: New Orleans Rhythm, Straight From The Source
Shannon Powell performs with the Palm Court Jazz Band at the 2010 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
It is said of Shannon Powell that he’s part of New Orleans’ musical DNA — that he knows things only local drummers know.
Powell, 49, is the A-list drummer in town. He’s played with Dr. John, Harry Connick Jr., Nicholas Payton, R&B guitarist Earl King and Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
He got his start as a teenager with the legendary banjo player and guitarist, Danny Barker. Powell has also toured with jazz vocalist Diana Krall and jazz musicians John Scofield and Marcus Roberts. Currently, he fronts a contemporary jazz band called Powell’s Place, with Jason Marsalis, of the Marsalis dynasty, on vibes.
Sitting at the drums in his shotgun house in the Treme neighborhood, Powell demonstrates the basic New Orleans beat: “New Orleans drummers accent on the four. One-two-three-four.” He’s playing what he’s saying: “one-two-three-four.”
He switches to a seductive samba beat. “African rhythms, Brazilian rhythm, calypso,” he says. “It’s all related.”
Perhaps that’s the genius of Shannon Powell: It’s all related.
“Skating Skirts” Ladies Skate Ski Clinic this Saturday, Feb. 25 at 10 am.
The clinic is in Ridgway with Deb Willits as lead instructor. Deb is a former PSIA Nordic Ski Team member (the only woman ever.) There will be instruction at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels.$20 donation goes to the George Gardner Experiential Education Scholarship Fund.BootDoctors/Paragon has a van to take ladies from Telluride to Ridgway on Saturday am. We meet at Paragon at 8:45 am – if anyone need demos we will have them for free. If you know of anyone interested please have her call Paragon at728-4525 to reserve the van ride and/or demos.Where: Top of the Pines (just outside of Ridgway, CO)Directions to trail: Take the first right as you come into the town of RIdgway onto Amelia Street. Travel south 2/10 mile on Amelia to County Rd. 5. Turn right on County Rd. 5 and travel 4.4 miles to Highland Drive. Turn Right on Highland Drive and travel 3/10 mile to entrance gate. The parking lot is on the right.
U.S. Basin Avalanche Video Starring…. taken last Friday, February 17, 2012
Peter Lev photo
Check this out. Kodak courage. J.R.
Avalanches on the Rise for Thrill-Seeking Skiers–NYT
J. Roberts photo, Cement Fill
The deaths of four people in two avalanches Sunday in the Cascade Mountains northeast of Seattle are the latest examples of what can happen when backcountry skiing, powered by the predictable human urge for thrill, meets the more capricious nature of high-country snow. Though textbook conditions for avalanches have had forecasters throughout the Mountain West ramping up warnings for backcountry travelers, close calls and fatal accidents continue to mount.
Graphic-
So far, 17 skiers, snowboarders and snowmobilers have been killed with more than two months remaining in the roughly six-month season, which has had conditions more conducive to avalanches than most in memory. Although that number projects a little higher than the national average of 28.8 deaths a year over the last decade, increasingly those who put themselves in harm’s way seem not to be careless novices but rather experts pushing the limits of safety.
Among the victims in Washington was Jim Jack, the longtime head judge of the Freeskiing World Tour, who was killed with two other experienced backcountry skiers near Stevens Pass. Their party of 13 included professional skiers and ski journalists.
“It’s mostly the hard-core riders, people who know better,” Bruce Tremper, the director of the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center, said recently of the trend of experts testing their skills against the backcountry, no matter the conditions. “In the past, we felt once you’re in the hard-core category, you’re more low-risk for us. But now with the films and the videos, everybody is pushing it to the extreme.”
Indeed, skill, experience and daring are often not enough. In recent days, two backcountry riders died in avalanches in southern Colorado — a well-equipped solo snowboarder was killed in the lower Bear Creek near the Telluride resort on Feb. 13, and an off-duty ski patroller from the Keystone resort died when all three skiers in his party were caught in a slide near Wolf Creek Pass on Thursday.
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JERRY ROBERTS 2 pesos worth
It’s interesting to me and other long time snowviewers that once the media takes a bite of a subject for it’s short term news cycle and spits it out (Avalanches On The Rise headline for example), the story becomes bigger/more sensational than it is… Avalanches aren’t necessarly on the rise, accidents are on the rise.
True enough, this years snowpack is very fragile, more so than the average year, but it’s not that unusual. This continental snowpack in the Rocky Mountain west is generally (conditionally) unstable most every year. When one observes a snowpack in one place for several decades or more, one year may stand out, but there are often other seasons nearly as impressive or unstable.
Today there is more media coverage and more backcountry users taking more (BOLDER) risks with the outcome such as it is, more accidents and deaths. We call it …POWDER SHOCK….
Thursday “quote”
“I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me-shapes and ideas so near to me – so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew to strip away what I had been taught.” Georgia O’Keffe
Horse’s Skull with White Rose, 1931
Sky Above Clouds III/Above the Clouds III, 1963
Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico/Out Back of Marie’s II, 1930
Publishing Pioneer Barney Rosset Dies At 89
Barney Rosset paid $3,000 for Grove Press in 1951. Then he used the company to help tear down American obscenity laws of the 1950s and ’60s.
February 22, 2012
A literary legend has died — not an author, but the publisher behind some of the greatest and most controversial writers of the 20th century.
Barney Rosset gave American readers their first taste of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, as well as uncensored classics by Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence. To do that, Rosset fought literally hundreds of court cases and was largely responsible for breaking down U.S. obscenity laws in the 1950s and ’60s.
Rosset was the son of a wealthy Chicago banker. During World War II, he served as a photographer, and afterward tried his hand at filmmaking. Then, in 1951, he bought a nearly defunct publishing company called Grove Press.
“Grove Press was three titles and maybe a hundred copies of each, enough to fit in a suitcase,”Rosset told NPR in 2009. “No financial records, no nothing.”
Rosset published Waiting for Godot in 1954 because, as he told WHYY’s Fresh Air in 1991, no other American publisher was interested in Beckett.
“When I started publishing, I most definitely would have liked to have published Hemingway and Faulkner and Fitzgerald,” he said, “but they were already published.”
In 1957, Rosset launched The Evergreen Review, which became one of the most important magazines of 1960s counterculture. Two years later, he found himself waging a legal battle over the frank sexuality of D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Rosset took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, where he won a First Amendment victory. But that was just part of a calculated strategy to publish another banned book: Henry Miller’s 1934 autobiographical novel,Tropic of Cancer.
On Tibetan Plateau, A Sense Of Constant Surveillance
Ethnic Tibetan pilgrims walk on a road during Tibetan New Year in Langmusixiang, Sichuan province, in western China, Feb. 22. Celebrations are subdued in the Tibetan areas of China this year, after a string of self-immolations and protest against Chinese control.
Wednesday marks the traditional Tibetan New Year, but many Tibetans won’t be celebrating. They’ll be mourning the almost two-dozen people who set themselves on fire in the past year as a protest against Chinese rule. Eyewitnesses say the town of Aba, site of many of the self-immolations, resembles a Chinese military camp, with soldiers and riot police every few feet. NPR’s Louisa Lim traveled elsewhere on the Tibetan plateau to cover the story and sent this dispatch.
It was going to the bathroom that almost got us busted — or , to be precise, my going to the men’s bathroom. We were at a gas station on the highway. The women’s was out of service, so the attendant told me to go to the men’s.
While I was there, a local official pulled up in his black car. He got out – with a slam of the door – yelling in that unmistakable “I’m-an-official-get-a-move-on” tone of voice. Then he headed straight for the men’s bathroom where I was.
This was not good.
So I pulled down my woolen hat, put on dark glasses, wound my scarf around my face and scuttled out, doing my best to look like an ordinary Chinese tourist. He was so busy shouting at the guy cleaning the bathroom that he didn’t bother to look at me.
Visiting Tibetan areas nowadays is a risky venture. There is nothing in the Chinese regulations explicitly forbidding journalists, but the unspoken dangers deter many. One colleague told me it wasn’t worth bothering; the monasteries are full of spies, he said, you won’t get anything anyway.
Many have tried, nonetheless, hiding in the back of vans, under piles of clothes, in questionable disguises. If you do get caught, you might get detained and questioned, but eventually you’ll get sent home. At worst, you might get beaten up. The dangers are far worse for those who help us and talk to us.
San Juan Mountains Weather Forecast. Wednesday February 22, 2012–09:45
There is increasing moisture level in the NW flow today that will favor the northern Colorado mountains. A short wave is embedded in the flow and should bring a surge of moisture tonight/tomorrow morning with increased mountain snow. The north San Juans may see a few inches of snow especially above 11,000′ , but this does not look to be a big snow producer for our mountians.
A cold front will move through the area Thrursday morning increasing the potential of snow and NW surface winds causing a burst of heavy snow with frontal passage that could affect RMP/Uncompahgre Gorge for a few hours. The snow should end by mid-day with drier air moving in behind the surface front.
Friday will be a transition day with a ridge of high pressure building then a Pacific short wave arrives Saturday evening. Not a lot of prefrontal moisture so little dynamics, but orographic lift combined with cold temperatures could produce good snow for the northern & central mountains and less for the NW San Juans through Sunday. Far into the future, Monday/Tuesday, there may be another trough of low pressure, but one model shows split energy with little impact on the forecast area. Future model runs will settle the guessing.
Jerry Roberts
