Gear Check! Team Rhino members Dan and Paul arrive in southern Colorado and begin the always fun task of packing up all of the gear... Gear was toted into the forest in huge backpacks and a sledge pulled by Paul...
Ahhhhhh... Home Sweet Home! Using avalanche probe poles to gauge snow depth, we selected a huge snowbank to construct our snow cave. Dan & Jeff begin the dig !
Done! Jeff and Paul emerge from our new home 3 hours later! Tea is brewing in the outdoor kitchen. We also added a indoor kitchen for cooking at night when the wind and snow were too severe.
Inside Casa Grande' Here's Dan in the spacious interior.... He looks so warm and happy, or is that scared? Anyway, we had a vestibule, kitchen and sleeping area. It actually got so warm the ceiling started to drip on us in our sleep. After some roof smoothing and less cooking inside, we cured that ;-)
Jeff in the vestibule with our little kitchen in the background. We even had wall decorations !
Dinner was prepared in the outside kitchen this night with the aid of our new snow-block wind deflector! We now had a 7 foot entrance and windblock setup...
Tele-Ski Action! Jeff and Dan exit snow camp to Telemark through the forests and down some great runs on the back side of our little mountain.
Tea Time! Nice glasses Dan ;-) Jeff is very amused........
The gearing up platform, carved into the side of the ridge. A few fellow back-country skiers even stopped by to check out our accommodations ! They were impressed ;-)
Author's self portrait ;-)
As usual in the southwest , we were treated to fantastic sunsets every night and and beautiful mountain views every day. Nights were around zero degrees, thank goodness for that snow cave, and a little bit of vodka !