Between Christmas, Thanksgiving, illness, house projects, lack of snow, and a laundry list of other dumb excuses, we hadn’t managed to get on snow until MLK weekend. We fired up Xterrible at 5:36 in the AM and made good time on the highway until we got to Golden on I-70 at which time traffic ground to a crawl. Fast forward three excruciating hours to 8:30 AM, and we found ourselves standing in a humongous line in the A-Basin base lodge hoping to fill up on Huevos Rancheros and bad coffee. Regarding first chair: all hope was long since abandoned.
It was a weak storm anyway, grapes were sour, etc… But before we had unloaded at the top of the BMX we had hatched a plot: drive up the night ahead of the storm, follow the snowiest road as far as it would go, unroll the sleeping bags in the back of Xterrible and crash in place. While all the front-range powder-chasers toil on I-70, we’d be waking up at our leisure, a short drive from the goods.
In short: mission accomplished!
Some notes on maximizing your chance of success:
- Line the bed with a heavy wool blanket. Mobile homes are notoriously difficult to heat because there is cold air beneath the floor. Xterrible is no different in this regard.
- On top of the blanket: two-man 20-degree synthetic bag for extra cushiness and insulation from the cold.
- Inside the 2-man bag: the Therm-A-Rests. Ideally, use two of the insulated blow-up versions. Neither the closed-cell foam nor the uninsulated versions will be as warm.
- On top of it all, 10 or 20-degree down bag, or similar.
- Crack a window to let all your breath out, otherwise, the inside of the car will turn into a little ice cave and then it will rain on you as you drive away and the car warms up.
The temps were from mid-twenties down to maybe 15 and we were too warm and had to unzip everything in the middle of the night. We could have been comfortable in much colder weather. We’ll be doing this again!
