lil' Dirt, lil' Snow.

Saturday was our local fat tire organization's monthly group ride. FTA (Forest Trails Alliance - the 'bike cult' I recently joined) saw this as a great opportunity to show support for BONC so that they would hopefully support FTA trail building endeavors. So, we did, but not really. We met up with everyone at the trail head, then went off and did our own ride....not sure how that qualifies as support, but whatever.

One of our many stops along the ride.

The 1st major malfunction.

The 2nd major malfunction....more of a cluster-f#ck.

After the ride, a few of us headed over to Zachi's place to do some work on FTA's webpage design (hopefully soon coming). The meeting was real productive, after Zachi gave us the initial tour of the place, which was incredible mind you. Zachi is a skilled, out-side-the-box contractor constantly coming up with crazy ideas. Check out his offical site.

He equipped his handcrafted house with a tower which we conducted the meeting at the top of.

The vine running up the tower is a ferro-cement sculpture that covers an irrigation system that is used to keep the house skin cool in the summer.

Zachi's personally designed and built house features a "secrete door" as the main entrance.

Of the many landscaping elements encompassing his yard, this handbuilt trials course was my favorite.

Sunday, in efforts to combat boredom, I headed up to Sugar Bowl for the day to work on turns. The Sierra Nevada got dumped on in the earlier part of the week but by Sunday it had mostly turned to classic Sierra Shit (except some aspects of the mountain where the skiing was actually much better than expected). I mostly just wanted to work on technique and all that bull shit for the day, but that got old REAL quick, so I ditched the resort skis and explored the backcountry (side/upper/near-country?) off the Judah lift. The skin up and around Judah were excellent. I got to try out some new equipment so that made the trip all the better.

Looking at the summit of Judah, only moments away. The cornice is 'looking' at Donner Lake to the east.

Castle Peak to the North from Judah summit.

My fat head blocking out Donner Lake to the east.

So the snow wasn't that good in the side country either, but at least I got to try out my new shtuff, and I caught some views.