The ski track ended at tree line, the top of a three thousand vertical foot backcountry ski run called Mavericks at ten thousand feet elevation on the east flank of Buck Mountain, in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. I started breaking my own trail, but quickly gave up. Strong winds were transporting thirty inches of […]
Photo: Steve skiing untracked powder on Mavericks, a 3000 foot vertical backcountry ski run in Grand Teton National Park, January 30, 2021. Credit: Jack Henley Why is it so hard to lose weight? This is the subject of my previous What I learned newsletter article, https://crooked-thumb.com/2021/01/19/body-set-weight-why-its-so-hard-to-lose-weight/. As I wrote in that article, the brain sets […]
Photo: Steve ice climbing at Sandstone, MN, January 2021 I had the privilege last week of ice climbing with my twenty three year-old son Charlie. It felt good. I am sixty six years old, but good nutrition, exercise, and a goal of younger every year is working. I can still do well all the activities […]
Photo: Steve Markusen on Triple Direct, Teton Pass, WY, 2019. Photo Credit: Max Markusen I peel the climbing skins off my skis, reset the bindings to downhill mode, don hat, gloves and goggles. I am alone at the top of Edelweiss Bowl, just south of Teton Pass, Wyoming. My son Charlie left two days earlier […]
Photo: Pre-dawn start, pitch one of the Ames Ice Hose. The eyes are the window to the mind. Telluride, CO, 2007. Photo Credit: Paul Gardner I shiver in the pre-dawn cold. Staring me in the face is the first pitch of the 500 foot mega-classic Ames Ice Hose. My lead, the crux pitch: one hundred […]
Photo: 2017 Minnesota Senior Games gold medals. Another bike race, another hill… and once again I was dropped from the lead riders. For years I struggled to lose weight failing time after time. Bad habits in control, I ate and drank too much; and over trained. When I hit 60 years old, my weight was […]
January 1978, Bob McCord was breaking trail and I reluctantly followed. We aimed for a low angle ramp between steeper slopes topped with five foot cornices: wind-blown snow at the tops of ridges curled like Dairy Queen Cones. The slope steepened. We made a switchback turn. Behind me, I heard a soft crack and a […]
Featured Photo: The Fortress from Alpine Lakes, Wind River Range, Wyoming Photo: War Bonnet and Warrior, Cirque of the Towers. Driving south from Green River Lakes, our exit trailhead, to Sweetwater Gap trailhead at the southern end on the range, you crest a hill just outside Pinedale, Wyoming. From the top of the hill, stretches […]
Photo: Grand Teton summit, Charlie and Steve Markusen, July 2019 Forty feet below the summit of the Grand Teton we paused as a gaggle of Exum guides and clients passed by us on their descent. It was 9:30 in the morning on July 27, 2019. My son Charlie and I had left Petzoldt’s Caves […]
“May you build a ladder to the stars And climb on every rung May you stay forever young…” Bob Dylan My gaze drifted up, taking in the steep rock wall that was the last, and most difficult, of a six pitch rock climb called the Guides Wall in Cascade Canyon, Grand Teton National Park. It […]