January Thaw

If you track the weather in my small part of Montana you will know that we are in the middle of our annual January thaw. This means unless you travel the snow conditions are groomers and sketch. To be honest i kinda like sketchy groomers (hey its better than skiing in Indiana), so me, myself, and i headed to the mountain.

I have now had the Back Seat Love Seat in operation for a week or so. It makes a huge difference when getting ready to go especially when you want to avoid the crowds in the lodge or just sit in the sun and finish your coffee.

After caffeinating in the sun i  headed to the summit. The gate to the Cole Creek lift was open, shocked and a bit hesitant (Cole Creek can have some of the worst/best conditions) i headed in to scope things out.

The conditions were not ideal. Lots of exposed detritus, moguls and wind blown crust. It was definitely not for everyone, in fact i'm sure some will describe the conditions using language like "shit" and "garbage". To those i simply grin,  i had a blast. The snow was questionable, the terrain steep and technical (especially after you factor in all the exposed rocks and stumps), but there were only four or five of us in there. Hurrah for our own private resort! While the rest of the mountain suffered with Martin Luther King Day racer crowds i happily dodged and hop turned my day away.

I guess it doesn't matter what the conditions are, i love skiing!
Oh! my broken skis are fixed, if Cole Creek didn't break em' me thinks i'm good for a while.

Over at the Rainy Day Boat Shop it was a really short (one day) week. If you follow this blog you may remember a table top and skirt built using re-claimed lumber. I finally got around to building some legs for it.

After a lot of debating with myself i went the coffee table route. The legs are dovetailed together, as you can see below it takes quite a few cuts to get it all in sync.

After cutting, fitting, and clamping here is how it looked.

I gotta say i'm really excited to finish this piece up. Well if you need me i'll be at Sylvan Peak the rest of the week (doing some fill in for folks).
Cheers.