Weekend of snow and exhaustion

So Saturday was a friend's b-day. The plan was to go to Hyak and have a decent nordic ski. We headed up with a late start and got some exercise in. It was a pretty chill day with beatiful skies. after some skiing around, we headed out to the yurt and arrived at about 3 in the afternoon. Soon people just started showing up with things big foot had stashed away for us. Part of the group and the "stash" pictured. Weather was warm, baking the snow and as we headed back it was already getting severely crusted over. It was a great day and a low key x-country ski - hopefully the birthday boy thought so too! I think that I totally suck at x-country skiing because I was exhausted on the ride back to Seattle in the evening, even moreso than climbing with a pack on. Back in Seattle the group met at a local brewpub and then Leny's, a local dive, to celebrate in another style.

So after 3 hours of sleep owing to daylight savings time, I was getting ready for a short bc excursion with Lucas. We were on our way early enough and were going skinning away from the alpental lot (actually me skinning and L taking his snowboard for a walk). We just decided to climb up the ridge to snow lake and go from there - needed to be a short day. It was great weather, but the snow left something to be desired. Hard crust early on. On the way to snow basin I got a quick shot of Chair peak and you can see the NE buttress route - 'hourglass' of snow heading straight up to the summit and the SE gully, the skinny snow filled gully just to the left of the large summit block, both of which we did last winter. After hitting the ridge, we headed into the snow lake basin and skied across the lake. On the left you can see L pushing taking his little pet for a walk across Snow lake. We then decided to climb the ridge on the other side because it looked "easy enough" and fun to ski. It was. We climbed up to the ridge and had a nice lunch on the ridgeline (Lucas pictured) and just skied back to lake (down to the right from pic). If we had to do it again we would have climbed closer to the peak behind L. It looked like a better climb and even better descent. Regardless, this was the best snow we found since I imagine it was protected from the sun and wasn't pure crust or pure sludge. afterwards we just retraced our steps and by the time we were skiing to source lake the sun had cooked the snow so we were skiing through the typical NW concrete. Back to the car by 1:45, early enough to dehydrate some more at rogue and then play soccer. With a lack of "drama" the past few times out, hopefully we've graduated so I can bring you some bigger and better TRs.... per my altimeter 2900' gain, 2850' loss, a good half day.

McClellan Butte

So Lucas and I decided a short, fun outing was best because of his need to defend .... well.... next Thursday! Well, we decided on skiing McClellan Butte. 5:00 came and I was rip roaring ... we needed an early start to get back for "work." So we parked just off the interstate and headed out. We had a "description" of what we wanted to do but the gist was: 1) drive I90. 2) get off at McClennan Butte exit. 3) Park at trail head. 4) climb with the NW shoulder as your destination. 5) ski down. 6) drink beer back close to Seattle. Well, I made (6) up, but it seemed fitting. At the trailhead, disoriented, we met some guys that pointed us in the right direction and in turn we gave them some tracks to get through the mid part of the mountain (they were post holing with boots the whole way)

So we headed up, me skinning on the skis (pic left) and lucas on snowshoes packing in his snowboard (bindings still in the shop; pic right). I didn't envy him. Per our descriptive guide, we accidentally started climbing a little too early. To our defense we wanted to try to hit the summit, whereas the NW route cliffs out 300 feet below the summit. mushy, wet condition turned into some newly felled powder on top of a crusty base. This soon turned into 6 inches and then 18 inches of powder! We got about 800 feet from the summit and things got pretty steep and sketchy for me and my skins. We tried to stay in the glades and boot it but with no pro and turnaround time coming we decided to dig a platform in the steep slope for a late lunch and turnaround (Pic from platform on left). While we wanted the summit, it was just time to hit the slopes that we had climbed. There was no sense tempting fate with the powder that lay below us.

After lunch Lucas started down on his snowboard ... it sounded like he was relieved to have it of his back. The first few pitches were tough, being steep and "warm ups" for both of us. but below them was pure powder. We had about 1500 feet of knee (+) deep powder to ski before hitting the wet slush through which we would have to navigate. All the way down both lucas and I were giddy giddy giddy. Even though we were cursing the hike up and what lay in front of us (in terms of the crap out), we both agreed that the fresh, untouched powder was worth it and so much more. Cursing the wet snow and wet snow bombs, we eventually made it back to the car exhausted... but loving every second of it. We twisted each other's arms to end up at Rogue Issaquah. We had a beer and were so hungary added some appetizers. 2 beers later we were cruising back to seattle .... lucas to work (L, how much did you accomplish?) and me to grab my stuff for a top division soccer game. It's a good thing I saved all that energy, yeah....

Thinking back on it, that was the best snow of the year, maybe ever. It was only one trip down but it was worth the energy. On the way back I almost drove off I90 looking at our lines ... and scheming on all the other possible lines out there.........

Pilsner Mar 01, 08

So I promised my sis, Kari, that I would drive down to her wedding and bring a few kegs with me. So what to brew? The wedding will be in the summer so a pilsner is always a good thing to have at hand for all them other types that don't like a lot of flavor in their beer. Actually, a well done pils has a ton of flavor. Any suggestions for a good, interesting, wedding beer?

Also at the brewstore I paid 75 bucks for a sack of grain. This compares to 55 bucks the last time i went in. With our crop land being trashed, global warming/cooling, a huge demand for bio fuels (i.e. EtOH), and other blights, there is a massive shortage on certain crops (wheat, barley, hops, and the list keeps going). So I'll get off my soap box, suffice it to say though, that good brews are going to be getting ridiculously expensive. Oh yeah, and my original point to bring this up. I have a bunch of older Spalt hops that i don't know what to do. So I decided to try something new and feature them (well, almost, I couldn't get rid of Saaz - that's sacrilege) in the brew. If I were smart I would have done a side y side test, but I was lazy today.

So i decided to brew under the car port because of the inclement weather. After I saw the sun, I wished I had stayed up on the deck. Oh well. Turned out uneventful, good brew day. Here's the details:

10 gallon batch. Target OG 1.045 (tad low for a pils; assume 80% efficiency). Target HBU - Don't know .... just followed a prv recipe that turned out.

Water. Filtered with no additions
Yeast. I think wyeast 2206. I took the dregs from the primary of a previous batch on 1/26 and made a ~0.5 gallon starter about 30 hrs before pitching.
grains 15# german pils, 1.25# Vienna, 0.75 #crystal 10 degree
Hops. 4 oz Saaz 3.1%. 4Oz Spalt 4.1%

2Mash in to 124 for 30 min. Raise to 153 for 50 minutes (fluctuated between 145-155 but orig set was 153) . Raise to 170 for 10 minutes. Sparge with ~10 gallons hot water (Mash stayed at 170 throughout). Take about 14 gallons. Boil 60 minutes with following sched.
60 - 1 oz saaz 1 oz Spalt
30 - same
15 - same
5 - same + tea of irish moss.
0- knockout. Chill to 70 degrees. split to two primaries, aerate (filtered air) and pitch.

Actual OG - 1.053. Only took 9.5 gallons so Calc efficiency ~82%.

Picture on the right is during the sparge of my setup in the carport. after pitching there was activity within 24 (+) hours? very disappointing but there was noticeable activity Sunday evening... pictured left.

transfered 3/14 after 48 hr Diactyl rest at cellar temp. Gravity 1.015, which seems a tad high. Tasted nice and dandy. Will need to compare with my previous batch. Will leave at cellar temp before crashing it to see if it will ferment down any farther.