May-cember in Rocky Mountain National Park

Saturday May 1st marked what for me this year?  One of the best powder  days of the year.  Insane I know. Welcome to   Colorado weather.  I drove up (with Andrew and Chris) to meet Jon, Jon and Owen at the Bear Lake  parking lot in RMNP to get in some lines of gnar before the snow season finally closed.  The park was filled with Asian tourists in loafers admiring the snow and the scenery around some of the lakes nearby but we quickly strapped up and were on our way to the top  of some chutes right above Dream Lake.  Our first attempts at route finding through the deep snow turned out pretty unsuccessful after we always found ourselves on the bottom side of a pretty gnarly headwall.  After taking a quick ski descent we found a path up and around to hit some sweet pillows in  a gully appropriately called Marioland.  Because we had gotten a late start we really didn’t have much time to rip down a few more runs before a few of the guys had to make it back for a formal dance.  A few herds of elk lingered around the park as we made our departure.  I’ll be back there soon for some backpacking…that is if the 4 feet of snow melts in time.
 
                                                           
                                                                           




-Tyler Grubb

Mt. Massive is Aptly Named

On Tuesday night Jon and I took off after class to the Mt. Massive Wilderness area outside of Leadville in hopes of summiting in the morning and taking a ski line down the southwest slopes.  With a forecast for some chilly 50 MPH winds for the night and the next day we weren’t all that hopeful for a bluebird day.  After setting up a quick bivy camp and sleeping for a couple hours we took off at around 4 AM up the road to the Mt. Massive trailhead.  Snowshoeing for 3 and a half miles wore me down pretty quick on our way to the southwest slopes we intended to scale.  Post holing through the majority of the trail in some aspen trees (I’m pretty damn close to just buying a split-board) also took its physical toll before we gained the summit ridge.  With tired legs and wind blown faces we finally called it a day at around 13,000’ and took a crusty run  back into the aspen trees.  A     miserable route finding mission took place to get us back on a continuous trail we could ski (snowboard, again, not so hot) back to the trailhead.  We ended up back at the car around 11:30 and were able to make it back to Denver for class at 2 PM.  Quite the morning before learning about the sustainable business practices in developing countries….

     


-Tyler Grubb

Leading at the Edge

Last weekend I got to join a hoard of incoming MBA and MS students up in the mountains for some team-building and leadership exercises.  At first glance this looked like a weekend of holding hands and talking about our feelings but I was freshly surprised by the programs they ran us through.  The Nature Place, a camp founded by 10th Mountain Division Vet Sandy Sanborn, was host to our group of 60ish eager new grad students.  We spent the weekend in small teams completing orienteering tasks, climbing high ropes courses and assisting in a mock earthquake emergency rescue operation.  My small team consisted of a multinational  crew from Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, China and the US.  (Our team name was "Team Bang" which means "Team Awesome" in Chinese.)  In all, the people who ran the show did an awesome job integrating team lessons into some pretty exciting activities that most of the guests would never dreamed of attempting.  The pictures below show us working together through a pretty challenging weekend.
                                                   

                           

            

   
     

-Tyler Grubb