Raphael Slawinski

Winter seemed to come early to the Rockies this year. Late September and early October, instead of yellow aspen leaves and flawless blue skies, brought deep snow all the way down to the valley bottoms and the plains further east. After some grumbling over the premature ends of both the rock and alpine-climbing seasons, I reluctantly embraced the wet cold. I went drytooling long before I would normally consider it socially acceptable; I ventured up the guts of a chimney I wouldn't have given a second thought to in better weather; I even swung tools into freshly formed ice , the earliest I'd done so in a quarter century of climbing ice in the Rockies. I felt almost disappointed when warm sunshine returned, melting the snow and ice and drying the rock. While in cold, shady corners choss remained solidly frozen, it seemed perverse to make winter longer than it is already. Hanging up freshly sharpened and already dulled ice tools for at least another week or two, I hiked up to