Three Thursday Things

So I'd planned to continue showing off pics of the Austrian Alps this week, but something's come up - or down, rather.  Specifically, a whole lot of fat white fluffy snowflakes.  That's right, serious snow has come to the Colorado mountains at last (after a horribly dry early winter) and I intend to ski the hell out of it.  Which means instead of writing blog posts, I'm digging out powder straps and tuning skis and stretching and generally getting ready to have an awesome weekend.

But I don't want to abandon my faithful few blog readers completely, so I've got three quick things to share: first, a bit of internet news; second, a spoiler-free teaser for The Labyrinth of Flame; and third, a photo from one of my favorite mountain ranges in Colorado (can't do a Thursday post without some wilderness content, right?).

News

• The Tainted City got a great new review from King of the Nerds, woo hoo! "The Tainted City takes everything I love about The Whitefire Crossing, particularly in terms of characterization, and turns it up a notch creating a tense, emotional novel that with only some relatively minor pacing problems was an absolute joy to read. With her subtle worldbuilding and unique setting Courtney Schafer is definitely an author that deserves your attention, particularly if you enjoy character driven fantasy."
• Fellow fantasy author Mark Lawrence started quite the interesting conversation over on Reddit's r/Fantasy forum about piracy, publishing, and authorial riches (or lack thereof).  I would talk about my own views on piracy, but again...the mountains call.  Maybe sometime next week.  (Guess you can tell where my priorities lie!)

Labyrinth of Flame teaser

A while back everyone was passing around this "7 lines" meme, in which writers share 7 lines taken from either page 7 or page 77 of their manuscripts.  I finally caved and shared some lines on Facebook - although I did 8, not 7, because I'm too OCD to leave off the last line of the paragraph!  Anyway, I realized I'd never posted them here...so, here you go.  A spoiler-free 8 lines from page 7 of the first draft of The Labyrinth of Flame.  (First draft, remember.  Who knows, these lines may change entirely before the final.)

“Khalmet wasn’t so kind to a pair of footsore prospectors, this trip,” I said.  Kiran shifted.  I couldn’t see his eyes, hidden as they were by his hair, but irony was plain in the slant of his mouth.  Yeah, he must think that one hell of an understatement.  Likely he believed the god of luck’s skeletal bad hand was permanently fixed to his shoulder, dooming him to disaster.  Me, I wasn’t sure.  Some might think my very survival these last months a miracle signaling Khalmet had favored me with the touch of his good hand, not his bad one.  Then again, chances were good the gods just meant to save me for a fate horrific beyond all imagination.

Photo: on the trail to El Diente (14,159 ft), San Juan Mountains, Colorado

I love the San Juans of southwestern Colorado.  They're far more rugged than the ranges close to Denver, full of jagged peaks and crenellated ridges.  They're also far wetter, which means gorgeous displays of wildflowers in the summer and vivid aspen in the autumn.  It also means some truly epic thunderstorms.  This pic is from an attempt on El Diente in which we were turned back by thunder at 10am (this after we'd gotten up at 3am to drive to the trailhead from our campsite near Telluride, and started hiking at 5am...oh well!)  El Diente's one of the more challenging 14ers to climb, and I look forward to making a second attempt one day.

Waterfall beneath the bulk of El Diente.  The lower brown slopes might look like dirt, but they're actually fist-sized, horribly loose scree.  The route ascends to the left of the waterfall and then climbs through the cliffs to the ridge, which you then follow to the summit.  The climbing is reportedly stiff 3rd class, even 4th class in spots.  (4th class means foot and handholds are plentiful, but either the rock is dangerously loose or the exposure is so great that a fall would mean death.  Sounds fun, right?  Come on, just look at that peak...)

Thursday Adventure: Mt. of the Holy Cross

With the week o' sickness we're having here at Casa Schafer (flu for me, pinkeye for my son, and now my husband's throat is sore...), it's nice to think of healthier, happier times tromping the mountains.  So for this Thursday's adventure, I offer up Mt. of the Holy Cross:

Mt. of the Holy Cross (Sawatch Range, Colorado)

One of Colorado's 54 peaks above 14,000 feet, Holy Cross is in the Sawatch range of central Colorado, not too far away from the town of Vail.  I climbed it a few years back via the Halo Ridge route, which circles the Bowl of Tears basin beneath the peak and gives an excellent view of the Cross Couloir that gives the peak its name.  (The standard route up Holy Cross approaches from a different side and so you never get to see the couloir.)  Halo Ridge isn't technically difficult - it's just a lot of class 2 talus walking - but it's a hefty day trip, since you climb over three different unnamed 13K peaks along the way, and there's no easy retreat in the event of a summer thunderstorm. If you ascend via Halo Ridge and descend via the standard route as we did, the hike is 15 miles with 5,400 feet of elevation gain along the way.

Me on the summit of Holy Cross

Beautiful as the hike was, I also cringe a little when I recall it, since my Holy Cross trip also included my Most Embarassing Trailhead Moment.  Knowing the length of the route and the inevitability of afternoon thunderstorms in Colorado, my hiking partner and I wanted to start right at dawn.  Not wanting to get up at 3am to do the drive, we drove down the night before and slept at the trailhead. The Holy Cross trailhead doesn't have much in the way of official camping, so I slept in the back of my Subaru Outback, and my friend climbed the steep, forested slope above the road and found a spot for his bivy sack.  Now, we were far from the only people snoozing at the trailhead.  Hiking 14ers is a hugely popular activity in Colorado, so there were about 30 other Subarus and SUVs parked along the road with mine, all with folks sleeping in them.

Having spent my formative years in cities like D.C. and L.A., I dutifully locked my car doors before settling down inside to sleep.  At about 2am, I woke up, drowsily thinking I'd like to crack a window and get more fresh air in the car.  Since the Subaru has power windows, that meant turning on the car.  Too bad I forgot that locking the doors arms the car's security system.  The moment I stuck my key in the ignition, the car alarm went off: blaring siren, flashing lights, and all.  And the shock left me so discombobulated I couldn't remember how to turn the damn thing off.  I think I actually dug out the manual from the glove compartment; meanwhile, I could see annoyed, shadowed figures sitting bolt upright in all the other cars.

Finally, I got the alarm shut off.  Sadly, my hiking partner and I had agreed to meet at the car at first light, which meant I couldn't creep away so early none of the other trailhead campers would see me.  When I slunk out of the car at 5am, my friend stomped out of the forest and announced, "God, I hate trailhead camping.  Did you hear that racket last night?  Some utter moron set off their car alarm!"  I cringed deeper into my goretex and muttered, "Yeah...what a loser," and prayed none of the other car-campers stuffing gear into their packs would point and give me away.

Thankfully, nobody did.  And embarassment soon faded in the beauty of the day and the determination needed to scramble over acres of ass-kicking talus.  But I confess I've never slept in my car at a trailhead again (I find nearby spots where a tent can be pitched, instead).