[Journal entry for January 16, 2012]. In the afternoon, Dallas and I took a two-hour telemark skiing lesson at Arapahoe Basin. We had been wanting to learn this technique, because of its suitability for back-country outings, such as the Shrine Mountain trip we took last year. Light snow was falling as we drove up Route 6 from Silverthorne, making the road rather difficult. We were glad that our rented vehicle had four-wheel drive. The clouds were mostly high, so we could see most of the mountain peaks. The Araphoe Basin ski area is set in a pair of cirques on the west side of Lenawee Mountainm (elevation 13,204'), just about at tree line. The rocky scarp of the wall of the bowl is impressive. Snow-filled chutes provide some exciting expert-level skiing. We, however, stayed only on the wooded beginner slopes at the bottom of the cirque. We arrived well before our lesson, so I spent an hour or so skiing the lower mountain, using standard alpine technique, which works fine on telemark skis. During our lesson, we were taught by Amy Ackerman, a PSIA-certified instructor (1-888-272-7246, skiridetele@me.com) with whom we had arranged a private lesson. Both Dallas and I are fairly competant downhill skiers (Dallas is quite a bit more accomplished than am I), so we concentrated on telemark-specific skills and expecially the maintaing of the correct stance and correctly distributing weight between the two, differently-positioned skis. Amy proved an excellent teacher and we made quite a bit of progress from our zero-knowledge starting point, and were starting to get the hang of a telemark-turn by lesson's end. Overall, we skied five runs, all on bunny and beginner slopes. This would have been a trivial exercise for me on downhill skis, but on teles, the experience really tired me out. Afterward, we rested in the lodge, sipping hot chocolate and eating candy. Clouds began to move lower as we packed up and the intensity of the snow increased, with near white-out conditions as we drove back to Silverthorne. About three hours.