Good morning and welcome to Summit Up, the world’s only daily column that’s pretty stoked that now three out of four local ski areas are open. Yep, Copper and Keystone open today with what we’re hearing are pretty sweet conditions for early season. And Breck opens next week, so we’re well on our way to yet another ski season.

May it snow again, soon and heavily!

***

OK, the yellow penalty flag has come flying at us from Pete Pierpont, who writes thusly:

“Keep it clean? Oh man, really? As a loyal reader I can overlook the, ahem, occasional misspelling or typo in the Summit Daily. Wars have erupted, presidential elections have hung on hanging chads, ice caps are melting and the Republicans have taken back the House. Through it all, I’ve remained doggedly silent.

“Like Libya’s Gaddafi, however, I also have my ‘Line of Death,’ over which no one may pass. Getting Caddyshack quotes wrong crosses that line and cannot stand. Some things are sacred and must be accorded the reverence and awe that true genius demands of us.

“‘Keep it fair, keep it fair, will ya?’ says Rodney Dangerfield’s Al Czervik as he stuffs cash into the hand of Brian Doyle Murray’s character, game referee Lou Loomis.

“Now that we’ve got that sorted out, ‘how about a Fresca?'”

Thanks Pete, we’d love a Fresca! And we apologize for the error. We should have written something like “… to paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack …” But we didn’t and we stand corrected! We suck!

***

OK, we’ve got a bone to pick with all those old miners who left crap all over the backcountry without the simple courtesy of telling us what in hell any of it is. Case in point is this photo from Copper Mountain’s Kim Fenske who, near as we can tell, spends every waking hour climbing mountains and who’s good enough to send us tons of cool photos. Anyway, Kim sent this photo from the Holy Cross City area, which we figure is over there in the Holy Cross Wilderness. This is some kind of old mine thing, but what, exactly, is it?

Does it matter? No, it really doesn’t, which is why we’d like to introduce our first Summit Up Caption Contest where you, the reader, supply the photo caption and we, the hippies at the newspaper, supply you with a prize if you submit what we think is the best one.

So, for example, you could look at this photo and write something like this:

“This old machine was used to tighten the girdles of the prostitutes who worked at Holy Cross City back in the day. The steam engine boiler featured a harness that attached to the girdle and drew it tight, while the wheeled contrivance was used to transport the Acme Girdle Tightener from one mining camp to the other.”

Send your submissions to summitup@summitdaily.com. The winner will score a copy of “Tundra – Organically Grown Humor” by Chad Carpenter. It’s a book full of comic strips that’s pretty darn funny.

Deadline is, uh, whenever we get enough decent entries or Sunday at 11:57 p.m., whichever comes first.

We out.