Ski-Blog.comFebruary 20, 2010
Decent Storm Brewing--Wolf Creek Already Has 16"
Not a lot more to say than that. Waiting to see what materializes at Brian Head and the AZ resorts.
Posted by Justin at 12:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Categories: Wolf Creek
February 11, 2010
Sunrise Trip Tomorrow
I have the day off work at the end of a long week and am heading to Sunrise tomorrow for a day of skiing.
Sunrise got 4" or so from the storm last night which is not exactly a powder day, but still is fresh snow. They have gotten a foot and a half in the last 4-5 days so the snow should be fresh and enjoyable.
Will report on the day tomorrow or Saturday.
Posted by Justin at 02:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Categories: Sunrise
February 10, 2010
Avalanche Article from the American Spectator
An odd place for an article on Avalanches, but good read nonetheless:
Recently, a young man was caught by an avalanche while skiing out-of-bounds at Snowbasin Resort in Utah. When found, he was dead and buried under only a foot of snow. The physics are interesting. When an avalanche stops, the snow settles within seconds and sets-up as hard as concrete. The victim's movements are paralyzed, and -- like drowning -- death usually comes within 15 minutes due to suffocation. Though there are historical cases of people surviving after being buried up to 45 minutes. At any rate, it's a hideous way to die...There are precautions to be taken in avalanche country. Check avalanche conditions online or via local media before a trip. Know the landscape and avoid open, expansive areas without trees. Never cross-country ski, snowmobile, or otherwise travel alone in the backcountry. When accompanied by fellow recreationists, small portable shovels, collapsible steel probe poles, and electronic transmitter beacons all increase the survival odds if one is caught in a snow slide. If caught in a slide, flail your arms and legs around in a swimming motion that might leave limbs exposed when it stops. If there's time, extricate yourself from skis or a backpack to assist range of motion. Even a deep breath before it hits will increase survival time by a few minutes. Keep your mouth shut so it doesn't fill with snow and choke you. After all that, say your prayers.
But avalanches aren't the only hazard found out-of-bounds. Recently, at Grand Targhee Resort in Wyoming, a 46-year-old man from New York skied over the line near day's end and simply got lost. He called the 911 on his cell phone and reported his predicament. When asked to describe his surroundings he noted an open snowy meadow with a creek flowing through it. Unfortunately, that described hundreds of acres in the area. The man had a GPS Unit, but didn't know how to use it. He was dressed well for a day of skiing, but lacked the extra clothes and survival gear needed to survive the night. Local Search and Rescue personnel and the Grand Targhee Ski Patrol searched for part of the night, but due to snowy weather and the avalanche danger, halted the search until daylight. In the morning they found the man dead of hypothermia.
It is all about preparation. First, know your surroundings. If you want to go backcountry skiing, at least know how to use a GPS and beacon. Have the right equipment. Never go alone.
There are hundreds of dangerous activities in life that are extremely fun and rewarding. Backcountry skiing can certainly be one of them, but it is not for the inexperienced. Hence why I do not ski backcountry. But even backcountry is no where near as dangerous as "side-country skiing" where novice skiers venture just over the ropes to try to track some wide open expanse of snow.
Know your limits. Have the right gear. Have SURVIVAL GEAR. Don't do stupid stuff.
Posted by Justin at 04:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Categories: General Skiing
February 09, 2010
Is Global Warming Going to Destroy the Ski Industry?
I don't like to wade too deep into the "Climate Change" waters, but got a link from a reader to story by a local news station about the ski industry:
Already, the Aspen Global Change Institute forecasts that if global emissions continue to rise, the local ski industry will be little more than a memory by 2100.Among the group’s sobering findings:
“High greenhouse gas emissions scenarios… are likely to end skiing in Aspen by 2100, and possibly well before then, while low emission path scenarios preserve skiing at mid-to-upper mountain elevations. In either case, snow conditions will deteriorate in the future.”
Skeptics of global warming cite images of major blizzards and snowfalls measured by the foot in Midwestern and mountain regions. Williams says those pictures hinder efforts to convince people that a warmer future really is coming.
“It’s a small but constant change,” he said. “It’s hard for people to embrace that.”...
The Williams-Lazar report offered a glass-half-full scenario for Colorado. While other areas face devastation, change appears to be coming more slowly to places like Aspen.
That doesn’t mean it won’t come, even if freak early or late storms seem to paint a different picture.
“The way I think of it is: Do you want to ski with your grandkids? Or do you want your kids to ski with their grandkids?” Williams said.
“That’s about three generations out. That reverberates with people. They get that.”
Interesting. Scares the hell out of people.
Before I look at the methodology, I just want to point out a few things. First, there is a major correlation between the ENSO (El Nino) ocean temperatures and the snowfall in particular in either the Southwest or in the Northwest. Weather patterns caused by El Nino are well documented and there is a strong correlation.
Yet even in the strongest of El Nino years, climatologists cannot predict even within a narrow range of what the snowfall amounts will be. This is an El Nino year. How many inches approximately will Brian Head receive? Somewhere between 300-500". That is about as good as you will get.
And that is a short time horizon. That is only forward looking, say six months tops. If climatologists cannot tell me even a solid ballpark figure of how many inches of snow a particular resort will receive in a year, even as late as say--October, so I know whether or not to buy a season pass or when the opening day will be this season, how in the holy hell should I believe that they can tell me when opening day will be on average in the year 2100? In 2009, A-basin had their earliest opening EVER. October 9th. Climatologists say they can only make predictions about long term trends using fancy "closed source" computer models that have been ripped to shreds for their coding errors, not make short term predictions about anything useful. Water levels will rise several feet by 2100 and submerge half the coastal cities, but tomorrow there is a 40% chance of light showers. 40%? WTF?
Below the fold, I will get into why I am so disgusted by the scare tactics thrown around by the environmental folks that think putting up windmills is somehow going to help Aspen have good snow in 2100. And I won't even get into the Sierra Club saying that switching from coal to nuclear power is like switching from cigarettes to crack.
» Continue reading this entry.
Posted by Justin at 10:11 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Categories: General Skiing, Politics (Rare), Weather
February 07, 2010
Truth in Motion
Sat down and watched Truth in Motion last night. Had it Tivo'd and got to watch it on the LCD in HD off of the local NBC station.
It really puts a face on the people that compete in the Olympics. So much of what we see is Shawn White this and Bode Miller that, but these are not the Shawn Whites with multimillion dollar endorsements. These are some of the most dedicated people you can find barely earning a living off sponsor money and ski team money to compete at the highest level.
What they do is not fun. It is not enjoyable. It is brutal. Most of the athletes describe some multiyear rehab from an injury that happened doing 60 miles per hour on icy snow. Bouncing from town to town and continent to continent to prepare.
And it is four years of preparation. Come the 1st of March, after the flame goes out in Vancouver, these athletes start gearing up for another four years of World Cups and qualifying and training to get ready for another go at the Olympics.
And if not, they prepare for the fact that their careers are over.
"Truth in Motion" stars 2010 U.S. Olympic Alpine Ski Team athletes Ted Ligety (Park City, UT), Sarah Schleper (Vail, CO), Jake Zamansky (Aspen, CO) and Tommy Ford (Bend, OR). There are also cameo appearances by Bode Miller (Franconia, NH), Lindsey Vonn (Vail, CO) and Scott Macartney (Crystal Mountain, WA) along with numerous coaches and ski technicians who support this Team."You see exactly what we're going through every day," said Ligety, the 2006 Olympic combined gold medalist. "I don't think anybody has ever gotten a truly in-depth look at ski racing. It's cool in that respect. This portrays what we do.
Directed by Academy Award nominee Brett Morgen, the film takes you inside the locker room in every aspect of the being an elite ski racer, only their locker room is Portillo, Chile; Saas Fee, Switzerland; Soelden, Austria, on airplanes, long car rides and hotel rooms across the globe.
"This film spends more time on the characters and people, the personalities and the perseverance," said Scott Keogh, chief marketing officer for Audi of America, which has supported the U.S. Ski Team since 2007.
There is a noted lack of glamour as the film takes you through pre dawn wakeup calls to check lactate levels and stretch before riding a frozen chairlift to work. The athletes are candid, raw and provide an insight to their sport that cannot be seen in a two-minute race.
"There were numerous moments where people said things to us that shocked and surprised us at how open they were," said Morgen, who followed the Team from Chile to Park City and then to Switzerland and Austria. "It was very important for us to let the skiing tell the story."
Schleper provides a unique aspect to the film as she delves into the difficulties of juggling motherhood with working to achieve her Olympic dream. Following two missed seasons after the 2006 Olympics – one to a torn ACL and the other for the birth of her son Lasse, who turns two Saturday – Schleper battled back into the World Cup elite and successfully made her fourth Olympic Team.
I strongly recommend that you watch it when it repeats on NBC this week.
My comments to Jake after we finished watching it:
Jake, I have watched you ski since you were 5 and seen how much better you get every time we go out. If you really put your mind to it, dedicate yourself, and train hard for the next few years, one day, you might be good enough to make the US Ski Team and get a job waxing and tuning their skis.
I am a supportive dad. It is what I do.
Posted by Justin at 02:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Categories: General Skiing
February 01, 2010
Intrawest Defaults on Loans, Lenders Start Foreclosure Process (h/t Mark)
A reader sent me this story from CBC regarding Intrawest's financial problems:
Wall Street financiers say they are going to put the Whistler Blackcomb resort up for sale while the facility is hosting Winter Olympic events next month.Creditors who have lent $1.4 billion US to the ski resort's owners, Intrawest ULC, have effectively seized control of the company and are attempting to auction off its assets.
Whistler Blackcomb, one of numerous ski resorts Intrawest owns in Canada and the U.S., is set to host major ski events at the Olympic Games next month.
On Tuesday, a notice of a public auction to be held Feb. 19, 2010, was published in newspapers in Canada and the United States, soliciting bids for a membership interest in Intrawest Holdings. Among the assets in the notice were "partnership interests in two resort properties located in Canada (Whistler and Blackcomb)."
In 2006, Wall Street hedge fund Fortress Investments LLC bought Intrawest in a $2.8-billion US deal. Fortress recently missed a $524 million debt payment connected to that purchase.
The primary lender on the Intrawest deal in 2006 was defunct investment bank Lehman Brothers. New York debt managers Davidson Kempner and Oak Hill Advisors also helped finance the deal, and a source familiar with the process told CBC News the major creditors are united in pursuing the auction process.
Typically, lenders are willing to work with borrowers to avoid foreclosure. But the lenders' inability to move the debt repayment plan along seems to have spurred this week's unexpected developments.
Most of these issues are symptoms of the economic meltdown. Especially the meltdown in real estate values. There is more fallout coming.
Posted by Justin at 09:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Categories: General Skiing
January 31, 2010
Outstanding Day at Sunrise
Took a day trip to Sunrise with my cousin Zach that took a whole lot of arm twisting. He finally told me on Thursday that if no one else was going to go that he guessed he would because had already committed but that he didn't really want to drive 250 miles each way in the same day.
We were going to leave around 4AM from my place and he stayed over. Unfortunately, at 1AM were will still up and hanging out and finally against our best judgment figured if we chanced going to sleep, we would oversleep and not end up going so we left then. I made it to Payson before I doubled over exhausted and he slept the entire way in the back seat of the Avy. A quick breakfast at the only restaurant on the planet that doesn't take credit or debit and is cash only, then off the rest of the way there.
I have never seen Sunrise so packed. The parking overflowed all the way down the main road about two miles, almost to the lodge. The base areas were completely packed. And on top of all that, the restaurant/lodge at the top of Apache got a bunch of water damage so there was no real place to stop up there. The food sucked, even by Sunrise standards. But we weren't really there to eat.
Started at around 10 because of the traffic and by 1, I still had not even clicked out of my bindings when we grabbed lunch. By that time we had skied all three mountains for at least a run. The runs that had been being skied a lot were in great shape. The ones that were less accessible or less used were like skiing concrete because the 4' dump from last weekend had been sitting for a week and compacting. Then you add that it was chopped up and it was horrible to ski.
There is a great midmountain lift that goes from halfway up Sunrise Peak to the top and is just off to the right of the midway lodge that had ZERO lift line so we did several laps on it taking Rustler and Superstition. Best skiing of the day was right there. Zach was a hell of a skier ten years ago so by the end of the morning, he was back where he could hang.
About 3, we got to the top of Sunrise and I decided I was going to poach Quakie and have Zach take Arrowhead and meet me at the bottom since he refused to go poaching with me. He made the right choice. Quakie was horrible. It gets direct sun all day and was almost untracked and just nasty. Difficult to ski. Small trees poking up. Bleh!
Bad news is that Arrowhead crosses with a run that goes to Sunrise base where I thought we were going but also goes straight down to the Cyclone base. I waited for Zach, but could not find him and I ended up at Cyclone while he was at Sunrise. Then vice versa. Then waiting and looking. Finally after about 30 minutes of waiting, I had time for one last run.
When we were walking in from the parking in BFE, I met a couple guys from back east and was BSing. One of them was a hard core New Yorker and he was just rolling up to the line at Sunrise as I was about to get on. I climbed over the rope, went to wrong way in line and pushed my way back to get to him and his three buddies. You guys mind if I take the last run with you?
Tony had a softside cooler bag at the top of Sunrise from lunch that he had to bring down and thankfully his buddy John said he would carry it so he could get one last major run in. The two of us took Rustler as hard and as fast as I have ever skied moguls in a late afternoon dim light where you could barely see the contours of the snow just mashing the pedal down. Stop halfway down, catch a little breath, mash some more. It was the best mogul run I have skied. Having someone to push you and make you work. We flew to the base area and were 4 chairs to late to make the last run of the day. I begged. I bribed. Hell, I tried to steal, but no way.
Always end the day with the best run. I wanted to do Lupe if we could get on the last chair, but that was left for another day.
Gave out the URL for the site and hope to get an email so we can trip up there again.
Posted by Justin at 02:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Categories: Sunrise
