zappasguitar
Well-known member
Oh HELL yeah! Went there many times! I always loved being able to ski right off the mountain into town!
Skiing in Virginia, August 29, 2009
- Thread starter DamnYankee
- Start date
Oh HELL yeah! Went there many times! I always loved being able to ski right off the mountain into town!
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
You obviously couldn't ski blue ice without shitting your pants full and wiping out.
Blue ice is here every early season, we ski it fine. In CO all conditions that can exist do. It's just better most of the time. Settling for constant blue ice is what you do when you don't know any better.
You can go down one mountain and go from powder to pack to ice all in one run. Scraping up your wax job all the time is nothing to be proud of.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
Why would you "scrape your wax job"? You should be on your edges all the time.
Unless you are bowlegged you are turning and the base of the ski will be on the ice, being proud of skiing all the time in crappy conditions is like somebody being proud of going to a bad school. There really isn't anything to be proud of. You really do need to come out here and take a trip down some real runs. Scraping off your edge and wax job isn't something you should be running over with pride about.
"Our runs suck more, and you couldn't handle that..."
Rubbish.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
You should always be turning when you're skiing, unless you're on flats. And skis shoulder width apart, which may be bowlegged for some I suppose. I always look for the crappiest snow to make hard turns, because it makes me more prepared for race events when the courses develop ruts as big as Volkswagons.
zoombwaz
Radical Moderate Populist
I've skied Purgatory and Wolf Creek, the former in a crappy season where the lower slopes were garbage, but the upper slopes were great, and the latter in a season with so much snow, the bottom chair lift began in a snowcat groomed trench. It's a little unnerving to be sitting in the lift chair and have people skiing above you. I kept waiting for someone to lose it and come crashing and/or cartwheeling through the drift fence, over the edge and into my lap. Poles first. My tripto Purgatory was with my youngest brother Pete, who is one of those sick people who does double diamonds on 205 cm XC skis (granted, they're fiberglass w/steel edges, cable bindings, and heel locators), cutting Telemark turns all the way down. He's amazing to watch, although he occasionally loses his mind and does things like mount three-pin bindings on a pair of Head competition GS skis, and take this potentially fatal combo up to Arapahoe Basin for a shake-down cruise (his reasoning being that a smaller feeder area like A Basin would significantly lower the odds of him kissing a tree. And dying. Great.) I went with him to act as his lifeguard, and near the bottom on his second barely-in-control run, i came around a curve to see him lose it completely and take a high-speed header into a snow drift.. He went in past his knees, and damn near vanished. His first words when I pulled him out of the drift with the help of a couple of the Ski Patrol (one national, one pro) were, "Jesus Christ! I was in so deep it was actually dark. I gotta get these things off before i die." At that point both Ski Patrol members suddenly had their "What's Wrong With This Picture?" moment. National said, "Holy Shit." Pro inquired after his sanity, and both told him to walk down and put his death traps away for good. He asked if he could just give them to the first Texan he saw. To their credit, they both said no, but there was a noticeable pause before they answered.
Pete went to school at Western State in Gunnison, CO (aka Wasted State and Gunny Sack, respectively), so I had a couple of trips to Crested Butte, which I loved, even the white-out halfway down the mountain my first afternoon skiing there. It was snowing and blowing like hell, and all of a sudden everything went white. Aarrgh. While I was frantically trying to recall the terrain from my first run down that slope, there was suddenly nothing under my skis. In unison, we said the last words heard on nearly every cockpit voice recorder after an airliner crashes: "Oh, shit." Immediately, we dropped out of the cloud of blowing snow, and Pete landed gracefully with a perfect Telemark to the center of the gully (goddamn showoff). In contrast, I sat down hard on the tails of my skis, but managed to bounce back up after Pete said, "you better get your ass down here with me, unless you want to wear all those skiers behind us." He didn't have to tell me twice. We spent the next 5 minutes or so watching bodies drop out of the cloud and into the gully, immediately telling them to join us toute de suite, after which Pete held up an imaginary sign and called out the scores for their landings. The more disastrous the crash, the better the score, but nothing over a 9.7 from Pete. Most of the skiers were friends of his from school, and told me he had a rep as a tough judge (WTF? They score crashes here on a regular basis? No wonder they call the place
Wasted State) After Pete gave a 9.7 to a spectacular, cartwheeling yard sale by one of his friends that drew a 10.0 from the others, the guy said, "Jesus Christ, Pete! What do I have to do to get a 10 out of you?"
"Die."
Guffaws from the crowd. Their parents must be so proud. Pete graduated cum laude. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
My best wipe-out was hitting a GS gate perfectly centered with a ski tip. The other ski and me kept going but the tail of the first came up to about 90 degrees before its binding let loose. This resulting spring energy coupled with forward kinetic energy caused it to spin in a vertical plane while passing me on our way down the fall line. It hit the flag in front of me and continued to spin until fully entangled, and I parked my ass just downhill.
zoombwaz
Radical Moderate Populist
Not fun. I learned to ski in the hills of VA, MD, and PA, and there is something to be said for the skill level attained when the definition of a black diamond is short, nearly vertical, and glare ice like Blue Knob in PA. Learning to carve your edges HARD isn't a matter of style, but survival. Both of my brothers have skied Telluride in CO, which has some of the gnarliest double diamonds in the US, and they agreed that learning to carve a turn in glare ice gives one the confidence to step off the edge on Stairstep, or The Plunge, both of which end on the main drag in Telluride, so if you crash and burn, there are plenty of witnesses. I,ve never skied a double diamond, because while both brothers spent their peak "blowing off class to play in the snow" years skiing near their schools (Wasted State for Pete, and Colorado for Steve), I went to college in Iowa (what the hell was I thinking, picking a school for academics instead of the number of nearby ski areas?)
My favorite place to ski in Colorado is Shrine Pass, which isn't a ski area but a road, which starts at the summit of Vail Pass, goes up steeply with numerous switchbacks for about three miles then gradually downhill 8.5 milesto the town of Red Cliff. This road never gets the snow plowed, and is impassable to cars by Thanksgiving most years. Then it becomes one of the best XC ski runs in CO. You leave at the crack of dawn in two cars, because you need to leave one car in Red Cliff, then pile into the other car and drive to Vail Pass Summit. The three miles up is a real grunt, because it snows too often to establish a trail, so you have to take turns breaking trail hrough knee deep snow (of course in Jan and Feb that knee deep snow is "champagne powder," but it's still skiing up a steep goddamn mountain road. Then you get to the summit of Shrine Pass and break for lunch, surrouned by 14,000 peaks. Then comes the reason you skied*up the pass: the ski down, but unlike most ski-mountaineering (aka timber bashing), you aren't skiing back down the way you came up, but have 8 1/2 miles of downhill powder skiing. There are a couple of short, hairy, steep runs about 1/4 to 1/2 mile each, which serve to remind you that carving turns on XC skis is largely a matter of telekinesis, but for the most part it's a gradual down hill slope, such that you get about an 8'-10' glide on each stride, with very little expenditure of energy. AND Red Cliff has a great bar with some of the best chili I've ever had.
Hell of a way to spend a day.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
That sounds like quite a XC run. I started into that when I lived in upstate NY, as we could ski right out the back door and across miles of rolling farmland. There was a public XC area with groomed trails about 30 minutes south of Syracuse they we used to visit. It had marked trails in green, blue and black, and a central lodge with hot chocolate and snacks. This was all tracked runs and the trail named "Kamikaze" had a fairly steep run in tracks. Not possible to do any speed control or turns to slow you down.
I've never done telemark or anything like that. I always say that I would like to try it but alpine is just too much damn fun.
I've never done telemark or anything like that. I always say that I would like to try it but alpine is just too much damn fun.
zoombwaz
Radical Moderate Populist
I never got the hang of stringing together a series of Telemark turns, either, for pretty much the same reason as you gave (now i can't do either XC or alpine skiing...bummer). Still, my brothers and I skied every weekend in CO for a few years, and spent exactly squat, since we were broke and were timber bashing for free on our skinny sticks in the national forests...lots of jumping off cornices, followed by crashing and burning on the landings, spending the night in snow caves we would dig or in igloos built by my brother Steve (who is damn good at it and fast as hell) or the ultimate, doing New Year's Eve in an old miner's hut (there were several you could XC ski up to, with working wood stoves, firewood, and plywood bunks. The rule was that anybody who showed up was welcome, since there was really no way to reserve most of the huts. Fortunately, there was a fairly limited number of people for whom this sounded like fun, and as long ss you avoided the close-in and better-known places like the Barnard Hut, you would still inevitably spend New Year's with folks you had never met before, but rarely so many that the hut would be crowded. Very cool way to see the old year out, but if you thought turning on XC skis was tough in the best of conditions, try doing it armed with a death-dealing hangover and a pack on your back. That's when you discover that when rocketing down a sun-packed southern slope into a permanently shaded northern slope on skinny sticks, there is no way in hell you can decelerate enough to avoid a vicious face-plant when you cross the line into the unpacked snow of the shaded slope and REALLY decelerate, like instantly, and it feels like God/Allah/Shiva/(insert alternate Supreme Being here) puts his hand b between your shoulder blades and jams your face into the snow, with your ski tips next to your ears.
Talk about your rude awakening.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
I used to do a lot of backpacking on foot during the spring and fall, never winter, and always in New Hampshire or western Massachusetts. My brother was seven years older and was never around, so I had to rely on friends, and you really have to know someone well to be able to pack with them.
One weekend during my college days I was invited by a high school friend- for this story I'll call him "Ralph"- and two of his buddies to go hiking in the southwest corner of Massachusetts. It was a nice hike, about 4 or 5 miles, and we had paid $2 to the Ranger at the trail head to reserve an old camp shack near the summit. We got up there around 5 pm and cleaned out the mice shit and set up camp.
About an hour later another groups walks in expecting to use the shack. There were two high school boys, two high school girls and their chaperons from a church group. Did they reserve it?- 'No". Did they have tent?- "Some." We made an agreement where the girls could stay in one section of the shack partitioned off by a tarp while the boys would cobble up a tent and stay in the woods. They were decent folk and that was that.
About 3 hours after dark we're all starting to call it a night when we hear this crashing noise down the trail followed by voices and all sorts of commotion. It's a group of about ten or so and they too are expecting to use the shack that we had reserved. These were western Massachusetts local "yahoos" with all the fixin's: Boom box powered by a car battery, axes to cut firewood, jugs of gasoline to start fires with green and wet wood, plastic tarps and clothesline rope for tents, cans of Dinty Moore, loaves of white bread, and a half keg of beer (dragged up on a hand truck) to wash it all down.
After their initial disappointment of not getting to stay in "their" shack we got along pretty well with them. They cut down trees and lit up a huge fire and set up a big camp all around it. There was of course more beer than we all could drink in a day and not that much time. I had two beers and went to sleep on a top bunk, not able to doze off due to the music and noise outside.
Ralph got himself wasted and apparently got rude on one of the girls from the local group. Her brother or boyfriend (trying to sleep at the time, I wasn't paying much attention) then apparently told him off and pushed him around. Old Ralph, being ever the coward and now drunk, went off on a string of curses on the guy and some of his friends. They all laughed at him which only accelerated his anger.
When he came into the shack later he was tossing shit around and sat/ fell down on top of one of the girls and started a big commotion. I told him to get his ass off the floor, shut the fuck up and go to bed. He came after me with a sheath knife.
I had both arms wrapped up inside the sleeping bag so I balled up and kicked my legs at him. I guess I knocked him to the ground because the other two guys from our group then got on top of him and took his knife away and dragged him to the opposite end of the shack. Needless to say I didn't sleep at all that night, Ralph and I ended our friendship and I'll never stay in a place like that again.
One weekend during my college days I was invited by a high school friend- for this story I'll call him "Ralph"- and two of his buddies to go hiking in the southwest corner of Massachusetts. It was a nice hike, about 4 or 5 miles, and we had paid $2 to the Ranger at the trail head to reserve an old camp shack near the summit. We got up there around 5 pm and cleaned out the mice shit and set up camp.
About an hour later another groups walks in expecting to use the shack. There were two high school boys, two high school girls and their chaperons from a church group. Did they reserve it?- 'No". Did they have tent?- "Some." We made an agreement where the girls could stay in one section of the shack partitioned off by a tarp while the boys would cobble up a tent and stay in the woods. They were decent folk and that was that.
About 3 hours after dark we're all starting to call it a night when we hear this crashing noise down the trail followed by voices and all sorts of commotion. It's a group of about ten or so and they too are expecting to use the shack that we had reserved. These were western Massachusetts local "yahoos" with all the fixin's: Boom box powered by a car battery, axes to cut firewood, jugs of gasoline to start fires with green and wet wood, plastic tarps and clothesline rope for tents, cans of Dinty Moore, loaves of white bread, and a half keg of beer (dragged up on a hand truck) to wash it all down.
After their initial disappointment of not getting to stay in "their" shack we got along pretty well with them. They cut down trees and lit up a huge fire and set up a big camp all around it. There was of course more beer than we all could drink in a day and not that much time. I had two beers and went to sleep on a top bunk, not able to doze off due to the music and noise outside.
Ralph got himself wasted and apparently got rude on one of the girls from the local group. Her brother or boyfriend (trying to sleep at the time, I wasn't paying much attention) then apparently told him off and pushed him around. Old Ralph, being ever the coward and now drunk, went off on a string of curses on the guy and some of his friends. They all laughed at him which only accelerated his anger.
When he came into the shack later he was tossing shit around and sat/ fell down on top of one of the girls and started a big commotion. I told him to get his ass off the floor, shut the fuck up and go to bed. He came after me with a sheath knife.
I had both arms wrapped up inside the sleeping bag so I balled up and kicked my legs at him. I guess I knocked him to the ground because the other two guys from our group then got on top of him and took his knife away and dragged him to the opposite end of the shack. Needless to say I didn't sleep at all that night, Ralph and I ended our friendship and I'll never stay in a place like that again.
zoombwaz
Radical Moderate Populist
Holy shit. The worst I had to endure at one of our new years eve bashes, was an idiot who insisted he could cook a "gourmet meal" starting with freeze-dried food. He was quickly and soundly voted down by the assembled multitude, most of whom were seasoned "Downward Bound" veterans (not to be confused with Outward Bound). "Downward Bound" was an informal group founded in protest of the insufferable geeks of the "ultralight backpacking" persuasion, who used tissue-paper-thin packs, and would go as far as sawing the handle off a toothbrush to save a half-ounce of weight, and then boast about how little their load weighed. By contrast, we all used Expedition packs from Lowe Mountaineering, which were made of Cordura nylon (waterproof and virtually indestructible). Also weighed more empty than the ultralighter's packs fully loaded. And held twice as much, triple if you used the large detachable side pockets which were held in place by the load control straps. The beauty of the Lowe Expedition pack was its suspension system and its internal frame (actually two heavy aluminum stays that you carefully bent and curved to accomodate your height and build.
Now to the important shit: the typical Downward Bound expedition. It always involved rallying at the trailhead Friday evening after work, always involved backpacking in the dark, and usually started taking what little organizational form it ever achieved on Wednesday afternoon, where any member called any other, suggested a trail head, and a brief discussion was launched as to whether there was a) sufficient water at the top (ie, a lake) to warrant packing in the two inflatable boats for the traditional Saturday and Sunday morning "yacht races" (always), and b) would I be going or, more accurately, would my black lab, Jason, be in attendance. Jason was the biggest damn lab I have ever seen...160 lbs of solid muscle, a significant portion of which was located between his ears...and his own Cordura saddlebags, which I had sewn from a kit, then added a kid's daypack/bookbag on the web that went across his back. When Jason joined the expeditions, we were able to relieve the two boat packers and the guy carrying the two cases of beer (aluminum cans only) of the weight of some of their other equipment by spreading it around to the other expedition members, including Jason (especially Jason), making sure nothing edible went into his saddlebags (duh). I carried his dog food in the bottom of my pack, along with the frozen New York strips for Saturday morning's steak and eggs breakfast, which pretty much guaranteed the location of his nose throughout the hike, and where the nose is, the rest of the lab can't be far behind. The smell of steaks on an open fire in the morning is a great way to wake up any ultralighters nearby to the reality that their freeze-dried rations are crap. After a bracing breakfast of steaks, eggs, and hash browns (three guesses who carried the cast iron skillets), followed by yacht races, followed by boot-skiing down a glacier or snow field if one was available (but of course) {note: boot-skiing is a misnomer. The sport actually requires an old pair of Converse Chuck Taylor high tops with litle or no tread left, slung around your neck by the laces, while you hike up in your boots. At the top of the glacier, the boots and high tops are switched, and you step off onto the face of the glacier/snow field and slide down on your worn high tops, which, in the tradition of using French terms (why?) in describing mountaineering techniques and equipment, we called a flouffe, while falling on your ass and finishing the descent thusly was a rumpage, pronounced flue-fay and rum-pahj, respectively. But I digress.} After the morning and early afternoon's exertions, it's time to round up some long, straight sticks, lash them together at the top in classic teepee style, wrap the frame with ponchos and ground cloths, bake some rocks in a fire, push the hot rocks into the teepee with a forked stick, crawl naked into the sweat lodge (Downward Bound is co-ed, btw. Leave your modesty at the trail head) and start pouring water on the rocks. After you've had a good cleansing sweat, you run out of the lodge and jump in the glacier-fed lake. Yes, the water is freaking COLD, but your skin is so superheated, it feels refreshing until the cold penetrates to your nerve endings...about 5 seconds...at which point you make a noise like the pod people in the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (which has the added entertainment value of scaring the shit out of any other campers within earshot), jump up and walk across the surface of the lake to the shore, your skin tingling (and clean, without soap).
Repeat as necessary Sunday. Backpack out. My kind of fun.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
I venture more towards the ultra-light, although you won't find any drill holes on my toothbrush. And my pack is an Osprey Aether 75, rugged yet tending towards light. I also use a lot of freeze dried eggs and vegetables, but draw the line at dried meat, tending towards country ham and foil packets of tuna and salmon. Pasta is always a staple. My cookware is thin stainless that I've had for decades and I traded in my 8# Coleman single burner for an 8 oz MSR years ago.
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No freeze dried ice cream? It is the best!