The light's on in the hall

 My alarm went off at 6.  I know, cos I heard it from the kitchen where I was making breakfast and watching the neighbour's garage burn down.  I don't really remember the neighbours all that much, but I'm pretty sure there was a minivan in the driveway.  It was chilly for April, at least if you consider how folks talk about April.  Never mind that April in the PNW is always a seesaw of warm and cool, of cloud and sun, dominated by convective clouds in between breaks of sun that are equal in intensity to late August, with the midlatitude synoptic flow still heavily influenced by Arctic high pressure.

I lived in a little studio in Stadium, North Tacoma.  A seesaw of wealth and poverty, much like the April weather.  The neighbours were probly on my level, gettin by, but with a coupla kids, higher input and higher output.  The father was a blue collar dude, who looked like all of his earnings were in the house, while the mother seemed to always be playing catch-up with the kids.  A normal family, then.  I never heard them argue or anything, never really noticed anything amiss, and while there's no way I was as devastated for them as they were for themselves when the garage burnt, I could feel their pain in the heat coming off the fire.  Once the fire was out and a few days had passed, they started slowly cleaning up, and by the next April when I moved out of that tiny brick box across North 6th from them, they seemed to have rebuilt and moved on with their lives.

That neighbourhood has changed some since then.  Their house looks clean and remodeled, with a late model Grand Cherokee parked in front of a small but tidy garage.  The old brick Red Maple building I lived in is still there, looking clean and fresh as well.

Whitebark, subalpine, Englemann, and one big mountain.  Tahoma looking all Tahoma-y, from the top of the King.  Lenticular starting to form in the lee Aliens coming in for a landing from the east.  Awesome show, great job.

That morning, after the fire trucks came and I got packed, I headed across town and grabbed my buddy Karl from his and Kari's house near the shop.  The town was quiet that early.  It was Easter, '006, broken clouds thinning as a transient ridge passed through.  Tiana was reporting sixteen new.  For those who've forgot, somehow, this is back when the first thing a lot of us did after our urgent morning constitutionals was pick up the landline and call the snowphone.  I didn't even have a cell phone then.  I can't remember her voice on that particular day, but I heard it so many times over the years before snow reports were fully on the local internet, and while checking in her yearly ski mounts and tunes, and even a little from school where I was a year behind her all the way from kindergarten on, that I can still reconstruct how excited she would have tried to sound.

I still had my '87 Cherokee, then.  It was an auto, but with a manual transfer case.  Pa had snuck on some really nice tyres for my birthday a couple years prior, which still had good grip.  My Rocket Box on the luggage rack that was definitely not load-rated would bounce off the roof between 70 and 75, so I mostly kept it to more moderate speeds.  That morning drive was uneventful, mostly dry until Greenwater and tacky the rest of the way up.  When we hit A Lot an hour early and still were almost at the back, I realised most of The Sound had also heard Tiana's mildly-forced excitement in comparison to all the other joints who'd been skipped by whatever fickle flow pattern had hammered Crystal overnight, and made their own morning trundles up the White.

Okay, maybe it didn't look like this.  Speaking of Tiana.  She and Mr Tiana bought this'n offa Louie and Diane Gebenininininini (I think that's how they spell it) a few years ago.  I wish I'd had the capital when it was on the market.  I coulda been a contender.

Karl was--and hopefully still is, now in his 40s--a fit kid and a ridiculously good bike handler.  While riding trail out in Bonney Lake one time, a typically rainy PNW day, he saw what I remember to be a five foot cedar stump from back in the springboard days.  Massive, rotting, but still with good bones after 80 or so years, springboard notches intact.  He was riding his even-then-old mid-90s Kona Hot, a rigid steel hardtail with v-brakes and outdated drivetrain.  He kinda mumbled something about thinking he could, and then just rode up and over the dern thing.  Even he got excited when he stuck the landing and rode away, stoic Boston kid he wanted us all to think he was.  (I think I got a taste of what he felt when I rode over my own stump out at Lake Sawyer a couple years later, only it was like a foot and a half tall.  Still, I'll take a W whenever I can.)

Whenever we rode together, he'd take off, do whatever it was people who are actually good at mountain bikes do, and wait at a trail intersection until I showed up, then take off again.  He wasn't particularly mean to me about our experiential and technical proficiency differences, he just didn't wait for me to catch my breath.  When I saw the crowd, I realised that that day was my only chance at some sort of payback.  I may not have mentioned this, though.

If you know, you know.  And you probly feel smug about it.  Or at least I did.

Karl was almost as good on the snowboard as the mountain bike.  I, however, knew the ridgleine traverses and tele'd them all twice a week or more at a real high tempo.  I knew the not-very-local crowd would lap up the inbounds snow first and that our only hope for unskied snow would be laps off the King and the Beach and Boxcar and the Exit Chutes.  And then, only if patrol could get South open right away.  I don't know if I ever even said anything to Karl other than "South is the only place to ski today."  Patrol was on it, and they dropped the ropes right at opening.

I'd take off ahead, doing whatever it is really experienced Crystal telewhackers do to cover as much traverse and bootpack ground as possible.  Wait at gates and trail junctions, never long enough for Karl to catch his breath.  Sprint on to the next spot.  Most folks struggle to finish a South lap in an hour.  I was cooked by the time we dropped into the Exit Chute at 4 o'clock on our eighth lap in under six hours.  Karl was worse off, since he had to posthole in his snowboard boots when I could glide easily on skis with free heels.  (Nordic gear and long-track speed skates have a free heel for this same efficiency.)  Each run was good, staying cold even in the angry April sun.  Boot top, sometimes more, snow I was blasé about then and barely even see now, in this arid almost-desert.

It doesn't hurt that tele boots were lighter than any alpine boot back in the day.  And that I knew I could sprint up to the False Summit cos it wasn't long enough to burn my lungs.  Sorry, not sorry, Karl.

I don't really remember the turns in each run, just one long, raucous day.  We'd sprint hard, make some glorious turns, tuck hard and skate as fast as we could back to civilisation, hit 9 and 6, and do it again.  Last Run was (somehow) first tracks down the Exit Chute, Threeway Peak dark and intimidating over our shoulders.  There were some patrollers at the Party Knoll already, a tapped and rapidly emptying keg poking out of the snow.  Stina was there as well, looking a little out of place without her normal posse. We had a slow beer, looking up at Threeway and that iconic gut no one outside the Silver Creek drainage has even dreamt of, let alone heard of or seen.  A skier, John from Christiaan's old shop, poked into the gut from the east shoulder, and ripped the shit out of it.  G.N.A.R. points for weeks, I'd say.  When he slid to a stop at the keg, one of the more itinerant patrollers I didn't know spoke up, clearly baffled.  "There's barely room for a turn in there, John!" John laughed and shook his 1992 Eddie Vedder hair.  "That's why they call it Two Easy Turns!"

Okay, so you gots to make three turns.  The name still stands.  If you're wondering, no I haven't.  I did totally get the shoulder twice, though.  Lookers' left of the summit, skirting the drops but still turning for directional purposes only, both in this condition.  A little wind-consolidated, a lot rad.  The second was Amy's and my pre-first-date date.  Not quite as gripping, but dag.  Them shits is right.

Memory always cuts in and out.  I am no different from anyone in this.  Karl and I hung aboot, languishing and getting cold, chatting with Stina and feeling that Closing Day melancholy.  One beer and I was tipsy.  The sun-effected snow was glazing over, and Triple F* was more like FSF.  Sketch-eee.  The beer didn't help, and I realised right there that I didn't need to beer and ski.  Still don't.  We got through, probly stumbled across the airfield on foot, and then, the memory just ends.  We made it to town, for sure, cos I'm still here and Karl was last I knew.  I don't remember skiing out under Chair 4, or kicking the boots off in A Lot.  I know I probly threw the skis and board in the Rocket Box, and I know for sure we got up over that little knoll at the end of the airfield, the one that Sam always groomed a peak into so you could skate up it quicker.  I'm sure we just up and went to work the next day like nothing happened.

See, what's funny is, if you lived under a rock in 1992, is that Eddie was on a major label, and was not on SubPop, for which this shirt is an advert.  That's what they call irony, young 'uns.  Eddie was probly makin enough cheddar flow to pay Megan Jasper her current (2025) C-Suite salary to come up with more fake slang for the NYT to print as gospel and not notice the missing sums.  I mean, that's at least what I imagine Epic Records was paying.  Who knows.  All I know is Ten still slaps, as the kids are saying, and there's still a Gossard Street in Enumclaw, and I still ski like I did in '92, in flannel whenever I can cos if you see me and don't think "that cat's definitely from the Cascades and he definitely was in bands in post-grunge Seattle and he definitely learnted to tele at Baker" then I'm failing and also I still don't get Nirvana.  Actually, now that I think about it, the live album with all the country songs was pretty decent.

-

Title from Bob McDill and Dickie Lee's classic, The Door is Always Open.  Waylon done did it damn good, and Jamey Johnson may have done it even better, should that actually be possible.

* Triple F has a compatriot on the other side of the King, the exit from A Basin, called Damn Fine Forest.  You get it.

I don't wanna be in a box

The latest I have skied is 9 July, and the earliest is 31 August.  I am not a TAY guy.  I am not hard core, as some of my peers who are now olds used to say.  I do, however, enjoy skiing in a t-shirt.

You can't see here but I was wearing a responsibly UV-combatting flannel shirt, which is actually my favourite ski wear.  T-shirts are nice, though, too, also.  This is that 31 August.  Timberline, OR.

The first song on School of Fish' sophomore slump record, Human Cannonball, is a ripper.  Starts off with all the requisite 1993-vintage distortion, hard driving guitar licks, non-sensical lyrics that still kinda make sense in that way where nerdy high school juniors are all like HE TOTALLY GETS ME MOM YOU WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND.  The first line even makes sense.  "I don't wanna be / in a box until I'm gone."  None of us do.

Let's back up a little.  I was only 11 when that record came out, winter of sixth grade.  My older brother was, as these things go, older than me, 16 that February when the CDs in their incredibly wasteful anti-theft cases hit the shelves.  I think it did alright, sales and chart-wise, if that ever mattered.  It hit right at just the right time.  '93 was pretty good for music, at least the stuff I've been into.  Even the Man in the Moon is Crying, Mark Collie's one hit, was all over the country's country stations.  Radiohead hit the airwaves with Creep, their "cover" of The Hollies' All I Ever Breathe is Your Farts, or whatever, I can't remember.  I just know they got sued for using an identical-ish chord progression and then later, whether as a joke or out of supreme tone-deafness, sued another artist for the exact same reason.  Like, not a different song, the same exact one.  At any rate, that record, Pablo Honey, had some actual good songs for its day, though I'll admit it didn't stand up to time like their next few releases did.  Siamese Dream, that incredibly uneven, but at times absolutely brilliant sophomore effort from Jimmy Corgan Billy Strings Smashing Pumpkins (sorry, I'm getting old, I don't remember so good) came out in the summer, 27 July according to a popular not-for-profit web-based encyclopœdia.

I forgot where I was headed.  My brother, as these things go, who is waaaaaaaaayyyyy older than me, I mean damn near 50 now, the old man.  Sheesh.  At any rate, back then, as these things also go, too, as well, I learned music from other folks.  Some gospel from Ma, country from Pa, and the hipness of the moment from J-O.  I'm not an essentially curious person, at least not in the sense of seeking out something unknown completely blind.  Once I'm on a road, I tend to keep pedaling, though.  My tastes, then, were for a few years headed decidedly down the grunge-then-alt-rock road.

Skip a few tracks forward, it's 1999 and I've got a new stereo deck in the Tercel.  If it sounds sporty, well, with the right attitude, anything can be.  It was a little hatchback from '81, bug-eye back window, off-orange paint, 1.4L engine, 5 speed, and all.  I know that the top speed was 74 mph cos I hit it often enough to get a real expensive ticket for doing 74 in a 40.  The cop reduced it to 70, telling me he was giving me a break.  All these years later, I know he was, cos at the time more than 30 over the limit came with a few automatic things, not the least of which was an immediate suspension of driving privileges.  I paid, incrementally, quite a lot after State Farm booted me from my parents' insurance a few months later after my third ticket in the poor little orange gremlin.  (Not THAT Gremlin.)  The $240 a month for bare minimum coverage in '99 dollars kinda quite a lot.

This gremlin.  Well, not this one, but mine.  In orange.  And, seemingly disappointing my uncle Stan, not the SR5 package.  Toren Carter has one, though, mint.  SR5, I mean.  In this colour, or just a little darker.  It'd bug me if Toren wasn't a good dude, but he is and I'm just jealous.

Anyway, I'd push that flashy disc into the deck, turn it up, reach over and roll the other window down, try not to drive off the highway headin up from Cayuse Pass as I was doing so, and maybe hit the gas just a little.  It was a big winter, the biggest in memory by some measures, and there was just so damn much snow still on the ground in late June and into July.  I'd love to weave some tale about the quality of corn snow that day, or how I pioneered a line on the west face of Naches Peak, but really, I don't remember.  I just have the polaroid of a moment.  Just the start of the song, the car, my black Dynastars in back, the windows down, and the view down Chinook Creek to the Ohanopecosh.

Nobody will argue with me when I say that memory is fickle.  I am adamant that summer skiing is the best skiing, and that in the last 14 years of making almost no summer turns at all, I have lost a little bit of myself.  I don't honestly remember many of the actual days, though.  I know they happened.  I keep records and looking back, there are probly a hundred days over the years.  Actually, probly more than a hundred.  I got about 50 days in just the springs and summers of '001 and '002.  I skied at least once a week--usually 5 or 6 days--from Veterans' Day of '007 through the 4th of July of '008.  And yet, despite all this, I don't know, hubris, very few turns stick out.  That is exactly what I want.  Folks talk about skiing like it's a vacation activity, and it just isn't.  It's vocation.  Personality.  I know there are more important things.  I know I'm not bringing anything new to the table.  It's just, I want skiing to be mundane because I can't take it or leave it.  It isn't need, addiction, any other cliché you want to level at me.  It's just, I don't know, 

This.

I went through a phase in '008 where I really dug pita pocket sandos with spinach and hummus and a hunka sharp cheddar.  Easy on the stomach, lotta protein, some interesting textures, simple to pack for the day.  I had one with a warm Guinness Catherine had forgot to chill after a big June day in the Tatoosh.  At the base of the Fryingpan Glacier after I finally calmed my stomach down and worked the cramps out of my hamstrings, before four of the lowest turn-to-skinning-mile-ratio turns I've ever made.  I had one on the side of Naches on Saturday the 14th of June.  I know it was the 14th cos it was the day after I sliced a two-inch chunk of left forearm misleveraging (like, actual leverage, the mechanical kind, not business jargon) a stuck pedal and taking a dirty and wore-out big ring 4, 5 mm into the subdermis.  Still have the scar, too.  I wish I had pictures.  Fun stuff.  I just hosed it out with alternating dish soap and hot water and alcohol.  I don't even remember it hurting, but there's that pesky memory again.  It probly really did.

The last turns I made that summer were on Silver Peak, just west of Hyak.  We could barely see our feet for the 4th of July June Gloom.  Watermelon algae in sun cupped snow, the sort ya gotta just kinda get on up in there and ski.  Glide like you was born to.  We were with some cat named Penxa and the snow reporter from the Summit, Catherine and I.  I remember the turns were challenging, more than most summer days.  I also remember that I made them as I always do, a left after a right, right on up until the bottom.  Penxa was pissed, strangely even at me.  He couldn't ski for shit, and complained about the viz, the conditions, the mist, the drizzle, meanwhile I just made good tele turns, one after the other.  If you could see my face, it's a rictus of smugness, even seventeen years later.  I won't lie about this.  I absolutely love being the untrained person in a group that gets it more than the ones with schooling or coaching or training.  I taught myself to tele by watching folks who got it.  Stina, GC, Kenny Tataku, and a few others, in the winter of '000.  John Adams at Baker the next couple years.  No classes, no coaching, just boot up and go.

And this.

1993 had some truly big hit single songs.  I mean, that one Naughty by Nature song, the one from Duran Duran that sounds like they listened to The Cure's Disintegration over and over and over again but didn't really get it, heck, 2Pac even had an album on the shelves.  Keep Ya Head Up was startlingly prophetic, along the lines of The Message from way back in the day, and stands up like few songs can.  There was, maybe poetically, maybe just coincidentally, that one "hip-hop" performer named Snow, who had the ridiculous and ridiculously popular hit, Informer, that holds up as well as flushed toilet paper.  The Cranberries' Everybody Else is Doing it So Why Can't We?' came out on the 1st of March that year, a few weeks before Depeche Mode's Songs of Faith and Devotion.  SoFaD didn't go as big as some of their other records, but it was mature and dark and moody and accessible all at once and it still sounds good to this day.  I also might be forgetting one or two of those Seattle bands that were so big back then, I don't know.

1993 was also sixth grade for me.  I don't remember doing any summer skiing.  In point of fact, the last day I remember was Crystal's Employee Ski Day, and if yer wondering, no, I did not work there then.  I was 11, turning 12 that summer.  Baseball was still number one for me.  Aram and I were skiing Sunday afternoon, the last day of spring break, and had a parallel realisation that we were not individually prepared to turn in our Spring Break Paper the next morning, and yes, it was largely cos neither of us had yet written a single word.  We did what any self-respecting ski bum would do and convinced our respective parents--not hard on either account, especially when you consider neither of us told about the papers we hadn't written--to let us borrow some guest passes and headed on up.  Aram's ma, Holly, was a liftie on the weekends.  Both of my brothers and also my pa worked in the base area, so we had access to four passes.  The weather was questionable, but it never really rained.  The snow was gooshy mid-April, something that may have imbedded in my preferences.  Closing day is always best if the weather's a little bit moody and the snow a bit sloppy.

I know we turned in our papers, and that whatever grades we got were good enough.  I don't remember Mindy the Teacher getting mad at us.  For the rest of the year I felt a little smug, like I'd gotten one over on the system.  

If this had been 4 weeks earlier, I coulda skied that one triple-fall-line shot dead centre on the ridge like I did back when I was all young and virile and could still tele like I was the Hindenberg but it wasn't and I'm not and I can't but hey here's some Abies lasiocarpa for your consideration thank you there's probly another conifer or three as well okay now it's bed time

As I said, it's been a while since I've done any peeople-powered summer skiing, and I don't feel right about it.  I really just want to take the spring off one year and ski into July.  Park the RV I don't have at Morse Creek, wear flannel, hide out, look up at the stars at night, and wonder if bears really are Catholic or if the pope really does like to eat pizza in the woods.  If you've got any cash money you wanna donate to the cause, write me at Help Enore Pretend It's 1993 Again but He's Not a Kid; Not Really the North End, Boy-Cee, Not Really the PNW but Kinda, 837 I forget the rest.

Gratuitous photo of Tahoma from above Lower Tipsoo Lake with some lovely conifers you can probly smell now you're welcome thanks for listening.

-

I done did explain the title already but if you must have a recap it's the opening line from School of Fish's 1993 record Human Cannonball off the song "Complicator".

- - 

Oh, and if you must know, it was 1 turn per 2 miles skinned.  I checked.  Uff da.

Straight from the factory

I've been skiing on the Rossignol Groupe's Rossignol Bandits XXX with VAS and Dualtec Integral and Bumper Tips for the 23 years and I can give you now a long-time review of the skiing it.  Please believe me saying it is the skis.  I have many times.  Liking the skis.  Down there in the creek, thinking of the birbs of prey that are hunter.  Have you seen the moon?  It is like the skiing.  You enjoy it.

Subtle foreshadowing.  Chair 6, Bogus Basin, East Cascadia, South Canada.

This ski is the rad.  Much stable in the turning.  Dualtec Integral for the precision and glide.  The tip is for anti-vibrating also like the VAS that Rossignol Skis has been designing from start.  VAS is technique for calling it Vibration Absorption System.  It is the red if you are looking at the sidewalls but also maybe the shape of the ski.

When I have been turning, it is long.  This ski is fastest when pointed but also it is still fast in turns.  The turning radius is 29 metre in the 1.95 metre length that skiing is for me.  This is helpful when I am going to the fast.  The New School telling me it is for slashing but I don't know slashing I am only going smooth and rapid.  I am turbo.  Thanks for asking.

Testing the Rossignol Bandit XXX 2002 with the VAS from Rossignol Groupe FR and Dualtec Integral.

Have you seen when the pine martens are hunting?  That is the 2002 Rossignol Bandit XXX with VAS.  The ski is made up of multiple layer of things like woods and metals.  It also has rubber, maybe it ate flax for dinner too.  When long it is fast but if you are more vacationing then they do also go rapid but you can shorter.  Shorter is still strong like Serge Nubret.  As is longer.  It is just that the turning.

Have you seen when the eagle-owl?  Bubo bubo is the hunter and the piste is the hunted.  Rossignol Bandit XXX with the VAS and with DULTEC Integrals can make you Bubo.  The Eagle-Owl like a falcon but instead bigger stronger hungrier for more more.  Set the ski on edge and the shin to the cuff and you will be like me, the turbo.  I am Bubo.  I make the rodents fear.

Must hydrate-ing.  After Skiing.

The eagle-owl can be old sometimes.  This is advantaging the smarts.  Bubo knows where to turn and how to slice the air.  Bubo knows just what to eat for dinner.  Rossignol Bandit XXX with VAS and Dualtec Integral, exceptionally in the 1.95 metre length, can eat the table.  Do you like coffee? Bubo will make it for you but you better be on ready because the slice and the punch.  Lookout rodents.

When are the Rossignol Bandit XXX with Bubo coming to town? Sadly, I do not.  Rossignol Groupe is no longer making since 2003 when the B series.  The B series was different skiing and more like a harrier who could do.  If you are looking to, I will suggesting find the Rossignol Arcade 94 with Yellow and Purple and Central Vertical Power Rail and AIR TIP is the new Bubo but hopefully not the cousin Jerry because I saw Jerry out in his yard mowing his lawns and Jerry is not Serge so hopefully the new Rossignol Arcade 94 In Yellow and Purple With Central Vertical Power Rail and AIR TIP is not this Jerry but is slicing the piste and trails like you've never seen.

In summary the skiing is better on Rossignol Groupe's Rossignol 2002 Bandit XXX with Dualtec VAS INTEGRATED and Salomon 916 binding set for slicing the piste and dicing the wild.  Snow is like life except we don't get to reappear.  When you are turn, the ski is.  When you are slide, the ski makes.  Have the life, fun all the ways.  Don't change the music, but it is turned up.  You too, please.  If you bend the ski it is fast.  If you skid, it is like the hockey goalie.  Freeride, happiness, goal-oriented.  Living.  Be the owl that looks like danger.  Rodents run and hide.  XXX is here for best.

The Rossignol Groupe Rossignol Bandit XXX 2002 with Integral Vibrations Dualtec Integrations System for The Farm Of Turns coming in for the hunt and dinners.

The important information that needs:

Skier is 120 kilos, 178 cms.  Type III+ skier type.  Yeah, I'm pretty good.  Boot sole length is 305 when the skiing Tecnica Cocheesy 130 MV and heavy bindings.  Ski was purchased from Andrew the Ski Patroller with G3 Targa Telemark Binding and skied for 2 years in such the way.  That was when skier was 20 years old in 2002 from Jackson Hole but at Mt Baker Ski Area by Duncan "Get Off My Mountain I Am DUNCAN" Howat.  It was then the Salomon 914 in aubergine colourway.  That binding is no longer with us.  There is a different one in the archery but it isn't the same different one and it's on a K2 Recon from '008.  The new binding is from 2009 and is the called Salomon 916 Lab Heavy AF binding.  This came on a race ski it wasn't supposed to.

Realistic portrait of the author and tester "Enore 'Fino' Hocm" in his younger days with more hair and stronger arms.

-

Eino has the skiing for a long of his life.  Many turns.  He has the boots also tested.  Sometimes he is not skiing he likes the long walks and beaches and also birbs are nice.  You can find him Bogus Basin sometimes but if it is then not then maybe Soldier Mountain Idaho with the 2 Swiss chairlifts that are called Städeli.  They are maybe relics of a finer time when the money wasn't only.  Please wear a sweater.  Eino has been called Best Skier On The Mountain by some.  Rodents fear.  Eino is like Bubo but he is also like the teddy bear.  One time he borrowed the amp from the Portland (eww) Oregon Hipster Collective The Decemberists with Jenny Conlee. 

Title for this piece is from Clint Black's debut Record " Killing Time " as it is the first name of the first song on that record.  When you listen it is like a falcon is singing above the cirque you are skiing.  Slice the pistes and glide the trees.

Don't believe the hype

Okay.  I don't do rap, mostly.  I won't rank songs or artists or eras cos I don't really care about the entire discipline, even though I and my generation are wont to do so.  I don't have the knowledge or depth of listening.  I will, however, state confidently that Public Enemy is better than some rap and hiphop artists.  I also dig that one Grandmaster Flash song from back about the time I was born.

Clout goggs for the win. Flav would go.

Alta, that one** place in Utah that doesn't allow snowboarding, has some good terrains.  They claim a lot of snow each season, too, although I'm not sure I believe them.  Or anyone, really, unless their totals have been certified by NOAA.  Even in the modern era of web-based snowfall-stake cameras, there is always an asterisk, something like "official totals taken in a special secret bunker location located secretly somewhere on the hill or maybe not so if you see an obvious discrepancy it's tooooootally not our fault you just don't know the whole story," and then 4" on the webcam is 6" on the report, just like it was before webcams when Herb would tell Denny 3", Denny would figure it'd snow another 3 before opening and tell Duncan 6, and Duncan would Duncan and report 12".  Meanwhile, it'd stopped snowing before Herb could get back in the loader after calling Denny and brewing some more coffee.

At any rate, "Alta is for skiers".  That's one of their taglines.  In truth, they can have it.  I just don't get it.  I remember a day back in April of '96, Pa and I were down there on the way back from a band trip in Breckenridge, See-Oh.  (Speaking of overrated.)  We'd skied A-Basin, Keystone, Vail, and were in SLC for a bit before flying home to the Wet Side.  It'd snowed, probly ten or twelve, and it was a bit thicker than what Lee Cohen always shows in them hash-tag Award Winning Photographs.  Pa and I ripped the shit outa that place.  Seriously.  It's one of the best days I can remember.  Patrol opened some line they then called Glory Hole, which I can't find on the map today, for whatever reason.  (Maybe more on that in a later episode?)  2 in the afternoon, Utah sun still not punishing the snow, first tracks on the skinny skis, it definitely doesn't get any better.

In the lodge, though, one couldn't escape the attitude.  "It's heavy, today." "Fkn Sierra Cement." "What is this shit?!"  The locals, or at least the grumpy dudes who wanted you to think they were locals, were not only looking the various gift horses squarely in their respective mouths, they had out the measuring tapes and were disputing whose hands should be used to measure the beasts.  It was probly mid-20s in the morning, warming slightly to around 30 Freedom Degrees by closing, never really damaging the snow.  Comfortable, good viz, deep, supportive snow, and these clowns were complaining before going home empty handed.

Alta is for traversers.

Fast forward a few decades, Amy and I are in line at the bottom of Collins, waiting our turn on another April deep day.  (Shoulda skied Wildcat, but I didn't know that then.)  Collins is now a detach quad, and as such there's always some shuffling about in line trying to maximise uphill capacity.  A couple dudes next to us, who apparently "weren't from here" or something, asked the two dudes next to them if they could join and make a quad.  The local--he absolutely would not let you forget--spat "that's not how we DO things here," and continued shuffling unfriendly-like up to the ticket checker.  I've skied at around 4 dozen joints, and not a one of em cares if you make up a full chair group ahead of time when the line's long, so long as you don't leave empty spaces once you actually load.  But at Al-tuh not Awl-tuh, we do things just a little different.

Conincidentally, about 6, maybe 8 turns below the top of Collins, I lost my edge on a rock and slid real hard over my pole with my hip and bruised my entire iliotibial band from fibula to iliac crest.  Couldn't bear weight, and had to get a ride down.  Couldn't test ride bikes at work for three weeks.  The patroller was efficient, and in no time we got to the bottom, where he unceremoniously said "This is where you get of bwah, I'm goin back to Alabam."  (I mean, I heard David Allan Coe, anyway.  Maybe he didn't actually say it like that.)  Turns out Alta doesn't staff an aid room with your ticket money.  Some other entity does, and wouldn't you know, they charge you for the attention.  Really, I just needed ice, so Amy got a trash bag full of snow and I sat glumly in one of the bars slopeside while she went and got all schreddy on Wildcat.

Lee Cohen, gettin the shot.  Hash tag award winnin'.

Snowboarding can trace its roots to surfing, I think.  At least, the original 60s era product that is the first recognisable thing related to a snowboard was called a Snurfer.  (I hate portmanteaux, almost as much as I hate Al-ta.)  It's kinda silly, really, this snowboarding.  Everything is asymmetrical, moving through any sort of terrain where gravity isn't the prime mover is basically impossible, and (important for our modern overcrowded slopes) you have a massive blindside on every single heel-side turn.  If you live somewhere, say, Alta, where all the goods are accessed by long traverses with a lot of uphill, you limit yourself to just easy-access spots or Joey-traverse your way into the lines halfway down, ruining those lines for those of us willing to work to get to the top.  Moving through the line at the bottom of the lift is a joke, stepping on your neighbours' skis and generally getting in the way.

Mecca, allegedly. Hash tag number one.

Speaking of listicles, I recently ran into an article while perusing the internet on my morning constitutional.  17 Not So Obvious Bucket List Experiences for Skiers and Snowborders in the U.S., missing hyphens theirs.  In addition to being conceptually incorrect, in that everything on the list has been done to death in a million ski rags since the dawn of ski rags, multiple "experiences" on the list aren't even available to snowboarders at all, number one in particular.  Mad River Glen, Ski It If You Can, as the sticker goes.  Or as the Burton (I think) Snowboards sticker goes, Ride It If We Could.  Set aside for a moment, your judgment of whether or not the Back Bowls at Vail are actually bucket-listable*, or if they're "not so obvious".  The fact that snowboarders can't access some of these things on snowboards is interesting, to say the least.

This argument, to allow snowboards or not, is settled science at {does some internetting and coffee-break maths} 99.4% of the ski areas in the good ol' US of A.  The simple answer is "d'uh".  For some joints, there was some holding out.  For others, say, the number 5 "not so obvious" bucket list joint, nestled up there in Whatcom County, WA, South Canada, between Shuksan and Kulshan, from where one can spend an afternoon working the top of 5 gazing longingly at American and Canadian Border Peaks, and Tomyhoi, and Goat, and Yellow Aster, and the list goes on, the answer was an emphatic "yes", print my money now thanks.  

The Godfather, Craig Kelly, working hard to prove me wrong.

Craig Kelly grew up in Skagit County, WA, that land of extremes.  Spires of accreted sea floor rip foot after feet of water out of the clouds every wet season, supporting vast forests of Abies and Tsuga and Pseudotsuga and, in the slide paths, Alnus and other first succession species.  The Skagit River drains under 2,600 square miles and starts up in the far northern reaches of the Cascades, in Canada.  Yeah, it just crosses that wild frontier like nobody's watching.  Build a wall, there, CheeToh.  On a big flow day, it'll move about 45,000 cubic feet per second out into Skagit Bay.  On a really big day, we're looking at 80-100 grand.  The Boise River, our local stream, looks like a creek in comparison.  The Boise serves a big portion of south-central Idaho, over 4,000 square miles, draining in its course many peaks exceeding 10 grand in elevation.  High spring melt-off flows, the ones that get Eagle Island residents running to their attorneys to sue the Bureau of Reclamation, rarely exceed 7,000 cfs. Less than 10 percent of a big Skagit day out of a drainage something like 50-some-odd percents bigger.

The peaks above the Skagit Valley, the really big ones like Eldorado and Terror and Shuksan and Jack, either barely climb above 9 grand or don't at all, and yet they hold glaciers.  Snowfall, as they say when attempting hyperbole without any sort of creativity, is measured in cords and fetlocks and average-size adult Acer macrophyllums.  (One of the many, many binomials I like.  "What's that tree called? Bigleaf maple.  Cool, let's call it Maple with the big leaves, but, like, in Latin."  It could've gone the other way, too, but I wasn't there.)  Snowfall is famously wet, or more accurately, dense, as all snow is technically wet when it melts.  Having lived within sight of {starts internetting but runs out of ambition and besides, it's a dern volcano} what I think is the highest point in the Skagit Drainage, I can attest to the density.  It makes for physically strong skiers like yours truly, and in the case of Craig Kelly--you though I'd lost the thread, didn't you?--strong snowboarders.

Craig helped push snowboarding from its scrappy roots and goofball image to the same level as skiing.  He was ridiculously smooth.  His time at Baker no doubt helped him build technical strength and skills that folks pointing and slashing in Rocky Mountain pillow fluff wouldn't have needed, nor developed.  He influenced skiing, which would be hard to admit for a lot of PSIA folk, more than a lot of skiers in his day.  Though the rumours of skiing's demise in the early 90s were greatly exaggerated, Craig's style and skill and ambition still helped us out of what could possibly be called mild doldrums.

I mean, who sees this and doesn't think, wow, those cats really can get it?

In the end, the American snowboard discussion seems to have ossified.  The three--yes, just three--resorts that ban snowboarding are at this point loyal to a mistake*** they will never admit is a mistake, and have hardened their stances into legend.  If Mad River Glen, or Deer Valley, or Al-ta ever allow snowboarding, it'll feel like a tidal shift.  (Or just good business sense, but who's counting?)  There will be faithful who will turn on the perceived devil who makes the decision like a shieldback on a squished fellow shieldback.  (I'm not linking anything for you.  You can gooooogle it, thankyouverymuch.)  Boycotts, outrage, all sorta vitriol better aimed at folks who do ethnic cleansing on their neighbours or starve whole nations because there might be one militant left among the rubble.  Their privilege, as the kids are saying, will be showing.

The final thing that frustrates me about this whole absurd argument is the folks who claim this snowboard ban is discrimination, somehow of akin to a civil rights infringement.  Snowboarding is a choice, one that cannot be argued is baked-in.  Where the colour of one's skin is a) not a thing that can somehow be "wrong", and b) not a thing that is chosen, snowboarding is an active choice, one that in some specific situations can actually be wrong, and one that is entirely a first world concern.  To that end, Alta, MRG, and DV do not discriminate against the person, only the orientation of the stick or sticks that cat slides on.  Reduced to such a minimum, both houses deserve a pox.  Banning snowboards, no matter how useless I personally think they are, is simply being a dick for the sake of being a dick.  Claiming discrimination is just absurd.  You, printer of stickers and poacher of lines, are not banned, not in the slightest.  If you want to ski that hallowed High Rustler mogul line (#4), learn to ski.  Or remember how, if you used to ski.  Or, better still, boycott the douchebags outright and go somewhere, anywhere, you are actually welcome.  Sliding on snow is not limited to the 0.6% where skiing is the only option.  My best day on snow wasn't even at a ski area.  Think about that.

Let's be honest.  All you really need is a pile of whatever this is. Enore, gettin rad on the side of the Silver Mountain sled hill, Silver Mountain, Idaho, east of the Cotaldo Mission, due south of Kellogg by exactly a really long gondola ride.

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Title from Public Enemy's magnum opus, Don't Believe the Hype. If you have not heard it, queue it on up.  It's also the title of my new Snowbird (not snowboard) ad campaign.  Alta, Don't Believe the Hype. And here you thought I'd never get to the actual point. Hit me up, Powdr.  I'll sell the rights for only many many many many ducats.

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** YES I KNOW THERE ARE TWO WELCOME TO THE ENGLISH LANGUISH

*** Richard Russo wrote whole books about this very human tendency.  If you are in need of some good noveling, give him a look see.

* Annoyingly so, I'd say.  That same Al-ta trip, Pa and I got absolutely shredded by the sun back there, and it, too, is top ten ski memories.  You'll know from reading our pages that top ten lists might be 60 things long, but that's okay.  The back bowls on the backside of Vail's frontside, should you somehow time them to a day where only 3299 of your best friends are at the hill instead of the usuall 70,010, are mellow, open, endless, with views to match.  Vail Corp is one of the worst things to happen to skiing ever, other than all the gatekeeping and abusive coaches and racist bullshit and misogyny and Sinclair Oil and, well, you get it.  The terrain west of Vail Pass, on the south side of Gore Creek, east of the upper Eagle River, north of Turkey Creek, is not to blame for President Katz and all the evil he hath wrought.  It just sits there, waiting for the kiss of a sintered base and some really, really toxic wax.

Everyone else is doing it

Okay. There's like somehow like all this hubbub about the Look Pivot? Like, I don't really get it, but, like, here goes. 

The basic design of the Pivot was finalised in the late 60s.  If this is good, bad, indifferent, maybe just interesting, I don't rightly know.  The Nevada N17 doesn't have the name recognition of, say, the Rossi FKS, but both heels have a giant heel lock like an overgrown cow magnet floating on two small arms that connect to a turntable/Lazy Susan thingie that now also holds the brake but didn't back in the olden days***.  I'm not sure when brakes started appearing on bindings in general, but companies didn't settle on their current position under the heel until the late 70s or early 80s.  I imagine the toe position both complicated the toe's release and the anti-friction device (with it's much cooler sounding acronym, AFD) and caused/allowed/was disabled by icing.

Toe pieces were, and still are, different throughout the binding line.  Today there are three options, from an 11-din heap of plastic to the 15- and 18-din all-metal, single pivot, rotary release toes that are shared with Look's race bindings.  For a minute back in the 90s there was this cool wing-release toe that looked like a futuristic football stadium at the front.

Futuristic football stadium. You choose what kind.

I have thoughts on binding toes. Rotary-release toe pieces tend to have longer elastic travel, which all the pundits and all the freeride bros in the liftline yammer about incessantly as though that's the measure of not only a binding, but a skier.  It's like the dropper post, um, drop that all the endurbros yammer about incessantly in the coffee store in Hyde Park.  "How much drop you got?" "240 mil." "Yeah? I GOT 75 MIL IN THE TOE." Something like that.  More important to me, the skier who never leaves the ground but has a good bit o' that ol' kinetic energy goin mach stupid at 265 el bees, the release is very smooth.

Wing-release toes do the job, but with a little more fuss and a little less comfortably.  There's usually a lot of plastic, although that is a function more of price-point than structural necessity, and in, say, an old Salomon 912 from back in the day, there was a good bit of plastic even in a rotary toe.  

At any rate, though there has been a good 30 years and more of R&D into bindings and the cost of rotary toes should therefore not be prohibitive or even high, even Salomon has quit that shit.  It makes me sad.  There are only two readily available in the retail market today, and they are not coincidentally the 15- and 18-din Pivot/SPX Race toes.  Why does this matter, if Bob St Pierre says he likes the new Strive 16, with its awkwardly low toe and knockoff 747 "colourway"?  Because I said so.

Been around a minute.

The Pivot challenges the modern gear frenzy.  Everyone goes on and on about new this, new that, and the upper tier of the Pivot family has with minimal exaggeration only changed to meet the fashion of the day.  The big news last year was the new Pivot 2.0, with a new heel and unchanged toe. The refinements boil down to some reinforcement on the sides of the cow magnet where all the young kids are scraping the paint off cos they ain't got that good mid-Aughts steez like I do, a little extra magic oomph of some kind in the pole-box for a less disfiguring release, and a small--7mm, give or take--increase in forward pressure adjustment.  The Pivot is touted as the new hotness every year by online mags and whatnot. It just isn't, though, and that makes me happy.  The new changes, those small and easily overlooked things, are welcome.  They do not improve the experience all that much, but they do signal that Look isn't *ahem* looking to drop the binding any time soon.  (Speaking of which, if you have a line on any mid-Aughts Salomon 916, 914, STH 16, or STH 14 bindings, I want em.  Especially if the brakes are wide or if they're in any wild non-North American colours.)

I realised I don't have any good close-ups of these bindings and for that I blame Tim Cook just like I blame him for how wildly poorly typed my text messages are and for why I sent my friend Jake a picture of literally nothing while trying to ax im a question about literally something well anyway it's cos I got a new phone and counldn't figure out how to sync up the photos and HEY TIM GO SOAK YOUR HEAD.

I think about ability a lot.  Having it, not having it in certain circumstances, being good enough at something, say, baseball, to enjoy it, but not good enough to keep playing it beyond high school.  Or the mountain bike, on which I can confidently ride a lot of trail, until things get weird.  Then I just get scared and lock up.  On skis, the point of locking up is much further into the deep end, not quite in over my head.  

I occupy two fairly rarified worlds, both in skiing where sometimes not metaphorically I am the best skier on the mountain, and in bikes, where I have 21 years worth of career experience and see so many skilled riders who cook their gear each year.  There is a stark lack of context.  This is visible in multiple ways, but for my purpose here it is in the choice of gear.  Esoteric and--importantly--really expensive choices are made, justified by some imagined need.  I can see it happen all around me, folks "needing" XTR cranks at {checks Shimano for retail} over $300 without chainring, or an XO1 cassette at $530, when as the kids are saying, we have cranks and cassettes at home.  Only in this meme, the crank is $125 WITH chainring, and the cassette is $220, and both serve their purpose with the same exact functionality.  Only folks with top-tier ability will know the difference.

This top-tier ability, coupled with the theory of the aspirational product, supports this almost arcane buying habit.  If my wording is sounding circular, bear with me.  We are surrounded by folks at or above our ability and financial levels.  We exist in a space largely populated by like-minded folks, at least when it comes to gear and experiences.  There is a much, much larger populace who indulge in the same activities, about whom we feel not so much more superior than, but entirely separate from.  And this, especially in the 18-din version, is where the Pivot 2.0 comes in.  Everybody else is doing it, so why can't we?  All the guys on the FWT are slammin Pivots on their 120mm freeride skis, jackin the din to 45, and gettin free RedBull for life, that must be the ticket.  New criticism, this abjectly is not.  Nor is it original, or rarely repeated.  This is Marketing 102.  (101 must be how to weaponise languistic incorrectness.)

In my rarified worlds, even absent the RedBull-type circuits, not only is the large recreational populace who also participate in our sports ignored, the gear they use is as well.  The building is 7 floors high, but we always take the elevator to the 5th and act like that's the basement.  A $125 crank that's as expensive as many bikes people ride is "entry-level". A 14-din binding that's above most skiers' heads is similarly "just barely enough".  We're exposed to really, really expensive gear early and often, and I think that inures us to our shelling out serious, usually hard-earned ducats.

Gratuitous shot of my tracks made on skis that may or may not have a Pivot 15 masquerading as a Rossignol Race 155 from '003.  I cannot confirm that they help me get solid edge pressure before the apex, nor can I deny it.  I can confirm to the internet commentators that they do not hinder said carving, that indeed it is you, internet commentators, that cannot generate adequate edge pressure before the apex in a carve.  What's the apex, ask all you internet commentators? It's the part where your skis are parallel to the fall line, above and below which I have almost symmetrical pressure.  Now go take on the day.

Sometimes this circular reasoning, this ignorance of the function of something as theoretically simple as a ski binding, goes above mere marketing susceptibility.  Look doesn't really advertise in any memorable way.  They don't need to.  They are one of 4 main binding companies out there, and due to the realities of our late-stage capitalism, they are supported by a gigantic holding corp of one variety or other while simultaneously being required equipment on the bulk of skis sold by this same holding corp.  The Rossignol Group of which Look is an integral part is not unique or insidious.  This is just business, as they say.  You can agree or not.

Nobody skiing resorts in between "work from home" shifts at the local coffee store needs an 18-din binding.  I, and they, don't need a 15-din kit, or even 14.  I'm a stocky dude, aggressive, skilled, skiing three days a week, and I'm a 9.5 on the holy sheet.  The highest I've ever charted a customer was a dude who at like 6'6", 250 el bees, with a not-crazy long foot, and he was a 12.  I could barely test his toes with our Vermont Safety cos the correct torque was like eleventy-fortyleven moon units or whatever.  He skied daily, pro patroller that he was.  What these medium-build cats who've never stood atop a no-fall zone in 13" of Cascade, um, "powder" think they need with a knee-killing 14-din setting on a Pivot 15, let alone 18, is beyond me.  Ours not to reason why, I guess.

The Pivot, separate of its corporate genesis, is THE binding of the moment.  There have been others, like the mythical green spring--don't ask me cos I don't know--Salomons of the late 90s and early 000s, or the Marker MRR Turntable of the mid 80s, or, poetically, the Pivot-lineage Look Forza circa the page turning year of 1990.  Look doesn't have to advertise because any marketing collateral is good money thrown after bad.  There is nothing so powerful in marketing as out and out lust, and when you can have your cake and eat it, too, you do.

It do look nice.

So, how does it ski, you ask?  I need more experience with the binding mounted on other skis, but my first impression is that it skis like any other good binding.  It disappears under your foot, letting the boot talk directly to the ski while the ski talks directly to the snow.  It releases as it should, doesn't over-damp the snow feel like a plastic Marker from their venerated--but not really all that great--Royal Family does, and looks good doing it.*  Yeah, I said it.  My favourite binding, the 900s Equipe of the late 90s, is definitely form-follows-function in its appearance.  Its replacement, the 914, had a little more elegance, but still didn't rise visually too high above the rabble.  I find this æsthetic comforting, sometimes even pleasing, but I do like me a little steez.

So, where do we go from here, you ask?  My hope is that Salomon sees the continued success of the Pivot lineage and brings the old 747 family back.  I don't see any reason why they would, other than sheer cussedness, and they aren't Sámi.  Not much incentive there.  Basically, where I go is I scour the ski swap every November, check the internet periodically, and try to have a few loose sawbucks on hand specifically for that 997, or that STH14, should I or you come across one.

These would be nice. Rare J-Spec, all three of my favourite 997 colours represented.  Keep them eyes peeled, if you would.  And if you are a person of substance at Salomon, get me these back on the market in 10, 12, 14, and 16. I'd even settle for 10, 13, and 16.  Just frickin do it.  Stat.

In the end, I hear endless justification, fluffed-up statements of need, or comparisons to friends who totally ski every week at Mt Shredly, but I almost never hear the only two legitimate reasons for buying a Pivot 18 or 15.  The first, stated a little less succinctly over our time together at the old shop by Ryan (the Owner) than I'll type out here, is if a given skier is aggressive beyond his or her own skill, preferably if that given skill set is still rich and deep like Ryan's.  If you have the ability to get yourself into that sketchy situation and the willingness to schralp yer way on down, crashing and injury possibilities be damned, then maybe the elastic travel and superior retention is for you.  Otherwise, all I can say for myself is "I just want one".  There is no need to justify yourself.  If you have the--uff da--DAMN NEAR $500 for this kit, by all means.  Send it.  Them new "colourways" is right.  Otherwise, why do we need new bindings when we have bindings at home?!  (I have three pairs, jetzt, heute, and two of them are even full sets.)  Or if you don't, Evo's got a Salomon Strive 12 on sale for like a buck sixty.  It's good enough for all of us.  Yes, even me, that most refined of consumers.**

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 Title is from the seminal 90s Gen X identifier record Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? by the Cranberries.  But you knew that.

*  Well, there's a few recent "colourways" that Look could have skipped.  The Forza re-release didn't cut any mustard, let alone THE mustard, for an example.

**  Granted, you will hafta put a, like, 6 mil gas pedal under that shit, but, like, that's why I'm here.

***Always looking for an excuse to post Eben Weiss' masterpiece, The Dachshund of Time.