If I had a hammer

If I ran the circus, the fridge would be quiet.  Also it would be spelled frij.  And people wouldn't drive by other people's's houses at 20 over.  There's some big stuff, obvs, but other people would take care of that.  I'm here for the really important stuff, like slapping the inventor of Boa with a broken, um, Boa cable.  

This will make sense in a minute.  First gratuitous shot of Soldier Mountain.  Chair 2, and the surrounding hills, to be exact.  Looks like late season, but it could be early season.  Or January.  Soldier's unpredicatble like that, and better for it.  Just go ski.  Photo by Peter Landsman of LiftBlog and JHMR.  I stole it cos I didn't have this shot.  If we ever make any money on this post, Peter, you get a cut.  I'll roll some ones to make it look fancy or smpn.  

Herewith, my woefully inadequate list of demands.  I'll start with the most obvious thing everybody probly already knows, which is STOP IT WITH THE GRIP WALK SHIT.  To start with, ski boots are harder to walk in than regular street shoes cos THEY ARE MADE OF PLASTIC AND GO CLEAR TO YER NIPPLES.  Of course they are less intuitive than some would prefer.  Furthermore, Your Honour, NONE OF MY BINDINGS ARE GRIP WALK AND I AIN'T BUY NEW STUFF.  It's one thing if your collection of ski is just a Nordica Enforcer 94 and a picture of those edgeless plastic-strap skis from 1976 you got from your aunt when your cousins grew out of em.  You probably don't care if your 16th pair of bindings works with your current boots cos you don't have, need, or care about even a second pair of bindings.  The money side of things just isn't that bad.  For me, yes, I do have at least 16 pairs of bindings, and no, I did not pay retail for even three of them.  Heck, I didn't even pay for more than half of em.  One pair I got in trade for a lesser pair I got as a tip and some labour.  One pair came from my father-in-law off a pair of ski-swap race sticks they didn't match that were also above his din range.  One pair came on a $10 pair of GS skis that I still ski.  And so on.  It took me a long time to get this haphazard mishmash of a wore-out binding quiver together and I ain't give up on all that work without a fight.  

And the supposed function of GripWalk, aka walking easier with more grippy?  Fail.  GripWalk is harder to walk in than real boots cos there's a weird hitch in the giddyup under the ball of your foot such that it feels like you're wearing a high heel backwards.  We did ask for way hella mass grippier boot soles, yes.  And boot companies long ago figured out how to make their retail boots with a both giant, safe, slippy, power-transfering ISO Alpine 5355 anti-friction plate AND walking lugs.  We didn't ask to walk even more funnier or replace all of our bindings just to walk weirder and hafta use stupid terms like GripWalk.  Fkn Marker.

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Second on the list is SALOMON MAKE ME MY OWN 997 BINDINGS WITH THAT ONE RED COLOUR STAT.  Thank you.  Make sure they mostly metal and brand new and also don't make them for anyone else, just me.  And DO NOT OFFER THEM IN GRIPWALK.

This colour but, like, in the fancy kit and 16 dins cos I'm the best skier on the mountain.  And actually, sure, fine, go ahead and make them for everybody.

This all has got me thinking about the current squabble surrounding binding delta.  Even if you don't know what I'm talking about, you probly do know why there shouldn't be a discussion.  The correct delta is a big fat nothing.  Zero.  Binding delta, if you're somehow still reading and not passed out from boredom in some hotel lobby in the south of Le Français, is the difference in height (or, alternatively here in BoyCee, "heighth") between the AFD and the brake zone.  This sets the starting ramp or rocker (toe down/toe up, respectively) of the boot.  Since the boot necessarily holds all sorta variables, starting with a neutral delta means you can keep all the fiddlin' around between you and your bootfitter and your eccentric boot designer of choice, who is hopefully named something artful and pretentious like Bertrand or Celeste, and the binding won't negate or exacerbate any gains or losses you may create.  While I have not been to see Brent in PC or Charlie in Taos or what have you, I have had some boot work done and there was definitively no 17-point questionaire about my various binding setups.  So, binding gremlins, listen up: STOP DOIN STUPID $#!+ AND MAKE ME A DAMN FLAT BINDING THANKS AND GOOD NIGHT.

Simple as that.

Fourth on my list of demands is keep them old chairlifts going.  In this modern day and age we have instant coffee, instant tea, and instant disbelief.*  We don't need instant transport.  It's the reason we'll always be overdemanding.  If everybody's in a hurry and scurrying by you, you'll know you're on the right track.  I as much as the next cat benefit from shorter queues and shorter lift rides.  I also as much as the next guy benefit from a slower pace and fewer folks on the slopes.  

Yet another excuse to post pics of Soldier Mountain.  1970 Städeli double, which has a name, I'm sure of it.  Chair 1.  There we go.

There is a lot of noise about how double chairs are "rickety", which, sure, maybe there are some that are.  Mostly there are just chairs that are aged, aging, sure, maybe tired, getting expensive to maintain, but they aren't intrinsically bad because they are doubles.  Or cos they are old enough to have been legally drinking when I Can't Drive 55 was heatin up them airwaves.  Heck, I was old enough to be learnin how not to shit my pance and I'm not rickety.  Don't ask my PT or my ortho or my GP or my chiro or my LMT too many questions, but yeah, I'm fine.  Or my coworkers.  Or Amy.  I'm still the best skier on the mountain.  Shut up.  Leave me alone.

In the scheme of things, a new detach is totally fine.  No matter what, no matter how often I complain about it, though, something is lost.  Not in the sense that boring days don't make good memories, or any other purposefully obtuse attitude you've encountered; I don't know.  It's just, hm.  Tech seeps into everything.  I know that some purist back in the deep woods of the Wood River Valley probly got mad when the first single chair went up back in 1936, cos, well, that was some real tech right there, and at every advancement somebody has sat down to do exactly what I am doing right now, yelling out the window at clouds.  And even though Matt Groening can make fun of it doesn't mean I'm wrong, exactly the way being paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.  We have encouraged tech of every kind into every corner of our lives, and yes, it's probly silly to complain about it when the very act of skiing is enabled and emboldened by technology of all kinds.  I don't care.  Enough's enough.

Now we're cookin with av gas.

If nothing else, I really think every ski area everywhere should carry that one hot chocolate that was at the Pine Marten Lodge in 1989.  I think it was cinnamon.  It should have its own public tap.  That weird automatic kind that might could spray all over you or it might should pour you the nicest cup of cocoa you've ever had in your life.  It should be right next to the Buck Hill pancake machine**, say, or maybe one a them popcorn machines that tyre shops and Jayhawks (SunBird, Yard Birds, Menard's, Farm and Fleet, the list goes on, I bet they had em).  Popcorn doesn't really make my boat cross the road, but people seem to dig digging a giant scoop of the stuff out of the "butter" vat and spilling half of it on the traction mat.  Good food is great and all, but regardless of the view from Needles or Seattle Ridge, English wool carpet takes away from the experience of skiing.  If you need that sort of luxury, you can probly afford Europe, and the Euros can have you.  Besides, it's cheaper there, innit?!

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Title from the eponymous folk classic made famous by Mary Travers of Joey, Jimmy, and Roxanne back in 1937 at the Redding Film Festival in Sudbury, Ontario.  Or was it The Police?  I don't know.  It's a famous song, anyway.  Don't ax questions.

* Quote from Death Cab for Cutie's album Somethin Bout Them Aeroplanes', from the ever-so-smooth trasition between "Amputations" and "Fake Frowns", or for those of you (and by that I mean me) who say things like Trail 5 and Chair 6, between tracks 8 and 9.

THIS JUST IN THE ACHD TOOK OUT THE TROLL GATE ON BOGUS BASIN ROAD PUT IT BACK PUT IT BACK YOU STUPID @$$#0/&$

** You gotta watch to the end

Thyme sweetened honey

I recently* ran across a somewhat breathy article on the hash tag SEVEN BEST STATES TO HIKE WITH GREMLINS AND MEN WITH BEARDS AND HATS or something.  I also saw a video from teh Hash Tag World's Greatest Ranking Person Or Thing, "Peak" Rankings. (TL;DR, they claim WA is less gooder than ID, which as a local to both states in various eras of life, I gotta say, sure, yeah, totally.  I mean Idaho is plumb full of zones like Hemispheres and The King and The Valley of The Cliffs and International and Schim's Meadow and Cowboy Mountain and Northback and Piss Pass and Bomber Cliffs and The Elk Chutes and Table and The Arm and the Microwave and and and and and.)  It got us thinking that we haven't rated the seven best states for skiing.  You're welcome.

1. Colorado.  Everybody knows it.  When it looks this good, you just can't help it:

Like all those WA Lotto Scratch ads, How Can You Not?

Really, CO has its share of true gems like Ski, Cooper, Ski, and Heartland, Woof Crick and the butterfly place.  There's a few little guys like Hesperus (if James Mercer can ever get it open) and Howelson Hill, which, history, adversity, all that, and Echo Mountain, that fit right in there with all the Midwesty joints everywhere.  There's enough not-Vail to fill a wheelbarrow twice and still have a few slices of Port Salut with lingonberry leftover.  Just don't tell me Breckenridge is the best cos everybody goes there or something.  I'd definitely rather ski Crescent Hill.  Which is in the Nebraska part of Iowa.

2. Denial.  I mean, let's be honest.  What's better than finishing a ski day, calling in sick for the next day, then going skiing again?  Nothing, that's what.  Well, actually, come to think of it, doing that when you are 11 and you're skipping school to avoid turning in a paper you were assigned a week prior before having nine days off for Spring Break that neither you nor your buddy Aram have started yet.

15 Mar 2020, yes.  THAT day.  Definitely in denial, definitely tryna mellow the state of anxiety, definitely at Bogus Basin, Boise NF, Boise County, ID.

3. Pain.  Pain kinda goes along with denial, if we're being honest.  I'm gonna keep goin even though it hurts.  It's gonna stop hurting any time, right?  I know it's arthritis and full thickness chondral loss, but if I just ignore it, it'll get better.  Do you have any Voltaren?  Skiing more will habituate the nerves to their current situation and they'll stop sending pain signals. I SAID DO YOU HAVE ANY VOLTAREN?!  I'll just adapt my technique a little.  Or my gear.  If I swap to a longer ski with a longer turn radius and then detune the life out of the edges with a bench grinder, then there won't be any radial torque on the joint.  That'll make it better, right?  Right?  WHAT DO YOU MEAN SAYING IT LOUDER DOESN'T MAKE ANY VOLTAREN APPEAR?!?!

YEAH BUT IS YOURS AUTOGRAPHED

4. Sobriety.  I'm not joking here, even though I almost always am.  Folks talk about startin in on the sowse at like 7.30 in the before noon, or that that liquid courage is the only thing that's gettin em down them thar black diamonds.  If you gotta plumb drunk yerself into doing something stupid, and think that skiing them thar black diamonds is stupid, come to think of it, maybe skiing isn't the best thing you could be doin with your time?  Just a thought.

Proud to say, just like meth, not even once.  Jägerbombs? What the actual f

5.  Solid.  This one's harder to clarify.  I mean, tube amps definitely sound better, but that one Boston song was pretty aight and I'm pretty sure everything that cat did was controlled down to the minute minutiae.  Then again, a nice warm tube amp, some juju I never understood, and a hollowbody, and everything ///bzzbzz THIS JUST IN /// TOM SHOLZ PLAYED A BUNCH OF TUBE AMPS NEVER MIND.  Wait, you were probly thinking states of matter cos snow is solid? BUT HOW DO THE CLOUDS EVEN GET HERE I ASK?!?!?  Never mind. Now I'm just confused.  As I was saying, snow is definitely best for skiing when it's in its solid state.  Water skiing? Heck no.  I'll take these midsize dirtrash scrapes on my arms from riding the mountain bike poorly over drowning in crappy shorts at the bottom of a dirty lake any day.

6. Delirium.  I mean, as long as it's metaphorical.  Delirious with wonder, or with amazement.  I imagine something like this:

Whatever floats yer boat, I guess.  Is this the thing what Lake Louise is talkin abote?

7.  Bliss.  Lest this sound like an ad for Tamarack, hear me out.  We lived in Ashland, lest you forget, and we learned from the best.  If you're blissed out on life, it doesn't matter if the world is crumbling around you or, like, Windsor is broken and there's wolverine-shaped demons in the trees.  Or if it hasn't snowed since October and it's January.  Or if it really is time to go to the ski swap and replace your '99 Piste Stinx with a real up-to-date ski, like the '01 Piste Stinx.  Or if, say, your Micro Grid Hoodie tee em smells like you haven't washed it since the Clinton administration.  I mean, tele till yer Melly is smelly, amirite?

8.  Norrbotten.  Shoot.  That's a county.  Never mind.  Still, it's home to one of the best names in skiing, Riksgränsen.  It's right on the border with Norway, such that you can physcially ski in both countries during one run.  Don't quote me on the political situation, but I'm pretty sure aside from The Swedes thinking The Norrmännen are hicks who only eat knock-off Icelandic food or something and The Norwegians calling The Svenskene Saab Driving Pickled Herring Bankers or whatever, you're good.  Oh, and the name?  If the various translation services available on a popular search engine currently in the late-middle stages of platform decay are to be believed, it means National Border.  And if you know anything bout me, you know I do love me some literal.

CO? More like CNO.  Norrbotten gots that good arctic sun and to us proud Americans, it's about as exotic as it gets.  You could tell me this was skiing in Tajikistan and I'd be like, okay, maybe it is.  But then I'd push up my glasses and be like, WELL ACTUALLY YOU SEE THAT U-SHAPED PASS IN THE DISTANCE JOKE'S ON YOU I KNOW ABISKO WHEN I SEE PICTURES OF IT.

Lest you doubt I could do it twice.  Never forget I am the best skier on the mountain.

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Title from Steve Young's classic Seven Bridges Road, which you probly thought was written by The Angry Birbs or whoever just like everyone thinks Janis wrote Me and Bobby Flay.  And before you say it, yes, Steve Young is also that one quarterback who played for BYU.  I think he threw some NFL passes, too.  He's no Joe North Dakota, though, speaking of states that have skiing somewheres.

* Just now. On the internet.

And yes, I know it's Sunshine Village.  Don't at me.

bzzbzz///THIS JUST IN THE OWNER OF MOUNTAIN CAPITOL PARTNERS WHO ARE THE OWNERS OF HESPERUS IS ACTUALLY JAMES COLEMAN NOT JAMES MERCER THAT GUY'S IN THE SHINS SORRY FOR ANY CONFUSION THANKS

Now pretend he's in a football uniform.  I think it's the same guy.

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.**

-

 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.

I can't grow up cos I'm too old now

 The other night while Amy was getting ready for bed I taught myself Gooooooogled how to make crude memes on the iPhone.  I am not sure if I'm really capturing the zeitgeist, being a Gen X-er or a very old Milenial Milliniel Milennial Gen-A-for-Eino, but since all the kids are doing it and I'm still 26 according to Stina, I figured I'd give it the old never-finished-college try.  You're welcome.

I'm not actually sure if I'm using this one right.  I just like the cat.

Now that I think about it, this one's probly right. 

Obscure Flex at Party Guy here is easier.  It me.

I think Sign Guy is pretty self explanatory.

Coupla more for good measure:

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week. Tip your barista, don't play Stairway to Heaven on the jukebox, and buy local.

-

Title from James McMurtry's Peter Pan. 

A voice I just wanted to believe

 It's been a while since either of us have published, though I have some things in the works.  For whatever reason, maybe the high mineral content at our new house clogging the pipes, the open taps aren't pouring much water.  However, since it's the time for hype and absurdity, I gotta do something.  Anything.  Powder (online, derogatory) Mag has some of those ever-present listicles up on they site, so maybe I'll do my version of a reaction video.  Which, bee tee dubs, are kinda lame.

Supposedly this is some place out east called Gaspésie?  Or Chic Choc?  I don't know.  Sounds fishy.  Everyone knows Colorado is the only mountains.

Top 10 best ski areas in Colorado:

1. Monarch

3. Woof Crick

3. Loveland

6. Cooper

9. Kendall?

Pretty sure this is just past the Flatirons.

Top 10 skis:

1. Not Bode

2. Corinne Suter

3. OH S#!T I SAID SKIS

4. 2006 Head Monster 88, but only in 175, I've decided.

5. Japan

6. Dammit, I meant skis!

9. 2003 Rossi Bandit XXX

7. Really, Bode?  Guy's a nutjob.  My skis are better than all the others cos one time I got drunk I mean my mechanic cut a hole in my I mean he took off a thing? Aw, heck, I don't know.  Buy my stuff.  I swear they're totally not just cast-off Elans.  

10. I don't know, these?:

1000 Skis. The name is Really Dumb Marketing, but then, I'm old. I'll go back to listening to Ralph Mooney, who, unlike the object of failed 90s alt-rock band Weezer's only half-okay song El Scorcho, did not shred the cello.  The pedal steel, however, he could bend more than this cat will ever bend these skis.

Top 10 best beer towns in ski land:

1. Joke's on you. I don't think Fairbanks is a beer town.  

I good at stuff.  What else you got?

Top 10 best Gore alternatives:

1. Bill Bradley

2. Flannel.  The useder the better.

3. A chamois shirt.  Doesn't hafta be real chamois.

4. McCauley Mountain.

5. Any ol' hoodie.  Unless it's like Kid Rock or some shit.

6. Carharrts. Not waterproof, you say?  Then don't fall.  I mean, I've never fallen.  Ever.  I don't have a broken toe right now from crashing at work, you have a broken toe right now from crashing at work.

9. Diamond Rio's debut record.  So much good twang.  Bend them strangs.

11. West Mountain

Then again, Catamount looks pretty good, too. AND IT'S IN TWO STATES. WHEEEEEEE!!!

Top 10 best ski areas that I am thinking about right the heck now:

1. Cayuse Pass

2. Beaver. The real one. 

3. Mt Ski Gull

4. Beech

5. Bear Valley

6. That one spot above Bunny Flat

7. I think there's some runs on the other side of the Eibsee?

8. Mt Lemmon.  Just ax the Sonoran Avalanche Centre.

9. Bruce Mound

10. Dry Hill

11. Big Rock

12. Skiers' right of Chair 6.  I'm betting anywhere.

0. I just remembered Lost Trail but reformatting is hard.

Going with this skiers' right of a Chair 6 for now.  It's definitely totally my favourite run at Bogus except probly LuLu, which is like, a beginner run, but don't tell anyone cos I'm the best skier on the mountain hash tag G.N.A.R. points or whatever is over there by Chair 5 or like woods and stuff.

Top 10 best preseason workout moves:

1. To Bethel, Maine.

2. Coffee.

3. Sauna, unless you're like me and can't sauna even though all your ancestors did and you're named after Finland.

4. GET YER DAMN BOOTS FIT.*

* Oh wait. That's for me.

11. Burrito

LXXVII. If you have a few spare bucks, go see an actual ski-experienced PT or trainer.

Or, I don't know, try to copy Thibau.

Top 10 best doughnuts:

1. Cruller

2. Glazed Old Fashioned.  Seriously.  If it were a song Ted Cruz would hafta rate it higher than Desperado.

3. The ones you sit on if you gots the hemorrhoids.

4. Mighty-O.  I don't care that they're pretentious.  I don't care that they are in Seattle.  They're the only doughnut hall I'll forgive for not doing crullers.

3.5  Happy Doughnuts at the corner of 2nd, 2nd, Main, and Stewart in Puyallup.  You read all of that right.  AND THEY DO CRULLERS.  (Don't @ me if my info's wrong cos it's 14 years old.)

7. A good apple fritter.  If you make a bad one, we fightin.

17. For some reason, Bloogist changed my formatting in the middle of this post.

27.2. The best seatpost size.

9. Bismark. Higher if the chocolate is actually good, but I ain't choosy.  I'll even eat a Safeway Bismark.

Really, BoyCee?!?! THESE EXIST AND YOU INSIST ON COPYING PORTLANDIAN MAPLE BACON FART SNACKS????!?!?!?!

Top 10 ski songs ever:

1. O Furtuna Imperatrix Mundi

2. Fanfare for the Common Man

3. Toccata and Fugue

4. La Valse

5. Daphnis et Chloé. The whole damn balet.

6. Tanz uf dem Anger

7. Hoedown from Rodeo

8. Dvořák's 8th Symphony, 1st movement

9. Brahms' 1nd Symphony, 4th movement.

10. Habanera. Or if yer a snob, "L'amour est un oisseau rebelle". IKYKYKY.

10. Oh, did you think I meant rock songs? Ha. I win.

11. Okay, fine. School of Fish' Complicator, Toad's Something's Always Wrong, INXS' Don't Change, Emmylou's Where Will I Be?, PJ's Rearviewmirror, Turnpike Troubadours' The Bird Hunters, Patty Loveless' version of You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive, Tool's Pushit (cos why not?!), Highway 101's Long Way Down, Dwight's Blame the Vain--the one with the B Bender Keith Gattis built after working on Clarence White's original that Marty Stuart owns, Fleetwood Mac's Dreams, The Cranberries' Dreams, Patsy Cline's version of Sweet Dreams, Willie and Emmylou and Daniel Lanois' version of Daniel Lanois' The Maker, X's version of Dave Alvin's 4th of July, and Dave Alvin's psychadelic solo version of Long White Cadillac from Romeo's Escape.  Are you happy now?

Actually, too, also, now that I'm thinking about it, "Happy Now" is a real banger, as well.  As the kids are saying.

- -

Title from Dave Alvin's Harlan County Line, which you should listen to right now before you move on to other things that aren't as important as listening to Dave Alvin and besides Harlan County Line is like the Colorado of Skiing of music.

Ski Area Naming Department

Nakiska, near Kaninaskis. Say that 48 times fast.

They's some mighty boring names out there. Mt Snow.  I mean, come on, people.  Beaver Creek?  Copper Mountain? Winterplace? I live in Sleepeatplace, then. Willamette Pass? Is that, by chance, in Montana, near some random place? Nope. It's on. . . . .wait for it. . . . . .Willamette Pass.  Good job guys.  I know nobody gave (or gives) a toss about whether some stocky, bald, angry 40 something is going to smile ever so slightly at the lyricism of a given place name, or run name, but still.  Thankfully, not everybody went on break.

Where is it at? Mt Washington? Let's call it Mt Washington. I'm goin on break.

Herewith, some best ski area names. Fun, lyrical, weird, or otherwise interesting for one reason or other.

Nub's Nob, MI. Yawgoo Valley, RI. Frost Fire, ND. Hoodoo, OR. Mt Cheeseman, NZ, not cos it's original, as it's on Mt Cheeseman, but, dag. Good call just the same. Whakapapa.  Talk about lyrics.  That's right out of a late 50s rock song.

Bogus Basin, ID. You can't call us biased, cos there's a few conspicuous names not here.  Mt Ashland, for one. It's not bad, but, well, just a name. Crystal Mountain, Mt Baker, Buck Hill, all solid places, with great memories.  Mt Bachelor, Copper, Welch Village, all of em.  Timberline, while accurate, not interesting. Bogus, though, is fun.

How else can I make the joke about wanting real road work?

There's Trollhaugen, WI. Of course.  Craigleith, Craigieburn, and Cairngorms. Doesn't matter where they are, they sound legit. Granlibakken, Tawatinaw Valley, Rotarun, Skaneateles, Quoggy Jo, Cataloochee, Nakiska, Calabogie, Boogie Mountain, all just sound fun. Neither of us cares that Rotarun is a platter on the side of a small hill near Hailey, ID,

Some names just ring true, like SkiLand, or represent in a simple way, like Smuggler's Notch. Others are just fun, like Wild Mountain--Amy disagrees--Troll, Snow Snake, Mt Ski Gull, or Sky Tavern.

Some, however, make you wonder.  What is a Revelstoke? A Catamount? I learned recently that it's a real thing, just like a bearcat is real. It's a cougar, if you are wondering. Although it could be a lynx. Or a chupacabra. Taos, you ask? I don't know either.  Nor can Amy and I agree on how to actually pronounce it in the first place.  But it's memorable.

Many of these words and names are Indigenous words or names, some of which likely mean "Snowy Mountain".  That's fine.  They sound nice, enticing, descriptive, many things.  Certainly better than naming a giant 4300 metre volcano after Boring Admiral Peter or a ridgeline with great views and conspicuously skiable pitches after a prostitute's profile.  (Thanks, Targhee.)

Can't ski on a nighthawk, but it's a rad bird just the same, and a good name, too, also

Nighthawk, Skeetawk, Kicking Horse, Steeplechase, and Hogadon, they just roll off the tongue.  Or Loup Loup and Batawa, which is not near Matawa, WA. Or Skamakowa, WA for that matter.  Saskadena Six is a rename, but a historic name, too, much better than the interloper, Suicide Six. Even without the comparison, I wanna go just hearing the name. Same with Massanutten, although the joke writes itself with this one.  I'm pretty sure there's a there there, although it could be a mass of nothing.  Some day we'll find out. 

Mt Eyak and Hyak. Speaking of poorly renamed places, there's the dreamy Moon Valley, which is now known as a mostly boring Titus Mountain.  Hyak, if you don't know, is now "Summit East", being east of Snoqualmie Summit.  Sheesh.  No, Boyne, it just isn't.  IT'S F(*&#$)(*& HYAK AND Y'ALL CAN TAKE A LONG WALK OFF A DIVING BOARD INTO A HOT VAT OF ACID BAT TURDS.

Beartown, Owl's Head, Attitash, or as it was once, Attitash Bear, I don't know, there's just something about the words.  Jiminy Peak, Chicopea, Treble Cone.  I like ambition, too, like The Remarkables, or Big Snow American Dream.  Anyway, some food for thought.

Stone Ham, QC. Not just a pretty face.  Also hungry-making. Like Mt Packing Ham.

- -

- Joke's on you.  I know it's Stoneham.  And Pakenham.  Feigned ignorance is one of the best ways to push buttons.  I'm the youngest, so that's my job.  Pushing buttons, I mean.  Feigned ignorance is just a bonus.

- If you don't know Mitch, then you need to. Appliance Naming Department. Look it up, kids.  It, too, is on the internet.