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.

Never was a world

Learning to tele, like really learning, took a lot of patience, repetition, and rain gear.  I crashed fell over at slow speed so many times that first full winter, and I learned really quick that the best way for me to stay at least sort of dry was a rain jacket, good Gore-tex bibs, and insulated leather gloves from Hardware Sales in the Iowa district.  You know the ones.  They don't need publicity anymore, having Henry Winklered the shit out of that water skiing stunt years ago.

Anyway, the gloves were easy to remove, with a cuff wide enough to hold onto my jacket sleeves, which both kept some snow out and allowed me to easily yank the glove off to shake the snow that inevitably did end up inside back onto the snowpack where it belonged.  They also dried easily on the rack above the propane stove in the shack at the bottom of 5.  I'd tumble, again, maybe the third or forth time in a run, grumble a little, get up, whip the snow out of my sleeves and gloves, and keep going.  I was 19 at the time, and determined that this, this fall right here, would be my last ever.  It would take years to accept that, different from the cheesy sticker that was all over gear and cars at the turn of this century, to free the heel is to free the body to fall.  I don't think my mind really followed, either, come to think of it.

Sure.  Okay.  I believe you believe that.

Below the top of what is now the Northway Chair* at Crystal is a nice southeasterly pitch.  Not super long, not crazy steep, just good open turns.  It's a lot bumpier now that that merger-era Unistar drive sits atop it.  At the turn of the century, it was smooth and creamy in the warm March sun.  Good terrain, then, to find a rhythm.  

I didn't learn to tele from the bottom up like the PSIA says you should.  I was dropping the knee on what Colorado folk think are black runs by the third day on freeheels.  (A little more than two years later I'd straightline the moguls here, skiers' left side of Green Valley, and have what is to this day my scariest crash.  Could've been so much worse than the broken nose and ganked neck and disapperated glasses I went home with.)  I tried a drill that day, one I came up with myself.  I sat all the way onto my trailing heel to feel what the foot and knee and hip and quad needed to feel like, to understand the shapes I'd need and how the turn progressed without needing to know how to actually do it.  I told myself it was only that run, and then I needed to be able to do it correctly.  It took a few moderate tweaks over the years, but by the bottom of the Valley I was what John Becker and Sam Lobet of P-A, WA called, with seeming affection, a telewhacker. 

The next day out, maybe a week later, I made some turns with a handful of fellow freeheelers, and it really clicked.  That wide open ramp under Northway Peak was quiet, and I watched three or four go, and then just made the shapes with my legs and torso that they made with theirs.  I found a rhythm, one I never really lost until my arthritis and tendinopathy took it away.  Looking up, I couldn't distinguish our tracks from some unevenness or poor turn shape I might have made, only that one set ended at my skis.  Somebody casually mentioned that I looked pretty experienced, and I had to hide my smirk when I said it was my fourth day.

If you're doing it right, people who don't know won't be able to tell.

For a long time, I skied in Atlas gloves whenever I could.  They aren't super practical if it's cold or wet, but when it's sunny and the bumps on Upper Nash get suitably big, they breathe well enough and are dextrous and waterproof in the palm and fingers and they smell a certain way in the sun and, I don't know, the smell still reminds of that one time in the ticket office at White Salmon when I was getting a buddy pass and I'd just plumb blowed up the thumb ligament in my right hand and couldn't really grasp the old sticky wicket tickets well on account of the thumb brace I had wrapped over the Atlas glove and this really nice, utterly intimidating lady walked over and said "here, let me do that for you," and I was smitten for at least 5 minutes.  I was 18 and I never got her name and certainly don't even remember her, really, just that brief moment.

I will admit to certain conceits with regard to skiing, especially to tele.  I tried to ski in Carharrts or Dickies as often as possible, along with the Atlas, and later, other types of work gloves.  I had a couple thrift store button-down shirts to wear when I wasn't feeling my usual flannel.  I think I wanted to project a casual disregard for the possibility of actually falling, and to distinguish myself from the bougier elements in our little world with my grease-stained duck workpants and emotional distance.  To belie the existence of any fear or misgiving.  I'd worked so hard to overcome that first year of non-stop tumbles.  I wanted folks who knew to really know.  (There's that guy.  Y'know, Two-turn Eino.  He never falls.)  Also, I found it comfortable and thought myself stylish.  I still really like Atlas gloves. 

See?

About the third time the heel cable on my old Pitbull 2 broke, I caved.  Some idiot volleyball patroller on Nose Dive who stopped the heavily used Black Diamond touring ski with the nice mountainy topsheet and de rigueur Canadian flag sticker it was on told me I'd never lose my ski if I used G3 bindings like he did, despite his not recognising that I'd kicked the ski and not fallen out of the binding. He'd put me off of upgrading the part of telemark skiing that both ties the room together and necessarily needs to be in the background for too long.  It took a minute, but a month or so later a pro patroller named Andrew was selling some Igneous skis with a G3 Targa on it and I bit.  It was the first ski I bought for the binding, the first in a loooooong and still continuous line.  I'd told myself I wanted the ski, but at 197, made of like two full-height maples, and with a less-than-okay top sheet--a pic of Anna Nicole Smith, with a blatant heroin reference as a "pro model"--the ski and I never really jived.  The binding and I did, and I skied it probly another 300 days before I and the Cascadian humidity wore the retention springs out.

The cable wasn't the only thing I broke, just the most annoying.  I broke both ankle straps on my first bumblebee T1 in two winters at Baker, and my humerus on a particularly funky morning, far skiers' left of Gabl's.  It'd rained about halfway up 5 the day before, and then cooled fairly quickly and continued on with the precip for a while before clearing off completely for an absolute North Cascades stunner of a day.  The top of Gabl's was fluff on butter, just real creamy and fast, but right about the Chute 4 bench it locked down under the confectioner's sugar.  I was hittin it full steam, and got knocked off line by the frozen whatevers sitting four or five inches under the surface.  My left ski caught something and stopped hard, and I went down on my left arm.  I lay on the ground for a minute, then couldn't get myself situated to stand up because the arm was completely dead.  It took a while for it to shake out.  When I got to the bottom of 5 to bump chairs, Paul the mechanic asked if it was snowing still, despite all that blue sky and dry air.  I still haven't forgiven that fu    

Anyway, that Sunday night after work I drove to Enumclaw, 170 miles away.  If you haven't driven a manual with a dead left arm, I don't recommend it.  Not as bad as if your right arm was broken, but still.  No fun.  I got in to see Luther, the family doc, and after an x-ray and some poking slash prodding, he told me to take it easy.  I took that to mean borrow my brother's alpine skis, and otherwise go about my business.  Turns out I tore about two inches of deltoid and chipped a piece off the humeral head.  I still feel the muscle, over twenty years later.  Coincidentally, it's right about where the nurse jabs you with the tetanus goop.

When I called home to chat a few weeks later, Ma said Luther asked her to scold me for shoveling snow and trying to hide when he came through my line at the bottom of 5.  170 miles from home and it's still a small town.

Bend the knees to bend the skis.

In addition to the shoulder destruction and the countless slow-speed tumbles, there were a few truly hard crashes in the learning process.

My EMT instructor, whose name escapes my just now, said that some folks see "tracers" when they have a mild head injury.  I had no idea what he was talking about, and assumed it was just a folk tale.  I mean, in all the old comic strips, folks who'd just got a concussion had birds flying about their heads.  The second time I hit something hard enough my skis stopped, after a nice somersault I could never accomplish on purpose, I sat and watched the thousand points of light race each other in very messy circles, their light trailing behind, playing havoc with my sanity.  I described what I was seeing to Stina and she just said "tracers." 

The twisting lights slowly faded as I sat, motionless and concerned about all the trauma I was certain I'd inflicted, but aside from seeing these same stars a little bit easier now in my forties, nothing really ever came of it. I can still remember well the entire run, the hike to the top of the King, breaking trail for Stina and her buddy Mary and them giving me first tracks down the Appliances Chute as a thank you, the straightline and subsequent wallop, the tracers, and the much mellower run to the bottom of DFF, turning and turning and turning, wondering if I'd ever feel normal again. I'm 43 now, and I still wonder.  I still see not only the tracers that show up here and there, but the blood in the snow and all of each tomohawk way back in '001 at the bottom of the Valley and, later, on the frontside of the Queen this time, how the the world looked when I realised I'd stopped, tails tucked into the snow, as though I was poured onto a chair made just for me, without any understanding of why I wasn't still skiing.  That pivotal moment alone is just missing.

It's probly an old timber feller.  Checkin in, sayin hi.

There are things I miss about making that turn.  Real and quantifiable, or ethereal and mearly mystical.  I was almost a cliché, making hay while the sun shone brightly, knowing that--without knowing when--the ride would end.  My legs aren't as strong and I'm not as fond of steeps these days.  Skiing is still paramount for me, but I haven't stepped into a tele binding in a long time.  In point of fact, I just handed my last binding over to my brother when he bopped on through BoyCee in November.  The last real day of making the freeheels was the day my former employee who became my boss took the photos on this page in the Spring of '016.  These photographs hurt a little, just looking.  Things gained and then lost, skills developed and then forgotten. 

So many turns, steeps or flats, crashing hard or pinning it top to bottom, solid, fast, controlled.  I could turn both ways and stop, in damn near any condition, on damn near any pitch.  I'd step into those bindings, and every time the feelings would flood my arteries.  Memories of people and places and times gone by.  Playing a show for 400 college kids in Tacoma or hiking alone at Chinook Pass.

The day I first stepped into those tele boots was the day my maternal grandfather passed away in February of 2000.  The phone rang early in the morning, 6 or so. I heard Ma cry out and go quiet, and I knew.  Grandpa Kelly had been languishing; a stroke had laid him low and there wasn't much to be done. He was 85 and a quiet fighter, a man who could outlast the hard times.  He could fall asleep when all of us grandkids were running around screaming, 41 of us by the time the youngest came along.  

Noël had wanted to ski with me again, or more acurately wanted me to follow her on the hill and chat while riding the chair.  There wasn't much for me to do at the funeral home, nor much room for all of us, so Ma said to keep my plans.  I rented gear, and that was that.  For the next sixteen years I felt like I belonged to something, that I wasn't just sliding along like all the other folks.  Sixteen years of feeling a connection to my paternal grandfather who passed away in '62, nineteen years before I came along.  He was a freeheeler back in the day, leather boots and leather strap bindings, Sámi muscles kicking around far northern Sverige's beautiful and low-slung mountains before moving to the states and meeting my grandmother in the UP, up around Calumet somewhere.  I think of him every time I see a raven on the wind, or hear one calling in the deep Doug fir in the rain.

-

Title from Jonatha Brooke's Landmine, which she released on her first fully-solo record, 1997's 10¢ Wings.  Rock may have sucked in the late 90s, mainstream country as well, but there were some really good artists doing other things who went largely unnoticed because, well, there wasn't a a funky beat you could bug out to or catchy, yet misogynistic rap lyrics written by white dudes who should probly have been cleaning toilets instead.  I listened to that album over and over and over again in my little '81 Tercel driving back and forth to Crystal and GRCC in '000.

*Bonus points if you can spot me.

Sendin postcards when they get there

 It took me a minute the other night to think of my roommate's name, but it was Rory. She wasn't actually my roommate, but she was dating Jason the bartender and he was my roommate, and somehow they fit on that tiny little Mt Baker Employee Lodge mattress.  The things we do for love, I guess.  Or short term ski area romance.  Anyway, Rory and I were having a chat about racing gates, specifically the citizens' Super G we'd just run that day.  Raven's Edge, I think the Howats called it.  I mentioned in passing that I didn't understand how I made up time on the second run, because I'd felt so much more in control throughout the first run.  Having never run gates before, I had no idea what it should feel like.  Rory just laughed, and said you know you're going fast if you're uncomfortable and maybe a little outa control.  Today that just sounds like race coach gibberish, but it was super profound to me then.

Yawgoons.  Learn the name.

Recently, our local hill was voted "Best Ski Resort - Readers' Choice" by the well-known ski magazine,  Newsweek.  As we all know, Newsweek has correspondents in all the major ski markets, like Äre, Innsbruck, St Moritz, the Vail Valley, Burlington, Cham, Santiago, Hokkaido, Scotland, the Eastern Townships/Memphremagog, Santa Fe, Cuyahoga, and the like.

Sorry.  I can't keep a straight face.  I honestly forgot that Newsweek existed.

At any rate, Best Ski Resort.  I won't dig into the list very far, other than to say that one of these things is not like the others.  They rate highly some familiar faces, like Telluride, Sun Valley, and Deer Valley.  Y'know, resorts.  Places with amenities like lodging, after-ski activities, and, I don't know, Maserati dealerships with complimentary Courvoisier served in Swarovski crystal with a side of blow.  Bogus just seems, well, bogus in comparison.  (If this setup sounds familiar, hear me out.  Ima do something different, hopefully.)  Without question, however, the only other joint on their list that's also on our list is Whiteface.  Fur might be commonplace in the town of Park City or the ersatz, ridiculously named, and utterly pointless Town of Mountain Village inside a corner the Telluride Ski Resort.  It stands out like a fur coat in a mud parking lot in the parking lot mud next to Chair 5, though.  And we try to park in the really muddy lots.

Sounds fancy.

The rangeland along the upper Arkansas south of Bueny is like a lot of the West.  Fairly arid, scrubby conifer and sage and aspen, which you can tell because of the way that it is.  Sheep country, if there ever was.  It's gentrified over the years, slowly at first, more rapid now as everywhere.  Salida has definitely arrived.  In the snow of a cold December day, though, it is a quiet winter scene of the sort we all dream about.  You can't see the accumulation deepen, but when you get to Monarch, there's six or eight and the Christmas Trees are holding better turns than you might expect.  The parking lot is half full, a lot of Texas plates this close to Christmas.  The bar is full, Texas drawls and cowboy boots and beers that don't cost a fortune.  It's cold on the hill, windy, inconsistent as the Rockies always are.  

Monarch has five chairs, with plans and okay for a sixth.  Runs the new lift will serve are already cut, and the new Skytrac triple is slated for completion this fall.  If you're not a nerd like me, you might not know that there was really no other option for who they went with on the new chair.  Skytrac's only drive terminal is the Monarch, named after King George III the ski area who bought Skytrac's first-ever drive terminal.  Skytrac is now owned by HTI/Leitner-Poma, but the cats who founded the company were former CTEC engineers.  Probably not coincidentally, the last full lift built at Monarch is a Garaventa-CTEC, and the other four are Halls, which, through a few M&A manœuvres, is owned by Dopplemayr/Garaventa.  The unsexiness of all this business speak aside, Monarch is in my book the best ski area in Colorado.  (And as we all know. . .)  There are arguments to be made, of course, even for Alterra-owned A-Basin and Powdr-owned Copper, but I just don't care.  Monarch is not where you go to be seen, it's where you go to ski.  And that, good people, is the entire essence.

This is a Monarch, but it's not one of that Monarch's Monarchs.

I've been to Burlington, WA, and the Burlington Coat Factory in the SuperMall Outlet Collection Seattle (actually Auburn), but never to Burlington VT.  As such, all I can do is dream.  Not necessarily about Burlington itself, but of all those towering ~ 4,000' peaks that frame the skyline.  (Did I actually say "towering"? Oof.)  There's Mansfield, of course, and Jay, but I'm not really interested in water parks or trams or in paying Vail for the priviledge of accessing the state highpoint.  I want the ragged rawness of Madonna and Sterling, at Smuggs.  The family-owned and -run Bolton, or the hopefully-not-too-too-bougie charm of Mont Sutton, just over the line in les Cantons de l'Est.  (Which is what you call the most English part of French Cannuckistan so that you can ignore names like Glen Sutton and Dunham.)  The Eastern Townships look like what a French prøtègé of Norman Rockwell would paint.  Snow, stout thickets of mysterious trees, gorgeous hills the locals call mountains, snow, cafés, brioche, thick wine from the old country, and probly a poutine or two.

This part of the world is by no means unknown, with Stowe just sitting there like a jewel waiting to be stolen, and Jay up there by itself, smug like a narco who actually got out of the game alive, water park and fraud convictions notwithstanding.  Burke in its corner, the forgotten cousin.  It's not the glamour, or the Boston accents off to do some weekend warrin', that I want.  It's the still-remaining mystery.  The certainty that it'll snow, even if it's not until next year.  And yes, the rain.  I swear, I'd learn how to ski in the rain again if I were there.

If we're parsing bests, and we are, we cannot ignore New England.  There's just so much history, so many little hills and big, so much life.  Little towns tucked into the draws and hollers, amazing views on the days where the sky turns blue and the trees stay white.  Names, gosh, they just roll off the tongue.  Smugglers' Notch.  Saskadena.  Sugarloaf.  Whaleback.  Saddleback.  Owl's Head.  Mont Bechervaise.  (Frantically checking if it's named after a cheese.  So far, no go.)  Bromont.  Catamount.  Yawgoo Valley.  Moon Valley, although that is now Titus.  Which makes me sad.  Big Rock.  Le Massif de Charlevoix, better know simply as Le Massif.  Mad River Glen.  Mont Tremblant.  Loon, Cannon, Wildcat, Plattekill.  Maybe none of them are Hash Tag The Best Skiing In North America Tee Em, but maybe, when the Nor'Easter sets up just right, one of em can be for a week or two.  If you've skied the Platty trees with a Laszlo or Brownski in a classic dump, well, hats off.  Supposedly it does get better.  I got not clue just how.

Do the trolls hide in here?

People ask me from time to time about my favourites, and I always demur.  Choosing is hard, even if it's options for gloves or goggles or helmet liners.  When it comes to where one should ski, it's so personal as to render recommendations null and void or at least more of an impressionist sketch than a real, hard and fast guide.  The truth is, even if the only option is Alterra, one should ski.  In sickness and in health.  If there are options, try em out.  The drive to Soldier isn't half-bad, easier for sure than to McCall, but folks here always go to Brundage or Tam and leave Fairfield to the sad losers who don't know better.  Like me and Amy.  Folks here are wrong about a lot of things, not the least of which is Soldier Mountain.

It's quiet in the loudest of times, and gets less snow than Bogus or Tam.  It hasn't trademarked the useless and untrue marketing phrase "The Best Snow in Idaho" like Brundage has.  There are only two chairs.  The lodge is small, and the parking lot unpaved.  There was a fire here not that long ago, and, unlike at least one recent late-season burn in the west is rumoured to have been, it wasn't started by the ski area to get around permitting issues.  They lost a bridge and almost lost the lower lift and the lodge.  Locals, as always, showed up and saved the structures.  The newly-open pitches are nice, even if the small stands of Doug fir that used to, um, stand here made for some interesting turns.  Soldier has what so many small family joints have, what so many corporate joints with their fancy chondotrams and gondobriolifts and giant blue bubbles and television screens don't.  Space to take a breath and clean air to actually breathe.  Belonging, or at least the room to believe you might could.  Small rollovers, unfamiliar trees, and some old folks from somewhere else who ski every sunny day because that's what they've done since 1949.  T-shirts with a snowcat or ski area logo for sale next to the always decent pot o' chili.  Good grooming, too, once the grass is covered.  They're open three or four days a week, and the local kids all yell at each other from the chair and cheer each other on.  (I'm sure there's some cliquishness here, like anywhere, but I'm painting an idyll at the moment.  Let me have my dreams.)

Best view of a 14er from a beginner chair with many Abies.  Also, since we're stating opinion as fact, best Abies: the fairly aptly named Shasta fir.  The big ones are off to lookers' right.  You'll just hafta imagine.

Mt Baker has the snow, and the terrain, and the absolutely stunning views, and on the face of it in the right crowd, you could easily call them the best.  They have that new mid-mountain chalet, which is gorgeous, and Don Wilcox's fever dream at White Salmon, the main lodge.  Hash Tag World Record Snowfall.  Legendary baked salmon.  And, unfortunately, the attitude to go along with it all.  A mean undercurrent from which you're never fully safe.  One of the rudest, most condescending coworkers I've ever had is one of the top muckety-mucks, and in his on-hill reports he sounds exactly the same as he did in the fall of 2000.  Baker is the personification of the common human misperception that because the place you are is legit, by extension, you are as well.  You could die inbounds at Baker, fairly easily, and folks have.  Baker's been shut down at least once by their liability carrier for exactly that reason.  Many folks then take this knowledge and run with it, believing that since they're alive, they've bested some demon that weaker folks can't.

Folks pass through, good folks, like Rory and Jason the Bartender.  People who stick, though, with few exceptions, are mossbacks, meaner than hell and hiding from something or other.  That fake-chill pseudo-hippie bullshit where you're always wondering when the hammer's goin down.  When the trustafarian in full Arc'teryx kit is gonna unleash a tirade on you for not smacking the icy chair seat with enough angst and wore out sheave liner.  When Howat's gonna just sell you down the river.

See?!  Super Fancy.  Best Ski Areas need Best Ski Area Bars.  Even if neither of us has had a sip since the last presidency.

To call something the best is hubris.  Unnecessary.  There are no objective measures that matter.  Snowfall? Okay, Baker wins.  Unless Alyeska does.  Or Alta.  Japow.  Erie, PA.  Or Bogus, if you can believe it.  Not season or monthly totals, but just last month we got more out of a two-day cycle than anyone else in North America in that same two-day stretch.  It's not just politicians and free-marketeers who bend the data to serve their own ends.  As well, too, also, do we only honour the amount of SWE that falls?  That sticks around?  Or do we start getting snobby and try to quantify what is "best"?  I disagree with Ski Utah, and even with Professor PowPow himself, Jim Steenburgh.  Utah is not the greatest snow on earth, just as Big Sky isn't the Biggest Skiing in the US, let alone North America.  (Although, they seem to have backed off that particular marketing angle.)  The quality of a turn, how it feels in the moment, is so heavily personal, and effected so aggressively by mood, and ability, and timing, and add in your own metrics, that measuring it is as impossible as it is unnecessary.  (Thanks, Stacie.  I'll never misspell that word.)

Is Bogus the best precisely because of that ephemeral, unknowable thing?  Some unknowable that we don't have any idea what it even is?  Or is it because some random in town built a bot to stuff the ballot box?  Does it even matter?  To that last point, I'd say no.  It does not.

This is what Rossignol was talking about when they said "BEST. DAY. EVER." Bonus points if you can name that chair.  Double happiness points if you know what kind.

I can't remember exactly which turnout I waited so long at, but it was one or two or three below Cayuse, on the north side.  410 is a winding tunnel of a mountain road in the Park, always wet.  Maybe not under that one heat dome, the one that burnt Lytton, BC and set records I pray to God will stand for millennia, but otherwise, wet.  It's gorgeous, and the air is clean even with the higher burden of motor tourism this modern era hath wrought.  That day, I don't even remember which summer, was quiet, to the point where I probly shoulda maybe not planned a long descent that ended with a mandatory hitch or two-hour skin.  Who are we, though, if we always follow what is "best"?

I started the day up at Chinook, mostly skiing the east face, looking down the upper American River drainage.  After a few fun-but-perfunctory runs, I figured what the heck?!  I'd been considering a long tour, long for me anyway, for quite a while.  Top of Yakima to wherever I landed down on 410.  I started by booting up the north chute to the peak itself.  Steep, almost a crux at the top.  The turns in the chute were smooth and creamy June corn.  Every turn that day was.

Upon exiting the chute, I traversed left under the cornices that hang menacingly off the the north side of the west shoulder of Yakima, and when I saw the longest descent on the pitch to my right, dropped my right knee and skied to a small bench where some older folks on AT gear were collected, looking up at the ridgeline.  One of them asked if I'd heard it behind me.  "Heard what?"  He pointed with his pole, looking a bit shaken.  I turned around to look, hoping to see my sweet turns, only to see them covered by a slide.  Part of the cornice had gone, maybe two fridges wide.  (I grew up at Crystal, and at least then, some lines off the King were named by the size of common debris slides.  Hence, Appliances, Toaster, et cetera.)  The rubble crumbled as it went, but I'm betting it woulda broke a leg or two, or worse.  I raised my eyebrows, shrugged, and headed off the bench toward the upper end of Klickitat Creek.  From there, it's tree skiing to the road.

Mt Bachelor is the best at rime in the country.  This is just a lodge, halfway up the hill, during a short storm in April.

It took almost two hours waiting, but finally a gray sedan pulled up.  There were four Mexican dudes out on a drive, super friendly, really interested in what I was doing.  They didn't speak much English, and I even less Spanish, but we got the point through gestures and laughs.  They gave me a ride up to Chinook, one of the fellas even taking off his shoe and using the whole thing to tie the trunk down over my skis.  Up top, we took some pictures, and they tried to ski on my tele boards.  There aren't any real easy pitches on the east side of the pass, and they all fell a bunch, but they were clearly enjoying themselves.  I was as well.  We hung out for a while before I realised how late it was getting, and I headed off to town.

The turns were solid that day, but with repetition and exposure, not actually remarkable in the arc of my skiing life.  I am privileged when I say that, I know.  I can't measure anything about those turns, even in memory.  They are long gone, the snow melted two decades ago along with my recollection of any individual motion.  Thing is, though, much like Bogus last month, I have no doubt that for that short time, those turns were the best in the country.

See?!

-

Title from James McMurtry's I'm Not From Here.  One of many incisive tunes from one of the best storytellers and social critics of his or any generation.  

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.

Relatively easy

The hike out the King can take anywhere from 12 minutes to 2 hours, depending on your skill, familiarity, and fitness.  Mostly your familiarity, as you need to know where to just point it, where you can kick steps as fast as you're able until you almost puke knowing that the line you're sweating for is just past the top of a given pitch.  Skill helps, of course, cos those hard corners where you drop a shoulder and glide instead of skidding wide are much faster with the right amount of edge, and the speed'll let you carry up past ten or fifteen side steps other folks have taken, which saves your lungs for those three pitches on the actual peak where you need to kick hard to stay ahead of the Joeys from Bellevue in their bar-mode boots and this year's trendiest goggles.

I swear it's steeper than it looks. First Throne Gate, CM.

The first time I headed out, I think I was 7. All three of us tagged along with Pa, and I'm fairly certain I was the slowest.  My brothers would have been 10 and 12.  I obviously didn't know where I could pump a roller for an extra boost, or where I should double up to rest the legs for a half second of airtime.  The hike is all about conservation, whether it's momentum or lung power or quadriceps energy, and at 7 I knew about none of that. Somewhere in the middle of the second pitch on the shoulder of the King, we caught up to, or more likely were passed by, a couple around Pa's age. The wife, I'm pretty sure, had a Bota bag of apple juice.  I will never forget the taste.  I think about it, the Bota bag, the apple juice, the kindly lady I never saw again, every time I'm out South, or sidestepping out to Lower Mores here in the desert, or walking along one of the ridges at The Place That Shall Not Be Named, or skating back to the Lodge on the 20 Road after a quick Rabbit Ears lap at Mt A, when my throat burns cos I'm too stubborn lazy to carry water.

I don't remember which line we skied.  Knowing the sort of terrain Pa prefers, it was probly Southeast Right.  Wide open and steep, but manageable. Southeast facing, as you'd guess.  In my mid-to late-twenties, it was a ramp of much speed and few turns, but in the spring of 1989 it would have seemed endless.  I don't remember how many turns it took down to the exit, but it probly felt like a few hundred.  Those years in the late aughts tuning skis for Brad, I made a game of how few turns I could make from the top of the King to the bottom of the first pitch on either side.  My best was 4.

-

Yesterday, I woke up and realised I was 42 years old.  My birthday long past, but still, sometimes it sticks.  I know this is universal, whether you're 31 or 75 or 103, one day you're minding your own business, checking groceries, pumping gas, bumping chairs, riding bulls, sweeping dirt off your baseball pants from a successful steal of third in the deciding game of the CWS, playing a show in front of 3000, whatever, and the next day you're older, feeling broken, and praying to God the trade-off is one resulting in endless wisdom and old-guy strength.  Again, not unique amongst any peer group or novel in the scope of geographic time.  Just, well, hard to swallow sometimes.

This wasn't anywhere as steep in '008. Two Turn Eino? More like Two Hundred Forty-Two Turn Eino.

That day, the 4 turn day, was a Saturday.  It'd puked, then puked some more, and Patrol hadn't opened south all week, not even Friday.  (Stina always spat "Baugher's just waiting for Friday cos he hates locals!")  I knew it would open, and didn't have a shift in the shop, so I was planning to just head for the gate and wait until somebody dropped it and fight for whatever leftovers I could find.  Standing in line for 11, just before opening, the line stretching for two hundred people in front of me, I heard the Number Two Lifts Guy (no clue his name, this far on, but I'll call him Adam, cos why not) yell my name.  That year, '008, I was tuning most-time for Brad.  I'd got my pass through lifts thinking I'd need two jobs, so when I realised I couldn't swing both, I told Bob I'd help out when necessary and otherwise deal with fewer Greenbacks.  He didn't really need me much, and I usually skated by with the last of my tips.  That morning, though, they were short enough lifties that they actually needed me. 

Anyway, Adam wanders over and asks me if I can do lunches. Obviously, I can't say no, regardless, but I mumble something about getting one solitary South lap, and he says "Dude!  Of Course!  Gimme your time card and I'll punch you in. Come back and do lunches, go skiing some more, and clock out at 4."  Well, now.  To be honest, I don't even know if he ever clocked me in.  Or care.

That knowledge of the hike and traverse out south, it pays off sometimes.  There was a line at the False Summit, the second Throne Gate.  I kept booting until I was alone at the top of the Throne, only a short ski down the ridge to the A Basin saddle.  Everyone waiting in line for the lower gate had to traverse, duck the krummholz firs and pine and spruce at speed.  I just had to point it and hope the corners hadn't changed too much with all the snow. I had probly a 5, 6 minute head start on them, and I was faster than all of 'em, too.  I hit the bottom of the King knowing nobody could catch me, no matter how many were back there.  I had built another 4 or 5 minutes in by the top and could catch my breath, make my decisions, breathe some more, ignore the butterflies and the crowd at the top of 9, and be ready instead of jittery.  Brad and his now ex were second and third, surprisingly.  He rarely skied, but it was exactly the kinda day that he waited for.  High, thin, beautiful overcast, chilly enough to preserve the day-old snow, visibility clear and unlimited.  When he poked his head through the last whitebark, I looked quizzically, and asked "How'd you pull this off?" He just shrugged.  "How'd you?!" "I'm doing lunches, as you can see.  Hard at it." I saw the cloud of ants chasing them up the last pitch, waved, ignored his invitation to ski where he could see me, and dropped off to the northeast. Slid a directional turn on the ridge and dropped into the Hourglass, the easiest line off the top of the King.  Some lines just feel right, and I hadn't known it'd be that line until I rolled over and saw nothing but an open ramp.  Four turns at speed, whatever radius that is, down to DFF.

When I was shoveling the ramp at the top of Rex during one of the lunches, a pro patroller slid by and said "Nice turns. I know it was you."

You can't see the forest for the glaciers. Ingraham, Fryingpan, Emmons, Inter, Winthrop, Curtis, and Carbon, NE shoulder of Tahoma. There's more species of conifer in this pic than in all of SW Idaho. Name them all and you get 15 points.

The knees just don't work the way the should, and certainly not the way they did.  I remember one morning at the community college squatting outside Noël's old Acura 5-speed at 7 in the January morning, thinking my knees were done, and how unfair it was that I was only 18 and I was already being sold down the river by creaky joints.  I wasn't, though.  Through strength training, and, more importantly, telemarking 100 days a year and hiking 3000' vertical peaks all summer, the muscles and joints starting working together.  Once I got a bike and stopped with the horror of running, things really clicked and I had a stretch of 15 years with only one single second of true knee pain.  Just now, though, I settled weird in my seat to write these exact words and the lateral side of my right knee lit up with that same white flash.

-

Alta is known for traverses.  The High T is probly the best known, perhaps in the whole damn country.  I've never partaken, and to be honest I have no desire whatsoever.  I and Alta don't get along.  Taos, Bridger, Baker, and the like are known for bootpacks straight up to their respective ridgelines.  Mt A for complaining that the Bowl is closed while ignoring the technically-out-of-bounds south and west sides of the peak because the skate back on FR20 is there.  Not cos it's hard, because it just isn't.  Sun Valley for its glitz and septuagenarians ripping the groomers on the Warm Springs side at Mach Stupid.  Mad River Glen for its single chair, co-op structure, and for allegedly being hard AF.  Jay, for the waterslides.  You get it.

The Place That Shall Not Be Named, maybe none of those things.  They have those gilded bathrooms, the English wool carpet lining all of their countless lodges, the grooming, the 3000' vert of grooming.  Nobody talks about the short hikes to the actual reason to ski in Weber County, Utah, which is the same as anywhere else you can think of, even the Driftless.  Quiet, steep, not-always-safe turns in good, unsettled snow.  Not all of the lines are worth it.  Some, though, it's, well, shoot.  There are still some things I miss about Utah.  From the top of Strawberry, you boot up a little toward DeMoisy, then skate around the west side.  In many years, with some adventurous partners, you could drop Burch Creek all the way to town.  You ignore this, ignore the obvious lines back into Middle Bowl, skiers' left of DeMoisy proper, and keep skating and sidestepping and booting until you're on a ridge above a hidden bowl that empties down into the top of Porky.  You can't really see it from anywhere, and nobody will know you're there.  It's not the steepest spot on the hill, not exposed and terrifying like Mt Ogden, nor obvious like the north face of DeMoisy.  It's a ramp with probly 20 or 30 turns, and it's yours if you want it.

Some of the only truly good memories I have from that glitziest of hills are the handful of turns I made back there and the look some tourist lady gave me when I popped outa the limber pine onto the groomer at the top of Porky.  My moustache, drooping every day further below regs, caked in snow when it hadn't snowed in days.

It's right behind that rock, right there, and there's none of those pesky Joey traverse lines or strange skier people you don't know and yet somehow know you don't like.

The hard truths that take lifetimes to grasp don't first arrive as welcome rain drops on a light breeze after a three week drought, they hit like a 2 am tornado.  Just as convective storms are still hard for the atmospheric science hippies to pin down, these lessons, or insight, whatever you want to call 'em, do what they please, and you have to be paying attention at all times or it'll be years later and you'll sit up with a jolt because there was something to learn from that one moment, way back in 2012 or something, that you can't quite visualise.  Scientific understanding has taken millennia for this same reason, that most folks didn't know how to understand what just happened when all they could see is the black of the receding tornado and their belongings scattered hundreds of yards or even miles away.

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By the time I hit the top of the King last winter, I was scraping rime off the gnarled 5-foot Pinus albicaulis to chew on for water and hoping the feeling in my chest would recede.  Four years of knee problems and anxiety and the fitness I spent all those years cobbling together is long gone, with the weight my far-northerly genes seem prone to add when I'm out of commission complicating things further, and that easy 15-minute hike took me probably 45, for most of which I was out of breath.

The view is the same, that slow spin to take it all in, one more time.  Maybe that was the last, I don't know.  Alterra hasn't made things better up there.  They can't significantly alter the landscape.  They are trying, though.  They are having success pushing out the locals, too, as they are in all of their gathered holdings, legacy and otherwise.  Heather Hansman and Hal Clifford have documented this part of our world better than I can.  Maybe it's obvious, maybe not, but when a large portion of a corporation is built on past legal misdoings--think Intrawest and the fraud they or at least stakeholders in the org committed--one has to wonder whether there's ever any goodwill at the heart of things.  One can't escape these things, only ignore them, and there's a line I can't cross.  It hurts.  It feels like I can never go home, and yes, maybe I should read that book.  I tried Look Homeward, Angel, but never finished it and I associated Wolfe with Kerouac too much and got bored.  I grew up at the exit of the valley, where the lahar fill spreads north and west and flattens the land.  We didn't leave to be gone, but to try to find greener pastures, and yes, the joke writes itself.  Enumclaw averages almost 60 inches of water a year, pretty much all of which falls as rain.  Ashland and Ogden get less than 20, and BoyCee many years never receives more than desert-level water.

From the top of the King, one can see peaks of all shapes, exotic terranes, volcanism old and young, forest, water, and even a little bit of desert.  The constant change and illusion of permanence.  The Emmons, that murderous and beautiful and terrifying glacier, is the biggest thing. It becomes the whole western sky if you don't look away.  It is magnetic, the largest area of any glacier in the lower 48.  If I could choose my death, which I don't want to do, part of me hopes it's underneath another lahar, down on the White some cool fall afternoon, oblivious and calm behind a giant redcedar trunk when the ground shakes and I have a few minutes to understand, to take it all in one last time.  As I said, I don't want to choose.  I hope I'm old and crazy, yelling at all the tourists downtown, some jerk of a business owner calling the cops on me again.

That run wasn't four turns, or even forty.  I was gripped, bordering on scared.  Such a strange feeling in a place I'd long felt at home and comfortable at speed.  I dropped into the Toaster, the third line skiers' left of the peak itself.  I'm sure it's got other names, and I can't even begin to care.  The line is steep, with a nice, deep crux, and an immediate exit onto the huge apron.  I couldn't open it up, couldn't even get comfortable until I hit the groomed exit, avoiding DFF because I was too tired to make more shaky turns in uneven terrain.  Too pissed at the kid at the saddle who said he'd patrolled at Crystal for a year but never returned cos he thought it was boring.  I'd wanted that job, more than I've wanted most things.  Tried, even.  Wasn't cool enough.  Baugher ignored the recommendations of his assistant, the Snow Safety guy, the wife of the ski area owner, and several of his most senior patrollers.  I never even got a chance, and I will never pretend I'm not still bitter.  That anonymous and ungrateful 20-something trustafarian drove that home well and good.  I was so pissed at him I ignored the tightness in my chest and the scratch in my lungs, and only really took a break when I could dig my brakes into the chalk on the summit.

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I feel like I am starting to learn, though, as though I can recognise the colour in the clouds and know that hail reflects or refracts light in a way that in mass quantities will turn the sky green.  That green sky in turn has showed up before tornadoes, so maybe it's time to head to the basement.  I am doing PT, three days a week, grudgingly each time.  I know my injuries, now, or at least have some understanding.  I know that this is a long, boring stretch and that doing the PT helps, while skipping it will result in not being able to walk and needing crutches just to heat the tortillas.

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I think there's a transceiver gate at the top of Chair 8 now, the start of the hike out The Arm.  When I was bumping chairs at the bottom of 5 in '002, there was only a threatening sign with lots of red and firm admonishments.  Everyone sorta self-policed, and the winter of '99 was fresh in mind.  From the gate, one just starts kicking steps, grateful for any shorter person who went first, pissed at all tall dudes and snowboarders.  Tall dudes just step too far, but snowboarders didn't really kick their steps.  Something something "my boots are more comfortable than yours" and you all can go

The Arm. Dang.

Anyway, the snowboard steps would slope outward and even with tele boots, the traction would be garbage.  Best if it was a short and experienced alpine skier, so the steps sloped inward and were close together.  Many steps make light work, something like that.

There are some steep steps, and the terrain rolls parabolically away such that the only way to really know your line is to follow someone who does, or just guess and check.  There's only a few big cliffs.  You'll be fine. 

Who am I kidding? The Arm is huge, and consequential.  Don't french fry when you should pizza.  It's rewarding, too, with long and challenging turns, deep, unsettled snow that can rip out easily in the steeps, but a few lower angle ramps.  It's a circus most days that follow big cycles.  There was one day out there, I was on that big ol' red Seth Morrison.  It was late in the day, the afternoon angling toward shoulda-been-back-to-the-E-Lodge-by-now light, and it hadn't snowed in a week.  The wind coming up the Swift Creek drainage over Lake Ann had been slowly depositing grain and feather, and the week-long cold snap and its attendant drying had kept the snow soft.  Each convexity would hide a deep turn in the lee, several pillows unevenly spaced all the way down into the creek draw, surprisingly deep.  It was quiet that afternoon, just me and a couple other lifties.  At the exit we pulled left, silent, followed the traverse over the westerly branch of White Salmon Creek and out onto the bottom of Daytona, and out the cat road from the bottom of Chair 8 as we'd missed last call.  Another day, another dollar.  So many ghosts back there, real and imagined.
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I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. But still, this is how my brain tracks.

Title from the last track on Jason Isbell's first record after he got sober, the one with the song everybody cheers when he says he swore off that stuff, forever this time. It sounds trite, and instead it's all the feels. And that More Guns Walleye character can take a long tumble off Mt Ogden.