Don't believe the hype

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

Clout goggs for the win. Flav would go.

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

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

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

Alta is for traversers.

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

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

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

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

Mecca, allegedly. Hash tag number one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone else is doing it

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

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

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

Futuristic football stadium. You choose what kind.

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

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

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

Been around a minute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It do look nice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keeping my options open

I just drove past our old place.  There are new neighbours across the side street.  I think the apartments back there got their rents raised, and the quiet, friendly, working-class Latino family who always waved or nodded or smiled lost out to some real winners right before we moved.  They were there a whole weekend before we left and already the dad had parked his truck and trailer on our lawn, the mom had scared off all the birds with her unmuffled Honda Accord, and the son had yelled at passersby and then left his bike in our driveway.  The sorta folk who spread their drama all over, regardless of their neighbours' desire for exactly the opposite.  I guess moving across town isn't all bad.

I sound like a jerk, and maybe I am.  Maybe I should just listen to James McMurtry quoting whomever he quoted. There, but for the grace of God, et cetera.

This will make sense in a minute. For now, just practice your MA even though this cat ain't movin.

I like to tell stories, and I have a short attention span. They all interconnect, somehow, maybe just with me performing the function of disinterested and rarely-central nexus. Or maybe it's just that I thought of one thing, and then I thought of another, and I'll vamp until I can connect the dots from A to Q to * to Ň to ~ to B.  Sometimes a cigar, y'know, is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors.  Something like that.

-

I have been struggling a bit of late to keep up with the world.  Keep all the marshmallows from burning.  Last fall I tried to rejoin the ski industry and tune some skis locally, like within walking distance.  It did not work out.  I felt so out of touch with the kids, y'know?  Everyone acted simultaneously like time didn't exist and that everything needed to be done early.  The bosses, and they were many, definitely hadn't been to Charm School in a while.  The first day on the tune finishing bench was one of the worst work days of my life.  I am not being dramatic, and I could not point to any one thing. Within three weeks, I was having anxiety, the likes of which I haven't felt in a decade, maybe two, so I quit. Ryan (the Owner) let me have Fridays off in the hopes that I'd mellow out, and in some ways I did.  Still, some days I'd rather just dump this whole 20-year "career" of mine and drive a cat at Lost Trail or something.

One of those Fridays. An excuse to post pics of Soldier. 

I've long held that the 88mm ski is the best ski.  I still think so, at least when you consider who it's aimed at, which is basically everyone, and who can enjoy it, which is definitely everyone.  Many good examples here, like the old Monster and Kästle's MX88.  There's a Stöckli, of course, the SR88, and the Fischer Motive 86.  The last Bandit XXX from Rossi was 90mm, basically the same thing.  The list goes on, and since I sold my first-year Kendo in '016 in order to afford moving out of the shitstorm that The Place Who Shall Not Be Named had become for Amy and me both, I have had a bit of a hole in my soul.  I had a 175 Monster 88, the last legit one Head made, the black one with the totems that Euros don't seem to understand is theft, but it was on its third binding/fourth mount--thanks, LB, next time remember the RooClear--which is a Rottefella Cobra R8 tele and my knees don't exactly do that anymore.  Something about chondral loss and "post-surgical appearance".  Osteo-arthritis, as Lora the Trainer told me back in June.  (Sound familiar?)  Anyway, those went to CO with my niece.  The MX88 I saved from the compactor scratched the itch but didn't cure the rash.  Clapped out, tuned out, skied out, all the above.  Skis well in soft, not so much on hard.  I wanted, no, NEEDED a new 88mm ski.  I spent countless coffee times reading reviews, watched all the skiers on the hill even though I'm the best skier on the mountain, tried to find the exact pair that would be the one.  I feel like I've said this sort of thing before.

At The Swap last fall, I found first a Fischer 86GT that might have fit the bill, but the $300 tag and the wore out system bindings put me off.  I saw a Motive 86, the spiritual grandfather of the GT, for $89, and couldn't hold it in.  Weeks later, after my failed tune-shop experiment, I stopped by a different shop with a stone and was about to get em flattened when I realised there were 16 conspicuous pimples on the base.  Again, don't forget the melamine, Dr Mechanic Person!  And again, back to square one.

Fischer says this is their RC One 86GT?*

Rudi Finžgar founded Elan in 1945, along with "nine other visionaries."  They've sponsored a few big names, two of which can be described as the best of their generation.  Heck, just about any generation.  Ingemar Stenmark would be the 2001 Seattle Mariners of World Cup Alpine if the Mariners had won the Series that year and then continued on to win the Olympics.  (I know that's not how it works; that's how good Ingemar was.)  Plake is, well, Plake.  Not many skiers of the 80s and 90s were good enough--as Plake was and still is--to wave off Scot Schmidt as the guy who hip checks everything, but then, it ain't bragging if it's true.

Along the way, Elan has built some great skis, many of which are long forgotten, simply their version of whatever was on the podium at the races and moguls venues.  They claim to be innovators in graphics, too, being the pioneer in screen printing topsheets.  Then there was the Quad 1.  I don't even know what the story was there, but dag, did I want one.  Today 121mm under foot sounds like if that weird anesthesiology doctor who told me he wouldn't kill me like MJ the Creeper's doctor did had forgot to show up to my surgery at all but Beckmann the Knee Mechanic started in with the dremel tool anyway.  There was the Spectrum, which, in that forgotten period around 2014, was one of the best, most approachable powder skis out there.  It was with me on one of the only truly great Utah runs in two winters in Northern Utah.  I think that most folks didn't notice it at all, unfortunately.  They--Elan, not the docs at St Luke's--are responsible in part for the shape of skis today.  Bode Miller says that the credit is his alone, but that's just part of his myth. They are credited with building the first "hourglass" ski to really take hold, the SCX.  Before that, 20 years or so, they were building deeper sidecuts into skis than other brands were.  Ingemar skied the Uniline long before Bode race-plated a K2 Four in an amateur race and started building his brand.  If I sound like I'm Bode-hating, I'm not. He's just more sure of himself than he deserves to be.  Then again, I can't hope to finish a gated run on der Streif, let alone schralp the A net while doing so.

Of late, especially since the SCX, Elan is more known as either that one Euro brand that builds everyone else's skis--it's probly of little coincidence that Hashtag Peak By Bode Miller is made in Begunje--or the cruiser ski company.  At most, here in the States, they're the Ripstick brand.  Easily accessible, floaty, playful skis for the weekender crowd.  

Yeah, no.

Hidden in amongst the ruckus, or lack thereof, is the Wingman.  It's the descendant of the first Amphibio skis, a sort of graduate school version of ideas that have been kicking around for years.  Where the Scotty Bob (above) failed, the Elan Amphibio did not, largely because it was executed better, with much more subtlety.  I have enjoyed a few Amphibio-equipped skis over the years, though I won't even hesitate to say the actual traits that Elan calls "Amphibio technology" are gimmicky at best. The idea is that the outside of the tips and tails are lifted off the snow by rocker and the inside is not, shortening the outside edge dramatically and allowing for easier release and initiation.  If your eyes glazed over and you started thinking about Crispy Creams, then I made my point.  Still, and all, the lineage has been a fruitful and enjoyable one.  The old Apmhibio 84 is among my favourite all-mountainy frontside skis ever.

The Wingman is a simpler, more classic ski.  Wood core, minimal bs, and some metal.  They build three versions at the moment that are relevant to this particular fever dream, getting more and more techy as the number behind the Euro sign gets bigger.  Last Christmas, give or take, I was doing my rounds of the internet and found a Wingman 86 Ti at Second Tracks Level Nine in SLC.  184, cos I thought I needed the burliest version.  Everyone said it's a ski with limits, like Elliot on the Youtube, and I assumed that was cos it was undergunned.  

Paper-jigging in the laundry room.

It was not.  They are.  This is a strong and strong-minded ski.  My first day on the ski, after paper-jigging one of my 25 year old 900s Equipes with a satisfying amount of double, treble, and tetruple checking, was maybe not the day the ski was designed for.  A handful of new, cold, the sorta day that causes most folks to clutch their pearls and reach for the Big Stix.  I had a blast, once I sighted in the radius and the fact that this ski does one turn shape--round AF--real well, and that other turn shapes might not be why you buy this ski.  After a full season, I've found this ski to be capable in most conditions, on most terrains, an actual all-mountain ski.  As advertised.  Where Elliot (and all the others, I just use him as an example cos he's local) is wrong is that one can definitely ski this off-piste if one so chooses.  It makes round turns there, just like on the groomers he says are its only playground.  At speed, slow, it doesn't really matter.

I haven't been wrong about skis very often, and when I have, it's mostly been my underestimating just how many conditions there are in which they would excel.  This blue and green board, with its kinda over-done Euro-style marketing and funky topsheet, is one of the most fun skis I have ever been on.  It does do the roundy groomer turns well, just like Elliot says.  It also does all the other things.  I made a handful of runs in some creamy day-old at Soldier in January, and I didn't wish for any other ski.  Obviously, the normal caveats apply.  If I'd brought a wider ski, it would have been better in the duff and fluff, but I enjoyed the day without complaint.  It jumps off the Cabin Traverse into the Triangle moguls like it should, like all the other good skis out there.  And, not coincidentally, I like that I can ski it in conditions that others have adamantly claimed it couldn't even look at, let alone handle with aplomb.

My magic internet and photo rectangle thinks I love these shots. Also, another nother reason excuse to post pics of Soldier, too, as well.

Pertinents:

- 86mm waist, 17 metre radius, 131mm tip--which may account for the better-than-expected float and playfulness.

- Amphibio Not that important.  Or at all.

- Last year's model was $600 flat, which is obviously what you should buy.  I bet a Pivot would allow even more versatility than my stoic-like-Nordic-me 1999 900s binding.  There's a system version, which, even though Jeff from Ski Essentials says is just fine, isn't just fine.  System bindings start ruining ski feel about the 80mm mark, maybe even narrower.  Screws, man, they're the best.  Gotta use that #3 Posi for something or other.

- Minimal tip rocker, and almost no tail rise.  Square tail.  If you ski backward or are, like, from QC and think a trampoline is a training tool, this isn't for you.

- I mounted it at recommended boot centre, but I bet if you sized down and scooted back, you'd access some more schlarve in the tail.  Don't be tempted.  Size up and give 'er.  Turns are supposed to be round, anyway.  Point-and-slash is the ski version of Trix.

- Did I mention it's not super expensive?  I like that.

- Stand on it.  Centre of mass over base of support.  Be involved in the outcome of your day.  It's quite enjoyable, really.

Plake, not hip-checking even a little.

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Title from Kathleen Edwards' not-as-recent-as-it-seems-cos-of-Covid song "Options Open", on her 2020 album Total Freedom.  I always feel like brand loyalty is a bad idea, my 5 Soma frame purchases and 3 Subarus and, like, 80 goshdarn 747-lineage bindings aside.  Everybody burns you in the end.  In point of fact, the only non-prescription thing I can think of where I didn't deviate from brand is the Scarpa Terminator. 3 for 3 in 24 years.  For 43 years, I been keepin my options open.

* They use Bafatex, which is some kinda material that used in sails. I think it's a woven combination of unicorn floss and narwhal feathers.

Okay, maybe he didn't suck that bad, but I bet he can't pronounce the run leader's name or the Deutscher word for departure.  Besides, if you are on national telly claiming Ester's gold is only cos she was on Mikaela's skis, your grand idear is based on a drunk mechanic's attempt to reattach a gimmick to a ski, and you base a ski company on that and start it with an asshole ski exec from one of the two worst corps in the industry, I gotta say I'm skeptical.

- -

Really lastly, this was sposeta hit publish last year but life takes you where it goes,  or so it would seem.

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?!

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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.

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Title from James McMurtry's Peter Pan.