I guess you just know

 

Lowest maxima is 94 degrees American.  And it's 100 degrees at 9.20pm, by the way.  AND WE DON'T LIVE IN !!@*!!(U(&#$ ARIZONA ARRRRRGGGGHHH.

Anyway.  Time was I'd count the short weeks until the gear guides started filling up whatever random slots on the magazine rack the magazine lady chose that year.  I can still see her form, her ghost.  Mags aren't around anymore.  I'd say we're worse off, but there's so much waste in this world that it's a small price to pay for less landfill.  I doubt I was alone in this.  I'd memorise sidecut dimensions, topsheets, who'd stopped making a good ski in favour of a less good ski.  I catalogued as much as I could, and never skied anything in the pages unless I could scam a demo out of one of the hillside shops, which was rare.  Sometimes I'd pony up for a paid day, with whatever was left that week from the third (very part time) job at the gas station before Jeff closed it, or with what should have been overtime except the State ain't care if your OT is overage at two jobs.

Opening Day skis.  A long way from today.

The King County Fair ran for a few days in July.  Some years, it was pretty good.  Saw the Kentucky Headhunters there.  Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.  Pam Tillis, although I admit that was more cos it was some lady on the radio than a show I actually wanted to see.  Then, in what was usually the hottest time of year, The Highland Games.  I never knew what went on in there, growing up.  By the time I was in high school, we got recruited to march around in front of the Gathering of the Clans.  If you are wondering, it's not a scary race war cult, it's big Sottish families, going back to the old country.  Lots of tartan, kilts, double-snared drums, sooooo many pipes.  Piper John McBride, if I remember correctly, would tune up during the Massed Bands, before our tiny drum and bugle and flute band would lead the clans.  I think his sister was some muckity muck with the Games or like knew Secretary of State Ralph Munro, so he was like a really big deal.  And no, he was not in tune.  Not once.  I mean, bagpipes.  That's pretty much their thing.  

One year, I borrowed a kilt from my friend Peter, who was much taller, plus I got them short Sámi femurs, so I had to hitch all 8 yards of Shetland wool way above the traditional just-higher-than-normal-trousers waistline in order to not be wearing a dowdy old lady skirt.  Wool is hot, even if there's an opening for the breeze that never comes.  

The first time I marched with that scrappy little band of teenaged nerds, I was between 8th and 9th grades.  I played the bass drum that year, and Judy the Director brought along the big one.  Holy crap, I couldn't even see over it.  I went from being the starting varsity centre the previous October to tripping over a Doug fir root by the fairgrounds admin office.  Good thing Peter hadn't loaned me the kilt that year.

The last time I marched around in front of all the clans, I was helping my older brother Eli.  He somehow got saddled with directing the band even though he didn't have credentials or a degree or whatever it is you need to walk in a rectangle with 20 or so fellow nerds following you.  I'd skipped work at the hill, to my boss' eternal dismay.  Seriously, I bet he hadn't forgiven me when he got fired by Alterra whenever that was.  He had probly forgot long ago, but still hadn't forgiven.  He and I never got along, which, well, who knows how that shit goes.  I know I had a big hand in that, but he was a terrible boss, irresponsible, lazy, drunk, the works.  Any time somebody defends him, I remind myself of stepping into the work chair at the top of 4, first day I ever did line work.  He gestured toward a lanyard--not that I knew what it was--thrown down on the ramp, and said "There's a lanyard if you want."  No harness, no instruction, not even so much as a smartass "Hopefully your belt loop will hold you."  I was a 19 year old kid, scared as shit, wondering just how much it hurts to fall off an angled Riblet tower from 30 feet up.  I got real competent at holding myself up with my right foot hooked behind my left, my thighs squeezing the cross arm.  I'm still surprised I didn't end up with a broken back in the grass on Quicksilver.

Anyway, Eli'd asked if I could march with the snare, not a double, unfortunately, just the same beat-up high school drum I played Junior and Senior year after Mercer graduated and I got the good snare.  The boss claimed they were rigging for a resplice on new Chair 3.  Supposedly it was all hands on deck, which should have included Peter Case, who was one of the hill's only halfway decent big machine operators.  When I saw Peter at the Games, he just said "we were never gonna get that done this weekend."  The boss fired me, and that was that.  Maybe I didn't need to follow my brother John into that career, but I still haven't forgiven him.  I have never since been able to stay in the mountains long-term, and he had a direct hand in that.  He kept me from getting a Patrol job, kept me from any sort of year-round work at the hill. 22 years later, I'm still bitter about that.  I still don't like working inside, don't like working in town.

It's that time of year, now, isn't it?

Back in them days, y'know, with the magazines, I don't know, I had fun arguing with the resort guides.  Still do.  I mean, the pages had to stand in during these arguments for the writers, those privileged jerks who got paid to ski at this joint or that, who lived in exotic places like Jay or Truckee or, like, Ogden.  They always seemed to hold the keys to the kingdom, and they got it wrong every time.  I mean, Vail?! Really? Vail sucks.  As does Sun Valley.  The skiing's aight, I guess, but weren't they always arguing that skiing was only part of the equation?  If that's the case, then Vail sucks.  The town is a pile of corporate-owned schlock.  There's no there there.  You want a nice place, try Bethel, Maine.  Gibbonsville, Idaho.  Duluth.  Calumet.  Banner Elk.  You know the places; not really accessible in any real sense, not somewhere you could live, and yet, just maybe.  An actual dream, rather than uniformity and upwardly mobile bullshit.  You can argue all you want that the value is at a place like Deer Valley, where the beer flows like wine.  Or Aspen, where skiers flock like carp to an electric boat.  The vertical, the detaches, the groomers, the, well, the wine and cheese and allegedly-Norwegian sweaters.  I can't be clear enough, though.  They are flat wrong.

Not Beaver Creek, not Whistler, not Stowe, not Big Sky.  And if you turn around, there's a giant stratovolcano looking on.

Those resort guides, with their hackneyed pseudoscientific rankings and pretty people schussing for the camera.  The same rankings every year.  For some, even the ever hallowed Alta would rank like 45th in the Rockies, and that high only because of something ephemeral like "history" or the Goldminer's Daughter.  I'd sit there at the kitchen table, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Labour Day sales, wondering what the heck these turd farmers were getting paid for.  Not journalism, not really.  I'd say "how can you miss Maverick?" Or "What do you mean Stowe is empirically better than Smuggs?"

None of these things matter, of course, and it was an exercise in internalising futility.  And, if I am completely honest, given a stack of cash and a guaranteed byline, I, too, would probly find a way to talk about how The Place That Shall Not Be Named is a good value cos, I don't know, no hotels?  The Shoot'n Star?  It never ceased to get me going, the Resort Guide.  Didn't matter what rag, whose byline, what shimmering imagery.  I'd get riled up, think about how I knew better even when I hadn't yet traveled far or wide even.  I'd get so wound up, it'd be 2 in the mornin' and I'd be firing off letters in my head to Rob Story or Jackson Hogen (I met that guy once, crazy, interesting, a little weird, and above all, a phenomenal skier I could not keep up with, his age be damned) or whoever it was.

The legendariest burger in all the land: Star Burger, Shoot'n Star, Huntsville, Utah.  Take off, all you hosers who ruined Utah for us.  This is what I miss the most.  Certainly more than the Greatestest Snow On All Of The Earth Tee Em.  That, in particular, was a disappointment on the order of Californication, or, I don't know, Atomic shrinking the Big Daddy.

It's an easy and silly thought experiment, this.  It's August, the Resort Guides of yore long lost to the dustbins of corporate earnings reports and ad revenue charts.  There's nobody to argue with.  Leslie Anthony is probly off throwing rocks at telewhackers.  The Shoot'n Star is still there, but so are many folks I want nothing to do with.  The Elk sold to some hipster hotel magnate.  Skiing is far off, both in time and in space.  I could hoof it off to T-line, or hope there's still a strip up some northeasterly coulee in the Sawteeth.  Neither is really possible with my split weekend and minimal ambition.  Everything is hypothetical.

It's here that I'd usually fire off some utterly off-the-cuff list of esoteric joints with explanations of why they--say, Magic Mountain down south of Twin, or Beaver out east of Logan, or Giant's Ridge up northwest of Duluth--were the pinnacle.  Anthony Lakes on a sunny Friday after a midweek dump, cos, y'know, they're only open weekends.  You know the drill, though.  Nothing's really new, and that's totally fine.  Good, even.  I crave routine, even if I feel trapped by it.  I enjoy a new song by a familiar artist, and a new turn on a familiar pitch.

Familiar places, familiar faces.  Huh huh.  That's funny cos the pitch facing us (HA!) is called The Face.

For a couple summers, I can't think now how many, but too many, I worked in the Enumclaw Safeway.  I pushed carts for way longer than I should have.  When I finally got a checker job, it was temporary, cos by winter they'd scaled me back to one four hour shift a week.  When I got the promotion, I dove in head first.  Memorised like fortyleven produce codes.  Got my average items per bag up to like eleventeen.  When I was in the express lane, my line would never get past three people.  It didn't matter.  Winter comes for us all, for good and ill.  Mostly good.  Here' hoping the next one is above average.

Saddleback, Maine.  Seriously.  How can you not?!

- -

Indulge me here:

Tyler Mahan Coe has an incredible podcast about country music.  Find it here.  Don't recognise his name?  I bet you do if you think hard enough.  I bring this up because he likes to add liner notes, named after all the stuff artists or labels or management types would add to albums in order to enhance the experience, or educate you, or simply (Radiohead and Tool, here's to you) confuse the shit out of you.  Following are some of my own.

- Powder Magazine isn't fully gone, but having a website and emailing ad copy does not a magazine make.  Time was, it was the best.  It was specifically Powder I'd wait for, right at the beginning of August.  I don't remember if the first episode always came out then, but close to it.  Maybe the 10th or the 15th.  It didn't matter, cos I would go by the Safeway every chance I got to see if the Magazine Lady had updated her display.  Seriously, there's only so much Orange-Carrot Sobe one can buy before folks get suspicious.

- Some of the magazines, Ski in particular, really did get it all wrong.  Those pseudo-scientific listicles I mentioned were sheer dreck.  "Customer driven", or somesuch corporate nonsense, they called it.  They'd survey folks at the ski areas, then use the results to rank the contenders.  You can bet they didn't sit outside the Pioneer Lodge at Bogus asking Emmett lokes whether Brundage or Soldier was better if graded on scales regarding the quality of cutlery in the cafeteria or the symmetry of the tiller courds on the groomers.  They really added nothing to the conversation, just a circular handshake where Deer Valley would pay for copious ad space and Ski would use that money to go survey every single clueless New Yorker with money in the Stein Erickson Lodge and of course they'd say Deer Valley was the best cos they literally only skied at DV and wanted to use the platform to justify their expenditure, and besides, had no clue what else was out there, even in their own state, which has such incredible places as Titus, Plattekill, Gore, and Whiteface.  Not to mention the other twelveteen million ski areas in the state.  Seriously.  New York has the most ski areas of any state in the Union.  Suck on that, Colorado.  Deer Valley could then say in their ads "RANKED NUMBER ONE BY SKI MAGAZINE," and clueless tourists with money would keep flocking there like the Salmon of Capistrano. Vomit emoji. Poop emoji.

- Thing is, although I don't like to admit it, the skiing at DV and SV is real good.  Like, uff da.  Long, clean fall line, well planned, lifts where you hope they'd be, it's just, I don't know, still not enough. If I'm tryna fall asleep at night, it ain't the new Cold Springs lift I'm thinking of.  It's Chair 1 at Loveland. Or Chair 1 at Baker. Chair 1 at Lookout, Mt Spokane, Lost Trail, Bogus, Dodge Ridge, Donner Ski Ranch. Chair 1 at Hyak or White, if you wanna go that far back. Mission. Silver. 49 North. You get the drill.

- Herewith, just cos, a bunch of rad joints.  If there's a big name in a state, I offer these as counterpoints.  If there is not, then by all means, ski here or anywhere there:

- Eaglecrest. Mt Spokane. Kelly's. Hoodoo. Sky Tavern. Bear Valley. Sunrise Park. Nordic Valley. Snowy Range. Blacktail. Huff Hills. Terry Peak. Powderhorn. Pajarito. Mt Crescent. Mt Kato. Trollhaugen. Caberfae. Chestnut. Perfect North. Gatlinburg. Sugar. Wintergreen. Canaan. Snow Trails. Bear Creek. Kissing Bridge. Southington. Yawgoo Valley. Jiminy Peak. Saskadena. Cranmore. Bigrock. There's no option in Missouri cos Vail owns both joints. How that's not a monopoly, I do not know.

- Title from James McMurtry's Bad Enough.  It sounds good this time of year.  Most of his music does.

Middle of the day; already gettin dark outside

By Eino Holm

One year, we opened on the 4th of November.  Something like 18" new on basically dirt, weeds, dead beargrass stalks, and some leftover teaser-crust.  I was ecstatic.  Also, not alone.  A solid handful of us, whoever we were, were there.  Green Valley skied the best.  Maybe it was the only thing that really skied.  If I remember correctly, and I usually sometimes am sort of able to, we had to download on 11 (Chinook).  I think 10 and 3 were skiable.  I may be conflating two memories here, but I think I skied the morning and then headed to work.  In my ever idealised memory, it was in the Safeway, but it could have been later, when I was at Performance Bikes, pretending to know what I was doing.  At any rate, I skied horribly.  It was opening day, there were eighteen inches of unsettled Cascady manna on just enough crust to cover some of the dirt.  The bottom of 10 is a wet mess when not covered in snow, and otherwise it is a wet mess that is covered in snow, not always fully.  Several small springs keep the hillside muddy and alive with black flies in the summer.  Mel's Left (how a cat driver trail name got on the official map, I don't know) has this rad soft right-hander with a big enough rollover that I can still see Mike Kupsis gettin rad on some big Dynastar Bigs back in '000.  Mute grab, check.  Tele, natch.  Anyway, I didn't get rad, and when I tried to turn toward 11 to download, well, my teles and I had an argument.

See, the XXXs wanted to stop moving.  Like, now.  In fact, they wanted so badly to stop that both tips dug into the mud that was quickly spreading in the eighteen melting inches of early November gift.  I, you know, wanted to slide on over to the top of 11, step on them Targa heels, jump off the skis, and jump on the chair.  The skis won the argument at a trot.  Not a chance.  My logic must have been flawed.  I was muddy, pancaked in one puddle or other, cursing, sore already and the work day hadn't even started.  It was a stark enough moment that my memory of the day stops there, face down in the mud and maybe a little embarrassed.

Cooking up the White Ribbon of Death.  Bogus Basin, November '021.

Every year, ski areas around the world compete to open first. Some cheat, and locate themselves on the side of an Alp with access to glacial pitches in, like, Austria or wherever, and therefore are either never closed or are open in September. Here in the States and Canada, it's usually man-made, a contest between places as big and as corporately backed as Keystone, as famous as Lake Louise, or as small as Wild Mountain, Minnesota. Every so often, when the planets align and it's too warm in Summit or Rutland or Clear Creek counties, but the jet revs up and the weather pilot gooses the throttle a little, Crystal, Baker, Timberline, and a handful of other Northwest Nuggets vie to capture the flag. I definitely don't remember if 4 Nov was the continent's, the country's, or even the West's opening day, but it was Washington's, and all ours. I don't even really remember the rest of the year, but that day, that glorious, thigh-burning, poorly-skied day, that will be there along with all those closing days shoveling snow or scrubbing the tune shop floor in a white button-down and FarFar's tie cos, well, why the heck not?

November skiing is special, a kind of niche that many folks fight for and many other folks just do not understand.  Some times it's a 30 minute line at the bottom of BMX at A Basin.  For me, the best is '007, the year I got fired by a guy in Sumner who was too bloody stupid to never hire me in the first place and I spent all of November on unemployment waiting for a guaranteed ski tuning job that would start, as luck would have it, on opening day.  Crystal opened 1 December that year, got washed out by an historical rain cycle, and somehow managed (sorry, not somehow managed, it's Washington, home of the top 3 verified yearly snow totals IN THE WORLD*) to reopen the next weekend.  Driving up on Sunday, 2 Dec, was a wonderful gorp of axle-deep slop on the highway.  I got stuck by the late and lamented Crystal Inn cos the driver of the minivan next to me had parked too closely and I was worried if I goosed 'er the Legacy would slide sideways and smashify the damn thing.  Anyway, the dude from Robert's Rescue some random guy (don't sue 'im!) happened by with a tow strap that I just now remembered I also had in the trunk at the time, under the mat, and we shoveled all the snow we could between me and the Caravan.  He yanked me out with what I think I remember was a Grand Cherokee, in the process only sort of scraping the whole side of the offending minivan from tail pipe to headlight with my 30th-Anniversary-Gold, 5 speed Legacy L 2.2 wagon with the all-wheel drive that I then the very next day bought new snow tyres for cos, wouldn't you know it, studs are studly.

Nope.  Not even once.  Solitude, UT, 10 November '022.  I think the correct Norske phrase is uff da. Pic courtesy of some poor sap Jake Nixon (@thejakenixon on the tweeter, while it lasts) via Unofficial

Now, where was I? Right, November of 2007.  Paul Jr of Bonney Lake Bicycles of Sumner, WA (speaking of uff da; that shop name...) was advertising for help in August on his reader board, and I was advertising for getting the heck out of Performance Bikes.  It was a match made in at least the upper level of Purgatory until, in late October, he came to his senses and realised carrying an extra full-timer over the winter would be expensive and fired me.  He claimed I was a "bad salesman", which, well, maybe yer wrong cos I sold a damn Special Ed Endurbro in an October rainstorm, and specced and sold a drop-bar fat bike before The Radavist really hit its stride, but also, d'uh, I'm a mechanic, a cynic, and a sometimes-angry Sámi who has no idear why the heck these people keep coming in and asking questions the answers of which are super easy to find out by paying attention and not being a moronic suburban brain dead mediocre white as-----

I got lost again.  Apologies.  

At any rate, Jr laid me off, and that was that.  Blissful unemployment.  Brad answered my queries quickly, that he could totally use me part time starting opening day if I was just a wee bit flexible with my schedule, and being a single, unemployed, re-upping ski bum, I obviously was.  I was most excited about the down time, something I have not gotten since.  I imagined writing epic poetry (I'd prolly {haHA} even call it poesy cos that's what other people did who were like, hip and shit) in cafés with pretty baristas who'd flirt just enough to wake me up.  I'd go for long rides out at Sawyer on the XLT or the Monocog, and wander up to Corral Pass to stare into the abyss.  The road was still open then. I settled for the Starbucks in Sumner, road rides on the TCR cos I sold all of my dirt-worthy bikes, and the hope that I could one day again afford the alpine boot I returned, a Salomon Impact 10, the stiffest, most legit alpine boot I'd yet tried on in my blissful ignorance, to cover costs since I had (checks non-existant-at-the-time internet banking) $0 in savings at that exact moment.  With unemployment, returned boots, and three bikes sold, I was sittin' pretty.  Enough to not get a paycheck for 6 weeks and yet never feel the pinch I so often have felt.

Sexy or just weird Frenchist æsthetic? You decide.  Also, the buckle retension springs broke and would poke my hands.  Blood, man.  It's a trip.

Phew.  Then, it was quiet.  The last few days of October disappeared.  I assume I got up and did things, but I don't recall.  I do recall talking to Doc Clark about a skin condition (that I still have, so he was wrong) which he thought was MRSA.  I hate antibiotics.  So much farting and uncomfortable pooping.  Couldn't even enjoy Mama Stortini's on Chris' birthday.  I think one of the days in early November I went up to Greenwater and hung out with Liza, which is something we did then.  We haven't spoken in over a decade, and now that I'm way out into my 40s, I'm genuinely sad about that, and I know I'm at fault.  Anyway, she had just got a new-to-her black Impreza 5 speed.  It was a fun little car to drive, more responsive than my grocery-getter Legacy.  Or was that '008?  Again, memory.  Sheesh.  Somewhere about Chris' birthday, it started snowing in the hills, and by Veteran's Day, Naches Peak was skiable.  I ticked off little lines that in Summer (the Other Ski Season) aren't lines cos the snow is so deep and everything is just ramps.  One line I had to rappel in on an Abies lasiocarpa bough.  It was glorious.  Liza called my new-to-me flip phone and told me to do it.

I got four days on snow in November, a number I now recognise as unimaginative, but which may have been due to constraints I am not now remembering.  The last of which was a day of really, really, really nice myth-snow out in the Triangle Bowl with Brian Patrick.  I'd got to Chinook Pass later than I should have, which was early by the standards of my current situation.  People were parked every which way, Suburbans and whatever stacked on top of Legacies and beater Broncos from Lakewood.  I was pissed.  Full-on rage.  I mean, who the heck were these people?  Chinook is MY personal ski area!  I threw skin to ski, boot to floppy G3 binding, kit to snow, and ran.  By the time I reached the saddle between Naches and Triangle Peaks, I almost threw up.  I'd made the two-ish miles in 15 or so minutes.  I know what sorta mile that makes.  Sue me.  I was fitter then.  After retching, I laughed a little, watched the trees a minute, and started looking for tracks to follow.  On the move, I ate my apple.  I love apples.  I summited the Triangle easily, and stood there taking in the view.  Brian came up from below, and we exchanged shit-talking pleasantries about the conditions, the absurd crowd down at the pass, where we'd been all summer, y'know, life.  We made two runs in what is still the best November snow I've skied.  I think he stayed, beast that he is.  I headed back for the truck, and dinner at my parents.  It felt, for that moment, like I'd arrived.  (Today, I'm always surprised how quickly that sort of feeling can dissipate.)

November turns are better far than November sitting-on-the-couch.  Hiding from the Eye of Sauron, Thanksgiving, '022, Bogus Basin.  Mambo Left and Right.

For all the good skiing that November held, and this November recently passed, most early season turns are like last Sunday at the local Slop House.  I damn near cry for the feeling of being back on snow, and the turns are meh.   My feet hurt, my lungs hurt, and I wish there was a cello following me playing that one Bach suite.  They are irreplaceable, full stop.  And at the same time, forgettable, full stop.  So many Amerikanski folks associate skiing with the calendar pages between Thanksgiving and President's Day.  I just don't get it.  For me, fall skiing is borderline religious, but rarely is it good.  That month, November of '007, is the only one that stands out.  There are blips and blorps, yes, like Veteran's day of '005, skiing chalk (?!?!?!?!) on the Front Side on the ol' 1080 Gun, or Sweet Revenge and Bear Hollow with 3800 of my closest Utah buds in Northern Utah's worst winter on record, but otherwise, it's the snow and the wind and the first taste that I actually crave.  Chinook Pass (always, forever) in the first snow.  Chris' Civic, enough snow that it's white, and cold, and the divide between now and never, between here and gone.

-

One memory, just cold, an inch or two on 542 above the E Lodge.  All Saints' Day, 2000.  Eli's Godmother's birthday, if I am not mistaken. John and Lizz just got married, and I am just lost.  The inertia of 14 years of school is waning, my compass utterly unmagnetic.  I can't really tell where to go from here.  A couple months later, I just give up.  22 years later, I'm still a junior in college, like my nieces, though they'll stroll on past me this coming January.  There are a lot of people at Heather Meadows, some successful, most just wandering around like the four of us.  I think Lizz' friend Andrea is with us.  Does she still have Grandma Linnea's swivel rocker?  Maybe.  I think Kelly, friend of a friend, still has the dresser.  Or they had them, and who knows?  I am ashamed, from time to time, of how many cars I let fall off the tracks back then.  I held shit together for a while, barely, and then just, well, didn't.

Even so, this afternoon, 1 November 2000, all is well.  Everything is in front of me.  Table, Pan Dome, Herman, all above me.  God, too, if that's how this works.  Cold, low-angle sun, damp, Whatcom County, almost Canada; Border Peaks and Sefrit, Goat and Tomyhoi, Larrabee and Yellow Aster to the North, and to the East.  The cardinal directions that as a child I was certain held meaning beyond simply pointing the way.

-

Title from Zoë Muth's Taken All You Wanted. "Every day, about this time, this time of year, we lose a little bit o' light."  My parents' house is behind a 1000' peak, and this time of year, the sun goes down about 3 in the day.  I can't shake the feeling.

* I hear tell of much higher snowfalls, but without verification.  The point isn't that these three totals are absurd, or verified, just that I like the Cascades like some folks like cheese or The Beatles or Shania Twain.