After a nine-day sojourn in Texas for SxSW Interactive and a few days of Lindy Hop in Houston, I’m back. It was a nice break, but I’m feeling disconnected from the ski scene and trying to get back into the groove.
I arrived home to find some goodies from Ibex on my doorstep—some men’s and women’s base layers. The timing couldn’t be better because this weekend, I’m going with a bunch of friends for my first back country hut trip so we will have an opportunity to test wool’s vaunted stink-proof properties.
Frontier passengers who fly between November 3, 2006 and April 15, 2007 can exchange their Frontier boarding pass receipt at any ticket window at Winter Park/Mary Jane or Copper Mountain and receive two lift tickets for the price of one at the full-day window rate.
Both resorts close on April 15, though, so it doesn’t leave much time.
It’s spring break around the nation, and it seems like everyone is spending it on the Colorado slopes. I can’t blame them — the weather has been gorgeous here and the snow has been good. Bright cloudless days are the best for skiing. Of course, all of the visitors mean lots of people.
Whether you’re a local or a ski savvy visitor, here are some of the ways that we manage to dodge the crowds and have a good day, no matter how many people we’re sharing with:
Get to the mountain early. Get on the first lifts and get out of the main part of the resort. At some mountains you can spend an hour or more just to get on the mountain, so getting an early start can mean many more runs in your day.
Get away from the main areas. This is possible even if you’re a beginner. Look closely at the map and see if you can find lifts that don’t go all the way to the bottom of the hill or if you’re in a resort where it applies, get on the back side.
Try the trees. If you have the skill to feel comfortable, try hopping into the trees. Your best chance of finding fresh snow is in there and on the right run, they can be a blast. Just don’t forget to take a buddy. Skiing in the trees by yourself is tempting fate.
Photographer Michael G. Halle keeps blowing my mind with his back country photos—and I just stumbled across him on Flickr one day as I was hunting for cool shots for this site.
Intrawest completed its purchase of Steamboat resort on Thursday, but pass-holders better stop holding their breath: there will be no changes this season.
Evidently, they’re still thinking about what they’ll do next season. One has to think that a Winter Park/Copper/Steamboat pass is inevitable—it would certainly make the Rocky Mountain Super Pass more attractive to me.
The Summit Daily News goes into more detail, but I’m just giddy with the prospect of watching the drama as Steamboat and Intrawest come together. It should be the stuff of soap opera.
“It’s a bit of ski YouTube,” said Rob Katz, chief executive officer of Vail Resorts….”
You have to give Vail some credit for trying. At least they recognized that there’s something happening in the world of online video. But there’s one small problem: it’s not YouTube. [Not even close: I was going to embed a video from MySnowTV right here, but it only give me the code for a Vail promo video. I’m pretty sure I could hack it, but why bother when it take two clicks to embed a similar YouTube video?]
Founded by a former A-Basin ski instructor, the company makes beautiful wood-veneered skis with a wacky shape explained thusly on their website:
Skiers naturally have more weight on their downhill ski than on their uphill ski. ScottyBob’s ground-breaking design has a shorter uphill edge, increasing pressure along that edge. With more weight on the uphill edge, stability and control are dramatically increased. The result is a ski with unparalleled carving performance.
The funny thing is, as soon as I read about ScottyBobs, I started seeing them everywhere I skied, kind of like when you learn a new word, and suddenly it seems like everyone around you is using it.
Over at the Goat, Rocky has pissed some people off by suggesting that the small, hand-made ski manufacturers might not be able to create a product as good as larger manufacturers.
Obviously, he does not appreciate the joy of the wood shop with its scraped knuckles, sore feet, and sawdusty phlegm.
He has a point—it’s MUCH more economical to control tolerances and quality when you make 10,000 of something than when you make ten. My girlfriend is fond of pointing out that when products are marketed using phrases like “built to aerospace standards” it’s worse than meaningless: In aerospace they make one of something, they make it using the most well-worn (read: oldest) technology that will serve, and they tend to make things fit with shims, glue, and paint rather than precision. Why? Because it’s too costly and time-consuming to setup for precision. Want to make an impressive claim? “Built to automotive industry standards.”
But there are definitely some cogent arguments on the other side:
There is little to no rational to support Rocky’s comments on small ski companies. The big companies would like you to thinks they invest in technologies and R&D unattainable by other vendors, but in reality the technological advances have only reducing the barriers to entry for small ski and snowboard designers over the last 5 years.
A few weeks ago, I saw something in, of all places, the 
Over at 
