ski-blog

Just wanted to give a shout out to Justin over at ski-blog.com for a quick recover back to a season on the snow.

For those who haven't seen it yet, Sh*t Skiers Say is making the rounds now thanks to Whistler Blackcomb.

What Snow?

This has been a topic of conversation for most of this season. For the folks in the West coast the season started early (mid to late November) and then entered a drastic warm spell for December. For the folks on the East coast it's been a lot of warm with man-made snow being used as much as possible. Then a friend sent this little link to an article called Wheres the Snow?. It's an interesting read to see how things are going this season despite it being a La Nina season. Despite my attempts at laughing at the lack of snow, I've come to the conclusion it must be bad. CNN has published an article talking about it as well.

Back alive on the blog. This one comes from the folks at Teton Gravity Research (TGR) to remind us to take care in the back country:

Puckerface avalanche from Jamie Culp on Vimeo.

Other details on this slide according to the American Avalanche Institute include a 36-inch hard slab, on a greater than 45 degree angle at about 11:30 am. Thankfully no one was caught in the slide. TGR also provided this interesting link to the current tally of deaths due to avalanche this season: http://www.avalanche.org/accidents.php

Snow on the ground

Spent this weekend up at the mountain, cleaning up the rental cabin with my new roommates, and in general preparing for my home away from home. Ended up sitting around having a few drinks with the group when we got the brilliant idea to go climbing towards the summit for the sunset. About halfway up we found snow. Not just the usual dusting or few inches. Nope, we found knee deep left over from last season with several inches of fresh from the recent snow falls. The start of the season is just around the corner, is anyone else excited?

Shake out the Dust

It's that time again... yep time to shake out the dust on this blog. The winter season is fast approaching. Or really, correction:

Wolf Creek has already opened for a bit this season.

The End of a Class

This year at Corpy provided me with my first chance to take part in a multi-week school program. Meaning one of the local grade/high schools would bring up a bus load of students on the weekends for instruction time.

For the past 8 weekends, I spent each morning with 9 junior high school students who wanted to learn to ski. The afternoons were spent with 2 grade school students, and 2 junior high students.

At the end of this past weekend, both groups expressed their disappointment that our time had come to an end. A few of the students also asked if they could continue on taking more lessons from me. They all seemed to say the same thing to me, they enjoyed learning to ski with me because we didn't do just drills. We did a few, but we spent more time going down runs fast, going down runs slow, cutting through trees, taking jumps, bumps, and learning to ride a box together. I watched one student move from never having skied to riding the black diamonds with us, only to consistently crash on the flat run outs back to the lifts. I watched all of them learn about the joys of riding in powder.

For me it was a sad end. I really enjoyed working with these students over the weeks. It gave me a better clue as to how they were progressing as skiers, and really became a lot more fun once we got to know the names for each other. I'll miss my classes. But hopefully I'll see them on the slopes as the season continues.