Day 54 - Friday Apr. 20 - Another Power Day?

Yeah, dude. Another powder day. Cody came over to my house last night to help me wax the three pairs of Insanes we were each planning to see today. It was very educational, and I plan to do this again sometime. We met at 5:30 am at the park-n-ride at 39th and Wasatch. I was nominated to drive and so they got to enjoy the beautifully orchestrated noises of Wilco - A Ghost is Born along with me (is anybody as stoked for their new album as I am?). We all put on our Insanes in the Grizzly Gulch parking lot and CJ couldn't help but notice the lightweight nature of the Insane/Switchback combo. We skinned up the gulch to Twin Lakes Pass and then around Patsy Marley to the Wolverine Cirque. All the while I was enjoying the conversation primarily between Cody and CJ (with the occasional comment thrown in by yours truly) about efficiency and style in telemark and AT skiing. The conclusion that I came up with, after what seemed to be a long time arguing, is that when you telemark you sacrifice efficiency to some extent. But when you AT you sacrifice style, fun, face shots in all kinds of conditions, etc. etc. I think in my mind telemark won. CJ and Cody are planning on skiing the NorthWest couloir of the Pfeifferhorn tomorrow so they wanted to do something today that would prepare them. So we did Roman's couloir. Now, some of you may know that what is always first in my mind is taking care of the environment. If I had joined them in the rappel down the first cliff face, we would have had to leave some webbing at the top. I just did not feel right about this and I decided to skip this section of the course and enter in at Zoot Chute and traverse over to Roman's so that I could clean all the gear from the top. I feel like I have done my good deed for the day (remember that my skipping the rappel had nothing to do with my fear of heights and everything to do with my care for the environment). The chute was great. The snow was deep. The turns were nice. The skis and bindings were superior. Everything was just going well. We skied out the apron and that was really nice. We then made our way back into Grizzly Gulch and back to the car (with a few turns through the trees and such on the way). Cody was supposed to be at a meeting at work by like 10:00 (he has recently been hired as a ski buyer for Backcountry.com). We didn't get back to his car at the park-n-ride until 10:30. Oops. I am sure they will understand. It was a good day. It was an exciting day. I don't plan to become a hardcore ski mountaineer anytime soon, but I did have a good time today. Oh, yeah, and here's a picture of CJ taking a wizzzzzz.

Day 53 - Saturday Apr. 14 - TANDEM TELE!!!

"What's that?" you say - Yes, I said TANDEM TELE! As many of you know, winter is nearing an end here in the great state of Utah. It has been warming up for some time and climbing season is nigh at hand. I have always seen people on the last few days a resort is open doing things that you don't normally see. I think we topped them all. Jer and I had lunch at his house around noon today while we watched parts of the epic film, Waterworld. "I don't know what all the fuss is about. That movie ruled!" We then got dressed (as seen above) and on our way to Alta we picked up CJ's tandem telemark skis. While working for Black Diamond, CJ attended an employee only sale where they had a pile of free stuff. None of this gear was worth his time, he said, except for this beautiful pair of tandem tele skis. He brought them home and has not touched them since. This is where Jer and I come in. We just could not let a gem like this go to waste. They are some old Trucker skis about 220 or so cm in length with two pairs of 3-pin bindings on them. We were a bit nervous about whether or not we were going to be able to do it, but we were determined. It just so happened that there was an alpine demo day thing going on over near Goldminer's Daughter so we thought first we would take a stroll through there to check it out (we happened to stay on our skis for this stroll). It was here that Jer fulfilled his ultimate and final goal in goondom - people were going out of their way to take photos of us all day with their own cameras. We ran into only one person we knew at this time - Anna, a friend of Cody, whom we had met during the PowderKeg. She took a couple of posing shots for us, then we made our way over to the Albion lift to really start skiing. Jer would just get out of the skis in order for us to load the lift. None of the Alta employees gave us a hard time because they all thought it was cool. We went down a few times, but we were both surprised on how well it was going. I was in front, and I would simply call out when we would be making the next turn. Jer's job was pretty much just to throw off my balance every now and then and make me fall over. Just kidding. Jer was key in the balance of the ski, edge control, and turns in general. We took a few runs on Albion and then thought we were ready for the big stuff so we made our way over to Collins for a few turns. We saw one more person we knew as we were crossing along the rope tow, Carvel, from our institute class. The bummer is that neither of the people we saw that we know got to see us actually skiing, because they would have been impressed. We loaded Collins and as we regrouped at the top we had quite the crowd waiting to see us ski. This was somewhat flattering, but it was also a bit unnerving. We didn't want to screw it up. We got some guy to take a few pictures of us and we were on our way. We had a couple good turns until we screwed it up. We fell. But we weren't going to let that bring us down, and we quickly got back up and tore it up for the latter half of that run. I think people were impressed. We also got a video of us on this run as well. It took us a little while, but we made it all the way down and were ready for another. Tandem proved to be a bit harder on my legs than regular tele (seeing how I had to control Jer's weight too) so we took a few breaks each run down. We reloaded the chair and began our second descent. Again we had a big crowd waiting for us, and this time we totally delivered. We were shredding it up. It was at this time that we really started to get the hang of it. We had an admirer come up to us (as we did all day) to congratulate us and she was kind enough to take a few photos and video of us as well.

By this time we were practically tandem tele pros (which probably isn't that hard since we are probably in a group of a very small few that have ever attempted the sport). I have to say that today was good for my confidence as a telemark skier. I feel like a poor or average freeheeler would not be able to do what we did today. It was difficult, and we did it really well. It was about 4 o'clock at this time so we decided to take one final run over on Albion and ski our way to the car. We happened to take a pretty good fall on a sheet of ice over here so it was a good thing it was our last run. I landed right on my camera with my right leg and I have the bruise to prove it. All in all we had a good day. It was fun to mix it up since the snow is not exactly at its best. I hope you all enjoy the photos and video. Please feel free to leave a comment on what you think about the whole thing.

Day 52 - Friday Apr. 13 - Unluckiest Day Ever!

Actually, it wasn't unlucky at all. We simply had class today. Yep. That's it. Today was our practicum. Evan and I were partners and we dug a pit, we analyzed it, then we hiked up a little and made some turns. Attached is our pit from today. You may notice that we did three different stability tests (compression, propogation, and rutschblauch) along with a shovel shear test. We deciphered that that the snow was safe enough to ski on and we did. We really only got like four turns in, but they were sweet! Ok, so they weren't that sweet. It was all slush. But it was fun. Peace.

Day 51 - Monday Apr. 2 - Under the Full Moon

CJ picked me up after class this evening around 8:00. We then picked up Cody at the 6200 park-n-ride and made our way up Little Cottonwood. By about 8:45 we were skinning up Grizzly Gulch by headlamp. The lunar calendar said it would be a full moon, but I am not sure that makes much of a difference if the moon is hidden behind mountains. Because of our chatty natures, we took it a bit slower to get to the ridge tonight. At any given time or on any given aspect the snow was one of the following: solid ice, chunky ice, hard crust, breakable crust, and sweet powder (all of those are true except for the last one). As much as that may not sound like fun, I really did have a good time. Due to the lack of moonshine (both light from the moon and the alcoholic beverage) we primarily skied by headlamp, which ended up being pretty cool. I thought it would be cool if I took pictures without the help of a flash - hence all these pictures that all you see is a headlamp. We got back to the car around 11:15 (just as the moon was beginning to really show itself). We had a good time. The skiing may not have been the best, but it certainly was an adventure. Now for those of you whom I do not know or with whom I am in little contact other than this blog, we can only hope that winter continues so that we may continue to be together. It is looking dismal for the time being, but that is what I thought before last week's big storm. Until next time, I bid you adieu.

Day 50 - Saturday Mar. 31 - Blog Contest Winner

I decided some time ago that I would reward my most loyal blog reader by taking them to Snowbird for a day of fun in the sun with me. Today was that day, and the winner is... Jimmy Bunting! Jimmy and I were mission companions for a week while serving in Sherman, TX. We got along quite well while out there, but since he lives in California and I live here in Zion, we have not been able to spend any time together since. When I started this blog I sent out an email to those of you whom I have your address just giving you a heads up about it. Jimmy was one of these who received this email and he actually reads it! Many of you are even featured in the blog and you don't read it. Well, today is Jimmy's turn to be featured in the blog and to read it. He and his friend, Kevin, came over to my house around 9:30 or so (they were a little later than our planned departure time of 8:30). We packed up my Civic and made our way up to Snowbird. We listened to some live Phish on the drive and all were edified and uplifted. I got them each a half price pass and we began to ski. We started with just some warm-up laps on Gadzoom. We then met another friend of theirs named Peter who was there with a couple buddies of his own. They kind of seemed to be satisfied with just looping the same damn run over and over so we left them behind and went over to Gad 2. As mentioned before, Jimmy is from California. He does not exactly have the same opportunities to ski as I. Knowing this to be the case, I thought I would still ski whatever I wanted and just see if I could push him a little. I am sure at times he was not super stoked on what we were skiing, but he generally seemed to be having a good time. We then decided to keep making our way around the resort to ski all sorts of terrain. We went to the Snowbird Center for lunch and the chick in General Gritts gave me a hard time for wanting to use my employee discount for their food! This was the first time this had ever happened. I am happy to say, though, that I was able to talk her into it. Yes, I have still got it. We then went up Peruvian and through the tunnel into Mineral Basin. We skied a few runs over there amidst all the wind and crappiness that comes along with skiing in Mineral, then made our way back over to Little Cloud. We were able to find some soft crud dropping in from the Road to Provo. This was good enough that we decided it would be worth doing again. So we did. We skied relatively the same line and experienced an equal measure of enjoyment. Check out this video of Jimmy shredding it up (sorry, I still haven't figured out how to simply put the video within the post itself). In order for me to be back in time to shower, change, and stuff before conference we then skied our way out to the car. We had a good day. The snow was pretty soft considering it is spring. We found some decent crud occasionally and we had good conversation for the whole of the day. Jimmy seemed to come up with a different excuse for his average performance every few minutes. But we all know the real story - he was just toning it down in order to boost my confidence as a skier. That's why I like this guy. He is always looking out for the little people (and compared to him I am very little).