Ski Bum Poet

Spring madness in March. Big time! It was almost like skiing in the summer. We met up with Jesse and JJ for a mellow Deer Valley carve day. Got some sun, some fresh air and a killer lunch at Empire lodge. I’ve ranted once before about carvin’ it up at DV on the Nature of The Turn post I made back in February:

…the first thing I did was hit the Rossi demo yurt and get myself some 170 Rossi carve/race skis. I proceeded to arc massive 40 mph turns on wide, perfectly groomed, people-free runs and I had the time of my life!

Hehe.. At any rate, I took out some carve/race skis again, but this time with the whole crew. Everyone (myself, Danette, Jesse and JJ) all took out some Rossignol tuned race skis for the day. It’s pretty sweet. Just give them your credit card and take what you want. As long as you don’t walk off with the skis or destroy them they’re free for the day. The skiing was pretty fun but 1) It was typical DV crowdedness for a weekend, and 2) ALL aspects were pretty much toast/slush by 1pm. In fact, after lunch when we made our way back to Snowpark on our fat skis it was a pain in the butt (non-tuned phat skis in 4 inches of slush is pretty hard work…especially for the pregnant one). It was nice though to get to work off that badass lunch we had: $65 smackers for the four of us and that was with everyone ordering H2O for their drink! Dangness. Luckily GravityFed picked up the tab on this one (Jesse and I had a board meeting continued across several lift rides ).

All in all it was pretty fun early on. Carve skis were a treat and D and I practiced our Powder 8 techniques all day. I basically mirrored her every turn partly to act as a blocker (so no flailing rich wankers from Delaware would crash into that ripping pregnant woman!) and partly to symbolize our togetherness in this new journey of parenthood we’ve arrived at together.

Early afternoon it was time to call it a day. But we got sun, exercise and some turns with good friends as an added bonus.

Over and out, Gary M

Alrighty I’m behind. I realize that my last SBP blog post was on March 9th…when I was Spreading the Alta Love. The powder went away so I stopped the storm rides & explosion face shots and went back to super charged work binging. Yep, I’m good at those. Doin’ time to get ‘er done. Danette sometimes shakes her head wondering how I can spend so much time working through these binges. I work from home so it’s just how I roll. I remind her that together we built a human being, and its heart is now beating in her belly…so therefore it’s my duty to work like a madman to build security for us. Yep. That’s a good reason for my work binging. (BTW we’re having a baby her and me):

So it goes during winter in Utah. It snows, we ski powder. When it doesn’t, we work (or go to I Street and jump our bikes ). I realize this winter is winding down. There is no doubt we’ll get another powder day or two. But it has been somewhat of a none-winter from an Alta skier’s perspective. I made the best of it, but we didn’t have the powder we’re used to in Little Cottonwood Canyon (or Timberlakes for that matter). I think this is the first season since I moved to Utah in 1998 where I might not see the 500 inch mark for snowfall in a ski season. Say it ain’t so…

At any rate, since the latest powder cycle ended, and my last post on March 9th, I’ve focused on the following:

• Of course, AvantLink. I am the Marketing Director you know. Busting it out on behalf of our new company. We can’t be faded. Acquiring new merchants all the time and these past couple of weeks I’ve worked on getting PricePoint.com and BlackRhinoTools.com launched. I have been working on bringing attention to those two killer programs online through an array of content distributions mediums.
• I’ve also helped K.C. Gaudet recently with his site ThePedalWrench.com. He’s got some true value there and we just updated his whole site. He can’t be faded, either. Keep an eye out for the ‘Bike Mechanic’s Rant’ blog coming soon. It will look somewhat like this blog.
• An old friend (Todd McGowan Lewis) from back east has started a company consulting people on Kitchen Design…so I am helping him out on the side with his new site (I’d say it’ll be online in 4 weeks from today). We’re going to build out the Portfolio that will surely seal many contracts to come for T.M. Lewis Kitchens.
• Of course, the standard updates to GravityFed, AltaCam, OGEBlog and several other sites have also occurred. I am especially proud of a new content feature on AltaCam this week: Onno Wieringa Podcast (Onno is the Alta Ski Area General Manager). As always, Johnny B did a great job interviewing Onno for our Podcast series.
• I also helped out Scott Mason from Wasatch Speed Goats. He’s a trail running pro who recently started a blog about trail running in Utah. They’ve actually got the go ahead on a brand spanking new race that will be at Snowbird this summer. It’s the “Get High” 50K at the Bird.
• Let’s see…what else. Dog walks, exercise, baby book reading, break dancing, nourishment, Seinfeld episodes, a buzz or three, making fires to heat our home, pooping, peeing, sleeping.. I think that’s everything.

So that’s that. It’s what I’ve done since there was powder. Thanks for checkin’ in! Gary M

On March 7th I had the pleasure of introducing two great people to Alta skiing and Little Cottonwood Canyon. Whenever I describe to folks the difference between Alta and other Utah ski resorts it sums it up nicely to simply say “On a storm day everyone in line knows one another”. It has a true family feel. Alta means a lot to me so I really enjoyed showing Mike Doyle, your About.com Guide to Skiing, and his daughter Katie around. We went on a complete mountain tour. It was a morning with bright blue skies and great visibility, so it made my job of pointing out features much easier. They carved the place up, asking questions and smiling all a long!

© Mike Doyle

The next day Mike posted a great write-up about his morning at Alta, and they also carved it up at Snowbird in the afternoon: Skiing Alta and Snowbird on the Same Day?

Also, linked up from Mike’s ‘Skiing Alta and Snowbird on the Same Day?‘ blog post, there’s a specific article he wrote highlighting all they took in at Alta. This is the first hand account from a new Alta skiing fan! Skiing Alta

Being a passholder means, in general, the cheapest way to ski the most at a place you like. Here at Alta it means a lot more – at Alta it means you are family.

Read entire article..

I also posted a thread to the AltaCam Ski Forum about these great articles. Check it out: Alta Featured on About.com

Over and out, Gary M

Well the voting polls are closed and results in …and the winner has been announced for the February 2007 AltaCam.com Ski Photo Contest! I’m dang impressed with this photo by Brett Pelletier. The skier is Brian Menzies and he’s tagging Monte Cristo in Little Cottonwood Canyon. To get a full view of this photo click here or the image included below. Notice the Oquirrh Mountains off to the west in the back drop of the image. Killer photo. Nice job Brett!

Here is the photo caption:

“Brian and I decided that it was the day. I had been ‘eyeing this shot’ for a while and knew it had to be taken. Brian able and willing charged out on the hike from Superior to Monte Cristo while I waited and set up for the shot. He dug a little pit, I said a prayer, he dropped in and I fired away…”

BTW, Brett won a $75 gift card for gear from Backcountry.com for winning the February contest. If you have some classic ski photos you would like to submit for the March Pic of the Month contest here are the submission guidelines on AltaCam.

I took Thursday, March 1st off from ski riding, but the report was a good one from the people I talked to. The skiing’s been real nice this week in the canyon. It was a good call for me to wait until Friday (March 2nd). For one, I got tons of work done. Also, we got slammed Thursday night with a weather system plus some classic lake affect that the Cottonwood Canyons are famous for.

Even though I had to take an airport run later in the morning to drop off my sister and her friends (they arrived just in time for a good storm cycle where the Wasatch delivered big time!) it was good timing. They didn’t even get Highway 210 open until 10am and traffic was backed up so by the time I hit the mouth of LCC at noon it was pretty easy to get up the road. The skiing on the afternoon of March 2nd was just about as good as it gets. Crowds weren’t too bad, I didn’t feel the bottom once all afternoon, and they even got the backside open for us! I think 24 hour storm total was about 20 inches on top of a very active weather pattern over the last two weeks.

I did a few laps with Michael Higgins and we decided to go in stand on line for the Eddie’s gate to open. We got off Collins and started hiking. There were around 100 people at the High Notch gate, but only about 15 at Eddies. After standing at the Eddies gate for a few minutes, and while casually chatting, I heard a ‘thump’ noise and then saw Mike hit the deck. Barely a second later I noticed a good sized rock (probably around 8 lbs.) in the snow next to him. We was tagged with that sucker right in the back behind his scapula. The patroller waiting to flip the gate (and I assume a doctor that was in line, too) came to check him out. Everyone got a little sketched and hugged the wall from that point. Also, a guy standing next to Mike said one just missed his helmetless head! Apparently four or five rocks came down at the same time. Mike is one tough bastard. The line-up invited him to the front for 1st in and he destroyed the pow even after getting hit with that rock.

A couple of things to consider if standing in line at Eddie’s on bluebird day:

1. WEAR YOUR HELMET
2. Higgins was about 10 feet out from the wall and the rock bounced off a ledge to tag him. To avoid falling rocks if you’re waiting for the gate to open stand up close to the wall.

Mike, glad you’re alright! I think he’s alright, anyway. I saw him in Collins line after he skied that Eddie’s top to bottom.