Ski Bum Poet

Attention Utah Internet Junkies… Ever heard of Utah Broadband? If not check them out and you’ll be glad you did!

I wanted to post and mention that Danette and I recently dropped our ISP at Allwest (DSL) in exchange for MUCH better Utah wireless Internet service from Utah Broadband. We live in a remote area of Wasatch County and fortunately we had the line of site necessary (to their Brighton tower) to access the UBB network. Incredible technology as well as top notch service!

This company is expanding quickly so chances are you can get on board with them. Their current coverage reaches a wide area. From their coverage page:

Utah Broadband has the largest coverage area of any local wireless ISP. We have continous coverage throughout all of Salt Lake, Davis, Utah, Summit and Wasatch Counties. Below are rough estimates of our coverage area. If you’re not sure if you are covered, just give us a call!

Believe it or not, up in Timberlakes in Lake Creek Canyon (Wasatch County, Utah) we are now getting a sustained connection speed 7Xs faster than what we were getting with Allwest. I understand we were at the end of the line for Allwest, but the fact that we were paying what every other one of their customers were paying for their DSL service was a joke. The connection speed was at a crawl and over the course of the one year we used them they were down no less than 100 hours! Considering the fact that they never once offered reimbursement for the downtime we experienced, I have no problem ranting about them here. Friendly operators and techs only go so far…

So if you want highspeed wireless in Utah, check these guys out. And be sure you said the Ski Bum Poet sent ya! Actually, I do have a contact for UBB so drop me a line and I’ll put you in touch. My email: garymarcoccia@yahoo.com - Phone: 435-785-8067

I’m guilty. I am now almost a month behind in posting to my personal ranting platform, aka the Ski Bum Poet blog :). Sorry ’bout that…but what can I say…for a long time running now when the ski season ends, I disappear. Although in the past I would retreat deep into the deserts of Southern Utah, Moab specifically to thaw out, so to speak; nowadays I just disappear from posting and ranting about life and skiing in Little Cottonwood! For the most part, anyway. We did take one trip…

Danette and I went to central NY to visit my family. They live near Ithaca in a small town called Erin. It was a good time. The forest was turning green and there were some nice days of both sun and rain (living in Utah I miss those long, sustained rain storms that rhythmically hit the roof all night long)…not to mention quality family time. My parents have two catch ponds on their property to channel the runoff from the hill around the house, so I threw on the ‘ole white mister twister and caught large mouth bass (1-2 lbs) pretty much at will. Thanks to Dad for letting me catch his pet fish he feeds all the time I was nice and gentle and they all made it back into the ponds safe and sound, spare a sore mouth I’m sure.

Below is a good picture that’s featured on Danette’s Baby Belly Page of us and my folks at Taughannock Falls State Park near Ithaca, NY. That park is really impressive. A little piece of trivia I learned on this trip: Taughannock is the highest free standing waterfall in the Northeastern US…even higher than Niagra Falls. From the Wiki page I linked to above:

The main cataract of the falls is an astounding 215 ft drop, making it 33 ft taller than Niagara Falls and the largest single drop waterfall in the Northeastern United States.

So yeah, that was a good time. We returned to a lush green Timberlakes…which was nice. Apparently we had a ton of rain even in the higher elevations of the Uintas while we were gone. We missed a small flood according to Karen and Greg, our neighbors. I felt bad…Greg had to come up and dig out the culvert that runs under our driveway b/c the clog was starting to flood their yard. Thanks Greg

We’re both doing fine. Danette’s pregnancy is going smooth and I have great confidence that she’ll meet her goal of a natural delivery. That’s one strong woman. I am getting excited to meet our child face to face. Feeling some strong kicks in that belly of hers!

I’ve been getting some good pedaling in since we returned namely in Park City. Mountain Trails is doing a great job as always of cleaning up down trees and winter time debris. Kris Gray and K.C. Gaudet from The Pedal Wrench have been showing me some nice loops from town that I didn’t know existed. Go figure. I lived there in PC for two summers and never even knew of some of these interconnects. I guess I was spending too much time Deer Valley lift & shuttle freeriding, and not enough trail riding. So the cookie crumbles. At any rate, we’re having fun and I am hoping to get my hands on a 29er (29 inch single speed trail bike) and join the WXC gang in PC. WXC = Wobbly Cross Country

At any rate. That’s that. Besides some killer progress at AvantLink (check out one cool merchant that just launched with us - Upside Over - a store dedicated to outdoor gear for kids), I’ve been laying low working, riding and oh yeah, fishing up a storm. GBM

On March 9th I wrote a blog entry called ‘Spreading The Alta Love‘ in which I described a day of skiing with About.com Skiing Guide Mike Doyle and his daughter Katie. It was a great day in Little Cottonwood. Alta was in classic blue sky form and we had a blast taking the mountain tour from Baldy shoulder to Catherine’s Area.

Well not only did I make a couple of new friends who love to ski, but I found a great source for some progressive skiing related news and content out there. A couple of weeks ago (sorry Mike it took me so long to post!) Mike sent me a link to an interview with the producer’s of Steep, a new documentary that premiers at the Tribeca Film Festival, going on right now until May 7th. I haven’t seen the film yet but the interview Mike sent me was enough to peak my curiosity. In the interview, released on April 20th through LX.TV, the producers Kayce Jennings (widow of Peter Jennings) and Tom Yellin discuss the nature of what drives big mountain skiers and base jumpers to test their limits.

The idea behind the project has merit but until I see the film myself I am going to reserve judgment. From the interview alone, it’s a hard for me personally to get drawn in. Why? Because there is a difference between film producers who like to ski and people who are skiers telling a story like this. Sure they produced the film and worked closely with people like Doug Coombs and Shane McConkey but I doubt they’ve ever skied a 100-day season and I doubt they’ve ever ski cut a slope that released underneath them before. I think the story line from a salty ski bum hippie from the Alta Lodge or P-Dawg on this subject would be just as compelling. Sorry Kayce and Tom, no offense

There is an interesting discussion at the TGR forum. A lot of the Maggots seem to really like the idea of the film and there are some great reviews of the film from people who saw it: “Steep” The Documentary

Here is the Steep Trailer..

And here is the interview Mike sent me:

On this episode of Drinks W/LX, George Oliphant joins Executive Producers Kayce Jennings and Tom Yellin at Centrico to discuss their documentary Steep, premiering next week at the Tribeca Film Festival

Interview Permalink: Tribeca Film Festival Special: Steep

Take a look at the interview and trailer and share your thoughts.. GBM

Last Sunday (two days ago) I went up to Little Cottonwood Canyon and had a great time skiing it up with good friends and all the energetic locals that make up the traditional last day festivities at Alta Ski Area. Of course Snowbird in LCC is still open, and they will be for several more weeks.. but the season is pretty much over for me/us. Notice I said ‘pretty much’ I am certainly not afraid to hike for good corn or even pay for a day of skiing at the ‘Turd if there’s exceptional April/May powder.

In recent years Alta Ski Lift Co. Management has split up the closing day for skiing into two weekends, which I think is probably a good idea. One driving factor for ‘two closing weekends’ is likely to mitigate the impact and potential hazards of too much drinking and trippin’ on High Boy. The last day antics and raging have gotten pretty intense and the party keeps getting bigger and bigger. It can’t help but keep growing when Powder Mag and other major skiing media write stories about classic High Boy Parties. I missed the first High Rustler party of the 2007 year (last weekend - Apr 15th), but on the second last day party (Apr 22nd) I noticed Onno Wieringa himself (the GM of Alta) checking tickets at the end of the day. Again, a good idea and IMO it’s very refreshing to see the actual general manager there rolling up his sleeves and checking tickets. (It has been widely known that anyone can get on the chair lift from 3pm on during the last day - no more and I applaud that!)

So how about the skiing you’re wondering? Well, um…not too much to report there. Although I did have fun on some high speed groomers and even 3 High Boys in a row top-to-bottom to end the season. The last of the three was my favorite. I was solo all the way out on the High T, and all the way down High Boy..non-stop..thinking the whole time about our little baby growing in Danette’s belly. What great thoughts and surely a last run of the year to remember. Next ski season, we’ll have our baby to take turns watching in the Goldminer’s Cafe while we switch up our ski time. I like the sounds of that.

This was a different ski season for me because we moved to the Wasatch back east of Heber City in April of last year. That made the commute over an hour each way to Alta so I was there 1-3 days a week instead of 4-6. What that did was help me appreciate skiing and life in LCC all that much more. No matter how crappy the snowpak was (just barely broke 400 inches - first time of 8 I’ve been here that we haven’t hit that magic 500 inch mark - see the Alta Snowfall History) I always focused on appreciating being there and making the best of every turn. I am proud to report that I am still a full-blooded Altafarian paying the price everyday! Alta…til next season old friend. Thanks for the 2006-07 memories

One last thing…check this out. This is the Photo of the Day on Alta.com for the last day of the 2006-2007 ski season. I am 99% sure based on the skier form and Rossi skis that it’s Sam Howard skiing off into the sunset of another amazing experience. Thanks all for another great ski year!

One of the great things about living in central Utah is having the choice in the spring of either pedaling your bike, or skiing powder. Well some of the times it’s powder…

As you may or may not know during the spring in Utah if you aren’t getting the Pow while it’s snowing then you’re outta luck. As soon as the sun hits the snow this time of year it’s finished. With that said, though, one cannot discount the killer corn snow cycles that we enjoy. There’s nothing like hiking to the top of a nice ski shot early in the morning and then waiting for the perfect time for the snow to soften enough to dig into and carve all the way home. Corn is good, but we all know Powder is much MUCH better SO, I’ll see what I can do about getting one last powder storm ride this season. Note: 12-18 expected in Little Cottonwood Canyon by tomorrow mornin’. Lifts are closed at Alta, but that don’t matter no how. That just means no crowds and plenty of powder for everyone everywhere. I like what daddyneedspow has to say at the AltaCam forum about lifts closing:

lifs? we don need no steenkin lifs.

some buddies and I hiked greeley for corn this morning and loved every second of it. tomorrow, we hike for pow!

Alta Post-Season: no screaming children, only screaming quads…

Full thread…

Now for early 2007 pedaling news: I’ve already got about 10 days on the AS-X namely pedaling the Glenwild area near Kimball Junction/Park City. It’s been a good start to my conditioning for the bike season. Been chasing around Kris Gray on his 29-inch single speed. My bike is around 38 lbs and I have been stubborn about staying in one, mid range gear on the climbs just for fun. Ha. Real fun. I have been pretty successful during the first 2/3 of the climb to the freeride trails but man it hurts. One thing that helps is that Gray pumps Bob Marley from external speakers on his hydration pack.

Map courtesy of UtahMountainBiking.com

Once we get to the freerides (this trail system has 3 sanctioned DH/freeride trails) we’ve been partial to ‘Ant Farm’. It’s the most recently built of the 3 DH/freeride trails. Not bad. One thing that is nice about these trails is that it takes around 4 miles of uphill and traverse pedaling to get there.. so this keeps all the strict DHers on 50lb. bikes from flooding the zone. Not that I have anything at all against DHers.. but I like the idea of working a little to get to these progressive trails. Seems they are getting better each year. I hope Mountain Trails keeps it up in that regard. Build more freerides! And make each new one more and more challenging. The next thing you know we’ll have something like A Line at Whistler at our fingertips!

Over and Out, Gary M

I have made reference to our pregnancy on a few occasions so far in this blog. Yep it’s really happenin’ and now that Danette’s Baby Belly is becoming easier to see it’s sinking in more and more! We couldn’t be more thrilled. We’re both family oriented, and we always planned on having a family but we had to get powder seasons and some travel out of our systems first. Well back in December it was time and it wasn’t too difficult once we figured out how to make a baby together. Haha. Well we knew how to do most of it but we had to get some timing issues straightened out.

At any rate, isn’t she beautiful? Shucks.

Every Sunday I am having Danette stand in front of the shower curtain to pose for me so we can document her pregnancy with photographs. So far so good. We have the Ultrasound and week 20 closing in on us quickly. I’ll surely keep these pages up-to-date.

As far as names go, we have a girl name picked out (Ellen/Ellie after Danette’s Grandma Ellen Mckenney), but we’ve yet to decide on a boy name. Oh and BTW we’re not going to find out the sex of the baby. No reason to start programming our child even before its first breath of air.

Over and Out, Gary M

Holy crap now this in entertainment! Especially if you’re an Alta, Utah skier and recognize the two stars of this IW episode

(Hint: The Independent Woman is Sarah Schreckengaust and Jackson Bravo is Johnny B. Sarah writes, stars in and produces her own video blog!)

Sarah and Johnny B told me about this episode from the Independent Woman Show (the name for Sarah’s WordPress video blog) while we were skiing recently but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw tonight. I nearly spit up my green tea holding back laughter when I sat down and watched the latest episode: 13.0 Blood Bath Gulch

Jackson Bravo, former Olympic Gold Medalist and Mt Middle District’s hottest skier, takes the Independent Woman under his wing and introduces her to what is truly one of skiing’s most aggressive lines: BLOOD BATH GULCH

If you have a weak stomach this video isn’t for you. Watch with caution. If I had one of those YouTube video plugin thingys for my Ski Bum Poet blog you would be able to watch it right here but unfortunately I don’t..so you’ll have to click the following link instead:

13.0 Blood Bath Gulch

BTW this part “If you have a weak stomach this video isn’t for you” is a joke. Watch it. DO-IT now.

A lot has happened in the two plus weeks since I last posted on March 19th. Yikes! That’s pretty bad. Not that anyone except Google really gives a dang, anyways.

We’ve had a pretty intensive stretch at work of late, so I’ve otherwise been laying low online. I tend to go on off-hour creative web binges whereby I bust out two months worth of production in a matter of five days (off hour means work besides my bread and butter job at AvantLink). I was telling Danette recently that I may just be on the brink of one of those binges now. Get ready world wide web, I’m about to rant and create some otherwise funky content ventures and that’s that…what with a baby and all on the way I need more money making content flowing around the web.

Let’s see if I can catch up on what’s been happening over the last 15 days (note these are estimates on what I did and when, give or take a day or two):

• The weather was pretty amazing at the end of March in Utah so yes it was time to pull the AS-X out of the crawl space and get ready for dirt and dust. We rode sometime during the week of March 19th…don’t ask me what day it was. Jesse got a new bike (Kona Coiler Dee-Lux - reviews) and after KC from The Pedal Wrench helped him build ‘er up we hit the Glenwild Trail North of Kimball Junction near Park City. The Mountain Trails Federation has been asking people not to ride yet but we checked it out and it was good to go. There were muck sections still closed so of course we stayed clear of those but otherwise it was a good spin. KC rode Kris Gray’s 29 inch single speed holding a madman’s early season pace!
• On the weekend I skied a day at Alta. Pretty good day. No powder of course but I enjoyed the turns none-the-less. I made it a point to get some exercise by side-stepping to the top of East Castle, an Eddies and, of course, you gottta pay the price a couple of times on High Boy no matter what the conditions are.
• On Wednesday during the week of 3/26 we had a pretty decent storm roll through. I took the first day of the storm cycle off to ski which was a mistake. The skiing wasn’t bad at all, but I hit it in LCC when there were 12 inches of new snow and by late Thursday Alta was reporting over two feet. No complaints though. I spent the day skiin’ it up with K.C. Gaudet and Matt Collins (and a girl named Julie he was with I just met that day) and also took a few laps with Jesse Weeks which is always entertaining!
• Saturday, March 31st, I was bored at home and needed some sun and air. I spend the week working from a home office isolated in the Dog and Pony show of Timberlakes so I jumped in the Subi and drove over to Alta for a few hours. It was a good call. I worked the legs by taking three straight laps on the high shoulder. The route was the side step all the way out to the rope line above Bad News Cliffs and then I added a booter up to the highest gate into Alta from Snowbird. Wasn’t deep powder but it was a shady North aspect with carvy foam that held my tracks. The work out was really all I was after anyways.

OK so there is a quick rant on what’s gone down in my recreational world recently. There are several content features that have been added to AltaCam in the last two weeks as well, but I want to hash those out in separate posts here at SBP.

I’ve definitely learned a lesson! If I have any chance of keeping this ranting platform up to date with all the activity and web junk I am doing there’s no way I should let it go so long. Sorry hippies! Til next time…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