Ski Bum Poet

Thursday, November 15th was the scheduled opening day 2007 at Alta…but it ain’t happenin. October came in strong and hard (in fact I skied Gunsight to lower Greely Oct 21st, my Mother’s Birthday…and it was deep and fluffy), but we’ve been shut out practically this month so far. It’s how it goes in the Wasatch. But at anytime we can have 100 inches in 100 hours once again.

Discussion on AltaCam about opening day: Alta not Opening on Nov.15

Here’s the note on the Alta.com homepage:

“Our optimism for a November 15th opening hasn’t been supported by Mother Nature. Our first storm in 2 weeks gave us 5 inches of snow and cooler temperatures so we can now make snow at night. Pray for another storm or two. We’ll open as soon as conditions allow. Keep checking alta.com for updates.”

Here we ago again. It’s the dawn of another ski season in Alta and AltaCam just released its first podcast of the 2007-08 ski season. Have at Johnny B’s sit down interview with ski photographer Adam Clark. I’ve known Adam for a while and he’s a stand up guy and true professional. He couldn’t be denied at 21, when he started shooting skiers in Alta professionally. Now he’s killing it, to wit:

I traveled to British Columbia, Washington, Alaska, this last winter. Winter is pretty much done here in Utah. Monday evening, I fly back to Alaska for a 35-day Denali Expedition. I’m going with Clark Fyans, Chris Davenport, and Nick DeVore. We’re just going up there to ski. Then after that, I go at the end of July to New Zealand, and then straight from New Zealand to Argentina, trying to finish up the Levitation Project’s ski and snowboard movie.

Not too shabby, eh?

It’s been over a decade now in the mountains of Utah and WAY beyond that Adam has dropped jaws by visually documenting mad expression throgh movement. He has the true Endless Winter traveling the world and skiing some of the most inspiring terrain anywhere. Thanks Adam for giving the subscribers of the AltaCam podcast series a glimpse into your passion for life.

Read the full MP3 interview or digg this story.

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

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

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

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.

This post is a day late, but better late then never. When I think back on Saturday, Feb 24th I’ll think of one thing and it won’t be powder or blue skies. It’ll be TRAFFIC. I have never seen the canyon as full of people and cars as it was yesterday. From what I understand, the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s office closed the road to Alta at Superior. Our little hamlet at the end of the road was packed to the gills. I’ve fought this notion for several years (ever since the dual pass between the Turd and Alta came into play crowds have been exploding), but now I’ve come to accept the harsh reality of the situation in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

The Alta many of us remember is gone forever. You know, the place where you could ski a bus run and hitch hike back to the lift with the first pickup truck that passed by. Or how about the place where on a Wednesday mid-week in February after a two foot dump you could still get a place to park half way back in the lot at noon. The terrain will always rule, the snow will always be the lightest; but the thing that has changed is that anytime there is a foot or more of snow, the Goldminer’s Daughter parking light at the Wildcat base is packed and over flowing.

Not to press this too much but here are some other points of interest in regards to the traffic situation on Saturday:

1. Traffic was backed up on the Exit 6 off ramp from I-215. I even heard at one point cars were lined up on the interstate waiting to get off Exit 6. The off ramp is about two miles from Big Cottonwood and around six miles from Little Cottonwood for those that aren’t familiar.
2. The other way into Little Cottonwood, via 94th South in Sandy, had traffic backed up four miles. Cars were stopped in line with skis on roof at the Smith’s grocery store on 9400 S and 2000 E.
3. I got on the road to head up at around 10:30 am and I was in a 15mph crawl the whole way up.
4. I left the canyon at 6pm and it took me over hour to make it to the mouth in a reverse order traffic snake from what I saw going up.

Now for the skiing report As you can imagine Collins was packed, so I took an inordinate amount of Ho laps off Wildcat. The Wildcat chair’s line was pretty much non-existent compared to Collins. I skied Keyholes and four runs to Powder Ridge and walked back to Wildcat. The powder was real nice and real deep. Although I didn’t get to my favorite terrain for the majority of my laps, I did get a couple of Highboys and a couple off Eddies. Also skied one run in West Rustler on the spine. So all in all, the skiing was pretty damn good but I wouldn’t sit in the traffic I sat in both ways for it again.

I pulled into Alta around 9:30am on Friday the 23rd. I took my time leaving yesterday morning. And the drive was slow as she goes. I-40 from Heber to Park City wasn’t too bad. Parley’s Summit wasn’t so bad, either. But when I hit I-215 in the Salt Lake Valley it slowed down big time. It was NUKING. Early morning commuter traffic was at a crawl so I jumped off on Wasatch Blvd and made my way slowly but surely to Big Cottonwood Canyon. Then, it was bumper to bumper going into Little Cottonwood from about Bengal Blvd on. There were Salt Lake County Sheriffs at the bottom of the canyon turning back anyone who didn’t have 4 wheel drive…just like they should be.

Now for the powder snow skiing report: Took a few laps off Highboy alone and then ran into Matt Tripp from the Alta Peruvian Lodge Bar. He’s running the show over there these past few years. He took over the bar manager job from me. He’s much on the same progression as I was in terms of my bar career in LCC. After a few years of long nights in that bar after long ski days, it gets hard. At any rate, we pretty much destroyed it for three straight hours on the hill. We couldn’t be faded. When I started skiing at 10am there were 8 or 9 inches new. When I left at 3pm we were closing in on two feet. Yep. YEP. Can’t say how bad I needed that storm ride. I was worked at the end of the day with wind burned face, but giddy like a 12 year old. I often say that a storm ride pow day in Alta is the only time I can act and feel like a kid for hours on end! Check out the Alta Pic of the Day for Friday, Feb 23rd!

Side Note: One cool thing was that Tripp said he would help me compile a list of local ski run names for Alta. His gang is a lot like mine. We have our own names for just about every area we ski in the boundaries (and beyond). Soon I plan to compile the ‘Alta local skier’s glossary of ski runs’ here on my rant platform, the SkiBumPoet blog. Keep an eye out for that…

Good ‘Ole Alta Peruvian Lodge Bar & Hippie Festival