Kicking Asses and Pulling Passes

Although the signs on the mountain say 'Slow Zone - Go Fast - Lose Pass' it is a rarity for us to take passes away for speed alone. In the time I have been here we have only taken a few passes. Most people do something like cut a rope and then give us attitude when we confront them. If people are cool when we stop them, we generally don't do anything unless they did something really bad. Today I pulled my first pass. In the afternoon I was doing speed control at the intersection of Springmeier and Four O'Clock. It had been a pretty busy day (Saturday of President's Day weekend). I was about to leave when I looked to the left and saw a few snowboarders standing around one of our slow signs. They were playing with the sign and trying to take the fabric off of the posts. I couldn't believe my eyes, they were going to steal the sign while I was standing 200 feet away. I should rephrase that: they were going to "try" to steal the sign. So one guy folds up the sign and puts it under his jacket. I start to traverse over to them and they begin to start down the hill. As I get closer I begin to yell at them to stop. There were three of them. I nearly knocked one of them over trying to stop him, but he kept going. I realized that I could only stop one of them if they were going to flee so I chose the guy carrying the sign. I told him to stop and he immediately gave up. He realized that what he did was wrong and that he couldn't get away. I asked him what he was doing and he started to tell me that he was on a scavenger hunt with his friends. They weren't stealing the sign, they were just going to leave it at the base area after they were done. I wasn't buying it. I got his pass from him (a season pass) and made him walk way up the hill to put the sign back. While he was gone my partner who had just showed up called the season pass office to revoke the pass for one week. After that week is over he must come back and talk to us to get the pass reactivated. We gave him his pass back and sent him on his way. The only unresolved issue was the two other "accomplices" in the crime. The guy I almost ran into was wearing a neon green and black camouflage jacket which I knew I would recognize. I skied down to the base area and immediately saw the guy walking down the stairs. I went over and confronted him and got his pass as well. While I was talking to him the third guy walked up, I guess not realizing who I was and what was happening. These guys weren't too smart. I gave them formal warnings since they didn't physically take the sign. If we catch them again doing something wrong they will probably loose their passes for the season. These guys were pretty bad thieves. They did a bunch of things wrong. First they committed their crime while I was standing about 200 feet away. If they had waited 5 minutes I probably would have been gone. Secondly, One guy was wearing easily identifiable clothing which made it so I could catch him later. This is pretty common. Generally people who get in trouble with us are wearing really distinct clothing such that even if they get away, we can identify them later. Third, if you are going to flee, you better leave the mountain as fast as you can rather than hang out at the nearest base area for 10 minutes. It is funny what people think they can get away with up on the mountain. I guess I am here to put everyone in line.

Casey, Dante and I at Vail

Vail

Casey and Dante arrived last night. We headed over to Vail on my day off. Thankfully my car started this time. It was pretty nice over there. We did some cool runs in the morning that I had never been on. The snow in the back bowls was a little crusty beacuse of the sunshine the day before, but there was still a lot of powder to be found. For lunch we brought sausages and grilled them up on the BBQ's at Belle's Cabin in Blue Sky Basin. It was one of the best meals I have had at a ski resort. Unfortunately, the rest of the day kind of sucked for me. I had been feeling a little sick all day like I had a cold coming on. Around lunch it started to get really bad. I took one run after lunch through Skree Field in Blue Sky Basin. It was an awesome run with tons of fresh powder in the trees, but I just wasn't having fun beacuse I felt so bad. I spent the rest of the day in the lodge drinking water and trying to rest. I think Casey and Dante had fun though and that was the point of the day. We had dinner at Fatty's Pizzeria in Breck. Hopefully my cold won't last long.

Another Skill in my Quiver

Back in early January when it wasn't snowing very much I began getting bored of skiing everyday. I decided to get a snowboard so I could go back to being a semi-beginner. I got a used board (Salomon 450 - 163cm) on ebay and new boots (Salomon F20) and bindings (Salomon SPX4). I took this setup out for the first time today. I got the whole setup for about $350 and I think all of the components are fairly high end. Prior to today I had only snowboarded three days in my life. The last time was about a year ago at Big Bear. I was pretty good that day advancing to the double black diamonds at Snow Summit (equivalent to groomed blacks at most resorts). Today I boarded for a couple of hours and most of the technique came back to me pretty quickly. I did a few runs on greens and by the end of the day I was riding comfortably on some of the more difficult blues although I was still timid about going fast. I only had a few minor falls. It was such a weird sensation to ride a snowboard after skiing so much this year. I'm going to try to get pretty good at snowboarding this year, hopefully I won't hurt myself.

Falling all over the place

In the past three days I have had more big falls than in the previous two months that I have been here. On Tuesday and Wednesday I was falling because I was skiing hard and pushing myself. On Tuesday I faceplanted in Cucumber Bowl when I hit an unexpected bump. On Wednesday I bit it in Ore Bucket when I hit a log under the snow I think. Today my falls were just sloppy. After an exhausting day yesterday, I had planned to do only a single run today. I wanted to hike up Peak 7 right when it opened and do a single run in the new snow (20" in the last 48 hours). It was a beautiful clear day with no clouds, but things didn't go as planned. The hiking terrain off of the T-Bar generally opens around 10am after ski patrol has done their morning routes. Today with all the new snow it was taking longer than expected. They also had a misfire on one of their bombs. The procedure for this is to wait one hour before going to check it out. I think the hiking terrain didn't open till about noon at which point I had already gotten impatient and headed home. The snow was still excellent. My skis appeared to be fine after the repairs yesterday. I skied down Contest Bowl off of the T-Bar and headed for one of my favorite secret lines which always has tons of deep snow. There is an area off of contest bowl where you can jump off of a cat track into a field of soft snow. Yesterday I hit it a number of times and it was great. Today I started skiing to the jump picking up speed when I started to notice something looked different today. It was too late when I noticed what the difference was. The cat track had been groomed overnight. Instead of there being a nice smooth transition from the slope to the cat track there was now a three foot vertical drop onto the flat cat track, which was now hardpack instead of a ton of powder. I didn't have time to stop or slow down so I proceeded as originally planned. I dropped off the edge and slammed onto the hard cat track. The impact ejected me from both of my skis and I went tumbling forward through the air off the edge. I did at least one full front flip before landing in the powder on the other side of the jump. Luckily there was about two feet of fresh snow to cushion the landing. It was kind of fun. Once I sat up, my first though was "That was cool" I looked behind me and saw that I had been airborne for at least 15 feet and probably ended up 30 feet from the edge of the cat track. I set off up the hill in search of my skis. One ski was sticking out of the snow, but the other ski was buried. It took about 10 minutes of searching to find that one. This was probably one of the best falls I have had in my life. I just wished someone had been there to take a picture or at least witness the fall. I headed home after the fall deciding it was probably best for me not to ski anymore today.

A nice pillow of snow on top of my car. It was so light and fluffy. I had to dig my car out.

Core Shots Galore

During today's powder day I did the worst damage to my Sugar Daddy's that I had ever done. I skied over a patch of rocks that were covered by a few inches of new snow and in that one moment I got three core shots and broke a piece of my binding. A core shot is when the plastic coating (p-tex)on the base of a ski is completely scraped off exposing the core of the ski. In this case my skis have a fiberglass core, but some skis have wood cores. You really have to hit something hard to damage your skis this badly. In the two months that I have been here I have probably run over hundreds of rocks, logs, stumps and dirt patches and I previously have had only one core shot. If left unrepaired coreshots can ruin skis by allowing water to get into the core causing swelling and delamination. The coreshot in the photo is pretty big. The other two in my other ski were smaller. At the left is a smaller coreshot that I got a few weeks ago, which was professionally repaired. You repair this sort of damage by dripping molten p-tex into the hole until it is level with the original base. It is actually a pretty easy repair, but the bases of the skis don't look as good as they used to. For the broken binding part I went to a bunch of ski shops in town to see if anyone had one. After about six shops I finally found a part which fit although the colors didn't match, but I don't really care. These skis now have a lot of character. Hopefully they will still ski the same.

Still Snowing

Breckenridge reported 10" of snow in the last 24 hours and it is still snowing. Today I had the day off and I got up early enough to catch the very first chair up the Falcon Superchair on Peak 10. I headed down Blackhawk on the south side of 10 for my first run. It was awesome. Deep snow with no tracks. I couldn't ask for more. I did The Burn on my next run. In some places the snow was thigh deep. I skied Tom's Mom under the E-Chair on my way over to the T-Bar. When I got to the T-Bar I observed that probably every single person who lived in Breckenridge was waiting in line for the T-Bar to open. I skipped the line knowing it would be at least 45 minutes to an hour before it opened and headed over to Ore Bucket. I have discovered that Ore Bucket is one of the best secrets that Breckenridge has. This area of the resort generally has the deepest snow that stays untracked for the longest. Today it was awesome. I skied through the bucket three times in a row and had fresh tracks every time. The T-Bar had opened by this time and I decided it was time to check it out. The line was still pretty bad by the time I got there. I was about a 10 minute wait which is by far the worst I have ever seen. I kind of wish I was working so I could cut the line. I saw my boss doing laps on the T-Bar and not waiting in line. It was well worth it though. It really did seem like every local was out that day. I didn't talk to a single person from out of town. Everyone had fat skis too, some of which made my sugar daddys look skinny. I did a few runs on the T-Bar, then more through Ore Bucket, Some runs off the 6-Chair. On a day like today you couldn't really go wrong. About 11-12 the lines for the T-Bar and 6 Chair died down. I guess people had to go to work. Today I skied from 8:30am to 3:00pm without stopping at all. It was one of the best days I have ever had. I stopped shortly after I damaged my skis on some rocks. (see nearby picture) I was exhausted, but it was a great day. My only complaint was the crowds of locals who all wanted the same thing that I did.

1st Big Storm

It began snowing this morning around 7am and it hasn't let up yet. There was about 10" of snow in the parking lot at work at the end of the day. Although I was "working" today, it is basically understood that when the snow is spectacular we are allowed a bit more leeway in sticking to our job duties. The snow was awesome everywhere all day and more importantly the mountain wasn't crowded at all so it didn't get tracked up. I had a blast skiing. I was really in the zone skiing the powder very well. At lunch I skied home and got my powder skis. The runs in the afternoon on Peak 10 were spectacular. I don't think I have ever skied so well.