Christmas Tree Bowl

I decided for a little variety today to ski the Christmas Tree Bowl. This is part of our double black diamond terrain at the very top of the mountain. As soon as I started I remembered why I rarely ski this part of the mountain - it's about 20 yards of super-steep terrain and then a long flat run out and even with the large amount of snow we've got there's still plenty of exposed rocks. All in all a complete waste of time.

Generally though the snow is still in great condition. Best run of the day was definitely the 3.30 trees. A made a point of skiing it fast and aggressive and I always ski better when I do that. The trouble is that fast and aggressive takes a lot of physical and mental energy so you can't do it all the time, so I spent the 45 minutes before that taking it easy and skiing poorly.

A (rarely) groomed Vertigo on the way home was also fun, but give me powder bumps on this baby any day!

Here's the GPS data.

Quick Hit

I've been so busy the last few days (and it was really, really, really cold over the weekend) that I haven't been out since Thursday. So today I only managed an hour and half of skiing, but that's still better than nothing.

Visibility was poor so I didn't bother with the helmet cam, but the snow was nice - soft and buttery - and the mountain was deserted. Still some idiot tele skier nearly managed to run into me on mid-Rainbow; message to that guy: "I do not have eyes in the back of my head mate!"

Here's the GPS data.

Not today, but tomorrow?

Today wasn't the epic powder day the weather forecast led me to expect - the seven inches in the previous 24 hours on the snow report this morning mostly fell yesterday afternoon - but the way it has been snowing since mid-afternoon, it looks like tomorrow will be (but also bitterly cold at around 0F or -18C).

Nevertheless it was a great day on the mountain. Best run of the day was Twilight aka 2:30 trees, especially the section below Duster which is the only thing I felt that I didn't ski like an old man today. Here's the video.


And here's the GPS data.

Nicole and Peter

Today I skied with my Aussie friends Nicole and Peter on about 3 inches of fresh.

Pete is a rapidly improving intermediate skier but that still meant nothing too challenging. Best run of the day was powder bumps to skiers' left of Hurricane with the powder bumps to skiers' left of Cyclone were a close second.

Here's the GPS data.

Video clinic

Skiing yesterday mostly involved videoing with my friend Elizabeth who is an intermediate skier and who is very keen to improve (she runs marathons so pushing herself is not a problem). Video is a fantastic learning tool - there's nothing like being able to see yourself skiing to be able to see what you are actually doing rather than what you think you are doing.

I didn't take any video of her husband Rob because I was afraid that shooting his fluorescent lime green helmet might damage my camera.

The end result for me was that it was a very casual two hours on the mountain. Since Elizabeth is not that keen for her performance to be put on Youtube for the world to see and I had some GPS issues (mostly due to operator error combined with some poor user interface design) that's all there is to report.

I'm not skiing today since it's Marie's birthday and we have a whole lot of people coming over to our new house later today.

Hungry elk

Because we had heavy snow early, the elk have struggled to get enough to eat and have been coming into residential areas much more than they usually do. Last night we almost hit a herd on our way home from dinner with friends and then this morning we looked out the window to see this big buck attacking a patch of exposed grass in our neighbour's yard.

Cruisy Christmas Eve

Whilst it was warm yesterday and the snow on the lower mountain today was hard and crunchy, the snow on the upper mountain today was perfect for just cruising around. Best run of the day was powder bumps on Tornado. Here's the GPS data.

Vertigo

Vertigo is my favourite run on the lower half of the mountain but I usually don't ski it until the end of my day. Today I was waiting for some friends so I hit it first up and it was so sweet it almost made my head spin (sorry...)


Concentration immediately after was also sweet. As was everything else on the mountain with all the snow we've been having. Here's the GPS data.

Friends from St Louis

I skied today with my friends from St Louis, Rob and Elizabeth. First day of the season for them, so we took it easy despite the 6 inches of fresh which is fast heading towards 18 based on the way it is continuing to come down. Could be a big day tomorrow.

Here's the GPS data.

Good days and bad days

Yesterday was a good day - several inches of fresh snow in the morning and more during the day, and even with Christmas only a week away the mountain was surprisingly uncrowded. Best run of the day was definitely Shadows, top to bottom (i.e. including the section below Duster) for the first time this season. Here's the GPS data.

Today started out fine. We had a nice lunch with friends out in a very beautiful part of rural Colorado but had a slight mishap on the way home. I took a corner a little too tight and skidded on the ice right into a ditch.

Thankfully their was no damage to the occupants (except the driver's pride) or vehicle, but it's not much fun waiting around for a couple of hours on a cold snowy afternoon in the middle of nowhere for the tow truck to pull you out! Fortunately our wonderful friends Gerry and Kathy were traveling behind us so we could wait in their nice warm car.

It Happened in Sun Valley

Actually it happened in Steamboat. I rode the Storm Peak Express this morning with a woman who offered to sing a song for my video camera. She chose It Happened in Sun Valley. Nice voice.


One of the nice things about living in a world class ski resort, apart from the world class skiing of course, is that you're surrounded by a lot of very happy people!

After that I joined my ski clinic with Jamie. The forecast had been for 12 inches of snow with high winds. In the end we got about four inches of snow with light winds which made for some very nice skiing. Priest Creek Liftline twice was the best of the day.

Here's the GPS data. A fairly big day - 22,000 vertical ft - for this early in the season.

Lucious leftovers

We had five inches of fresh yesterday but unfortunately I just couldn't make it out. I did get out for a couple of hours in the middle of today to enjoy the leftovers and it was still very, very nice, especially Shadows and Flying Z.

Here's the GPS data.

Vuvuzelas

As I mentioned previously I was in South Africa for the 2010 soccer World Cup.

A few people have asked me what I thought of the vuvuzelas. This sums up my feelings on the matter perfectly.

Broken finger

I broke my finger yesterday; not skiing (I didn't go out yesterday) but at the gym. If you've ever wondered who wins when a finger clashes with a 20lb dumbbell I can tell you that it's not the finger.

Fortunately the busted digit is on my right hand and I'm left handed; nevertheless even with only one finger on you non-dominant hand immobilised a lot of tasks (including typing) are surprisingly awkward.

I did ski on Saturday. I had an all day clinic with my coach Jamie which was great to fine tune my skiing so that I don't get back into bad habits. I went out electronically naked - no GPS or heart rate monitor or video - so I don't have any data, but it was about a 16,000 vertical ft day. There's been just enough new snow since last Monday's dump to keep it soft and buttery so it was a surprisingly good day.

Talking about last Monday, here's another video from that epic November powder day to keep us motivated for the next one. This run beneath the Four Points chair is one of my favorites to hit early on a powder day - jump on the Four Points chair when it opens at 8:45 am and fit in a run like this before the Storm Peak Express opens at 9 am. Watch for the drop off a rock into a deep drift of powder around 1:06. Whoa!

The cure for Monday mornings?

12 inches of fresh powder! It was certainly one of the most epic November powder days ever.

Fresh tracks were to be had everywhere but nowhere better than this run down one of Steamboat's (and the world's) best tree runs - Shadows.



Here's the GPS data.

Back in the groove

I didn't ski Friday because I pulled up sore from opening day which is not surprising given a break of nearly eight months and the fact that I skied too hard and not particularly well.

Yesterday I was much happier with the way I skied and it was such a beautiful day. Best run of the day was definitely this non-stop bump run down Whiteout. The nice thing about this video is that with sun behind me I can see how I'm skiing and note the corrections to make next time.


If you are wondering what the blur on the left side is, that's some snow stuck on the lens. I'm not sure how it got there since I didn't fall. Or if I did, it's been edited out. You'll never know. More importantly, neither will Marie. It seems she wasn't happy seeing the fall on Thursday's video.

Here's the GPS data.

Finally it's here

The 2010-11 ski season it is. It's less than eight months since I last skied but it seems like forever.

This year we've opened with top to bottom skiing after several very snowy weeks.

I acquired a new high definition helmet mounted camera a little while back, so here's the video of a sweet opening day run through the trees of Closet. Yes, I did fall. Did I mention that it's opening day? So I'm a tiny bit rusty.



It was cold out today - below 0F - but the sun was out and there was no wind so it was actually quite bearable. Especially when the pay off is opening day tree skiing!

Another hard drive fail

Yesterday my network attached drive failed. Unlike last time, I had all the data backed up.

It was easy enough to run down to Staples and get a new one. I couldn't get the same brand/model, and whilst all network drives do much the same things, they all do it slightly differently, so I had to spend a couple of hours getting it configured and all of the computers mapped to the right virtual drives so all my backup routines would continue to work correctly. It should have only taken 15 minutes, but the user guide was next to useless. The people who wrote it obviously have no concept of stepping the user through key concepts or common tasks.

The trickiest part was installing the client software on Marie's netbook which doesn't have a CD drive. The instructions included the following "if your computer does not have a CD drive, go to http://www.seagate.com/goflexhomesupport/" which I did, expecting to be able to download the software. No sign of it, or anything else that would help me solve the problem. So I had to copy the CD to a USB drive and install it that way.

Not a big deal really, but this is supposed to be consumer grade technology. There's no way the average consumer (i.e. someone who doesn't like to play with computers) could install this correctly.

Big fat soft flakes

That's what Champagne Powder is made of and plenty of it has been falling from the sky in the past week. With only ten days to go until opening day, it's looking like a much better start to the season than last year.

There's not quite enough snow yet to get an early start on the season by hiking for some turns, but certainly plenty to play in so yesterday we decided to go hiking in the snow up Emerald Mountain.

What's French for spam?

I've mentioned before how much I detest comment spam. But this one made me laugh:

Salut à tous,

Voulez-vous gagner des objets facilement?

Le site web xxxx.ca est un un site web facile d'acces qui vous permet de remporter de fabuleux prix sans investir beaucoup!

According to Google this roughly translates as:

Hello all,

Want to win things easily?

xxxx.ca website is a website easy access that allows you to win great prizes without investing a lot!

Is there anything anywhere on this blog to indicate that I, or my readers, are francophones? Well my wife Marie is, having been educated by French nuns through grade 9, but you can't tell that from my blog (at least until now).

Plus it was attached to a post about Aussies in Hollywood. Since it appears to be a French-Canadian website, it might have made at least a little sense if it were attached to this post which mentions a hotel in Ottawa with a French name.

The scary thing is that as dumb as spammers are, there are even dumber people out there who give them money!