An April Doubleheader In the Kingdom

Sometimes April brings a rare opportunity to enjoy my two favorite sports: skiing and mountain biking.  You would expect that a day where you could mix the two would lead to mediocre conditions for both.  Typically the best you could hope for would be some turns on corn snow followed by a slog on some muddy singletrack.  But last weekend provided an unbelievable opportunity to enjoy both sports at their best.

Jay Peak: Actual Views from the Top

If you've ever skied at Jay, you know there's no such thing as a perfect ski day. There are FANTASTIC ski days at Jay, but there are never perfect days because perfect is a tremendously subjective term. I've had fantastic ski days that my wife felt were horrible (see pic below) to be perfect and thus ruined the perfection by her thrice hourly coco breaks. I've also had fantastic backcountry powder days that were marred by 3 hrs of standing down in Montgomery Center on Rt. 242 waiting to hitch a ride back to the lodge.

Coco anyone?

A few weeks ago I did have a day at Jay that came pretty close to perfection though. -10 degrees. Free room and board at the Tram Haus Lodge. 6 inches of powder the night before. And 0 mph wind from no direction (that's almost the icing on the cake right there). To top it all off, visibility at the Tram summit was about 350 miles in every direction. Now there's something you don't get at Jay more than twice a lifetime.

Things you Suck at OTHER than Backcountry Skiing

It sucks to be really really rediculously bad at things you want to be good at, like skiing. If you can't be good at the things you want to be good at, then there's nothing to lose trying new stuff. This is a great personal maxim that has led me into dozens of cool new experiences and awkward situations too. What I like most is the idea that, you never know, maybe the thing you've never tried is something that you are so naturally gifted at that it's been your life calling to do whatever it is. You just never knew it.

Epic Jay Peak Bloggers Summit: Day 2

So, there are a lot of great things going on in the world of social ski media these days. I learned or was present for the teaching of a lot of them today. I wont bore you now (boring details to come later for sure), but if there's one thing to take away from this experience, it is that things happening in the ski industry today are pretty epic, and today was certainly an epic day at Jay for the best and brightest North American ski bloggers. The fresh POW this morning on River Quai was epic. The secret back entrance to the Face Chutes was pretty damned epic. And an impromptu drop off of Timbuktu into no-mans-land and down to Rt 242 was freaking epic too. In case you were wondering, epic is the new rad. So start using it before it goes out of style.

Thanks to Tim at Meathead Films for showing this groomer Guru a few new places to get away at Jay. Oh, and thanks to that guy in the private-but-not-pedophile North American Tele and Biking Instructors van for giving us all a lift back to the Jet (best part - the driver changed his name to Jay back in the 80s when he moved to Montgomery Center to weave organic coffee mugs out of his own hair).

**And of course, thanks to Jay Peak Resort for hosting all of us. And teaching us how to curl. No, not the usual which-way-to-the-gym kind of curl. The Canadian kind. Played while drinking Long Trail and hurling a 42 pound stone carved out of Barre grey's finest granite. If that's not globalization I don't know what is!

How Steep Is It?

The Flume a/k/a Certain Death

Have you ever skied Upper Goat on Stowe?  How about Devil’s Fiddle at Killington?  Middle Hardscrabble at Cannon?

How do they compare to the Headwall at Tuckerman’s, or the Flume, or that unnamed slide that keeps catching your attention on your trip through Crawford Notch?

 As I’ve been pondering different glades, slides and balds for skiing this winter, the question inevitably  arises: How steep is it?

Google Earth might just have a tool to help us all find the answer.

-Trip Report- Hillman's Highway: A River Runs Through It (May 2010)

Did somebody bring an auger?

There's nothing like skiing with the sound of rushing water beneath your feet.

The words skiing and water usually end in disaster unless there's a boat involved.  That includes the late spring contests where skiers dress up in ridiculous costumes and go skimming across open water to reaffirm principles of speed, air displacement, and blood alcohol content.

But I wasn't picturing the margarita fueled crowds of some resort.  I was more focused on driving out thoughts of a dark, cold, wet hole that was waiting for me on the other side of an unknown thickness of snow and ice beneath my feet.

Such is the mental battle on Hillman's Highway on a warm spring day.
 

Update: Rudy Sidelined

It figures.  After espousing the virtues of Rudy, Murphy and his freakin law would catch up with me in the mountains of Vermont.  Alas, this last Sunday Rudy found his match in the glades of Andre's Paradise on Jay Peak..  I finished my first turn at the top of the glades, and lept into a second jump-turn when my left foot came flying out of the binding.