The Ski thread 2019-20 - Come, and trip it as ye go, On the light fantastick toe.

The Game Room
41

I spent the holidays in Park City (Utah) with family! I managed to ski seven days in a row, including on Christmas. We actually would have preferred going after Christmas, but I didn’t pick the dates. I was worried it might be a bit too early in the season for a decent base, but conditions were great. I managed to ski 120K vertical feet over the course of the week (and 127 miles of distance).

This past Sunday I went to Mount Snow in Vermont. What a letdown after a week skiing out west. It had evidently rained the day before, which then froze overnight, so there was a lot of boilerplate ice and crusty crud. They were doing the best they could, though, with all guns blowing. This next weekend looks similar – temps in the 50s on Saturday with rain all day. :smack: It’s hard to build up a base with warm days and rain. :frowning:

42

I was in that category, till I took a spill and slid quite a long way mostly on momentum, not gravity. Lucky there was a very long smooth slope that allowed me to come to a stop still on that slope, not in the woods or off a cliff. I realized what could have happened if such a spill happened at another spot. I decided to make a change.

One thing I avoided like the plague over the years on the slopes were moguls. I figured that would slow me down and continue to challenge me on the slopes. The next ski day I found a easier mogul slope which happened here to be groomer made artificial moguls. I did that the entire day and by early afternoon really started getting it. I found that there was a pleasant fun and challenging rhythm to them that far surpassed my need for speed skiing.

After that day I started venturing out to other mogul slopes, natural ones that skiers have created, and found that irregularity added to the excitement. With some more experience, I discovered something else, it was like most if not all of the ski area opened up to me. I felt I can go anywhere and I didn’t need speed, but could hit that occasionally when I wanted but not like before.

Now decades later and with my older body I took a mogul clinic and found out 2 additional methods to ski the moguls. What I also found that my self taught way of turning over the top and skidding into the next one was the hardest on a body. The 2 methods I learned, side door/back door and skiing the bridges, was much easier and gave me much better snow then my former method. It changes my view of mogul skiing from ‘ski the bumps’ to ‘ski in the bumps’. Looking back a lesson or 2 back then would have greatly expanded my mogul tool chest, but I am glad I finally did.

Thank you for letting me share.

43

It’s not ice if there aren’t fish underneath.

44

Thanks for sharing. I’ve been trying to learn to ski bumps for a couple of years now with mixed success. Maybe I should take a lesson specifically for this.

I like to go fast, too, but I only let it rip on wide, empty (or nearly empty) slopes. I hit 46 mph last season on a smooth blue trail at Stowe with no issues. (The slopes were nearly deserted because temps were in the low single digits.) I was hoping to go even faster on the next run, but halfway down I came across a family slowly crossing in front of me several hundred yards downslope. Out of an abundance of caution, I moved over to the complete opposite side of the slope and ended up on a huge section of solid ice. I held it for a few seconds, but my skis slowly went out from under me. I slid for quite a ways on my side. :rolleyes: According to my app, I hit 47 mph on that run before I went down, and hadn’t yet reached the steepest section. I stopped then, because I didn’t want to get hurt.

45

Those apps are notoriously unreliable and vastly over-estimate top speeds. It’s very hard to hit 47 MPH on recreational gear on slopes not prepared for racing.

46

Well, shoot. :mad:

However, you’ve now got me taking a more detailed look at this. I’d like to figure out another way to measure my speed, even if it’s only an average. The vertical drop and horizontal distance seem accurate on the app, and time is easy enough to measure. Top instantaneous speed would obviously be more difficult to measure.

FWIW, I just took a look at a run I did in the Canyons at Park City. It was the end of the day, so I know exactly how much time it took (4.5 minutes), because I was trying to catch the lift again before 4 p.m., and I didn’t stop on this run. The distance according to the app was 1.2 miles, with a vertical drop of 1,071 feet. The vertical drop matches the resort stats, and the horizontal distance matches Google Earth. The app says that my average speed was 16.2 mph, which checks out (simple math). It further indicates that my maximum speed was 24.1 mph.

However, it also shows a very detailed profile of my instantaneous speed vs. time, with a series of peaks and troughs as I made my way down. (I could post a screen shot if I knew how to post pictures here.) There are 5 main speed peaks (22.1 mph, 21.2 mph, 23.9 mph, 23.2 mph, and 22.1 mph) as well a series of troughs (11.5 mph, 8.0 mph, 14.4 mph, 14.2 mph, and 6.2 mph). Bottom line: the average speed of 16.2 mph seems consistent with this profile of instantaneous speed. Quick check: simply average all of the peaks and troughs, and you are very close to the listed average speed, which we already verified.

The app does indeed seem to overstate the max speed a bit (24.1 mph vs. 23.9 mph), but doesn’t seem too far off. Also of note is that the vertical footage calculated by the app is nearly identical to that of the EpicMix app (which simply keeps track of every lift you take). My app calculated a vertical footage of 118.9K vertical feet, while the EpicMix app came up with 119,178 vertical feet for the week at Park City.

For those faster runs at Stowe last season, conditions were nearly perfect, and I was running the same run repeatedly. Also, the run in question (Nose Dive) was in fact historically used for racing at Stowe. (The guy who built the run said: “Nose Dive is the ultimate. That is IT! It’s inviting, it’s not too particularly difficult, yet you can develop pretty good speed on it.” He effused, “Nose Dive is really good—if you want to take it easy and swing turns, you can, and if you want to pick up speed, you can get going pretty fast.”)

Looking at the profile of the run where I didn’t fall for the section in question, the speed peaks on the profile were 25.5 mph, 25.8 mph, 29.1 mph, 37.2 mph, 45.0 mph, and 41.6 mph. (The listed max instantaneous speed on the app was 46 mph.) The troughs were 21.7 mph, 19.7 mph, 25.5 mph, 28.0 mph, and 33.1 mph.

In short, speaking as an engineer and former physics instructor, the instantaneous speed profiles profiles produced by the app look plausible.

Finally, and this is certainly not scientific, I’ve been on a bicycle at comparable speeds (downhill, of course). It’s not too hard to tell if you are going down a hill at 20 mph or 40 mph. I felt very lucky that I didn’t get hurt when my skis slid out from under me on the run that I was supposedly going 47 mph. I slid for quite a while (seemed like an eternity). Fortunately it was a wide open, almost completely empty slope.

47

Recreational skis and boots simply aren’t stable at those speeds, and frankly neither are recreational skiers. Take a look at what ski racers use for equipment, and they are much stiffer and rigid than recreational skis, and those racers have wicked strong legs and practice at those speeds. Gear that works well at 50 MPH is miserable at normal recreational speeds because they’re extremely difficult to flex unless you’re putting a huge amount of force on them.

At lower speeds those apps are probably fairly accurate; at higher speeds you get sampling error and small glitches that give wildly inaccurate peak speeds.

If you want to test your speed try the Tuck It speed race at Magic Mountain. Getting hit by a radar gun is a much better measurement than a phone app.

48

Nice logo for the event. :wink: I might just try to make it that day, mainly just to get hit by the radar gun. (I have no illusion of actually being competitive.) Thanks!

49

Got in a great evening of Telemark instructor training last night at Nashoba Valley, the 240’ hill that I grew up skiing on. Good to get back on snow, everything worked just like when we finished up last season. Conditions were exactly what we expected, New England hard pack with some loose ground up ice on time; dust on crust.

50

Finally, a real day on snow. Some decent snow overnight after a pretty good week of cold weather we were hoping for good conditions at Cannon today. And it delivered. It was cold and foggy, but the snow was as promised on the snow reports. Big crowds for the holiday and conditions, the cafeteria lines were the worst I’d ever seen. The lift lines weren’t bad, the visibility never improved, and my legs held out. A good real first day of the season.

51

Got my first XC ski in of the season – finally enough snow in the area (folks were going to Eau Claire to find snow)
South Loop, Bostwick Overlook, North Loop at the Coulee experimental Forest https://dnr.wi.gov/topic/stateforests/coulee/

Brian

52

It was very flat light on Wednesday, so I went cross-country skiing (well, sort of cross-country skiing) on old three-pin cross country touring skis (mid-1970s Atomic Intertop 2000 edgeless). I took a chairlift to the top of an escarpment and went into the bush to descend to the top of a snowshoe trail. The thin saplings between the pines made it a “George of the Jungle” adventure, grabbing very thin saplings and branches to lower myself down a few hundred feet, for it was too dense to turn much. The snowshoe trail descent was nice, which made up for the hour fighting my way to get down to it (about six times longer than climbing up the trail takes).

On Sunday it was horridly flat light again, so I tried out the same edgeless, double cambered, x-c touring skinny skis on a couple of groomed pistes (a blue and a black that are sweet for GS races). It was more fun than a barrel of monkeys rolling down a hill. Aside from the initiations (roll onto edge and weight the tip), the full christies were predominantly skidded turns rather than carved, only not forgiving the way more stable, heavier, edged skis are – just one monkey after the next surprising you with monkeyshines. They were quite fast when pointing down the fall line, which made for a far more exciting tuck’n’schuss than doing the same on wider skis.

53

Had a great day at Waterville Valley this Saturday. Temps were cold (single digits, WC well below zero) but that kept the lift lines non-existent and the snow fast. We could lap the mountain every 15 minutes as long as our legs held up, and my wife was is heaven. By noon we had done about 15 laps, including a stop for cocoa and a killer cinnamon roll at the summit lodge.

While exploring the new terrain opened on Green Mountain we spotted Wayne Wong, 1970’s freestyle champion, who was conducting a private clinic on the mountain that weekend. We followed a bit and he headed down Wayne Wong’s Way, the new trail named after him.

We went down Wayne Wong’s Way at Waterville with Wayne Wong. Wow. Wicked.

We made it from 8:15 to 3:00, a full day with lots of skiing. We’re in good shape for the upcoming school vacation week when we plan to spend time in upstate NY and VT.

54

It’s been a busy few weeks. I went on a ski club trip to Sunday River in Maine, which was great. However, a friend of mine got hurt skiing through a glade, though (more like a trail hacked through the woods), which put a damper on things. I demoed some new skis on the trip, which worked great (Blizzard Rustler 9 skis), and purchased a set when I got back. I then passed my old skis down to my son, who needed skis after finally buying some boots.

The next weekend was Killington, which was a bit of a bust because it was so foggy and crowded (great combo). I’ve never skied in visibility that poor. I finally bailed early, but not before actually getting hit twice by other skiers. The second collision really sucked – I got hit from behind by an out of control skier, and slid about 50 feet down slope. I managed to pull something in my left leg in the fall, but it generally seems OK now.

The next weekend we went to Stowe, and my skiing felt off for some reason. They got a lot of snow, and it bumped up fairly quickly, which I think threw me off and burned up my legs on the first day. Also, my leg was still sore.

This last weekend I was the trip organizer for our 6th annual Boy Scout ski trip to Pat’s Peak in New Hampshire. (I essentially learned how to ski on our first trip just five years ago.) Conditions were absolutely perfect. They have a good ski school at reasonable prices, so I signed up for an advanced lesson, and also got a lot of skiing tips from one of my fellow Scout leaders, who is also an expert skier. It turns out I had gotten sloppy, and was letting myself shift to the backseat, which is probably why I skied so poorly at Stowe. Anyway, I sharpened up my technique, and had a great day at Pat’s Peak, followed by a shorter day at Mount Sunapee nearby. Overall, I took it fairly easy, though, because I really didn’t want to overdo it or get injured before my big trip next week. I’m heading to Whistler-Blackcomb in British Columbia on a group trip with my ski club this weekend. Can’t wait!

55

Sounds like there is some decent snow back east - I should plan a trip! Out west we are dying of thirst - it’s been well over a month since significant snow in the Sierras. While attentive grooming is preserving the runs okay, we are in need of snow. All the resorts are hardpack and slick - in the 40s during the day and 20s at night - the perfect Sierra Cement. There are a couple hours early afternoon before the shadows arrive where things soften a bit and you can ride edges pretty well. There is no need to get there early and ride the ice. Sadly, each day we wake to see no change in the 10-day. We may go the whole month of February without a drop of rain in the valley or a snowflake in the mountains. :frowning:

56

Just spent a fun school vacation week (my wife is a teacher) with family in upstate NY. My sister has a place at Gore so we took our annual trip and had 2 great days there. The Rumor, the steepest run at Gore, was skiing fairly well, with one particularly hairy drop due to the snowmaking piles. Overall conditions were excellent, even had a few decent runs in the open glades, especially Bark-eater.

Then up to Whiteface, which I’d never skied before. My BIL lives nearby, it’s his home mountain, so he took us on a tour. Hit all the big runs up top, spent a lot of time moving very fast. Not many glades open but the few we entered skied pretty well. It’s the 40th anniversary of the 1980 Olympic Games and we ran into Andrew Weibrecht (2 time Olympic medalist) in the bar at the end of the day. He we there for a “Ski with Olympians” event.

Then a final day in the Bolton Valley backcountry, with WONDERFUL conditions of deep fresh snow and no one else out there. We hit some new terrain, lapped some glades that were catching some solar gain, and made it out tired but fun. And my blue wax held all day, pretty happy with that.

57

You’ve got me drooling with envy!

For folks who are wondering what The Rumor is: https://www.skimag.com/ski-resort-life/gores-encore

58

Alpine Canada’s Ontario U16 Provincials are in progress at my hill in the northwest. Most of the athletes are from the Toronto region at the south of the province, simply because that’s where about half of the people in the province live. In an interview yesterday, one of the young racers was chuffed about “racing on real snow.”

That raises the question: is it child abuse to get your kid addicted to skiing when they live where they can’t get a fix every day or two? :wink:

Obviously it wasn’t FIS level, but there were some kick-ass skiers (the GS and slalom courses were/are under the main chair) and boy-howdy, those kids were having a blast! :slight_smile:

59

It skied much better on Sunday than it did on Monday. Very edgeable both days, but it was getting scraped off on Monday, and there were more death cookies to deal with. It’s not Tuckerman steep, but it’s certainly makes sure you know where your edges are.

60

Overheard yesterday from an instructor laughingly admonishing his class of ~10 year olds: “I’m getting tired all all of you always ending up in the ditch!”

It’s not that the kid’s can’t ski, it’s that they like crashing off the side of the hill. :smack::slight_smile:

I figure they have what it takes.