I’ve never skied and I don’t know if I ever will, but if there are skiing experts here, maybe they can answer a question for me:
My wife and I recently did a major house-cleaning, and we discovered a box that we hadn’t noticed since we bought the house fifteen years ago - a pair of yellow Lange ski boots, size 8, in a box (at first we thought it was a hat box), they seem to be in good condition, I’m sure they’re used. Do you think there would be a market for them? How do I know if they’re men’s or women’s boots? Where would I find the model number or year? The prices for boots on eBay ranges from $50 to over $300, and I have no idea what the pair I have is most comparable to.
They would only be useful to a collector. The materials in a 20 year old pair of boots will have deteriorated enough that the padding will be shot and the plastic brittle. If these are actual Banana boots introduced in 1972 they might have some collector value, but they’re not useful as ski boots today.
Two (or maybe three, news reports are sketchy, and I’ve been too busy to dig deeper) fatalities in the Tahoe area already this season!
Some old asspipe off in a closed area got wiped out in an avalanche, and a Northstar instructor bailed into a rocky creek and snuffed it. Was avoiding an snowboarder, early reports.
It is an ongoing thread of conversation with our little ones, mountain safety. There’s no way to make skiing completely safe though and I’m steeling myself for injuries at some point.
Still, we hammer home the need for helmets and gloves at all times. Stay on piste, stay a good distance apart, take a wide berth of nervous skiers, stop at the sides, look back up the slope before starting, no off-piste without guides, obey the piste closed signs and avalanche warning…all the sensible stuff.
We don’t shy away from the danger of it all but nor do we want to scare them. Several times our kids have stood nearby as a helicopter lifts an injured skier off the mountain and it brings it home, as did a deadly avalanche in a resort we once visited, as did the Michael Schumacher accident.
Worst of all was the incident with the 7 year old in France which occurred when we were on holiday and my little boy was 7 at the time. We talked about it and I think he learned from it but still, danger lurks everywhere.
My neighbours do as you do. Drive rather than fly. Self-cater rather that dine out. They tag team drive for 24 hours to get there, but since flying most of the way and renting a vehicle to drive the rest of the way would waste the skiing hours of the day, they prefer the comfort of driving themselves all the way. They purchase season’s passes rather than day tickets, which makes their second ski trip very inexpensive. One of their kids got his driver’s license last summer, so this winter it will be three-way tag-team driving.
Where? Ontario’s and Minnesota’s western Lake Superior. Pretty much daily. Cross-country after work, lift areas on the weekends, and backcountry trails when I am out of town for work or if it is a particularly nice day locally.
Why? What do I like about it? I love the flow and rhythm of slow dancing down snow slopes at speed while playing with gravity and pushing myself to my physical limits. Here’s a blurb referring to my local hill that is supposed to come out in January: “A giant moon rising over the Giant while skating toward the S-bend, cutting right then left through the chicane, sailing off the ledge into the void, bending the skis in deep long exhausting turns in an exhilarating dance of force and speed under the dark night sky.”
There’s a mob of really nice people who ski out of Welch Village who make it up to Lutsen a couple of time each year. Filling condos makes it affordable for them. I hope you come across them during the season down your way.
It is a good way to do it if you can stomach the drive.
A christmas flight to Salzburg for 4 with 11 days car hire would cost us at least £1500 and take about 12 hours door to door. And that’s without factoring in the additional costs of transporting equipement.
To drive, including tolls, channel crossing and fuel costs £300 and takes 15 hours door to door. I’m lucky in that my wife is happy to tag-team with me.
And yes, season tickets are great. We are going back over to Austria for two weeks at Easter so we’ve bought a Ski Alpincard which covers a huge area (including glacier skiing) and that has cost us the equivalent of $550 per adult and $280 per child. A good deal I think.
I have to say I was astonished by the cost of lift tickets and hire costs that **Telemark **pointed me to. We’ve considered N.America but never priced it up. Now that I’ve looked it seems like passes and equipment hire like for like is about three times the price over there. And I can’t even find equivalent multi-mountain season tickets but hopefully they are better value.
I have had a season pass at our closest resort each year since 2000. It’s about 1 hour 15 minutes from my driveway the parking lot under good road conditions. So I try to go and get some turns in weekly (ski or snowboard, depending on who I am with). Unfortunately, the recent storms around Tahoe have been warm and rainy, so lack of open runs and poor conditions have been keeping me away for now. We don’t do ski vacations since I am the only one in the house who enjoys this.
Yes, skiing is expensive. However, most US resorts have reasonable “learn-to-ski” programs for newbies, where you get equipment, lift ticket, and a lesson for around $50. You can also get additional beginner lessons usually at a reasonable price. They want to get you hooked. After that, cost of equipment and lift tickets or season passes make skiing out of reach for most, to be honest, unless you develop a passion for it. I have been going to the snow for almost 40 years so it is a passion for me. I love it!
I wear a helmet now with speakers in the ear muffs, so I can pretend Warren Miller is filming me.
There are certainly deals that can be had with some planning and flexibility. For example, Colorado has many multi-day pass deals that cut the price of tickets in half. There are similar arrangements near Tahoe, allowing you to hit multiple resorts on an extended trip.
The huge prices are for buying tickets at the door. It gives you maximum flexibility but at a price. And some resorts attract a clientele that isn’t very price sensitive. But for the rest of us, multi-day passes, flexibility, and scrounging for deals can drop the prices to something reasonable.
That would be awesome. I added a couple more Lutsen weekends in January and February with old co-workers, and Aspen is in mid-January, after the kiddies go back to school. I made friends in Grand Marais during my first trip Up North, which has done wonders. I even got a surprise gift of Packers dreadlocks attached to a skullcap, so everyone can find me on the slopes. I have fun with the “Are those real?” questions.
