Don't believe the hype

Okay.  I don't do rap, mostly.  I won't rank songs or artists or eras cos I don't really care about the entire discipline, even though I and my generation are wont to do so.  I don't have the knowledge or depth of listening.  I will, however, state confidently that Public Enemy is better than some rap and hiphop artists.  I also dig that one Grandmaster Flash song from back about the time I was born.

Clout goggs for the win. Flav would go.

Alta, that one** place in Utah that doesn't allow snowboarding, has some good terrains.  They claim a lot of snow each season, too, although I'm not sure I believe them.  Or anyone, really, unless their totals have been certified by NOAA.  Even in the modern era of web-based snowfall-stake cameras, there is always an asterisk, something like "official totals taken in a special secret bunker location located secretly somewhere on the hill or maybe not so if you see an obvious discrepancy it's tooooootally not our fault you just don't know the whole story," and then 4" on the webcam is 6" on the report, just like it was before webcams when Herb would tell Denny 3", Denny would figure it'd snow another 3 before opening and tell Duncan 6, and Duncan would Duncan and report 12".  Meanwhile, it'd stopped snowing before Herb could get back in the loader after calling Denny and brewing some more coffee.

At any rate, "Alta is for skiers".  That's one of their taglines.  In truth, they can have it.  I just don't get it.  I remember a day back in April of '96, Pa and I were down there on the way back from a band trip in Breckenridge, See-Oh.  (Speaking of overrated.)  We'd skied A-Basin, Keystone, Vail, and were in SLC for a bit before flying home to the Wet Side.  It'd snowed, probly ten or twelve, and it was a bit thicker than what Lee Cohen always shows in them hash-tag Award Winning Photographs.  Pa and I ripped the shit outa that place.  Seriously.  It's one of the best days I can remember.  Patrol opened some line they then called Glory Hole, which I can't find on the map today, for whatever reason.  (Maybe more on that in a later episode?)  2 in the afternoon, Utah sun still not punishing the snow, first tracks on the skinny skis, it definitely doesn't get any better.

In the lodge, though, one couldn't escape the attitude.  "It's heavy, today." "Fkn Sierra Cement." "What is this shit?!"  The locals, or at least the grumpy dudes who wanted you to think they were locals, were not only looking the various gift horses squarely in their respective mouths, they had out the measuring tapes and were disputing whose hands should be used to measure the beasts.  It was probly mid-20s in the morning, warming slightly to around 30 Freedom Degrees by closing, never really damaging the snow.  Comfortable, good viz, deep, supportive snow, and these clowns were complaining before going home empty handed.

Alta is for traversers.

Fast forward a few decades, Amy and I are in line at the bottom of Collins, waiting our turn on another April deep day.  (Shoulda skied Wildcat, but I didn't know that then.)  Collins is now a detach quad, and as such there's always some shuffling about in line trying to maximise uphill capacity.  A couple dudes next to us, who apparently "weren't from here" or something, asked the two dudes next to them if they could join and make a quad.  The local--he absolutely would not let you forget--spat "that's not how we DO things here," and continued shuffling unfriendly-like up to the ticket checker.  I've skied at around 4 dozen joints, and not a one of em cares if you make up a full chair group ahead of time when the line's long, so long as you don't leave empty spaces once you actually load.  But at Al-tuh not Awl-tuh, we do things just a little different.

Conincidentally, about 6, maybe 8 turns below the top of Collins, I lost my edge on a rock and slid real hard over my pole with my hip and bruised my entire iliotibial band from fibula to iliac crest.  Couldn't bear weight, and had to get a ride down.  Couldn't test ride bikes at work for three weeks.  The patroller was efficient, and in no time we got to the bottom, where he unceremoniously said "This is where you get of bwah, I'm goin back to Alabam."  (I mean, I heard David Allan Coe, anyway.  Maybe he didn't actually say it like that.)  Turns out Alta doesn't staff an aid room with your ticket money.  Some other entity does, and wouldn't you know, they charge you for the attention.  Really, I just needed ice, so Amy got a trash bag full of snow and I sat glumly in one of the bars slopeside while she went and got all schreddy on Wildcat.

Lee Cohen, gettin the shot.  Hash tag award winnin'.

Snowboarding can trace its roots to surfing, I think.  At least, the original 60s era product that is the first recognisable thing related to a snowboard was called a Snurfer.  (I hate portmanteaux, almost as much as I hate Al-ta.)  It's kinda silly, really, this snowboarding.  Everything is asymmetrical, moving through any sort of terrain where gravity isn't the prime mover is basically impossible, and (important for our modern overcrowded slopes) you have a massive blindside on every single heel-side turn.  If you live somewhere, say, Alta, where all the goods are accessed by long traverses with a lot of uphill, you limit yourself to just easy-access spots or Joey-traverse your way into the lines halfway down, ruining those lines for those of us willing to work to get to the top.  Moving through the line at the bottom of the lift is a joke, stepping on your neighbours' skis and generally getting in the way.

Mecca, allegedly. Hash tag number one.

Speaking of listicles, I recently ran into an article while perusing the internet on my morning constitutional.  17 Not So Obvious Bucket List Experiences for Skiers and Snowborders in the U.S., missing hyphens theirs.  In addition to being conceptually incorrect, in that everything on the list has been done to death in a million ski rags since the dawn of ski rags, multiple "experiences" on the list aren't even available to snowboarders at all, number one in particular.  Mad River Glen, Ski It If You Can, as the sticker goes.  Or as the Burton (I think) Snowboards sticker goes, Ride It If We Could.  Set aside for a moment, your judgment of whether or not the Back Bowls at Vail are actually bucket-listable*, or if they're "not so obvious".  The fact that snowboarders can't access some of these things on snowboards is interesting, to say the least.

This argument, to allow snowboards or not, is settled science at {does some internetting and coffee-break maths} 99.4% of the ski areas in the good ol' US of A.  The simple answer is "d'uh".  For some joints, there was some holding out.  For others, say, the number 5 "not so obvious" bucket list joint, nestled up there in Whatcom County, WA, South Canada, between Shuksan and Kulshan, from where one can spend an afternoon working the top of 5 gazing longingly at American and Canadian Border Peaks, and Tomyhoi, and Goat, and Yellow Aster, and the list goes on, the answer was an emphatic "yes", print my money now thanks.  

The Godfather, Craig Kelly, working hard to prove me wrong.

Craig Kelly grew up in Skagit County, WA, that land of extremes.  Spires of accreted sea floor rip foot after feet of water out of the clouds every wet season, supporting vast forests of Abies and Tsuga and Pseudotsuga and, in the slide paths, Alnus and other first succession species.  The Skagit River drains under 2,600 square miles and starts up in the far northern reaches of the Cascades, in Canada.  Yeah, it just crosses that wild frontier like nobody's watching.  Build a wall, there, CheeToh.  On a big flow day, it'll move about 45,000 cubic feet per second out into Skagit Bay.  On a really big day, we're looking at 80-100 grand.  The Boise River, our local stream, looks like a creek in comparison.  The Boise serves a big portion of south-central Idaho, over 4,000 square miles, draining in its course many peaks exceeding 10 grand in elevation.  High spring melt-off flows, the ones that get Eagle Island residents running to their attorneys to sue the Bureau of Reclamation, rarely exceed 7,000 cfs. Less than 10 percent of a big Skagit day out of a drainage something like 50-some-odd percents bigger.

The peaks above the Skagit Valley, the really big ones like Eldorado and Terror and Shuksan and Jack, either barely climb above 9 grand or don't at all, and yet they hold glaciers.  Snowfall, as they say when attempting hyperbole without any sort of creativity, is measured in cords and fetlocks and average-size adult Acer macrophyllums.  (One of the many, many binomials I like.  "What's that tree called? Bigleaf maple.  Cool, let's call it Maple with the big leaves, but, like, in Latin."  It could've gone the other way, too, but I wasn't there.)  Snowfall is famously wet, or more accurately, dense, as all snow is technically wet when it melts.  Having lived within sight of {starts internetting but runs out of ambition and besides, it's a dern volcano} what I think is the highest point in the Skagit Drainage, I can attest to the density.  It makes for physically strong skiers like yours truly, and in the case of Craig Kelly--you though I'd lost the thread, didn't you?--strong snowboarders.

Craig helped push snowboarding from its scrappy roots and goofball image to the same level as skiing.  He was ridiculously smooth.  His time at Baker no doubt helped him build technical strength and skills that folks pointing and slashing in Rocky Mountain pillow fluff wouldn't have needed, nor developed.  He influenced skiing, which would be hard to admit for a lot of PSIA folk, more than a lot of skiers in his day.  Though the rumours of skiing's demise in the early 90s were greatly exaggerated, Craig's style and skill and ambition still helped us out of what could possibly be called mild doldrums.

I mean, who sees this and doesn't think, wow, those cats really can get it?

In the end, the American snowboard discussion seems to have ossified.  The three--yes, just three--resorts that ban snowboarding are at this point loyal to a mistake*** they will never admit is a mistake, and have hardened their stances into legend.  If Mad River Glen, or Deer Valley, or Al-ta ever allow snowboarding, it'll feel like a tidal shift.  (Or just good business sense, but who's counting?)  There will be faithful who will turn on the perceived devil who makes the decision like a shieldback on a squished fellow shieldback.  (I'm not linking anything for you.  You can gooooogle it, thankyouverymuch.)  Boycotts, outrage, all sorta vitriol better aimed at folks who do ethnic cleansing on their neighbours or starve whole nations because there might be one militant left among the rubble.  Their privilege, as the kids are saying, will be showing.

The final thing that frustrates me about this whole absurd argument is the folks who claim this snowboard ban is discrimination, somehow of akin to a civil rights infringement.  Snowboarding is a choice, one that cannot be argued is baked-in.  Where the colour of one's skin is a) not a thing that can somehow be "wrong", and b) not a thing that is chosen, snowboarding is an active choice, one that in some specific situations can actually be wrong, and one that is entirely a first world concern.  To that end, Alta, MRG, and DV do not discriminate against the person, only the orientation of the stick or sticks that cat slides on.  Reduced to such a minimum, both houses deserve a pox.  Banning snowboards, no matter how useless I personally think they are, is simply being a dick for the sake of being a dick.  Claiming discrimination is just absurd.  You, printer of stickers and poacher of lines, are not banned, not in the slightest.  If you want to ski that hallowed High Rustler mogul line (#4), learn to ski.  Or remember how, if you used to ski.  Or, better still, boycott the douchebags outright and go somewhere, anywhere, you are actually welcome.  Sliding on snow is not limited to the 0.6% where skiing is the only option.  My best day on snow wasn't even at a ski area.  Think about that.

Let's be honest.  All you really need is a pile of whatever this is. Enore, gettin rad on the side of the Silver Mountain sled hill, Silver Mountain, Idaho, east of the Cotaldo Mission, due south of Kellogg by exactly a really long gondola ride.

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Title from Public Enemy's magnum opus, Don't Believe the Hype. If you have not heard it, queue it on up.  It's also the title of my new Snowbird (not snowboard) ad campaign.  Alta, Don't Believe the Hype. And here you thought I'd never get to the actual point. Hit me up, Powdr.  I'll sell the rights for only many many many many ducats.

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** YES I KNOW THERE ARE TWO WELCOME TO THE ENGLISH LANGUISH

*** Richard Russo wrote whole books about this very human tendency.  If you are in need of some good noveling, give him a look see.

* Annoyingly so, I'd say.  That same Al-ta trip, Pa and I got absolutely shredded by the sun back there, and it, too, is top ten ski memories.  You'll know from reading our pages that top ten lists might be 60 things long, but that's okay.  The back bowls on the backside of Vail's frontside, should you somehow time them to a day where only 3299 of your best friends are at the hill instead of the usuall 70,010, are mellow, open, endless, with views to match.  Vail Corp is one of the worst things to happen to skiing ever, other than all the gatekeeping and abusive coaches and racist bullshit and misogyny and Sinclair Oil and, well, you get it.  The terrain west of Vail Pass, on the south side of Gore Creek, east of the upper Eagle River, north of Turkey Creek, is not to blame for President Katz and all the evil he hath wrought.  It just sits there, waiting for the kiss of a sintered base and some really, really toxic wax.

Everyone else is doing it

Okay. There's like somehow like all this hubbub about the Look Pivot? Like, I don't really get it, but, like, here goes. 

The basic design of the Pivot was finalised in the late 60s.  If this is good, bad, indifferent, maybe just interesting, I don't rightly know.  The Nevada N17 doesn't have the name recognition of, say, the Rossi FKS, but both heels have a giant heel lock like an overgrown cow magnet floating on two small arms that connect to a turntable/Lazy Susan thingie that now also holds the brake but didn't back in the olden days***.  I'm not sure when brakes started appearing on bindings in general, but companies didn't settle on their current position under the heel until the late 70s or early 80s.  I imagine the toe position both complicated the toe's release and the anti-friction device (with it's much cooler sounding acronym, AFD) and caused/allowed/was disabled by icing.

Toe pieces were, and still are, different throughout the binding line.  Today there are three options, from an 11-din heap of plastic to the 15- and 18-din all-metal, single pivot, rotary release toes that are shared with Look's race bindings.  For a minute back in the 90s there was this cool wing-release toe that looked like a futuristic football stadium at the front.

Futuristic football stadium. You choose what kind.

I have thoughts on binding toes. Rotary-release toe pieces tend to have longer elastic travel, which all the pundits and all the freeride bros in the liftline yammer about incessantly as though that's the measure of not only a binding, but a skier.  It's like the dropper post, um, drop that all the endurbros yammer about incessantly in the coffee store in Hyde Park.  "How much drop you got?" "240 mil." "Yeah? I GOT 75 MIL IN THE TOE." Something like that.  More important to me, the skier who never leaves the ground but has a good bit o' that ol' kinetic energy goin mach stupid at 265 el bees, the release is very smooth.

Wing-release toes do the job, but with a little more fuss and a little less comfortably.  There's usually a lot of plastic, although that is a function more of price-point than structural necessity, and in, say, an old Salomon 912 from back in the day, there was a good bit of plastic even in a rotary toe.  

At any rate, though there has been a good 30 years and more of R&D into bindings and the cost of rotary toes should therefore not be prohibitive or even high, even Salomon has quit that shit.  It makes me sad.  There are only two readily available in the retail market today, and they are not coincidentally the 15- and 18-din Pivot/SPX Race toes.  Why does this matter, if Bob St Pierre says he likes the new Strive 16, with its awkwardly low toe and knockoff 747 "colourway"?  Because I said so.

Been around a minute.

The Pivot challenges the modern gear frenzy.  Everyone goes on and on about new this, new that, and the upper tier of the Pivot family has with minimal exaggeration only changed to meet the fashion of the day.  The big news last year was the new Pivot 2.0, with a new heel and unchanged toe. The refinements boil down to some reinforcement on the sides of the cow magnet where all the young kids are scraping the paint off cos they ain't got that good mid-Aughts steez like I do, a little extra magic oomph of some kind in the pole-box for a less disfiguring release, and a small--7mm, give or take--increase in forward pressure adjustment.  The Pivot is touted as the new hotness every year by online mags and whatnot. It just isn't, though, and that makes me happy.  The new changes, those small and easily overlooked things, are welcome.  They do not improve the experience all that much, but they do signal that Look isn't *ahem* looking to drop the binding any time soon.  (Speaking of which, if you have a line on any mid-Aughts Salomon 916, 914, STH 16, or STH 14 bindings, I want em.  Especially if the brakes are wide or if they're in any wild non-North American colours.)

I realised I don't have any good close-ups of these bindings and for that I blame Tim Cook just like I blame him for how wildly poorly typed my text messages are and for why I sent my friend Jake a picture of literally nothing while trying to ax im a question about literally something well anyway it's cos I got a new phone and counldn't figure out how to sync up the photos and HEY TIM GO SOAK YOUR HEAD.

I think about ability a lot.  Having it, not having it in certain circumstances, being good enough at something, say, baseball, to enjoy it, but not good enough to keep playing it beyond high school.  Or the mountain bike, on which I can confidently ride a lot of trail, until things get weird.  Then I just get scared and lock up.  On skis, the point of locking up is much further into the deep end, not quite in over my head.  

I occupy two fairly rarified worlds, both in skiing where sometimes not metaphorically I am the best skier on the mountain, and in bikes, where I have 21 years worth of career experience and see so many skilled riders who cook their gear each year.  There is a stark lack of context.  This is visible in multiple ways, but for my purpose here it is in the choice of gear.  Esoteric and--importantly--really expensive choices are made, justified by some imagined need.  I can see it happen all around me, folks "needing" XTR cranks at {checks Shimano for retail} over $300 without chainring, or an XO1 cassette at $530, when as the kids are saying, we have cranks and cassettes at home.  Only in this meme, the crank is $125 WITH chainring, and the cassette is $220, and both serve their purpose with the same exact functionality.  Only folks with top-tier ability will know the difference.

This top-tier ability, coupled with the theory of the aspirational product, supports this almost arcane buying habit.  If my wording is sounding circular, bear with me.  We are surrounded by folks at or above our ability and financial levels.  We exist in a space largely populated by like-minded folks, at least when it comes to gear and experiences.  There is a much, much larger populace who indulge in the same activities, about whom we feel not so much more superior than, but entirely separate from.  And this, especially in the 18-din version, is where the Pivot 2.0 comes in.  Everybody else is doing it, so why can't we?  All the guys on the FWT are slammin Pivots on their 120mm freeride skis, jackin the din to 45, and gettin free RedBull for life, that must be the ticket.  New criticism, this abjectly is not.  Nor is it original, or rarely repeated.  This is Marketing 102.  (101 must be how to weaponise languistic incorrectness.)

In my rarified worlds, even absent the RedBull-type circuits, not only is the large recreational populace who also participate in our sports ignored, the gear they use is as well.  The building is 7 floors high, but we always take the elevator to the 5th and act like that's the basement.  A $125 crank that's as expensive as many bikes people ride is "entry-level". A 14-din binding that's above most skiers' heads is similarly "just barely enough".  We're exposed to really, really expensive gear early and often, and I think that inures us to our shelling out serious, usually hard-earned ducats.

Gratuitous shot of my tracks made on skis that may or may not have a Pivot 15 masquerading as a Rossignol Race 155 from '003.  I cannot confirm that they help me get solid edge pressure before the apex, nor can I deny it.  I can confirm to the internet commentators that they do not hinder said carving, that indeed it is you, internet commentators, that cannot generate adequate edge pressure before the apex in a carve.  What's the apex, ask all you internet commentators? It's the part where your skis are parallel to the fall line, above and below which I have almost symmetrical pressure.  Now go take on the day.

Sometimes this circular reasoning, this ignorance of the function of something as theoretically simple as a ski binding, goes above mere marketing susceptibility.  Look doesn't really advertise in any memorable way.  They don't need to.  They are one of 4 main binding companies out there, and due to the realities of our late-stage capitalism, they are supported by a gigantic holding corp of one variety or other while simultaneously being required equipment on the bulk of skis sold by this same holding corp.  The Rossignol Group of which Look is an integral part is not unique or insidious.  This is just business, as they say.  You can agree or not.

Nobody skiing resorts in between "work from home" shifts at the local coffee store needs an 18-din binding.  I, and they, don't need a 15-din kit, or even 14.  I'm a stocky dude, aggressive, skilled, skiing three days a week, and I'm a 9.5 on the holy sheet.  The highest I've ever charted a customer was a dude who at like 6'6", 250 el bees, with a not-crazy long foot, and he was a 12.  I could barely test his toes with our Vermont Safety cos the correct torque was like eleventy-fortyleven moon units or whatever.  He skied daily, pro patroller that he was.  What these medium-build cats who've never stood atop a no-fall zone in 13" of Cascade, um, "powder" think they need with a knee-killing 14-din setting on a Pivot 15, let alone 18, is beyond me.  Ours not to reason why, I guess.

The Pivot, separate of its corporate genesis, is THE binding of the moment.  There have been others, like the mythical green spring--don't ask me cos I don't know--Salomons of the late 90s and early 000s, or the Marker MRR Turntable of the mid 80s, or, poetically, the Pivot-lineage Look Forza circa the page turning year of 1990.  Look doesn't have to advertise because any marketing collateral is good money thrown after bad.  There is nothing so powerful in marketing as out and out lust, and when you can have your cake and eat it, too, you do.

It do look nice.

So, how does it ski, you ask?  I need more experience with the binding mounted on other skis, but my first impression is that it skis like any other good binding.  It disappears under your foot, letting the boot talk directly to the ski while the ski talks directly to the snow.  It releases as it should, doesn't over-damp the snow feel like a plastic Marker from their venerated--but not really all that great--Royal Family does, and looks good doing it.*  Yeah, I said it.  My favourite binding, the 900s Equipe of the late 90s, is definitely form-follows-function in its appearance.  Its replacement, the 914, had a little more elegance, but still didn't rise visually too high above the rabble.  I find this æsthetic comforting, sometimes even pleasing, but I do like me a little steez.

So, where do we go from here, you ask?  My hope is that Salomon sees the continued success of the Pivot lineage and brings the old 747 family back.  I don't see any reason why they would, other than sheer cussedness, and they aren't Sámi.  Not much incentive there.  Basically, where I go is I scour the ski swap every November, check the internet periodically, and try to have a few loose sawbucks on hand specifically for that 997, or that STH14, should I or you come across one.

These would be nice. Rare J-Spec, all three of my favourite 997 colours represented.  Keep them eyes peeled, if you would.  And if you are a person of substance at Salomon, get me these back on the market in 10, 12, 14, and 16. I'd even settle for 10, 13, and 16.  Just frickin do it.  Stat.

In the end, I hear endless justification, fluffed-up statements of need, or comparisons to friends who totally ski every week at Mt Shredly, but I almost never hear the only two legitimate reasons for buying a Pivot 18 or 15.  The first, stated a little less succinctly over our time together at the old shop by Ryan (the Owner) than I'll type out here, is if a given skier is aggressive beyond his or her own skill, preferably if that given skill set is still rich and deep like Ryan's.  If you have the ability to get yourself into that sketchy situation and the willingness to schralp yer way on down, crashing and injury possibilities be damned, then maybe the elastic travel and superior retention is for you.  Otherwise, all I can say for myself is "I just want one".  There is no need to justify yourself.  If you have the--uff da--DAMN NEAR $500 for this kit, by all means.  Send it.  Them new "colourways" is right.  Otherwise, why do we need new bindings when we have bindings at home?!  (I have three pairs, jetzt, heute, and two of them are even full sets.)  Or if you don't, Evo's got a Salomon Strive 12 on sale for like a buck sixty.  It's good enough for all of us.  Yes, even me, that most refined of consumers.**

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 Title is from the seminal 90s Gen X identifier record Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? by the Cranberries.  But you knew that.

*  Well, there's a few recent "colourways" that Look could have skipped.  The Forza re-release didn't cut any mustard, let alone THE mustard, for an example.

**  Granted, you will hafta put a, like, 6 mil gas pedal under that shit, but, like, that's why I'm here.

***Always looking for an excuse to post Eben Weiss' masterpiece, The Dachshund of Time.

Keeping my options open

I just drove past our old place.  There are new neighbours across the side street.  I think the apartments back there got their rents raised, and the quiet, friendly, working-class Latino family who always waved or nodded or smiled lost out to some real winners right before we moved.  They were there a whole weekend before we left and already the dad had parked his truck and trailer on our lawn, the mom had scared off all the birds with her unmuffled Honda Accord, and the son had yelled at passersby and then left his bike in our driveway.  The sorta folk who spread their drama all over, regardless of their neighbours' desire for exactly the opposite.  I guess moving across town isn't all bad.

I sound like a jerk, and maybe I am.  Maybe I should just listen to James McMurtry quoting whomever he quoted. There, but for the grace of God, et cetera.

This will make sense in a minute. For now, just practice your MA even though this cat ain't movin.

I like to tell stories, and I have a short attention span. They all interconnect, somehow, maybe just with me performing the function of disinterested and rarely-central nexus. Or maybe it's just that I thought of one thing, and then I thought of another, and I'll vamp until I can connect the dots from A to Q to * to Ň to ~ to B.  Sometimes a cigar, y'know, is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors.  Something like that.

-

I have been struggling a bit of late to keep up with the world.  Keep all the marshmallows from burning.  Last fall I tried to rejoin the ski industry and tune some skis locally, like within walking distance.  It did not work out.  I felt so out of touch with the kids, y'know?  Everyone acted simultaneously like time didn't exist and that everything needed to be done early.  The bosses, and they were many, definitely hadn't been to Charm School in a while.  The first day on the tune finishing bench was one of the worst work days of my life.  I am not being dramatic, and I could not point to any one thing. Within three weeks, I was having anxiety, the likes of which I haven't felt in a decade, maybe two, so I quit. Ryan (the Owner) let me have Fridays off in the hopes that I'd mellow out, and in some ways I did.  Still, some days I'd rather just dump this whole 20-year "career" of mine and drive a cat at Lost Trail or something.

One of those Fridays. An excuse to post pics of Soldier. 

I've long held that the 88mm ski is the best ski.  I still think so, at least when you consider who it's aimed at, which is basically everyone, and who can enjoy it, which is definitely everyone.  Many good examples here, like the old Monster and Kästle's MX88.  There's a Stöckli, of course, the SR88, and the Fischer Motive 86.  The last Bandit XXX from Rossi was 90mm, basically the same thing.  The list goes on, and since I sold my first-year Kendo in '016 in order to afford moving out of the shitstorm that The Place Who Shall Not Be Named had become for Amy and me both, I have had a bit of a hole in my soul.  I had a 175 Monster 88, the last legit one Head made, the black one with the totems that Euros don't seem to understand is theft, but it was on its third binding/fourth mount--thanks, LB, next time remember the RooClear--which is a Rottefella Cobra R8 tele and my knees don't exactly do that anymore.  Something about chondral loss and "post-surgical appearance".  Osteo-arthritis, as Lora the Trainer told me back in June.  (Sound familiar?)  Anyway, those went to CO with my niece.  The MX88 I saved from the compactor scratched the itch but didn't cure the rash.  Clapped out, tuned out, skied out, all the above.  Skis well in soft, not so much on hard.  I wanted, no, NEEDED a new 88mm ski.  I spent countless coffee times reading reviews, watched all the skiers on the hill even though I'm the best skier on the mountain, tried to find the exact pair that would be the one.  I feel like I've said this sort of thing before.

At The Swap last fall, I found first a Fischer 86GT that might have fit the bill, but the $300 tag and the wore out system bindings put me off.  I saw a Motive 86, the spiritual grandfather of the GT, for $89, and couldn't hold it in.  Weeks later, after my failed tune-shop experiment, I stopped by a different shop with a stone and was about to get em flattened when I realised there were 16 conspicuous pimples on the base.  Again, don't forget the melamine, Dr Mechanic Person!  And again, back to square one.

Fischer says this is their RC One 86GT?*

Rudi Finžgar founded Elan in 1945, along with "nine other visionaries."  They've sponsored a few big names, two of which can be described as the best of their generation.  Heck, just about any generation.  Ingemar Stenmark would be the 2001 Seattle Mariners of World Cup Alpine if the Mariners had won the Series that year and then continued on to win the Olympics.  (I know that's not how it works; that's how good Ingemar was.)  Plake is, well, Plake.  Not many skiers of the 80s and 90s were good enough--as Plake was and still is--to wave off Scot Schmidt as the guy who hip checks everything, but then, it ain't bragging if it's true.

Along the way, Elan has built some great skis, many of which are long forgotten, simply their version of whatever was on the podium at the races and moguls venues.  They claim to be innovators in graphics, too, being the pioneer in screen printing topsheets.  Then there was the Quad 1.  I don't even know what the story was there, but dag, did I want one.  Today 121mm under foot sounds like if that weird anesthesiology doctor who told me he wouldn't kill me like MJ the Creeper's doctor did had forgot to show up to my surgery at all but Beckmann the Knee Mechanic started in with the dremel tool anyway.  There was the Spectrum, which, in that forgotten period around 2014, was one of the best, most approachable powder skis out there.  It was with me on one of the only truly great Utah runs in two winters in Northern Utah.  I think that most folks didn't notice it at all, unfortunately.  They--Elan, not the docs at St Luke's--are responsible in part for the shape of skis today.  Bode Miller says that the credit is his alone, but that's just part of his myth. They are credited with building the first "hourglass" ski to really take hold, the SCX.  Before that, 20 years or so, they were building deeper sidecuts into skis than other brands were.  Ingemar skied the Uniline long before Bode race-plated a K2 Four in an amateur race and started building his brand.  If I sound like I'm Bode-hating, I'm not. He's just more sure of himself than he deserves to be.  Then again, I can't hope to finish a gated run on der Streif, let alone schralp the A net while doing so.

Of late, especially since the SCX, Elan is more known as either that one Euro brand that builds everyone else's skis--it's probly of little coincidence that Hashtag Peak By Bode Miller is made in Begunje--or the cruiser ski company.  At most, here in the States, they're the Ripstick brand.  Easily accessible, floaty, playful skis for the weekender crowd.  

Yeah, no.

Hidden in amongst the ruckus, or lack thereof, is the Wingman.  It's the descendant of the first Amphibio skis, a sort of graduate school version of ideas that have been kicking around for years.  Where the Scotty Bob (above) failed, the Elan Amphibio did not, largely because it was executed better, with much more subtlety.  I have enjoyed a few Amphibio-equipped skis over the years, though I won't even hesitate to say the actual traits that Elan calls "Amphibio technology" are gimmicky at best. The idea is that the outside of the tips and tails are lifted off the snow by rocker and the inside is not, shortening the outside edge dramatically and allowing for easier release and initiation.  If your eyes glazed over and you started thinking about Crispy Creams, then I made my point.  Still, and all, the lineage has been a fruitful and enjoyable one.  The old Apmhibio 84 is among my favourite all-mountainy frontside skis ever.

The Wingman is a simpler, more classic ski.  Wood core, minimal bs, and some metal.  They build three versions at the moment that are relevant to this particular fever dream, getting more and more techy as the number behind the Euro sign gets bigger.  Last Christmas, give or take, I was doing my rounds of the internet and found a Wingman 86 Ti at Second Tracks Level Nine in SLC.  184, cos I thought I needed the burliest version.  Everyone said it's a ski with limits, like Elliot on the Youtube, and I assumed that was cos it was undergunned.  

Paper-jigging in the laundry room.

It was not.  They are.  This is a strong and strong-minded ski.  My first day on the ski, after paper-jigging one of my 25 year old 900s Equipes with a satisfying amount of double, treble, and tetruple checking, was maybe not the day the ski was designed for.  A handful of new, cold, the sorta day that causes most folks to clutch their pearls and reach for the Big Stix.  I had a blast, once I sighted in the radius and the fact that this ski does one turn shape--round AF--real well, and that other turn shapes might not be why you buy this ski.  After a full season, I've found this ski to be capable in most conditions, on most terrains, an actual all-mountain ski.  As advertised.  Where Elliot (and all the others, I just use him as an example cos he's local) is wrong is that one can definitely ski this off-piste if one so chooses.  It makes round turns there, just like on the groomers he says are its only playground.  At speed, slow, it doesn't really matter.

I haven't been wrong about skis very often, and when I have, it's mostly been my underestimating just how many conditions there are in which they would excel.  This blue and green board, with its kinda over-done Euro-style marketing and funky topsheet, is one of the most fun skis I have ever been on.  It does do the roundy groomer turns well, just like Elliot says.  It also does all the other things.  I made a handful of runs in some creamy day-old at Soldier in January, and I didn't wish for any other ski.  Obviously, the normal caveats apply.  If I'd brought a wider ski, it would have been better in the duff and fluff, but I enjoyed the day without complaint.  It jumps off the Cabin Traverse into the Triangle moguls like it should, like all the other good skis out there.  And, not coincidentally, I like that I can ski it in conditions that others have adamantly claimed it couldn't even look at, let alone handle with aplomb.

My magic internet and photo rectangle thinks I love these shots. Also, another nother reason excuse to post pics of Soldier, too, as well.

Pertinents:

- 86mm waist, 17 metre radius, 131mm tip--which may account for the better-than-expected float and playfulness.

- Amphibio Not that important.  Or at all.

- Last year's model was $600 flat, which is obviously what you should buy.  I bet a Pivot would allow even more versatility than my stoic-like-Nordic-me 1999 900s binding.  There's a system version, which, even though Jeff from Ski Essentials says is just fine, isn't just fine.  System bindings start ruining ski feel about the 80mm mark, maybe even narrower.  Screws, man, they're the best.  Gotta use that #3 Posi for something or other.

- Minimal tip rocker, and almost no tail rise.  Square tail.  If you ski backward or are, like, from QC and think a trampoline is a training tool, this isn't for you.

- I mounted it at recommended boot centre, but I bet if you sized down and scooted back, you'd access some more schlarve in the tail.  Don't be tempted.  Size up and give 'er.  Turns are supposed to be round, anyway.  Point-and-slash is the ski version of Trix.

- Did I mention it's not super expensive?  I like that.

- Stand on it.  Centre of mass over base of support.  Be involved in the outcome of your day.  It's quite enjoyable, really.

Plake, not hip-checking even a little.

-

Title from Kathleen Edwards' not-as-recent-as-it-seems-cos-of-Covid song "Options Open", on her 2020 album Total Freedom.  I always feel like brand loyalty is a bad idea, my 5 Soma frame purchases and 3 Subarus and, like, 80 goshdarn 747-lineage bindings aside.  Everybody burns you in the end.  In point of fact, the only non-prescription thing I can think of where I didn't deviate from brand is the Scarpa Terminator. 3 for 3 in 24 years.  For 43 years, I been keepin my options open.

* They use Bafatex, which is some kinda material that used in sails. I think it's a woven combination of unicorn floss and narwhal feathers.

Okay, maybe he didn't suck that bad, but I bet he can't pronounce the run leader's name or the Deutscher word for departure.  Besides, if you are on national telly claiming Ester's gold is only cos she was on Mikaela's skis, your grand idear is based on a drunk mechanic's attempt to reattach a gimmick to a ski, and you base a ski company on that and start it with an asshole ski exec from one of the two worst corps in the industry, I gotta say I'm skeptical.

- -

Really lastly, this was sposeta hit publish last year but life takes you where it goes,  or so it would seem.

Not on demo day!

Demo Day is something of an impromptu holiday for ski nerds and Joeys alike, and probly everyone else, too.  It's like National Doughnut Day, National Taco Day, and National Burrito Day in that you can definitely partake in demoing skis at other times, but it feels special when there's a bit of ceremony.  One doesn't just get up and go skiing.  There's planning to be done.  Depending on one's mood, there needs to be time to choose a good outfit, like Bridget Jones and Arwen Undómiel on Rex Manning Day.  Some folks pretend to not care, just like the lady from The Mentalist.  (I know the show cos my landlord in Greenwater was like reeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaalllllyyyy into it.)  Robin Tunney.  Anyway, it's important.  Talk Like a Pirate Day important.

Last week, on a Wednesday--see below if you don't believe me--our local mildly confusing purveyor of seemingly unrelated outdoor goods (or seemingly related, if you are so inclined) had one of these National Holidays all by themselves.  They used to share the pitch with their neighbour, Greenwood's, who is literally walking distance away at the bottom of Bogus Basin Road, just across from Hawkins Pac Out and The Holler.  And not CityNerd walking distance, mind you. American Walking Distance.  I'll be honest that while waiting for a burrito at Hawkins on a powder panic morning, I've witnessed people driving the 13 feet, but that's neither here nor there.  I mean, there's a car wash Reed Cycle in between and going the fast way requires walking on a dirt driveway, and maybe that's too hard when there's snow in them thar hills.

Anyway, I donned my best chamois shirt and puffy vest so people knew I grew up in the 80s and 90s on a Dynastar Course GS, and Amy wore her Magnet Designs Tahoma Hoodie under her Patagucci shell to cover both nano-and macro-manufacturing bases.  I'm sure the cats hawking their wares were suitably impressed.  I mean, I was.  After a fashion, we tried a handful of skis apiece, and like Ray Delahanty, we have thoughts.  We'll share some herewith.

There's a chance they might not know how to count.  Either that or they possess a vortex and can experience multiple times simultaneously.

It starts with expectations.  Jim Steenburgh, the oft-mentioned PhD of Utah Powder, says the key to happiness is keeping them low.  With K2, I like go a little further, and keep them at zero.  I've been disappointed with skis from Blizzard, Nordica, Volķł, Atomic, Nordica, Sțocklǐ, Elan, Fischer, Nordica, Icelantic, Lib Tech, Salomon, Nordica, and probly many more.  Strangely, I cannot think of a disappointment endured while skiing K2.  Sometimes, like the Pinnacle from almost a decade ago, the ski didn't bend my mind so much as give it a gentle and kindhearted surprise, like when you taste the cardamom in an Ocean Roll from Sparrow Bakery.  Last year, during a particularly drawn out (like, seriously, days long) discussion about bindings, Ryan (The Owner) found a pair of Recons from '08 at St Vinnie's on Broadway.  They had the aubergine S914 binding I've been searching for since I sold my last pair back in around '010.  I had always hated that ski without ever having skied that ski.  LB and I tuned upwards of 80leven hundos of em, and we just spat and made fun of em.  Over, and over.  And yet, aside from a lower ceiling than I want from a daily driver, the Recon is actually really nice.  Very easy to ease into, clean, mid-radius sidecut, dense without really deadening, and real smooth in the more smooshier of snows.  Don't even try to ski the good cheesy pow on it, cos it'll be at the bottom dragging like an anchor, but that's not why you by a 76mm all mountain board from almost 20 years ago.

Here, of course, is the thing:  the Mindbender 99 Ti from K2 is really fun.  I didn't know what to expect, so I didn't, I just made a hard right around the top terminal of 1 and pretended the snow was actually good, and wouldn't you know it, the ski did exactly what you want a big, stout, metal all-mountain ski to do.  Broke through the meringue, carved up the carveable, held an edge on the groomers, and most importantly made me want to ski more, and faster, and at high edge angles, and drive the cuff, and turn left into the chop instead of right onto the groomer even though it was awesome on the groomers.  It's stiff enough without being overpowering.  Dense enough while still maintaining some rebound.  Ugly enough to remember what brand of ski you're on.  (I was in shops for the worst of their topsheet sins.  If I never see another deathclown graphic, it'll be too soon.)  For a ski this big, I doubt it'd float much, and I didn't get a chance to test my hypothesis anyway.  That, too, is part of keeping expectations low.  If it floats at all, it's a win.

Blasphemy, I tell you.  Thou shalt not think a K2 is good, let alone better than the Blizzard Bonafide.  But then, the Bonafide is on my list of disappointments.

The third ski I took out was the Dynastar MPro 94.  Since no one is paying us, I can say what I think, which is, wow, um, that was like, um, something.  Nothing?  Heck, I don't know.  I couldn't tell what was going on.  It was kinda like the front was one ski, and the back was another ski.  It was like the Apex boot that is a snowboard binding in skeletal ski boot shape.  Couldn't get a feel for anything.  The front of the M 94 is soft, deflectable.  Full of tip flap.  The rear is fairly stiff, which means it overpowers the flappy tip like me on a 1999 Specialised FSR XC with an undamped coil shock.  Flynn, who is somehow both the head coach for C of I and the shop manager at McU's, was pretty googly eyed over them, and I gotta say I now worry for his sanity.  I mean, this same cat rips on 15 year old 30 metre GS boards, knows the value of a good 18 din World Cup PX Racing, and yet thinks I'd dig this ski. He did not track when I told him it was two skis.  He also said it was a perfect teaching ski, which, sure, whatever, I've never taught anyone so I wouldn't know, but dag.  I was sorely disappointed.  I never skied the ski it replaced, but I skied the ski that the ski it replaced replaced, and with that apparently super old ski in mind, this ski is up there with the TenEighty Gun and the oldest new Enforcer as far as disappointments go.  There's just no there there.

This, though, had a there.  And a here.  And just about everything else in between short of floating like a wood duck in 32" new.

I bought the original Vôlkl Kendo in '09.  Or '010.  Or '011.  Can't remember, because I'm old.  At least that's what Jake (the coworker) tells me.  I didn't know anything other than it was similar to the Mantra M2, but, like, the best width, which is 88mm.  The Mantra had surprised me with its carving prowess on a test ride with a customer who couldn't get a handle on his new pair, and I figured a centimetre less material should be even more carvier.  (Turns out his bindings had developed a Shaq-sized case of the Tyrolia Twists.)  At any rate, Lisa (the patroller with the deals) knew somebody who knew somebody, and in exhange for pro deal cash and, for some reason, an awkward hug, I had me a 177 Kendo, replete with fairly indecipherable topsheet graphics.  As I'd hoped, it absolutely ripped.  Top 5 skis.  I threw a take-off 14-din FreeFlex that itself would later develop a nasty bout of Tyrolia Twist on there and skied it until we needed the cash to escape the dungeon known as Weber County, when I sold it at the Fairgrounds Ski Swap.

The second Kendo I skied was in '016, and instead of surprising me with the goods, it disappointed me.  Those were some dark times.  Heavy rocker was on its way out, but still fouling a lot of should-have-beens like Boa is fouling the ski boot world right now.  It was damp, to the point of death.  It was solid, to the point of feeling heavy.  It had a set turn radius, to the point of feeling stuck.  And it was dark blue, boring to the point of disinterest.  I loved the confusing black paint-on-titanal topsheet of the OG, and this then-new ski was just utterly, utterly uninteresting.

This past McU's Happy Fun Time Demo Day, the first ski I grabbed was a 184 Kendo Mantra 88.  (Sorry, Volķl.  Silly name changes don't improve skis.)  In keeping with my Steenburgh-like dispassion, I expected little.  Especially in memory of that M2 ski back at The Place That Shall Not Be Named.  McU's helped my lack of interest by installing a 10-din piece of plastic I was worried would shatter at Tower 1 under the depression sheaves, but thankfully, that didn't happen and I'm still here.  Once all the pomp and circumstance and waiting was over, and I could throw it on a nice edge angle, I felt good.  Happy, even.  It's a stout ski, but alive.  Holds an edge like the original, and lets go when it should.  It reminds me of the original, though not quite as quick out of a turn.  Not as much rebound, which I guess is fine since they are aimed ever so slightly below me.  They still don't have the kick-in-the-teeth snap that the original did, and for that I am a touch dismayed.  I wish ski manufacturers were more willing to toss off a bike industry style f-bomb and say "here's a ski, and it's up to you to ski it."  No one does anymore, and we're worse off for it.

Centre of mass over base of support, 'bout 18 colours represented, half-assed racer roll on the pant cuff, not a single repeated brand, rack-find GS poles. . .this much steez takes years of work. Oh, and a Peregrine 80 doing what it's told.

The hand-offs on demo day are always a little awkward.  Usually shops send up their mechanic types so that they don't have to indemnify any sales kids who can't be trusted to actually know what forward pressure is, and we mechanic types don't always got that good customer service.  One guy told me I was stepping into the binding too fast, as though bindings care how quickly they open and close.  He took the Võlkļ Peregrine 80 I skied second with a rote and dispassionate "how was it," that wasn't even really a question, and then got really weird when I said it was super easy to ski.  I think he wanted me to say it ripped like a gelada baboon on MDMA or sliced like a dull ginsu through luke-warm camembert or something.  I don't know.  All I know is it was a ski that did skiing.  If I had never skied a race ski, or an old-timey Head Monster, maybe it woulda been interesting, but it just wasn't.  It held the edge like you'd want a frontside ski to do, released that edge quickly, and transitioned well, but that's like saying I turned the key in my Forester and it started up, and that when I pushed the gas pedal it went forward as long as I'd released the clutch while also in gear.  It is supposed to do those things.  

Record scratch.

I just gooooooooogled for retail (a cool grand, if you must know, and without choice in binding cos Marker Dalbello Vołķľ group) and realised that it was designed to be "approachable".  I did what Rob Christensen  back in '94 said I would when I assumed something.  This is a herky-jerky way of bringing it all back around, then.  Expectations.  I knew of the ski because one of the most relaxing things to do when I'm all tense or whatever is watch Ski Essentials product videos.  Jeff and Bob have that podcast chemistry, and they keep the sales goop to a minimum while still showing excitement for the product.  Apparently I sat too far in the back of the class during the Peregrine episode.  I figured that if it's named after the fastest bird in the world, it'd be the fastest ski on the hill.  I guess ze Chermans don't think like that.

Not being an aspiring intermediate on the ski like I very much am on the mountain bike, I can't say how precisely they nailed it, but Ima give em a solid A-.  As an expert skier--like, seriously, I'm the best skier on the mountain, hash tag G.N.A.R. points--I didn't have to think at all to roll out some nice full-width carves on LuLu My Favourite Run At Bogus.  It held on, more than I'd expect from something mainline publications would call "agreeable", all the way until I told it to let go.

So there you go.  Hopefully that's as clear as mud.

Elyse Saugstad, certified Blizzard ripper, definitely not on the Black Pearl.

Speaking of disappointing skis, women's ski reviews usually be like JUST BUY A BLACK PEARL 88, it's Got A Furry Cuff.  Don't ask questions, don't demand other things.  Never mind if you're as average as an American woman gets, you're somehow too big and too small and too strong (but not tall enough), so we just don't think you're our target market.  Just say yes and hand over swipe put your card in the slot tap your card wave your watch and make sure you buy an approved Marker binding cos marketing.  You only need a 9 din binding, I can tell.   Pretty sure they make pink 9 din bindings.

We don't do that here.  We turn our noses up at pink-it & shrink-it and gape open-mouthed at the Atomic rep who enthusiastically tells us they "took all the metal out," so it's better now.  Here, we use our gear until it's threadbare because the retail experience is so horrendous that we avoid it as long as possible (and if we're honest, can't afford retail prices anyway).  And when we do go to the shop, we try really hard not to make eye contact with anybody while striking a balance between not looking too interested in anything in particular and not looking too lost, because I don't want to be mansplained at and...

Not trying to be rude, I promise.  Just facts.

An obnoxious trend I've noticed of late is unisex skis.  It's not that the unisex skis are annoying.  No, unisex skis are a good thing.  In fact, any ski can be a unisex ski if you're a Tall Enough woman, or a Brave Enough man.  But what's obnoxious is rebranding men's skis as unisex and not making them in a full range of sizes.  IT'S NOT A UNISEX SKI IF THE SHORTEST LENGTH IS A 163.  Most women's skis come in a range of lengths, usually 4 or 5 options from 143ish cm long to 180ish cm long.  However, most "unisex" ski I've seen start at about 165 cm, with some variation for style (carvey skis go shorter, big-mountain skis go longer).  By not making the skis in shorter lengths, they're making these products inaccessible to a whole bunch of women who need a shorter ski.  It doesn't just suck to make a unisex ski that a bunch of people can't ski, but it's super gaslighty to say, "Oh, look at us, we are gender inclusive," and then exclude a bunch of of people who don't have as many options to begin with.  I get it: budgets are tight these days so you can't offer as many choices as you could in a better economy.  But, instead of actually doing diversity, we're just back to ignoring half the population.

Atomics have been so ugly for so long, it's hard to remember if THIS was the one they took the metal out of or if it was another misguided attempt at "art".

No surprise, amongst the 30-odd pairs of skis, demo day featured one ski I was excited to ski, and two others that I can say nice things about.  There were a couple (as in, two) other skis made for women that I just wasn't interested in, and my runs are limited these days, so you'll just have to look elsewhere for a review of the Rossi Rallybird and whatever Line is up to.  I would have been interested in trying the Rossi Super Blackops 98.  Technically a unisex ski, but a) I don't think they had it in my length, and b) even if they did, the two shortest lengths are sold out.  Go figure.

Volkl Secret 88 in 163 cm length

This ski is fucking great.  I would buy this ski.  That is the highest praise I can give a piece of gear.  Despite the tone of the previous four paragraphs, I'm being serious here.

It's lively and quick, springs from turn to turn.  Yet, it's also damp (metal!), holding an edge without chatter when loaded up.  I made small, medium and large turns and it liked 'em all.  This ski wants to be on edge and does not want to be ridden flat.  But it can also skid and slarve.  Other things to know: it has a little rocker, but skis more like a traditional cambered ski, and it's got those sweet, sweet sidewalls.  Ignore the 3D Radius Sidecut marketing copy that claims "Three radii in one ski for maximum TURNING & SPEED VERSATILITY IN ALL MOUNTAIN SKIING."*  The stated sidecut for the waist of the ski at 163 cm is 13 meters, which sounds about right based on its performance.  This is an all-mountain ski for advanced and expert women and it does it right.  Dang, good ski reviews are boring to write.

There we go.  Looks good on paper, and even better in person.  Functional, interesting, with just a touch of the feminine.  Eino told me he'd ski it and have you seen that guy's moustache?!

*This is an overly-complicated way to describe the shape of the ski.  In practice, you can't somehow get three different radii in one turn, which is what the marketing copy sounds like.  When you bend a ski, it creates an arc, which makes the ski travel in the shape of a turn.  When you bend it more, the arc gets smaller and the turn tighter.  Put less pressure on the ski, it straightens out and the turn radius increases.  The ski's sidecut affects how much you can bend a ski, but I'm skeptical that this technology makes a noticeable difference in how the ski skis.  I certainly didn't notice on my handful of runs on this ski.

Volk Secret 96 in 163 cm length

This ski also did it all, just in a different way than the Secret 88.  I personally don't prefer a width in the mid-90s (unlike the pop-punk bands of my youth); it's just too in-between for me.  I want a ski I can carve when I want to and it's too wide for that.  I can ski a mid-80s ski off-piste just fine, but I want something at least 100 mm underfoot for true powder.  So a 96 mm wide ski just doesn't have a lot of functionality for me.  That said, this ski edged almost as well as it skidded.  It was good and stable at speed.  The big different between the two Volkl secrets is that this one didn't like to make quick turns--which seemed to be the Secret 88's m.o.--but I also wouldn't expect that from a ski this wide.  Unlike the 88, it did like to go flat, so if you're into tucking down cat tracks, it'll do that for you.  Oh, and I just found out from looking at the Volkl website that this ski claims to have even more sidecuts: 4 in total!

I'd be remiss not to mention that "Secret" is the name of a deodorant.  How embarrassing!

Dynastar E-Cross 82 in 167 cm length

When Aaron handed me this ski, his eyes lit up and he said, "This is an instructor's ski."  I was suitably impressed, despite my initial skepticism.  No, I wouldn't want to own this ski or make it my daily driver, but it did do all the things and did them well.  The shovel-shaped, lightweight, rockered tip initiated extremely easily, and then the ski held on and held up as pressure built throughout the turn.  The ski was turney and slidey, which is to say, it's very easy to steer into any turn shape you want.  I'd call it "contemporary" as opposed to "traditional."  The older lady at the demo tent on the same skis seemed confused by it, and I don't blame her.  When I asked her what she usually skied, she said, "they're old," so I assume she's used to a ski that take a lot of input to direct them where you want to go.  You can't try too hard on this ski; it won't hook up and it doesn't drive.  But if you use a light touch, you will be rewarded by a smooth and stable ride.  Basically, as long as you don't expect it to go like a race ski, and if you would rather ski in the chop and slop than work on your schmedium-radius carved turns on the groomed, it'll do you well in most terrain and conditions.

Amy demonstrating that good schmedium radius on the E-Cross.  Of course it's worth checking out, cos all new skis are these days.  I mean, with all of our collective history, no design engineer would over-rocker a ski, right? RIGHT?!?!?

Dynastar M-Pro 92 in 162 cm length

Why?  Why would anyone want this much rocker?  What is this ski for?  I truly don't know.  I'm not just trying being rude here; this ski is not very functional.  The extremely rockered tip just flaps in the breeze, smacks the snow in way that is both distracting and destabilizing.  Oh god, I just looked at the marketing copy and this claims to be an all-mountain ski for intermediate to advanced skiers.  It would not be good for either.  It's squirrely; I realize that its goal is not to rail an edge (because it really, really can't do that), but an expert ski should be able to handle a little extra speed without feeling unstable.  And an intermediate who wants to improve their turns would not be well served by a ski that so twitchy that you can't rely on pressuring or tipping it to get you through the turn.

K2 Reckoner 92 in 169 cm length

To say this ski is "not for me" is being generous.  To be fair, this ski is not for me.  But I'm also confused about who this ski is for.  The advertising goes, "From the park to the trees, to the afternoon chop, these approachable, yet playful skis and their versatile All-Terrain Twin Rocker will have you wondering why you waited so long to jump on the twin-tip train."  Ok, let's break that down.  "From the park to the trees, to the afternoon chop" means it's a park ski that you might also ski to and from the chairlift and on a lap with your friends who know all the good stashes, which is to say, it's a park ski.  "Playful" and "versatile" in this case means a cheap, cap-construction ski that's not good at anything in particular.  The thing about jumping on the "twin-tip train" is so outdated, I am confused about what they're going for here.  Twin-tips were invented for skiing backwards.  That's all.  Rocker negates the need for this and adds the functionality of making transitions easier.  Straight forward twin-tip park skis haven't been a going concern since like, 2005?  Was this ski designed by some guy who watched some ski movies back in college?  In terms of actual performance, it has none.  It's bad at everything the Dynastar E-Cross is good at: it can't shape a turn (you just have to throw the ski sideways), lets the terrain throw you around, and the tip and tail slap the snow all the way down the hill.  But maybe that's what you want from a park ski?  A ski that goes straight, that you can throw around when you encounter obstacles, and makes a good noise when you land?  I guess if that's what you want, this might be the ski for you, you still shouldn't buy this ski.  See, that was way more fun to write than a complimentary review.

This ain't from demo day, but it's pretty purty.

Is there anything else to say?  All I know is we didn't dwell, we each just ate our house-made egg sandwich with bacon and arugula and a light mild aioli on a toasted Wolfermann's Heritage English muffin and packed the Forester, bougie stickers and all, and made for the turniest ski hill road I know.  All 178 of em by the time you're at the Patrol room.  And we had a real good time cos it was Demo Day.

Never was a world

Learning to tele, like really learning, took a lot of patience, repetition, and rain gear.  I crashed fell over at slow speed so many times that first full winter, and I learned really quick that the best way for me to stay at least sort of dry was a rain jacket, good Gore-tex bibs, and insulated leather gloves from Hardware Sales in the Iowa district.  You know the ones.  They don't need publicity anymore, having Henry Winklered the shit out of that water skiing stunt years ago.

Anyway, the gloves were easy to remove, with a cuff wide enough to hold onto my jacket sleeves, which both kept some snow out and allowed me to easily yank the glove off to shake the snow that inevitably did end up inside back onto the snowpack where it belonged.  They also dried easily on the rack above the propane stove in the shack at the bottom of 5.  I'd tumble, again, maybe the third or forth time in a run, grumble a little, get up, whip the snow out of my sleeves and gloves, and keep going.  I was 19 at the time, and determined that this, this fall right here, would be my last ever.  It would take years to accept that, different from the cheesy sticker that was all over gear and cars at the turn of this century, to free the heel is to free the body to fall.  I don't think my mind really followed, either, come to think of it.

Sure.  Okay.  I believe you believe that.

Below the top of what is now the Northway Chair* at Crystal is a nice southeasterly pitch.  Not super long, not crazy steep, just good open turns.  It's a lot bumpier now that that merger-era Unistar drive sits atop it.  At the turn of the century, it was smooth and creamy in the warm March sun.  Good terrain, then, to find a rhythm.  

I didn't learn to tele from the bottom up like the PSIA says you should.  I was dropping the knee on what Colorado folk think are black runs by the third day on freeheels.  (A little more than two years later I'd straightline the moguls here, skiers' left side of Green Valley, and have what is to this day my scariest crash.  Could've been so much worse than the broken nose and ganked neck and disapperated glasses I went home with.)  I tried a drill that day, one I came up with myself.  I sat all the way onto my trailing heel to feel what the foot and knee and hip and quad needed to feel like, to understand the shapes I'd need and how the turn progressed without needing to know how to actually do it.  I told myself it was only that run, and then I needed to be able to do it correctly.  It took a few moderate tweaks over the years, but by the bottom of the Valley I was what John Becker and Sam Lobet of P-A, WA called, with seeming affection, a telewhacker. 

The next day out, maybe a week later, I made some turns with a handful of fellow freeheelers, and it really clicked.  That wide open ramp under Northway Peak was quiet, and I watched three or four go, and then just made the shapes with my legs and torso that they made with theirs.  I found a rhythm, one I never really lost until my arthritis and tendinopathy took it away.  Looking up, I couldn't distinguish our tracks from some unevenness or poor turn shape I might have made, only that one set ended at my skis.  Somebody casually mentioned that I looked pretty experienced, and I had to hide my smirk when I said it was my fourth day.

If you're doing it right, people who don't know won't be able to tell.

For a long time, I skied in Atlas gloves whenever I could.  They aren't super practical if it's cold or wet, but when it's sunny and the bumps on Upper Nash get suitably big, they breathe well enough and are dextrous and waterproof in the palm and fingers and they smell a certain way in the sun and, I don't know, the smell still reminds of that one time in the ticket office at White Salmon when I was getting a buddy pass and I'd just plumb blowed up the thumb ligament in my right hand and couldn't really grasp the old sticky wicket tickets well on account of the thumb brace I had wrapped over the Atlas glove and this really nice, utterly intimidating lady walked over and said "here, let me do that for you," and I was smitten for at least 5 minutes.  I was 18 and I never got her name and certainly don't even remember her, really, just that brief moment.

I will admit to certain conceits with regard to skiing, especially to tele.  I tried to ski in Carharrts or Dickies as often as possible, along with the Atlas, and later, other types of work gloves.  I had a couple thrift store button-down shirts to wear when I wasn't feeling my usual flannel.  I think I wanted to project a casual disregard for the possibility of actually falling, and to distinguish myself from the bougier elements in our little world with my grease-stained duck workpants and emotional distance.  To belie the existence of any fear or misgiving.  I'd worked so hard to overcome that first year of non-stop tumbles.  I wanted folks who knew to really know.  (There's that guy.  Y'know, Two-turn Eino.  He never falls.)  Also, I found it comfortable and thought myself stylish.  I still really like Atlas gloves. 

See?

About the third time the heel cable on my old Pitbull 2 broke, I caved.  Some idiot volleyball patroller on Nose Dive who stopped the heavily used Black Diamond touring ski with the nice mountainy topsheet and de rigueur Canadian flag sticker it was on told me I'd never lose my ski if I used G3 bindings like he did, despite his not recognising that I'd kicked the ski and not fallen out of the binding. He'd put me off of upgrading the part of telemark skiing that both ties the room together and necessarily needs to be in the background for too long.  It took a minute, but a month or so later a pro patroller named Andrew was selling some Igneous skis with a G3 Targa on it and I bit.  It was the first ski I bought for the binding, the first in a loooooong and still continuous line.  I'd told myself I wanted the ski, but at 197, made of like two full-height maples, and with a less-than-okay top sheet--a pic of Anna Nicole Smith, with a blatant heroin reference as a "pro model"--the ski and I never really jived.  The binding and I did, and I skied it probly another 300 days before I and the Cascadian humidity wore the retention springs out.

The cable wasn't the only thing I broke, just the most annoying.  I broke both ankle straps on my first bumblebee T1 in two winters at Baker, and my humerus on a particularly funky morning, far skiers' left of Gabl's.  It'd rained about halfway up 5 the day before, and then cooled fairly quickly and continued on with the precip for a while before clearing off completely for an absolute North Cascades stunner of a day.  The top of Gabl's was fluff on butter, just real creamy and fast, but right about the Chute 4 bench it locked down under the confectioner's sugar.  I was hittin it full steam, and got knocked off line by the frozen whatevers sitting four or five inches under the surface.  My left ski caught something and stopped hard, and I went down on my left arm.  I lay on the ground for a minute, then couldn't get myself situated to stand up because the arm was completely dead.  It took a while for it to shake out.  When I got to the bottom of 5 to bump chairs, Paul the mechanic asked if it was snowing still, despite all that blue sky and dry air.  I still haven't forgiven that fu    

Anyway, that Sunday night after work I drove to Enumclaw, 170 miles away.  If you haven't driven a manual with a dead left arm, I don't recommend it.  Not as bad as if your right arm was broken, but still.  No fun.  I got in to see Luther, the family doc, and after an x-ray and some poking slash prodding, he told me to take it easy.  I took that to mean borrow my brother's alpine skis, and otherwise go about my business.  Turns out I tore about two inches of deltoid and chipped a piece off the humeral head.  I still feel the muscle, over twenty years later.  Coincidentally, it's right about where the nurse jabs you with the tetanus goop.

When I called home to chat a few weeks later, Ma said Luther asked her to scold me for shoveling snow and trying to hide when he came through my line at the bottom of 5.  170 miles from home and it's still a small town.

Bend the knees to bend the skis.

In addition to the shoulder destruction and the countless slow-speed tumbles, there were a few truly hard crashes in the learning process.

My EMT instructor, whose name escapes my just now, said that some folks see "tracers" when they have a mild head injury.  I had no idea what he was talking about, and assumed it was just a folk tale.  I mean, in all the old comic strips, folks who'd just got a concussion had birds flying about their heads.  The second time I hit something hard enough my skis stopped, after a nice somersault I could never accomplish on purpose, I sat and watched the thousand points of light race each other in very messy circles, their light trailing behind, playing havoc with my sanity.  I described what I was seeing to Stina and she just said "tracers." 

The twisting lights slowly faded as I sat, motionless and concerned about all the trauma I was certain I'd inflicted, but aside from seeing these same stars a little bit easier now in my forties, nothing really ever came of it. I can still remember well the entire run, the hike to the top of the King, breaking trail for Stina and her buddy Mary and them giving me first tracks down the Appliances Chute as a thank you, the straightline and subsequent wallop, the tracers, and the much mellower run to the bottom of DFF, turning and turning and turning, wondering if I'd ever feel normal again. I'm 43 now, and I still wonder.  I still see not only the tracers that show up here and there, but the blood in the snow and all of each tomohawk way back in '001 at the bottom of the Valley and, later, on the frontside of the Queen this time, how the the world looked when I realised I'd stopped, tails tucked into the snow, as though I was poured onto a chair made just for me, without any understanding of why I wasn't still skiing.  That pivotal moment alone is just missing.

It's probly an old timber feller.  Checkin in, sayin hi.

There are things I miss about making that turn.  Real and quantifiable, or ethereal and mearly mystical.  I was almost a cliché, making hay while the sun shone brightly, knowing that--without knowing when--the ride would end.  My legs aren't as strong and I'm not as fond of steeps these days.  Skiing is still paramount for me, but I haven't stepped into a tele binding in a long time.  In point of fact, I just handed my last binding over to my brother when he bopped on through BoyCee in November.  The last real day of making the freeheels was the day my former employee who became my boss took the photos on this page in the Spring of '016.  These photographs hurt a little, just looking.  Things gained and then lost, skills developed and then forgotten. 

So many turns, steeps or flats, crashing hard or pinning it top to bottom, solid, fast, controlled.  I could turn both ways and stop, in damn near any condition, on damn near any pitch.  I'd step into those bindings, and every time the feelings would flood my arteries.  Memories of people and places and times gone by.  Playing a show for 400 college kids in Tacoma or hiking alone at Chinook Pass.

The day I first stepped into those tele boots was the day my maternal grandfather passed away in February of 2000.  The phone rang early in the morning, 6 or so. I heard Ma cry out and go quiet, and I knew.  Grandpa Kelly had been languishing; a stroke had laid him low and there wasn't much to be done. He was 85 and a quiet fighter, a man who could outlast the hard times.  He could fall asleep when all of us grandkids were running around screaming, 41 of us by the time the youngest came along.  

Noël had wanted to ski with me again, or more acurately wanted me to follow her on the hill and chat while riding the chair.  There wasn't much for me to do at the funeral home, nor much room for all of us, so Ma said to keep my plans.  I rented gear, and that was that.  For the next sixteen years I felt like I belonged to something, that I wasn't just sliding along like all the other folks.  Sixteen years of feeling a connection to my paternal grandfather who passed away in '62, nineteen years before I came along.  He was a freeheeler back in the day, leather boots and leather strap bindings, Sámi muscles kicking around far northern Sverige's beautiful and low-slung mountains before moving to the states and meeting my grandmother in the UP, up around Calumet somewhere.  I think of him every time I see a raven on the wind, or hear one calling in the deep Doug fir in the rain.

-

Title from Jonatha Brooke's Landmine, which she released on her first fully-solo record, 1997's 10¢ Wings.  Rock may have sucked in the late 90s, mainstream country as well, but there were some really good artists doing other things who went largely unnoticed because, well, there wasn't a a funky beat you could bug out to or catchy, yet misogynistic rap lyrics written by white dudes who should probly have been cleaning toilets instead.  I listened to that album over and over and over again in my little '81 Tercel driving back and forth to Crystal and GRCC in '000.

*Bonus points if you can spot me.