Who'll be my role model?

I finally found out around 3.30 why no patrollers would stop and give me a pee break. I'd peed in a Gatorade bottle behind the partition a few times, hoping no snowboarders piled up on the ramp.  (It's always snowboarders.  Except when it's not.)  Day three of a 100" cycle, at this point just getting scary.  It doesn't always take that much snow to get wild, but that much snow will always get wild.  That's three water years' worth of snow for, say, Minneapolis, all falling between Thursday afternoon and Sunday afternoon in a random March week.  To be honest, I don't even know for sure it was March.  And while I'm fairly confident it was 2004, it could have been '003.

This is your brain on skiing. Gauzy, imperfect, unclear, approaching beauty.

I've been scared in snow, been spooked.  Bogus Basin, January of '017, skiing with Amy and Ryan (the owner), the snow just felt wrong.  Empty.  A drum, but not tuned properly.  Ryan had already crashed and gotten slid by a slope that almost never moves.  Bogus doesn't even do control work, last I checked.  They might ski check a little on these spooky days, but they don't exactly have the experience of a joint like Palisades or Baker.

We were a little ways down skiers' right of Lucky Friday, kinda gettin rhythm, when Amy got the blues and stuffed her Kikus right into something.  Not sure what, but she was upside-down in no time.  Panicked.  Me too, for that matter.  When I got to her, she'd already gotten her head free, but she was skis-up and stuck.  With me digging and pulling skis, she freed herself fairly quickly and got back on her feet, but the day was over before it began.  

Lucky Friday Gulch, definitely not in 2017.

Or, out North, winter of '006.  The first lap through Flush Gap was deep, those old Karhus buried under who knows how much day-of snow.  I could feel the snow hitting my chest, my arms, my face, the sort of turns where while it's happening, you think "this is why."  This is why we ski.  The second run, it was different.  Maybe the stratosphere was descending, I don't know, but even though the turns were deeper, and fluffier, and more magazine-worthy, there was another mystical layer.

I'd been running North pretty hard, tryna lap in around an hour, Mountain Top to Mountain Top.  Long skate out to Morning Glory, a left-footed sweeper out into what CM now calls "Glory Days", staying skiers' right of the Gap until my choice was cliff or Flush.  I am terrified of leaving the ground now, at 45, but at 25, I was even more scared.  I involve my brain a lot more than I used to, and that helps.  Not that a four-footer doesn't push more adrenaline than getting in a fight with Jake "3Paq" Paquette in 4th grade, but at least I can do it.  Then, it was snow or hike out.

Flush Gap was even deeper this lap, feeling like more than the additional four inches added would account for.  Some spots just collect more snow, I suppose.  I couldn't see my tracks from the previous hour.  Cascade snow rarely settles like that, choosing instead to form dense banks and potholes where skiers and riders have been.  That day, February of '006, it got colder as the snow fell, and it settled laterally instead of clumping, and folks from Colorado would have been proud.  

I could feel the snow move with me, feel it settle down that steep rollover.  Ghosts.  Spirits, I don't know.  I wasn't alone, but I was by myself.  I don't think they were benevolent.  Or maybe they were and it's just that we're all unfamiliar.  Something spiritually deeper, not just the snow, and not like some vortex in Shasta or some 80s ski film.  I stopped for a breath down along the creek, away from big exposure--although you can ask Paul Baugher and Chris Morin about just how small big exposure can actually be by that creek in the wrong conditions--and then pointed it for the bottom.  Turning For Directional Purposes Only ™. * 

I'm sure it looked something like this.  You'll forgive me if I don't have any photos from a time before I had a phone.

There was at least four full inches on top of what had been clean dirt in the shuttle turnaround the last lap an hour before.  If I hadn't seen the grader before the bus came through, I wouldn't have even known.  Chet Mowbray pulled up next to me, looking as shaken as I was.  He said "I'm scared."  Keyed his mic.  "Mountaintop, Chet.  Close all Northback gates.  Stability is waning quickly."  He then turned to me, and said "You work tomorrow?"  I did, 9 am sharp.  He said, "You should call in sick.  It's gonna blow clear this evening and stay cold.  Snow will settle.  South'll be open.  Warming on Saturday."  Shivers, not from the cold.  Sometimes it pays to buy your second car from the Snow Safety Director.  Sometimes it pays to buy your assistant manager beer in trade for showing up late.

-

When I was 20, I got my EMT-B from TCC in, well, T.  It was the only class I'd taken where I actually had to try.  Not just trying, mental weightlifting.  It was rewarding, even if at the time I only considered it for getting a pro patrol job somewhere, something that I'm still frustrated I never did.  Frustrated even more having met some of the incompetent ass kissers who do get hired all over the place.  State Exam day, Eli and I skied Crystal, one of those impossible-to-describe Cascady transition days.  Good snow, actually, even though it was warm and windy.  To the north, up at Baker, it was warm and windy as well, but not good snow.  I talked to J-O before heading to Tacoma and he said it'd rained to the top of 8.  Early December of '002.  I missed PPE on the scene leader portion of the exam, which was a technical fail, but whoever was the proctor let me run a second scene and I passed.  (Brent at Crystal signed my EMT card a week later, but it didn't matter to Baugher.  I wasn't cool enough. Or something.)

I headed out from Tacoma well into the evening, maybe nine o'clock, not sure.  It didn't matter.  By the time I got to Mt Vernon, there was thunder, sideways rain, and wind, like you'd want to see in a murder mystery set in the PNW but which rarely actually occurs.  Hydroplaning on the Interstate, that kinda night.  I can't remember if I snuck up Highway 9 from Sedro or if I took 542 from Sunset, but by the DOT, it was puking legendarily.  It was dark as a coal mine below, two inches in 24 hours kinda rain, but once I hit the snowline, the world got brighter.  Orange light from the sand shed.

Maybe it looked like this? I don't know.  It was dark.  The clouds were like 40k thick.

The road was easy from the North Fork up to White Salmon, but when I passed the Razorhone bridge, it quickly got ugly.  I love driving in snow.  I love the disco-ball-and-bedsheet effect of the headlights, the heavy Tsuga boughs out the side windows, the crunch of compacting snow on the pavement.  This night, though?  Fuck.  Driving by Jolyan's Jaunt, that boulder-strewn sidehill viewpoint between sections of highway where he tumbled with some other lifties way back in the day, I know what was to my right but couldn't see it.  Just a white veil.  I could only hope whoever's tracks had locked me in never left the road.  I tried to keep momentum going, but even with studs, the tyres just spun.  It took me probably 20, 25 minutes to get through the three miles between White Salmon and the E Lodge, and I had the GL down in 4-Low, the tyres maxed out at 35 MPH while the car couldn't have been going more 5.  I crashed into my bunk at 1.30, and by 6.30 when I woke up for work, my car was already buried.  

I was eating breakfast, either an bacon, cheese, and tomato omelette or Darigold Raspberry with Life cereal, when Denny walked in.  He and I got along well, not something common at Bik Snow Mt Baker.  Most folks are closed off, grumpy, arrogant.  They exemplify the Mossback ethos, but in a way that makes you wonder if they even like living there.  They take pride in persisting in a place most people can't handle, and think it means they are better than you.  Denny was different, but he still fired me in the end.  I still don't know why.  He asked why I was there, cos I wasn't scheduled until Saturday.  I don't know where we crossed wires, but I've been simultaneously wrong and utterly certain many times over.  Since I was awake, I booted up.  Bumblebee T1s, those powerful slippers.  32 since closing, heavy, dank, thick Baker goods.  I could barely ski it.  Went in, changed to alpine gear, and still, I could barely ski it.

Except moreso.  And maybe some damage on the car.  Pa asked Ed Moad (The Boss) if he should get drug tested and go home.  Ed said to get back to work.

February is often a big month in the Cascades.  The airmass is still cold, still juiced, but there's a hint of Spring and the instability it can bring.  The right conditions, and it can really hammer.  Enumclaw SD started doing a midwinter break in 1994, and Crystal got what I remember to be between 96 and 99 inches in two days.  The 64 that fell on Thursday the 24th held the 24 hour record for about a decade before Bridger stole it around Christmas in 2003.  It followed a colder (a theme in the Cascades, unfortunately) 32-35" on Wednesday the 23rd.  The whole cycle was wild, 16" at my parents' house in town, enough that we could climb the blackberries and sled.  If you haven't seen the blackberry brambles of the Wet Side, just know that they don't mess around.  Falling into one (from experience) is akin to gettin hosed through the Dog Leg above Bear Pits.  It sucks.

I've told this story before, I know.  It sticks with me, for obvious reasons.  J-O and I were up on Wednesday the 23rd.  We'd grabbed the employee shuttle from Enumclaw.  Upper Mountain was closed, the wind and high precip rate just too much to safely put customers on.  For whatever reason, they weren't spinning Chair 1, though that may be because it was a light Riblet double and was above the heavier trees, exposed to the wind.  Or maybe Upper Bull and Upper E were threatening.  I was too young to really clock all the details.

I skated shuffled over from the top of Midway to Lower Bull, first run.  It was what you'd expect, deep, challenging for a 12 year old kid who only weighed a buck fifty.  I found a rhythm, but couldn't breathe cos I was choking on the snow.  (I learned later that you can just chew on it like it was a big dip o' snus and spit and it'll go away.)  One run beat me up.  I took a break in the lodge, then headed back out.  I skied the line on Midway cos I was tired and it was closer than Lower Bull, but I couldn't stay upright.  I buried my head in a pile of snow directly under the heavy side and panicked.  Somebody yelled at me to lift my head.  I did, and I was free, but I was done for the day.  One imagined near-death experience was enough.  It warmed by Friday, patrol was controlling Upper Mountain from a helicopter, everyone who could drive a loader or cat was out in the lots pushing snow, trying not to hit cars, and Aram and I couldn't get enough speed to move through the damn-near 100" even if we straightlined.

-

These storms, the really big ones, they can seem fun, and can be fun sometimes.  They don't always telegraph their intentions, though.  March '004, Thursday afternoon was fun.  A little surprising; I didn't yet know how to find good forecasts and I didn't know that we were in for a Classic Crystal Zonal Flow.  It stayed cold the whole time, something that doesn't happen often.  I was working Top of 6, brought my skinny skis cos I didn't think it would snow much, and could barely stay afloat on what was the start of a three day binge.  Double Aught Chutes were what the kids (all kids, all generations since at least Gen X, I don't know why) call epic.  Deep, sloughy, slashy, you name it.  I couldn't keep up, so on Friday I brought Jaks out.  Better.  Saturday, too.  Sunday, fuck.  It just felt different.  Most patrollers just looked tired.  Some even looked scared.  I couldn't read them well.  They all had their heads tucked into their jackets, hoods up, looking at the ground.  Before helmets really caught on.  I was working the top of 9, a good storm day post if there are enough lifties.  By 2 o'clock I was getting testy, the snow about done and the world a wash of white, bladder full.

I called around looking for a supervisor, and only got Jon, the jackass liftie at the bottom of 10.  We had a spat, I hung up, and he called back just to yell at me, hung up on me, and I sat there a bit shaken.  I get that low-blood-sugar rush when I'm really angry.  Nobody knew anything.  I drank the last of my Gatorade and ran behind the big wooden wall in the shack, hoping nobody walked in or crashed on the ramp.  Did it again an hour later.  (Once the dam is broken, y'know.)

Something's coming.  You can tell because of the way that it is.

Around close, I finally caught a patroller who would actually make eye contact.  I asked what had happened, why I'd been forgotten up there, and she said "the whole mountain has been looking for a guy who got separated from his buddies.  We finally found him by the powder cache."  She skied off, and it finally hit me.  They found his body, unfortunately.  I never got details, don't need them.  It's another immersion death, as sad and as frustrating as they all always are.  Another life just gone.  I felt like a supreme jackass, operating ignorantly and selfishly all day.  I never heard what time he'd stumbled into the flat trees next to Queen's, maybe lunchtime or so.  I doubt I ever got the chance to apologise to all the patrollers I'd yelled at.  I doubt any remember.  

There isn't a conclusion to be made, no real insight.  We do what we can, try to stay out of treewells, but like the mythical drowning in an inch of water, it doesn't really take all that much.  Life is akin to a hurricane, much violence and seeming monstrosity and yet if you dry out the midlayer or introduce a little shear or, heck, stay in one place too long--that one hits home--all that madness just winks out.

You had to be there.  Tuesday, 1999, E Lodge, Mt Baker, Whatcom County, Canada.

I wasn't at Baker in 1999, I was still in school.  I was a senior and skipping my share of Running Start days at GRCC to ski.  I remember the snowbanks at the top of 6, head high and rising.  I remember Cory Meador digging one particularly snowy afternoon, laying on the snow and grabbing a scoop between chairs.  J-O was there.  Reports are that it was a mess.  If you've heard the number, 1140", and think that you can fathom it, or that your local snowfall is comparable, you are flat wrong.  In February alone, there was no sun.  This isn't some northerly latitude with 24-hour darkness, although many visitors might describe it in such a manner.  Baker is just south of the 49th.  You can see Canada on a sunny day, should one actually happen.  I was there in '002, an 800 inch year, and I can confirm that it really does break blue from time to time.  1999, especially February, it didn't.

Amonium Nitrate-Fuel Oil big.  Aftermath of a heli shot. Now, imagine this going naturally, and bigger. Credit: Grant Gunderson.  Grant, if we ever make money on this, I'll give you the milliones in royalties you're owed.

The Arm went big in January.  Late-season, ANFO big, but early and naturally.  The Canyon didn't melt out over the summer.  The top of the Canyon is around 4 grand, not high, plenty of rain, it always melts, but it didn't that year.  We skied at Crystal until the middle of July.  Lift access, legitimate grooming.

The Arm went even bigger on Valentine's day.  Pa talks about seeing J-O fly by driving the sled, pulling two patrollers on a toboggan giving CPR.  Whoever he was, he didn't make it off the mountain.  His partner didn't make it out of the White Salmon Drainage.  Neither had a skier back in January.  My brother remembers seeing clothing first, two summers later.   The going theory was coyotes or cats were dragging the finally melting-out pieces to save for later, obviously not knowing we humans hold onto the dead as long as we can.

Who we've loved.

Title from Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al. When I write about skiing, I can be silly.  I call out the hypocrisies and sometimes gleefully join in.  I can, however, never ignore the cost.  I can joke, darkness just outside the frame.  Sometimes about the darkness itself.  Skiing isn't important, isn't necessary, and yet, here we are.  Parsing the past, reminiscing, wondering about the future.  What we've lost, who we've lost, who we've met, married, loved, hated, sprayed with snow, thrown rocks at, joked with, cried with, skied with.  It's all there.  My joints are tired, I'm soft in the middle, I need a shot at redemption.  I need a photo opportunity.  Don't wanna end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.

- - -

Our periodic reminder about snow safety. 

* With deference to Sam Lobet at Baker.  Just this once.

Except for an old Coke sign

 Johnsville Ski Bowl isn't around anymore.  Nor is Marshall Mountain, Yodelin, Pilchuck, Céüse 2000, or Chacaltaya.  Heck, Passo Stelvio closed this summer.  I even know what that is!  At any rate, the Plumas-Eureka Ski Club still runs long-board ski races at Johnsville, in the style of old Sierra mail carriers from the Olden Days, every third Thursday of January, February, and March.  The rope tows and pomas and fundraising efforts for a working ski hill were all abandoned in stages by the late 90s.

The story is roughly the same everywhere.  Some external force will exacerbate some internal turmoil, and the never-very-profitable small ski hill will fade into obscurity.  Or, like Johnsville, needed repairs exceed capital liquidity.  Hesperus, in CO, is currently on this path, even though it is owned by a decent-sized capital, um, group of money people.  As are Eaglecrest in Juneau, Spout Springs in OR, and to a lesser extent Bluewood in WA.  Spout Springs is in owner-operator limbo and has at least one lift that needs major repairs.  Bluewood is in court with an importer fighting over the, um, importing of a to-me ill-advised detachable lift.  Eaglecrest finally had to give up on their thirteenth-hand gondola, and are staring down a rough economic schedule trying to stay afloat.

ANY excuse.  The Dachshund of Time rises again.

There are some places that have survived, or at least are still operating, whether past the point of diminishing returns or not.  Soldier Mountain in Idaho, Whitecap in Wisconsin, Mt Ashland in OR, Bogus Basin here in BoyCee, all had financial messes at various different points in their various different histories.  Soldier sold, and sold again, and sold again.  Right now their on their third or fourth variation in recent memory.  Mt A and Bogus successfully converted to 501(c)3 not-for-profits, to various different success levels.  Whitecap emerged from bankruptcy this summer, hopefully better and stronger for it.  Silver Bell Ranch Nordic Valley Wolf Mountain Nordic Valley, down in Ogden's Hole, UT, is on the struggle bus as well.  While they have been in and out of bankruptcy, and are currently out and thriving getting by, they need higher elevation terrain and to repair fully or replace their main out-of-base lift, an old Hall double named Apollo.  Coincidentally or not, the very same Mountain Capital Partners who own Hesperus own Nordic.  Whaleback, NH is another on the list of folks needing funds yesterday for repairs they differed three days ago.  Then there are places like Black Mountain, NH.  Ups, downs, in betweens.  They're on the Indy Pass, that alleged saviour of small ski hills worldwide, and coincidentally or not, in some sort of ownership trist with the owner of Indy Pass, Erik Mogenson.  Also coincidentally, or not, a place similar to BoHo up in the Keweenaw in that their partying can ring up some anger or at least frustration from the locals.

Erik Mogenson.  Indy Pass honch, Black Mountain of New Hampshire Owner, Entabeni Systems CEO, all around proof that most philanthropy is self-serving, fighter of any independent ski area who doesn't want to work with him.  Smug asshole with a savior complex.  Typical tech bro who things cos he has that sweet, sweet startup capital he can do anything.

I feel for the good folks in east-central NH.  Black Mountain is a cool spot.  Their Saturn is rising.  (Or whatever.)  They are yet another joint who's been through their share of fiscal topsy-turviness and are on the back side of it, hopefully for good.  To come out the other side okay, and even possibly thriving, is a good thing.  But it comes with the cost of having to babysit yet another self-professed guru who thinks "independent" is just a code word for "I make all the money".

Mogenson took over Black Mountain in what feels like a shady handoff.  The Fichera family had owned the ski area since 1995, when they bought it out of bankruptcy.  (Cos, why wouldn't they have?)  The Ficheras ran it for almost 30 years before themselves declaring a not-yet-bankrupt inability to operate.  Unforeseen circumstances, the usual.  Things "beyond our control".  Legitimate complaints all around: low snowpack, waning interest, unpredictable weather.  A sad end to a storied local hill's success sine wave.  They endured a couple years of barely making do, then announced they would not operate during the '23-'24 season.  After a few weeks of sadness, a mysterious external partner surfaced, they announced their ability and intent to indeed operate for the '23-'24 season, and the next we heard, the Ficheras were just . . . gone.  Erik Mogenson, previous owner of exactly zero ski area experience, was the new boss.  His Entabeni Sytstems had previously acquired Indy Pass in a similarly opaque process.

The Black Mountain takeover, however, wasn't supposed to happen.  Once the dust had cleared and the mountain got back to the business of operating, Mogenson announced his plan to turn the operation over to a yet-to-be-formed local co-op in the same mold as Mad River Glen, VT.  MRG is a going concern with tons of support, slobbering loyalty, and the dubious distinction of being the only joint east of the Jordanelle to not allow snowboarding.  They've somehow convinced the Skiing World Of America that having an allegedly historical--read: all but replaced, with pretty much only vertical steel left of the original installation--single chair and some rocks means you are legit hard, like some G serving 6 consecutives for all the banging he did back in the Aughts.  Yes, the Mt Ellen lobe of the Green Mountains looming over the Mad River Valley is rugged, but so is the Mt Mansfield group to the north, and folks round there seem, well, less, I don't know, snobby.  (Yes, I know the vacationland snobbery of Stowe, but ability trumps finances in this comparison.)

Mt Ellen itself is burlier than the smaller hunk to the immediate north upon which MRG sits.  Locals are certainly entitled to their enthusiasm, and I am at least 87.99% sure I'd share it if I were to live in the wilds outside Waitsfield.  I just find it all a little bit much.  

Smuggs.  Not MRG? Not problem.

Regardless of my own rampant opinionating, the co-op model of MRG is actually something worthy to which one might should aspire.  If skiing in this bleak time is to continue to be even as minimally inclusive as it is today, any and all models that lessen the need for profit should be considered and successful models emulated, or even just cravenly copied.  Instead, Black Mountain effectively underwent a corporate takeover.  Whatever Mogenson's motives and strategies really were, the end result makes a lie of his public stance.  While Entabeni/Indy Pass is by no means a behemoth like Vail or Alterra or Boyne or even Mountain Capital Partners, it is still an outside entity controlling a local resource, and by those news reports, doing it in direct conflict with the very locals who are supposedly being served.

In truth, there is no bullet, plata o plomo.  The co-op model works for MRG, and outwardly well.  Bridger Bowl soldiers on as an interesting couplet of nonprofits where the 501(c)4 ski area itself cannot accept tax-exempt donations, but a fraternal twin 501(c)3 org known as the Bridger Bowl Foundation can and does accept those donations and operates closely with the ski area.  Bogus Basin and Mt Ashland are simple 501(c)3s.  Giants Ridge, in the Iron Range of NE Minnesota, is an interesting aglomeration of private money from mining (in lieu of to-me unknown taxes) and state funding through the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board.  The Big 3 in Upstate NY, Gore, Whiteface, and Bellayre, are run by ORDA, a state-funded org pushing regional development somehow related (or maybe just named after) the Olympics.  There's always a bit of chafe where privately owned mountains are concerned, as one would expect when Bogus can build a new Dopplemayr Uni-whatever mostly with donation funds (Chair 3, 2011) or Mt Spokane gets a new Skytrac triple (Chair 6, 2018) or Mt A gets a new Skytrac triple (Lithia, 2024)--this one a donation from the local car dealership grown wild--but this feels more than a little like sour grapes to me.  Isn't capitalism supposed to make the cream rise to the top?  Then again, if one or two locales are getting a hand up, maybe more should.

Phht.  "Then again, if one or two locales are getting a hand up, maybe more should."  Have you heard yourself? Real ones know what I'm talking about.*

I don't know the answers, or even most of the questions.  I know they say you should never meet your heroes, and I go a step further and avoid having heroes altogether.  Except maybe Zoe Muth.  Hopefully, as we move along in this curséd timeline, more folks figure this game out.  In the meantime, get out there and support some of these (truly) independent hills.  Places I've mentioned, even the ones I gripe about, and more.  They're everywhere, mainstream media doom aside.  Bolton Valley, just down the ridge from Stowe and Smuggs.  Family owned, now, again, after years of corporate neglect.  The DesLauriers grew up there, and their father, the late Ralph DesLaurier, founded the place back in 1966.  By all accounts, it's a family ski area, too, not just in ownership structure.  A high base area, for Vermont, anyway, and some older-but-reliable lifts.  Classic New England skiing.  Chancing the snow level, or hoping the thermocline is to the south.  Skiing trees when it's snowing, cruising the long, twisting groomers when it's not.

Or Saddleback, near Rangely, Maine.  Another community hill that punches above its weight class, that has come through some hardship and downtime.  It's owned by an opaque corporate venture, but for now it remains decidedly independent and resilient.  High elevation glades, that mythical chalk some of us dream about while not dreaming about summer slush.  Views for weeks when the sun shines.  Steep groomers between walls of trees shortened by short growing seasons.

Or Manning Park, in BC.  Yet another closure, yet another shadowy ownership swap, but a nice local hill nonetheless.  No one is perfect, and running a ski area is expensive.  Heck, take a trip out to Bethel, ME, and ski both Black Mountains.  Black Mountain of Maine is a 501(c)3, a classic New England operation of glades and winding, cut runs.  

Number one, or number six, I don't know, on my list for when people start paying me.  Plattekill, Castkills NY.  Three syllables.

I harp on this concept all the frikn time.  Skiing is more than just huckin yer meat and schralpin.  Maybe those are fun.  Maybe you need a huge hill cos you schred so hard that Harkin Banks and Donny Pelletier cower behind their sisters when they see you in a bar.  Maybe you need a perfectly manicured park cos yer cookin up a secret version of the cork and you just gotta get them laps in.  I do not, and neither do most folks.  Having grown up at legitimate Big Mountain Mountain Crystal Mountain,  having worked two winters at Big Snow Mt Baker, having skied places like Snowbird and Vail and Copper and The Legend Arapahoe, I do truly understand the draw.  When you can hide in the steeps off Gad 2 and pretend you're alone, or traverse back from the Steep Gullies and pretend you're alone, or when you know the best lines skiers' left of Brand X and can pretend you're alone, these places can really deliver.  You'll notice, though, that you have to pretend.  You never are alone, and often not in a good way.

I will never lie and say that, say, Big Powderhorn or Titus or Cataloochie will give you the beans in the way the big boys do.  They don't have the vert, the pitch, the condos, the attitude, the snarky marketing, the expensive lifts, the fancy food, the glass-walled trams, the bougie, messy base areas, the contrived ski bars, the bendy angle-stations that have to be re-engineered after a couple seasons, the rich clientele, the posing out-of-towners, any of that.  They do have snow, sometimes a lot, sometimes very little, and they have gravity.  That, and a little gumption from you, is all that matters.

Does it got one a them Halls?  Probly a good place to be.  McCauley Mountain, NY.

-

Some of my best friends are non-profits, in no particular order: Mt Ashland, Bogus Basin, Mt Spokane, Bridger, Antelope Butte in Wyomin (no G, thanks), Arctic Valley AK, SkiLand up in Fairbanks, Mt Eyak--owner of the oldest operating lift in NA, Cooper not Copper, Hyland Hills, Giants Ridge, Whaleback, you get it.  All is not lost.

- -

Title from Alan Jackson's Little Man.  You can argue that AJ is not a songwriter's songwriter, but you might should listen to more of his lesser known stuff.

* Can of Worms Interchange, Duluth MN.  Any pics I found of cans of worms were weird and unhelpful.

The almost had 'ems and the broken bones

I think in this meme, the yelly lady is wrong, but indulging in common misconceptions, while the cat is right, but totally pedantic about it. Neither is "likable", which always says more about us and our societal mores than the individuals that are being studied. For more on this sorta dichotomy, I direct you to search JSTOR and prepare to do some mental weightlifting in regard to sociology and community/pop--aka armchair--psychology. Or you could just join me in giggling at our modern society's absurdities and frustrations.

 

The above meme and a conversation with Ryan (the Owner) about weathers, on which later there will be specifics, got me thinking for the umpteenth time about the function in our society of being right.  As in, knowing the correct answer, understanding a certain atmospheric pattern of flow, eating pasta like you're "supposed to", and so on.  Spoiler alert, slurping and being messy is wrong, no matter what certain cultures might yell at you from the sidelines.  It's never okay to make more noise than necessary while eating.  And it's okay to cut your spaghetti.  It's just food.

Anyhoodles (quoting our local weather pedant): getting it right. I've been constantly reminded of this sorta thing over the years.  It's often frustrating to me, because most folks act simultaneously like there is no value in knowing things and that if you make attempts to educate them for not knowing things, then you're the asshole.  Which brings us to how ski bindings work.

Hopefully this was not simultaneous prerelease. Keep your jokes to yourself.

Bindings are like meteorologists.  They are correct somewhere between 80 and 100% of the time, they require a little knowledge from the end user, and get blamed for things they do not control most often when the user doesn't understand how they work.  Weather folks in this day and age have so many powerful tools at the ready that they can predict to the hectopascal (1/1000 of the natural atmospheric pressure at sea level for those of you who aren't science hippies) how deep an East Pacific cyclone will get three days before one even starts to form.  They can predict how this will affect, say, the Boise Mountain foothills east of Boise, ID, in Boise Ada Boise County, and they'll get it right to within a handful of miles.  If you can read a map, which I know some folks can't don't have much experience doing, you'll notice there are all sorta ripples on the land between the Pacific and Idaho's misunderstood capital city, and if you understand physics, which some folks actively try not to do don't have much experience with, you'll know that ripples on the ground cause ripples in the lower atmosphere, and if you've ever tossed two pebbles in a lake, you'll know that ripples interact with other ripples and, well, you get the point.

Thing is, it feels like people are militantly anti-knowing-stuff.  Take the simple and not-so-humble binding.  It locks your boot to the ski. With minimal exception, it uses some sort of vertical lock on the boot's heel that engages and disengages in an arc, a spring to exert forward pressure through the boot's sole in a consistent fashion throughout the various compressions and extensions of the ski, and if it's the most common variety of binding, has at least two sorts of releases governed by springs that can be compressed or relaxed to stiffen or ease those two release types in case of a crash.  The obvious one is the heel piece that like goes up and down and stuff, and the less obvious one is a rotational release at the toe, managed either by a rotary motion of the entire toepiece or flappy wings that spread apart.  Marker useta make this binding with a turntable heel that hip folks back in the late 80s would get out of by rapidly twisting their boots rather than hitting the eject button that Marker engineers didn't really make all that accessible.  I'll find a picture if I can.  Otherwise, you pretty much push down on the heelpiece and step out.  At any rate, there's not much more to it.  Thing is, to my endless and constant consternation, it's the last thing that folks focus on and misunderstand.  DIN Release value refers to an adjustment that governs how easy and/or hard it is to do said twisting and/or ejecting upward out of said binding.  If your eyes glazed over, bear with me.

Oops.  Wrong DIN.

I wish I could get paid for every time someone has yelled "CHECK YER DINS" from the chair when somebody fell and their skis came off.  Or every time Unofficial says somebody gots ta crank up his dins.  Or for every comment on some silly internet reel when somebody does a backflip off a sweet jump and their skis just go straight without them.  Release value--the name the law goons require us mechanics to call DIN instead of calling it DIN, even though customers all say and know(ish)what DIN is and get confused by me saying "release value"--is only one part of the equation, just like how many inches of snow fell compared to what was forecast.  Folks will get het up when three days ahead of a small storm the forecast said 6-8" only 5" fell.  Never mind that these same folks can't forecast what time they'll finish dinner when they just started eating.  It took xijillions of whoserwhats of comprurtering power to make that forecast, and given all of the various variables the weather gnomes overshot by 1-3".  They knew that it would be cloudy and not sunny, they knew that it would be cold enough to snow, they knew when within a few hours, and they even knew within a few millimetres how much water would be available 300 air miles from the ocean after crossing every sorta ripple-inducing (and therefore precip-inducing) mountain and deserts that encourage frontal regenesis, and yet this very accurate forecast is somehow seen as a complete failure.

Beware the poisonous tail of the bent-back occlusion.

Which brings us to a point of sorts.  First day on the job, 1 December '007, Brad's telling me about bindings.  This is before my Legacy got stuck.  That's a story for another day.  This is after I froze my fingers helping Murphy install the awnings Ty traded for a lifetime storage pass.  He says there's forward pressure, which does all the heavy lifting, and there's DIN.  Then he's like "but the law trolls will tell you to call it release value."  Anyway, he says, and I subsequently verify through daily interactions, that folks will always be confused and that for the next however many years, you'll just be Abe Simpson yelling at clouds.  Most undesired releases are incorrectly set forward pressure.  Super boring, not a marquee word that everybody knows, but like that annoying cat at the top of this page, the truth.  That yellow-booted Look binding user I posted 55 years ago at the not-top of the page is a learning experience.  He could have twisted out of his bindings in a situation where he applied too many rotational yanks on the toepieces--given where he's (frantically checks DIN chart) likely set, at least 105 Nm, but probly closer to 140 or more--which is what the dang toepieces are for in the first place, or his ski mechanic was like "Forward pressure? What?!" and then they be havin words.

Closer.

All of this to say I'm tired.  There is so much easily available, correct info out there, and folks instead wake up and choose violence.  Focus on one thing, and ignore all the other things.  Decide, somehow, that a fairly random number isn't just a representation of ability and human worth and/or manliness, even though they clearly think it is at least that, but the literal, physical embodiment of it all.  That running a 7 makes you less of a person, or less of a skier, or both, than somebody stackin 16s on his Pivot 2.0 18s (and cracking them cos he can't use the provided pole cutout like a normal human, which, side note, has the added benefit of not destroying your skis' bases), or bending brakes to get his never-indemnified Marker Comp 30 (go ahead and fact check, I'll wait) to fit his 114mm Big Mountain Comp Destroyers, never mind that to a rational person like myself and most folks I know, having bendy tendons and boingy ligaments is far preferable to brittle ones that have been surgically repaired thirteen times.

Further.

You asked for specifics, so I'll give you some.  Ryan (the Owner) was talking to his daughter before his work shift and her school shift.  She was all excited cos there were some snowflakes falling out of the textbook Treasure Valley Inversion stratus deck.  She was 11.  I remember 11.  Any snow in town at all and I'd almost poop myself.  At any rate, Ryan tells her it's not snowing, it's just that the cloud has pollution or dust or something and the stratus (he called it fog even though it was above ground level) is freezing onto the particles and they are collecting ice until they're heavy enough to drift down and appear to us earthlings as snowflakes.  Which is, poetically, a succinct and accurate description of snowflake nucleation and snowfall.

There we go. That DIN. I even remember when this chart came out cos it was the first chart I ever used and now Salomon hates me or else WHY WOULD THEY KILL THE 747?!?!?!?

The other day, let's call it "yesterday", cos it that makes it immediate even if you're reading this in The Future, I rode Chair 1 at Bogus with a fairly big cat and his lady-friend.  Not sure if they's partners or on a date or just ski buddies, but duder was real hard tryna impress her.  Falling over himself explaining the concept of damping (killing vibration) and why he "needs" a DIN of 14.  If you look at that ever-exciting chart up yonder stairs, you'll notice there is conspicuously NOT a 14 to be seen on the chart.  He said, and I'm paraphrasing a little but only cos I can't remember verbatim, "If I run a 12, there's like pressure and I fall out when I land a big trick."  The woman unfortunate enough to spend a glorious ski day listening to Macho Man Randy Shrinkage talk about DINs reacted like my 7 year-old niece Abby did when I explained why I rented a 7-passenger Ford Flex when I was only one person.  A sarcastic "Oh yeah?"  Randy just plugged right along.  "Yeah, my buddy and I ran my DIN chart, y'know, like if you were renting skis?"  (Italics most definitely his, disdain heavy and judgment dripping.)  "I ended up a 12, but like, that was as a Type III."  (Again, his.)  "I'm a III++."

Now, even if you've never performed the simple task of running a DIN chart for a customer, you can still pick up from my tone that this cat was abjectly full of shit.  The lack of III++ notwithstanding, why should I care?  I don't, at least not about him, but it's this adherence to a misapprehension that pervades the ski world and at times makes my job harder, or at least more frustrating.  I have to waste time, time which I could spend on literally anything else, like breaking down cardboard or, I don't know, rearranging my metal scrapers, explaining DIN again, to another customer who doesn't understand physics or care that physics exists and governs everything.  I have to explain how, just like spoke tension vs deflection, DIN is one value and boot sole length is the other, and that on its own, DIN is meaningless.  If you look at my handy chart I stole from Salomon, you'll notice that to the left, where the body has more leverage over the boot, there are higher values, and to the right, where the boot has more leverage over the body, there are lower values.  Up to 2 DINs lower.  All resulting in the exact same amount of torque being exerted on the binding's springs.  Such that, if you have a boot sole that is 335 mm long and you just gotta have that 12 DIN cos yer buddies do, but you're only 5'9" and a buck seventy, say good bye to your Achilles' tendons and all of your cruciate ligaments cos that puts you in the same range as somebody who's taller than 6'4" and at minimum 40 ell bees more massive than y'all.

And, icing on the cake, you can't even chart a 12 as a Type III.

The legendary double e on a backflip.  Silouhette Bros on the Snow are yelling TURN YER DINS TO 37 but in reality, he probly overloaded his skis and they flexed away from him like they were rafflesia flowers opening and he their evil death stench escaping.  Release value doesn't even affect the situation at all.

- -

Title from the unexpectedly good and poignant Nashville country song Dear Rodeo by Cody Johnson, made even better by Reba McEntire cos, well, Reba McEntire could make a song about slug eating a mushroom growing out of dog poop good.

Warning: this post is fulla all sorta arcane minutiae and pop culture references you need to know to get all the jokes.  Wait.  This shoulda gone at the top.

The summer's beginning to give up her fight

 

The shot.  Lee Cohen, Utah Episode of Powder Mag, c 2000.

Pika are lagomorphs.  You will not be surprised that the native pika on Hokkaido is ridiculously cute.  North American pika, however, are also ridiculously cute.  Like, the bestest.  Pika like higher altitudes and a mix of broken rock and meadow.  They make their homes in various formations in covered gaps under scree and piles of talus, somewhere they can take shelter and can store their hay.  Pika make hay in the summer, the same as we do.   They dry it out on slabs and boulders, saving the heartier bits for winter.  Apochyphally, anyway, they store any plants that might be toxic behind or underneath vegetation that is easier and safer to digest.  The going theory is the toxins can leach out over fall and winter and be safe to eat by spring.

Pika are not endemic to any month of the year.  In point of fact, they are one of the few alpine mammals that do not hibernate in any way.  They prepare for winter, the same as skiers, seemingly frenetic in late summer when the light begins to change and daylight starts to noticeably shorten.

What is this new sense of time?

So much of skiing isn't actual skiing. Anticipation, planning, dreaming, grumbling, complaining, and in this modern internet-addled existence of ours, poring over vast metaphorical volumes of ad copy, summer sales, and if you're lucky to find them, back issues of other folks' memories from days long gone. There's only minimal snow to find, way up high and harder to access than the spring turns we often call "summer skiing". Even in my most ambitious days, I still never made any August turns.

This is Silly Season, time of prognostication, although this summer it got off to an early splosion of a start with the promise of a Super El Niño and all of the ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that that brings.  Y'know, confusing the thing you expect, climate, with the thing you get, which is weather.

Those long August afternoons, sunsets when you can feel the climatic corner being slowly turned, those aching State Fair sorta days when you realise just how much of a redneck you really are when you tear up just a little at the smell of a horse barn and the waft of fried onions you never even liked as a kid.  The tractor club across from the hot tub seller, you know, the one with the single-piston demonstration engine.  Sooner or later it'll be September, and then it may as well start snowing because October, also known as The Best Month, is about a week long and that goes by so quickly you hardly have time to enjoy it.

September come, please take this heart away.

I could rarely make it through August as a kid without pulling out my ski pants "just to see if they fit", or buckling the boots and clomping around our small living room in front of the dormant wood stove.  I'd make some excuse about how Ski Bonkers was in a couple weeks, and maybe we'd hafta go see what was left after all the folks more well-off than we were had picked through the end-of-season clearances back in March and April.  It was never very comfortable in the heat, never satisfying, but that never stopped me.  It's not about being satisfied.

I don't remember it ever being as smoky as it is this summer across the PNW.  It certainly could have been.  I didn't really know about fires.  I do remember one, or at least the plume above it in the evening light from town.  I don't even remember smoke on the Wet Side, for that matter.  The Cascades kept it all at bay, or I've simply forgotten.  August when we moved to Ashland was new and different, and sometimes meant standing on our little porch and trying to decide if that street lamp, conspicuously on in the daylight, was three or four blocks away.  It was probably three.

In three years there we didn't weather a fire near town, but the Rogue Valley is fairly deep and narrow and smoke from fires west of GP and any that snuck over Siskiyou Summit from California would get stuck.  Ash drifted out of the smoke-stratus, some twisted version of cloud seeding in an inversion regime.  Some days you just had to stay inside.

6 August 2026.  I think the correct exclamation is "ick".

I spent the summer of '99 running 3 and 10 and 11 at Crystal.  A couple friends from school, Peter and Dustin, carpooled with me.  Dustin and I would throw rocks at each other across Midway and then head home and maybe have band practice, or whatever else we could get into with what little time we had before bed and doing it all again.  Crystal is 40 miles from where we grew up, and though neither of us was good at staying below the speed limit, it was a long drive.  Tall trees, ten or more conifer species with some vine maple and devil's club and salal for good measure.  The White wandering this way and that all the way up the valley to the Park boundary.  Six miles of steepish, true mountain road and then the quiet base area, long before the instacrowd and all the tourists that seem to be everywhere.  I practiced driving my old '81 Tercel without the clutch, cos it occurred to me that my clutch might go out, and what then?  What if I didn't know how to match revs?  When I wasn't grinding gears, I'd turn the engine off to "save gas".  I claimed the power steering made the car's handling to jerky in the mountains, and that I was fine heading home from work with just my wits until I compression-started heading into the last corner at Silver Springs.

In August that year we had a surprising number of thunderstorms.  One afternoon I got booted from the top of Rex when a big cell snuck in from the south.  I was in the shack and didn't really watch it build, and once I was down in the base area all I could see was rain, which that year was like seeing grass on a golf course.  Another evening in the same cycle I sat down at the fairgrounds and watched two slow-moving cells light up the sky.  I lost count after over a hundred lightning strikes in a minute.  Continuous thunder rolling across the Plateau.

I ain't ever satisfied.

The light shifts, especially if you're north of the 45th.  Slowly at first.  The sun sits so high in July, the shadows are crisp and feel harsh.  The subalpine rocks act as something of a microscope.  Everything, time especially, feels slow.  As the light shifts, it softens.  Some of that is the now-inevitable smoke of the Western summer.  It feels like whatever's out in the trees is getting impatient.  You catch glimpses, maybe just a Douglas squirrel, or maybe some cousin of the skunk ape.  Bugs that haven't died off with the drying of the land get pissed, start acting erratically.  Or maybe I do.

On the wet side, bear grass is the definitive in years it chooses to bloom.  Some years it just shrugs and you don't see it.  Late July, early August, somewhere along the trail you'll see those goofy fuzzballs and think, wait, I haven't seen you since the last time I felt this way.  The last baseball game of my short season had passed, I'd finally got my driver's license, I'd got used to working a job, things changed, or colleges started letting the freshman class move in and start developing those incredible and incredibly unearned superiority complexes.  The bear grass, and the pika making hay.

Here in the desert, it's the rabbitbrush.  It starts blooming up high, first, 6 or 7 grand, little tufts of yellow and then an explosion.  Sunflowers, numerous buckwheat, globemallow, all are still flowering, but rabbitbrush is the last big wave.  For some, it's an allergenic nightmare, for others, a gentle wave across the foothills and a reminder that the burdensome heat will wane.  Once the wave descends toward town, the mornings have already begun cooling, and the sun just isn't as brutal.  

She feels the changes in the wind.

Fremont is the highest peak in a seemingly endless ridgeline draped with northeast-facing bowls that would make for some righteous turns were they not behind a locked gate.  The west face is bare shale along the ridge, utterly exposed to the westerly zonal flow that pummels the upper White every winter.  Sluiskin is the only peak near Fremont's elevation, and it's a spiky tower that falls off dramatically to the north, leaving nothing but thin air between the coast and this unforgiving alpine zone.  It is stark and somehow welcoming at the same time.  The valleys below shimmer in the heat late in the day.  The shadows start to play, and that mid-July focus loses out to what is already advancing autumn.  The sun still burns, and the ptarmigan chicks aren't big enough to leave the hen behind.  Everything feels fragile, tired.  Stuck between stations.

I can sit at the lookout for hours, shivering, my sweaty hiking clothes slowly drying in the wind.  I always lay my pack down with the back pad pointed toward the sun, hoping it'll be dry by the time I need to head to town.  Mid-August on the Wet Side is no longer hot like the 29th of July almost always is.  The trail back to Sunrise isn't steep, mostly a false-flat traverse over moderate exposure high above the West Fork.  Little puffs of duff erupt from each footfall.  My shoes will be dirty.  If you are looking, you'll probly see a pika or two up this high.  There's a lot of loose rock amongst the heather and fading lupine in which they can build their caches, hide from the November Pineapples and the late February snow.  There is krumholz fir and spruce and pine to anchor the snowpack somewhat.  

I could watch the clouds for hours, and never need to know their names.

Tahoma looms over everything, as you well know, even Fremont.  The upper White is 12,000 feet below Columbia Crest.  By mid-August, the glaciers are into their angry era.  Most of the winter snow has melted off, especially in this waning-snow epoch.  Some years, 1999, say, the glaciers will keep their blankets, but this year, 2026, they won't.  Booming cracks at the toes of these old giants echo across the valleys they carved.  The tumble of rock confuses the air even further. On the windward side below Sunset Amphitheatre, the Puyallup and Tahoma Glaciers regularly kick out debris flows and glacial outbursts.  The rock is anything but solid.  It is baked and rotted from the inside, temporary.

Usually, the flow is moderate, a danger if you're along Tahoma Creek.  Sometimes, it buries the whole Puyallup Valley.  Most folks don't really think about it on a daily basis; a thing that only happens once in a few thousand years.  For the cities down along Puget Sound, Tahoma is sometimes little more than a disappearing poster on the wall and an unearned identity marker.  

Up close, Tahoma is everything.  The sky, the ground, the weather, life, death, music, spirit, Maker and Destroyer.  The rough edges; rocks and till and sometimes trees covering the lower reaches of bigger glaciers like the Nisqually and Carbon and Emmons and Winthrop.  It is imperfect, constantly destroying itself.

Summit Lake under a late-summer-coated Tahoma.

From Fremont, or Burroughs, or Tolmie, or Bearhead, or Summit Lake, anywhere you are close enough to get a good whiff, Tahoma is bleak this time of year.  The Elkhead is vanishing, some years almost completely.  Glacial dust whipped up in afternoon convection, collected over the years, melting out, rocks and trees ripped from the upper reaches of glacial valleys, the ice looks both tired and wizened.  This mountain has seen some stuff.  The volcanoes up and down the Cascade Arc all start to gather insect debris, loess, juniper pollen, anything that a strong easterly can carry up from the desert.  Local Abies needles and bark dust.  Ghostly gray.

I remember where I was, when the word came about you.  It was a day much like today.  The sky was wide, and bright, and blue.

When I was younger, and to be honest, still today, mid-August was the corner around which the entire year turned.  The last two weeks always flow quickly.  I keep checking climatology for the last day it's possible to hit 100 here in the desert, even though after 10 years I know it's still a month out.  I start reading football prognostications, although that, too, is losing its luster with all the realignment and massive payouts.  Dr J says it's time to watch Div III instead of FBS, which I guess makes sense.  FBS is the Vail of football, now.

Autumn starts peeking out from behind the curtains in the high country.  It's sneaky, the colour appearing at the edges of shrub and forb leaves as early as the first week of the month, at least in the hot and smoky summers like this one.  Autumn is already here by the time September comes.  Time feels like it accelerates again, the days rapidly shortening, the mornings becoming cooler and the afternoon heat letting go sooner.  Everything is dry.  Fire season is months old now, not barely starting like it used to.  Most years we're lucky and the burning happens somewhere else, some years you can still smell the fire in the Doug fir down on 410 at Deep Creek.  The wind picks up, rustles the dried leaves and fading buckwheat. 

It's a lock.  There's no way we could be wrong.

-

Title from Emily Saliers' Indigo Girls classic, Mystery. Back when I drank beer, I'd start thinking about pumpkins.  I still do, just not in beer.  Maybe now that I'm almost 3 years sans alcohol I should start having PSLs again.

You may or may not have noticed some of the captions.  If you did, good for you.  Nerd.  100 double happiness points if you can name all of the songs referenced here today.  200 if you can get even one of the artists to come to BoyCee.  And play, as one does indeed own a bar here.  23 year old me woulda went.

Apologies to B Evans.

Lastly, D and I quit throwin rocks at each other when I spied a real good one on the ground right under 11's top terminal and jumped off the summer ramp.  Without looking.  For those who don't know, a 6-pack Doppelmayr EJ chair weighs like eleventy milliones and at a line speed of 5 metres, even while in the decel zone, the chair is probly doing a ground speed of almost-orbital-breaking and has a kinetic energy of, to quote Carlin, fuckin meow.  Ask me and my broken glasses how I know.

Lindsey Vonn's Olympic Crash: a Movement Analysis

Lindsey Vonn broke her leg in the first alpine race of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, on the Olympia Delle Tofane in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.  She was considered a favorite to win the downhill race, despite tearing her left ACL the week before.  Lindsey came back to the US Alpine Team last season at the age of 40, after a partial replacement of her right knee and getting bored of retirement.  She's been dominant in downhill this year.  She came into the Olympics with 5 podium finishes in the discipline from the current World Cup season, including two gold medals.  As a lady in my 40s with bad knees, also retired from my ski career and getting bored of it, her comeback has been incredibly inspiring.

So, here's some movement analysis of Lindsey's run and crash.  But first, I take a close look at the same section of the course by the race's winner, Breezy Johnson.  Breezy skied a spectacular run and her win was well deserved.  Despite her consistently competitive finishes over the last 11 years on the World Cup circuit, she's podiumed only 9 times. Her hard work certainly paid off!

Video of both runs, as well as the other 3 top racers, can be found HERE.  I suggest watching it on .25 speed to pick out all the details, then watching it at normal speed to see how it all goes together.

Breezy Johnson:

• She makes a strong push out of the start gate, skates down the fall line then drops into a straight run and tuck with skis running flat on the snow.
• She tips her skis cleanly on edge and takes the middle line around the second gate.  The video doesn't show her skis here but her angulation is perfect.  It looks like a clean, smooth turn.
• Breezy takes off from the jump and sucks her legs up under her.  She keeps her skis parallel to the snow, which allows her to absorb the landing and move immediately into the next turn.
• She takes the low line on gate #3.
• The snow between the third and fourth gate is very rough.  Breezy is only racer #6 but the snow is already cut up.
• Breezy comes into this rough section with strong pressure on the outside (left) ski.  She gets bounced and bucked around quite a bit at first.
• However, she reacts to the bumpy snow by softening her legs, pulling them up under her body and keeping light pressure on the left (outside) ski.  This allows her legs to absorb the bumps with her knees and ankles, and allows her skis to glide through the snow, maintaining ski-snow contact.
• There’s also quite a bit of spray coming off her skis, which means she’s throwing on the brakes just a little (by adding leg rotation), in order to point her skis towards that next gate, which is placed wide across the hill.
• I assume the rough snow in this section is from forerunners and other racers extending the bottom of the third turn in order to control their speed out of the jump, and get across the hill to the 4th gate.
• Breezy absorbs the slight compression right before the 4th gate, and extends into a small jump as the terrain drops away from the 4th gate.
• Her right ski stays parallel and close to the snow.  She lands lightly on it and quickly sets an edge with both skis.
• She finishes the run and wins!  Go Breezy!

Lindsey Vonn:

• Lindsey is skiing on a torn ACL in her left knee, which she injured in a ski crash the week before.
• Lindsey makes a strong push out of the gate and skates down the fall line, dropping into a tuck on the last skate stroke.
• She rolls her skis cleanly on edge and takes the middle line around the second gate with lots of angulation.
• She takes off and lands the jump after the second gate without incident.  She fully transitions from right edges to left edges, and moves quickly into the third turn.
• She takes the low line, putting the apex of the turn below the gate.  The top three finishers took this line, as well as the majority of racers, judging from the the ruts left behind.
• She moves into the rough snow section with strong pressure on her left, outside ski.
• Through this rough section, her skis barely bounce.  They bend from the center and carve through the rough snow towards the next gate.
• She makes slight adjustments with her ankles and hips to absorb the bumps.  It looks like she is guarding the left knee and bracing against it, rather than flexing and extending it to absorb the rough snow surface.
• Her left ski is bent and loaded as she moves into the slight compression immediately before the 4th gate.  Her left leg remains relatively straight and she launches out of the compression.
• As her skis leave the snow, the tips are pointed up and toward the outside of the course.  Her head and shoulders are directed down the fall line and she is starting to adjust her body position in the air to face down the fall line.
• Her right hand hits the gate, which twists her upper body away from the fall line, past the tips of her skis, toward the surface of the snow behind her.
• Her right hand is also pulled backwards and her hips and midsection move back over the heel piece of her bindings.
• The tips of her skis follow her body and end up perpendicular with the fall line.
• Her body lands at an acute angle to the ground.  A cloud of snow, shoulder roll, tangle of legs and skis follow.
• She breaks her leg.  Ouch!

The moment it all went wrong.

So, why did she crash?

1. When she hit her hand against the gate, it twisted her body away from the fall line.  She did not have time to adjust before she crashed.  This is the primary reason she crashed.  If she hadn't hit her hand and gotten twisted around, she probably would have made adjustments mid-air that would have enabled her to land the jump.
   
   However,
2. Bracing against the left leg (rather than absorbing the rough terrain by flexing and extending it) meant she did not absorb the compression or jump, and provided the kinetic energy that launches her into the air.
3. She entered the jump at the fourth gate in a disadvantageous position, with her skis tipped up and away from the fall line.
4. The lack of flexion in her left knee as she hit the compression and the jump put her in this position.

Conclusion:

Lindsey Vonn's injured left knee (torn ACL) did not cause her crash.  However, she may have been able to better manage the snow conditions on the course before her crash and set herself up for a better jump if she had a healthy knee.

Video source: "Breezy Johnson, Emma Aicher, Sofia Goggia take on downhill test | Winter Olympics 2026 | NBC Sports." NBC Sports and NBC News YouTube Channel.  February 8, 2026.  https://youtu.be/4Y-I1FBwWeY?si=1bGepj8UzVMMp7iM