Can I ever beat this ski season?

This season was long, abundantly covered with snow, with frequent deep refills even though they weren't always the lightest Utah quality I’m so used to. 

As a result of that winter of plenty, I skied many days and piled up an impressive total vertical drop. So, as I look to the next season, the logical question is, “What can I do for an encore?” The way I can answer it is that I should probably opt for a more qualitative, instead of quantitative skiing. 

Quantitative skiing could be defined by how many number of days and hours on the snow I spent during one season, as well as the greater possible vertical drop in feet or meters achieved during that same period of time. 

Qualitative could mean a lot of things: Further refine my technique, explore and discover new possibilities in that domain, and acquire even more muscle-memory that relates to skiing. Ski more difficult snow and more challenging terrain, become even smoother on skis, more efficient in terms of efforts expended, and why not, even more stylish or good looking on my pair of boards. 

My age being what it is, I am still quite confident that I could achieve that qualitative path better than the quantitative one. The latter is what I would consider like maxed out, close to a zone of diminishing returns, and becoming almost dangerous as it promotes speed and heightens the risk that goes with packing up more vertical within a limited time constraint. 

This, on paper, looks like a doable and exciting program, but will I be able to follow it religiously and forget the quantitative side so easily?

What will I do when skiing is over?

On May 1st, Park City Mountain shuts down and I will have skied so much that I won’t drive 45 minutes each way to nearby Snowbird to add to my bloated vertical. 

So, it’s not unusual to hear friends and neighbors asking me: “What are you going to do, now that winter is over?” This question can be translated into “The poor guy, it’s gonna be a long wait for him till snow comes again, if it ever will…” 

Of course, not one to be taken aback, I have already a formulated a response ready for the asking; it goes like this: 

“This winter we played host to a herd of deer in our backyard and they’ve left us with many cubic feet of droppings, so priority number one will be to pick each deer pellet one by one with a teaspoon and pile them into a compost pile.

That precision work might take me until October, when it’s time to prep my skis. By the way, this is what we call ‘Après ski’ in France!” 

What about this for a complete and clean answer?

Biden’s age and the 2024 election…

When I think about this, I picture that I’m about to board a bus on one of these scary Himalayan roads and wonder who is going to drive it. 

The bus, its passengers and the dangerous path are the American people and the road its the current political path that our country must navigate. 

The driver? You guessed it, our next President.

This is almost like the movie “Sophie’s choice”, except that Americans like me will have to choose between an 80 years old who might die during the ride, yet whom we can trust to try his best he can, and a soon to be 77 guy, who is almost as likely to pass on the job as the other, but with total certainly will jump out of the bus if the driving gets too sketchy or a crash is imminent, and will car-jack an available vehicle to get out quickly of that bad situation. 

I’ve rested my case...

“Deer Man”, is that story true?

For most of the winter and particularly until one week ago, our backyard hosted a dozen famished deer that, among other things, ate our nicest and most valuable bushes and conifers, plus left cubic yards of manure on the spot.

This might be one of the reason why I picked “Deer Man, Seven Years of Living in the Wild” a book written by Geoffroy Delorme, a Frenchman, who, as the title implies spent seven years living with deer in a Normandy forest. 

That feat might sound like a stretch and frankly, my wife and I are a bit dubious as to whether that’s true or not. Seven years? We think more along the lines of seven days, seven weeks or even seven months. Is the author a sociopath? 

We can’t really comprehend why he left society to turn into nature the way he did it. The style in which the book is written is different, even though it’s been translated from French and having not read the original version, we can’t really fairly judge Delorme’s style of prose. 

The photos are okay but not great for a self-described nature photographer. In spite of my reserve, I’d still recommend reading it because of its unique, bizarre and let’s say it once more, incredible nature…

Are car roof ski racks going out of style?

I remember my first ski rack, back in France. It was made by DAV, a small company on the French side of Geneva, that could take four pairs of skis and was lockable. 

When I came to America, I would slide our skis into the family hatchback or SUV, or even my wife’s small station-wagon and it’s only in 1998 that I got my first Thule rack and began to carry our skis on the roof. 

Truth be told, racks had a few downsides; they were noisy, hard to load on tall vehicles, and affected fuel efficiency. In the early 2000s, I commuted to Vail, Colorado and purchased a Thule box that was more aerodynamically profiled and kept the road grim and salt away from my skis. That continued through the winter of 2021-2022. 

After that, I got a new car, designed an interior ski box and ditched my old roof carrier. These days, when I observe cars on the ski area parking lot, I would estimate the number of cars without roof or tailgate ski rack, or roof boxes to be around two-thirds of the vehicles parked. 

Most of people these days drive large and small SUVs that are generally a bit to tall to comfortably access a roof rack or box, which leaves their users the option to fold a seat inside and slide the skis or snowboards inside.

Further, EVs that are about sleek aerodynamics discourage their owners to place objects on their roofs. I would therefore conclude that the days of putting everything on one’s car roof are gone, or going fast. 

If you are into snowsports, where do you stow your ski equipment when you drive to go skiing?

What if I had remained a ski instructor?

I probably would have survived, aged as such and have had a much different life. That question was triggered when I happened to look at a photograph of my former colleagues taken last week. 

Would I still like skiing as much? Perhaps, but I might have diluted that pleasure after making it the main way of earning my living and spending countless hours repeating the same things to students and feeling trapped in that routine. 

I might have led the ski school, gotten an interesting job to balance my winter activity and perhaps got sucked into it because I could make more money that way, but I would have spent my whole life in my home culture, probably filled with deep regrets about not having followed a long established calling that was to take a shot at the world, exploring its possibilities, satisfying my curiosity and learning so many things in the process. 

My kids would be different, which goes of course against my deepest wishes, and there would be plenty missing in me. I seriously doubt that, deep inside, I’d be in the place I find myself to day. 

So, the verdict is clear and unequivocal, I can’t imagine myself be as happy as I find myself now if I had stuck around my home town and remained the person I never really liked from the get go.

How to measure a record ski year?

Measuring skiing is very difficult. In fact it’s a question that I have wrestled with for quite a long time. 

Can it be measured by the actual miles covered on snow, the vertical drop, the number of days or even hours out on the slope? What about time spend on the lift? And the terrain or conditions, easy or difficult. Did I mention visibility? Except perhaps for sailing or flying, few other endeavors get even close to skiing when it comes to the number of parameters that constantly keep on changing. 

Any kind of comparison is very hard indeed, yet we can only measure based on our own skiing style and preferences. Some only ski “groomers”, other everything, a few just the steep and gnarly. So my conclusion is to go by the vertical, knowing full well that super challenging conditions are probably worth no less than four to six times an easy, well groomed, cruiser run for the difference it requires in proper technique, balance, quick reaction and strength. 

Further, we now have easy phone apps or smart watches to keep track of all that kind of data. This said, it’s almost impossible to compare performance that way between individuals with so many intractable parameters, so I would think that such comparisons can only be applied by one individual in comparing his/her own performance at regular intervals. So whatever the type of measurement we choose, it’s can’t be universal and compare a multitude of individuals, but just personal to compare a rate of improvements or setbacks.

France’s ski instructors big party

In April 2007, Avoriaz, my French ski resort alma mater, organized the end of season national instructor race, and did it again this year. 

The event ended with the victory of Thomas Fanara, a former French Team member in the slalom, the gathering key event. 

Strangely, women had no choice but to race against men (French instructors are still really patriarchal and out of step with the 21st century) and the first and only woman who made it was Adeline Mugnier, from nearby Les Gets, who ranked 73rd, less than 7 seconds behind the winner. 

Most importantly though, this 2,000 people gathering is even more about partying than competing as the video illustrate. As for me, a friend asked me if I was missing the action. I just said: “Not really, skiing is still too good in Park City!” 

Marking Earth Day

Today, to celebrate Earth Day, I had planned to go out and ski, this would have been my 117th time out, but the weather was cold, humid and overcast, so I decided to focus on my morning stroll with my wife. Along the way we saw ducks, 

Canadian geese, a sand-hill crane and a few pelicans that had been fooled by their travel agent that it was okay for them to head north and make a refueling stop in Park City. I told them to rely instead of the webcams to see if snow had finally left the ground. 

Potholes galore!

Our winter has been marked with lots of snow and now that the white stuff is receding, we’re invaded with a myriad of… potholes. 

These wonderful, hollow creations that we see on roadways and parking lots are created when the top layer of pavement and the material beneath bend under the weight of vehicular traffic, due to the amount of traffic and the presence of water below.

Snowmelt or rain seeps through cracks in the pavement and into the substrate. Short of draining away quickly, the ground underneath becomes saturated and soft. That trapped moisture is subjected to repeated freeze/thaw cycles and with each occurrence, the expanding ice lifts and cracks the pavement more. The passing traffic weakens the pavement, cracking it further. 

This is also exacerbated by multiple passages of heavy and abrasive snow-removal trucks and abundant sprays of salt (remember that here in Utah, we have a Great Salt Lake nearby, with plenty of cheap supply!). As the process repeats itself from November through April and temperatures keep on fluctuating, the ice freezes and melts continuously, a void is left under the pavement. 

This void collects more water and after enough of that treatment it has no other way but growing larger and deeper. This whole winter has been a constant battle between my car and an army of potholes. I’m now looking for a cease-fire!

Spring skiing, Park City style

For years, spring skiing has been bringing the excitement of the sport into a warmer and more comfortable setting and with plenty of bright light after a long, cold and dark winter. We tend to forget the early morning frozen runs, the afternoon slush and always carry a super positive image of what spring skiing should be.

A great way to work on one’s tan and get bright ski jacket colors faded fast, but once everything is said and done, always a short and elusive experience, with finicky weather that can easily go from much too hot into freezing and back! 

Interest for this kind of skiing is still high for a minority of skiing aficionados that don’t play golf, don’t boat, don’t bike and don’t garden, at least early enough in spring. The ones who lose interest in skiing early are generally the same who can’t wait to destroy their new gear on rocks in November. 

So, while skiing is only good on groomed runs, it can be challenging and downright dangerous elsewhere. And with our dry, Utah powder, corn snow is no way near as good as what is experienced all over the Alps. So with all of these caveats in mind, enjoy spring skiing whether it’s in Park City or in Chamonix!

The destructive power of snow

Too much of good thing can plan havoc on other elements and this is precisely what this winter has accomplished. 

Too much snow can be fun but can also be equally destructive, at least that is what we are seeing everyday as the white cover recedes and expose some of it impressive damage. And this is before the big snow melt happens and threaten flooding under all possible forms. 

Here's a gallery of what we’ve been able to see in recent weeks and up to this day, and of course there still could be surprises... 

Collapsed roof, Park Avenue 

Partially crushed chairlift garage roof

Overturned bridge

Broken fence elements (6 in x 6 in)

There's also this unlucky deer carcass pushed away by the snowplow, that appear yesterday as a snowbank melted (photo not shown)
 

A few tips for Macron…

On Monday I watched Macron’s speech on French TV and noted some small improvement with his body language and his use of simpler words that everyone could understand, but still, something wasn’t there in term of providing the right response to the strikes and the general dissatisfaction that have punctuated his retirement reform. 

Macron is a young leader who confuses firmness with inflexible stubbornness. He won’t admit he is wrong, and yet if his reform was justified, his manner of communicating it to his constituents was deeply flawed. 

That’s right, he’s not a good communicator and remains with his head stuck in the sand and his stiff, unmovable pride. That kind of regal attitude only works when he talks to Xi, Biden or the Pope, not his countrymen. He can’t understand the word “compromise” either and is all but a good salesman and a savvy negotiator. 

I’m not expecting self-deprecation from him, but just more humility, admission that he sometimes makes error and a smidgen of vulnerability. This traits go a long way in endearing someone. His behavior shows that he has no kids and no parental experience to go with it and that’s a lesson for the electorate: Never put in office someone who is too young, too proud and has no kids. 

Utah Governor Bangarter’s pumps

In 2022, the Utah’s population came to the realization that as the state’s mega-drought was lingering and that we were about to lose our Great Salt Lake to terrible water management, excessive irrigation and exploding population growth. 

With this, all the dirt would be exposed and the heavy metals encrusted into it would be blown by the wind and poison us all. All hands were on deck to find solutions and money to “Save the Lake”. 

Rewind back to the late 1980’s when we got to Utah. The winters of 81-82, 82-83 and 83-84 were some of the snowiest in memory and with that the level of the Great Salt Lake kept on rising to 4,212 feet in 1986, to the point that the airport was threatened. 

This led the then Utah governor Norm Bangerter to okay, in 1987, a $71.7 million flood-control plan that would pumped water from the Great Salt Lake into the western desert, just north of the famous Bonneville Salt Flats. Today, with added corruption and inflation this deal might have cost $2 billion with no one batting an eye about the cost.

For 2 years, 2.7 million acre-feet of water got pumped from the Great Salt Lake to that evaporation basin in the western desert (April 1987 through June 1989) and when it was mothballed. our mega-drought began. 

After governor Bangerter died from a stroke just 8 years ago, he’s been mostly remembered for the sort of white elephants his pumps were, and for a highway that bears his name near the airport. Today, after this winter’s huge snow accumulation, Salt Lake City is bracing for dangerous flooding just like in the spring of 1984. 

This made me wonder that we might have to finally put the pumps to work again if the atmospheric river weather pattern we had this year were to repeat itself. In the past, the lake did rise 20 feet over a 20-year period, and 12 of those feet happened during a 5-year span, as the lake level can swing dramatically. 

On July 3, 2022, the lake level was at 4,170 feet and today after our initial snow melting it has just picked up two feet.

Age, Enjoyment and Competence

When I see an old person (around my age or more) hanging on to an important position at the expense of younger, more fit and qualified individuals, I usually cringe. 

Then I’m told “Well, these older folks enjoy their job so much, their output can’t be that bad, so why don’t you leave them where they are!” Okay, one can enjoy a job, any job, but that doesn’t makes them fully qualified and filled with sufficient energy and creativity to carry on the work that’s expected of them. 

Indeed, there’s a huge difference between being enjoying a position and qualified to do it optimally. I do believe that leadership positions are best suited for folks in the 50 to 60 age category. 

Not more and also not less. Look at examples like France’s Macron or America’s Obama, for which younger leaders are not quite up to the task as they have not garnered yet the necessary acumen and life experience. 

The problem with leaving older persons at command posts is that it creates a vacuum as the following generations won’t have any opportunity to garner the leadership and decision skills needed to lead, while their brain are still malleable enough to learn. 

Lower and upper age limitations should always be a consideration while selecting leaders, at least that the opinion of a 75 year old like me. What’s yours?

What pushes me to ski (Part 2)

The R&D job I got at Odo, in Morez, north of Geneva, Switzerland, never blossomed into a professional passion. I quit after 3 months or so, and since I had one year free before I’d have to report to the French conscription, I managed to get a job teaching Paris’ primary school kids that came for a month of “Classes de neige” (On-snow tuition) at all French ski resorts. 

These kids received a half-day of regular school courses and the other half was spent on-snow where they learned how to ski. Their stay lasted one month and at the end they took a ski test that earned them a pin called “étoile” that sanctioned their proficiency either at mastering the wedge or the stem-turn.

Because demand was high, I was able to get the job without any formal certification. I was delighted by the work that gave me free access to all lifts, equipment at Pro prices and a host of other perks. 

The following fall I was enrolled into the French Air Force and that would mean a long 16 month without much skiing. During that time I brushed up my school English and wrote to ski schools in America, including Aspen’s where Curt Chase turned me down, but Whistler’s Jim McConkey offered me a ski instructor job. 

I could have taken it but I had no certification and was on my way to the first exam when we crashed in my friend Michel Duret’s car, and this put and end to that dream. 

This led me to join the Avoriaz ski school and to discover a form of skiing bliss that lasted till 1974. 

At that point I joined Look ski bindings and this new career, while smack into the ski industry would deprive me of skiing for about 9 more years until I moved to Park City, Utah and rejoined my beloved mountains and their snow. 

Since that time, which is half of my lifetime, I have seriously caught up with my skiing since my total vertical skied just in Utah represents more than 83% of my lifetime vertical. 

This said, I can say that skiing is under my skin and has seeped into my DNA in an irreversible way! 6 mars 2019

What pushes me to ski (Part 1)

I could say these forces are gravity and pushing on my poles, but that would be far from the entire truth. Many people love and practice skiing for many of the same reasons I had tried to list some 15 years ago. These were generalities and didn’t just apply to me in particular. 

What does however, are a deep yearning for practicing the sport that began when I got a taste of it in 1957, but wasn’t able to do it as much as I wanted to, mostly because my parents didn’t see the need for me, nor could afford its cost. 

That situation lingered through my teenage years as my brother and I tried to get lift rides for free when we knew the liftie and he was nice enough to let us go. This was in the days of single-ride tickets and punch cards! So, basic deprivation became a huge fuel for my ski hunger. It’s only when I got a job as a liftie during my high school years that I got free skiing outside the school vacation periods I was working. 

What a game-changer that was! I then began to learn how to ski by watching and reproducing what better skiers than me could do on the slopes, incorporating with my homegrown technique a plethora of “bad habits” as we called the unorthodox style back then. 

This is about that time that my hunger for skiing turned into a lifelong obsession. I was training slalom in a steep slope below my parents’ house side-stepping to pack the snow and to climb back the hill, “inventing” a downhill course I called “speed ribbon” into the tree than opened to a wider meadow, a hamlet 2km away where I carried my gear on my shoulder back and forth from home… 

In summer, I was also imagining a place where I could ski year round to satisfy my need, as places like Tignes in France were opening year-round ski facilities and this seemed to be part of skiing’s future. 

 

When I got out of technical school, I immediately looked for a job and found one at an electric clock factory in the Jura Mountains, moving away from my home skiing environment. 

To be continued... 

While riding up ski lifts…

When we ski, we spend an awful lot of time riding lifts. For proficient skiers this means between 80 and 60 percent of the total time out. Skiing is barely the balance of that, depending on the grade of the slope and the speed of the lift. 

In America, when strangers are sitting on a chair or inside a gondola, they often engage in small talk as long as someone initiates the conversation. Varying state of mind and timidity might affect that interaction, but still it's mostly a conscious effort of socializing that triggers it. 

Within an 8 minute ride and depending on a person’s verbosity, it’s possible to learn everything about a fellow skier. Talk about an alternative to the shorter “Elevator Pitch!” In recent years, many riders and particularly the youngest ones, pull out their phones and get immersed into them for a large part and oftentimes the integral duration. 

When riding with family or friends, the subjects discussed generally revolve around the skiing we’re doing, what we observe from the lift or the way we feel (cold, hot, tired or painful feet). Deeper subjects aren’t usually discussed. 

This leaves us with what happens when we don’t talk to others or are riding alone (a more common occurrence on lifts serving expert slopes where lifts are significantly less crowded). I personally observe and think in a totally free form. 

Call it a form of mindfulness if you want. Contemplation of the snow, the trees, a few animal tracks and the surrounding landscape and the views. I also decide which part of the slope unfolding under my seat that I will explore, which my next run will be, which lines should I or would I take on it, how will I end my ski day. 

Tactical stuff, as you can see, nothing esoteric and profound. I also observe the other skiers and keep on learning from what I see them doing, also watching instructors and the way they handle their classes, becoming forgetful of the students left far behind them or struggling with their own technique. 

True, I often glance at my watch to gauge my pace, and – I’ll admit it - pull out my phone, albeit briefly to check my vertical when I can’t figure it from memory. 

All this to say that when I’m sitting I never get bored, and instead soak into my thoughts and my observation, except on some notoriously slow fixed-grip chairlifts that often test my patience...

A short history of snow tandem

Just this day, fifty years ago, Avoriaz’s local photographer shot François and I, as we were debuting on a ski tandem on the Arare area, a popular ski spot at that French ski resort. 

If you want to know more about it, the story is available here. I have good reasons to believe that I was the first skier to invent the concept and implement it with my buddy. If you feel differently, just let me know. The key to success on that tandem, was constant and clear communication between the two partners! 

We hardly practiced our tandem skiing and could have become proficient at it, had we spent just enough time to hone our skills, but we had to earn a living as ski instructors and in those days it was more like 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. Besides, it was the tail end of a long season (five consecutive ones for me) and we were pretty much exhausted. 

The video, below, illustrate the saga of the variety of tandems that have been seen on snow. It begins with Francois and me, the founding fathers of the movement, with the original photos from April 13, 1972. The grace was already there, just some more training might have helped. 

Later, in observing the pair of ski instructors from Courmayeur, Italy, filmed on March 29, 2012, we can see that they trained a smidgen more than us. Then on the flip side, we can observe two young Swedes, Jesper Tjäder and Øystein Bråten, doing a complete somersault in 2016. 

We switch to cross-country skiing, just this season (February 2023), to follow two Minnesota skiers, Chris Parr and Joe Dubay, that completed the entire Birkebeiner ski cross-country race (55 km) in tandem as well. We follow by going back in time to March 21, 2022, in Châtel, France, to witness that tandem riding is also doeable on a snowboard and conclude in 2018, with an adorable French couple at La Mongie (Pyrenees Mountains) demonstrating that monoski is truly the best tool available for on snow tandem gliding…

Never seek total happiness…

We all would like to be one-hundred percent happy, at least this seems what most humanity strives for. The problem with that is even if we get everything we want, deep inside, something always seems to be missing or not right. 

We aren’t quiet or satisfied, something is no quite good in our lives, we often can put exactly our finger on it, and this stresses us to no end. This is how I have discovered that “full” or “total” happiness might be what we want but it’s not what we need. 

We need to leave something incomplete, unrealized or simmering out there. This gives us something to work on, to look after, to worry about, even if it is “ever so slightly.” At the same time we must train ourselves to appreciate what we have and feel hugely fortunate for it, and this not just on a daily basis, but every awaken minute.

So the recipe is simple, aim for 80% happiness and leave 20% unrealized. Call it work in progress or something like it, appreciate how fortunate you are and look forward to improve the rest. And don’t worry, as time goes by, there will always be something that needs fixing!

Snow’s sublime way of vanishing

Long before winter was over, while it was still snowing almost everyday, my wife worried about if and when all the accumulation around the house would ever disappear. I said “No need to worry!” 

Well, the past days are proving me right as we’ve moved in a few days from temperatures in the thirties into the upper sixties and with it, snow has begun to melt creating rivulets everywhere and also trying unsuccessfully to percolate into a ground that’s still frozen. 

Then, there that mysterious and invisible phenomenon called “Sublimation” in which snow goes from solid directly into gas or water vapor. Certain atmospheric conditions help with that. Dry air can absorb more moisture than damp air conditions, and pull more moisture from the ground into the atmosphere. 

High winds can also blow moisture into the air and away from the area where it initially fell. And finally, the warmer the air gets, the more that the sun shines and the most energy is available for snow to turn directly into vapor. When you get combinations of these factors like warm, dry winds (Chinook in the Rockies, Foehn in the Alps) evaporation and sublimation are suddenly boosted.

So much so, that on a dry, windy day, up to around two inches (5 cm) of snow can sublimate into the atmosphere. That translates to about 72,000 gallons of water for each football field-sized area of snow. 

This said, I’m woefully unable to say how many gallons are melt directly from snow to water!

My neighbor and one-time ski buddy

My neighbor, John is now 84 and I skied only once with him, on February 23, 2017, when he still was 78. I remember taking him at Park City’s Jupiter and down Portuguese Gap, a very challenging slope where he more than held his own. 

For years, John has been driving to nearby Alta to ski (between 45 minutes to one hour depending on the road conditions) even though he could have done it, right here in Park City, but he had fallen under the place’s spell; don’t ask me why. 

In the meantime, he’s had multiple surgeries and replacement on his knees, foot and shoulder, but always rebounded, seemingly invincible. Talk about a forever-bionic skier! For the last couple of years however his legendary vitality has showed some decline. 

So, a few days ago, when I stopped by his house to chat for a few minutes, he said that he only skied 15 times this season compared to some 50 to 70 times in previous years. Things are changing fast for him, as they do for many folks who seem invincible for very long periods of time. 

There always seems to be a step-down waiting for them. So our destinies are pretty simple: Some of us are declining very gradually, others get their major step-down earlier and linger sick, handicapped and/or suffering for many years, while a smaller rest stays “forever-young” till, boom! A brutal step-down ends their bliss in a hurry.

 I kind of like that last option. What about you?

Visualizing one’s pelvis to ski better

It took me about 70 years to figure how to understand and find an effective tool for initiating ski turns in challenging terrain, and while I have discussed that technical point before on that blog, I’ve found a good way to turn this very important concept into some sort of muscle-memory. 

 

First I look at that picture of pelvis, mentally memorize it, and when it’s permanently identifiable into my mind’s eye, I can bring it back to my attention any time my skiing is below par. 

What that pelvic-thrust as I call it does, if projected so slightly up and into the direction of the turn, it unlocks the hip bones (femur) and magically sets them into a different direction that will initiate a new turn. 

As I indicated above, I really can think this motion is quite natural, at least more so than turning the upper body and opening the pole-plant arm into the slope, and can almost be built into physical memory, but it’s the next best thing to have at one’s disposal when one needs it...

Big snow, big headaches

With a record year snow come some big problems. Besides avalanches, there are some buildings and homes that can have a tough time under too much snow, and particularly roofs. 

Snow is heavy and as it packs up densely, it can weigh enormously on structures that were not designed to support huge loads, even though our construction code takes care of these occasional snow excesses. Some homes are also very old and predate modern construction standards, some are poorly built or getting weak over the years too. 

This is why this season sights of crews shoveling roofs has been quite common and in spite of these efforts, some roofs still collapsed. 

There were also leaks, mostly occasioned by poor roof materials and designs that lead to ice dams and necessitated shoveling snow around the eaves. Finally, there’s the big spring melt that invariably occurs in April and May. 

When temperatures rise too quickly while the ground is still frozen solid, melting water has no way to go but inside the basements. Creeks can overflow too, and low laying areas can become targets of temporarily, but highly damaging flooding. 

So no matter how you slices, wonderfully abundant snow always finds a way to turn back into water and comes with a heavy and unpleasant price to pay!

The Rossignol Strato 102

A couple of days ago was my 102nd day out skiing for the season. While I was happy that I had skied well beyond my age, my attention went to the number 102 and with it, brought back the picture of Rossignol’s famous iteration of its very successful ski “Strato”, under the “Strato 102” moniker.

In American culture the number 101 often represents a time of new beginnings and growth. If you've been feeling stuck or unhappy, this signals a great time to make a change. It also denotes an introductory course at college or university in the subject specified, so from there, one could infer that “102” was the next best thing or as the expression goes “one good turn deserves another”. 

I also asked Maurice Woehrle, who ran R&D at Rossignol for many years, he said that, as he recalls, there was no specific reason behind that number, except perhaps that “2” was marking a minute progress in the ski finishing technique. There was indeed an attempt, for a year or so, to replace the lacquer and varnish covering the ABS top by some wax that would have been cheaper to produce.

Finally, I also tried to contact Rossignol’s former CEO Laurent Boix-Vives in Paradise where he is currently on vacation. He was the one who resurrected the company thanks to his financial savvy. He said, "One hundred and two? You know, where I am now, figures don't interest me anymore! »  

So you know now the story behind that name and don’t be surprised if someday, we see a new Rossignol Strato 103 marking a quantum leap on that successful breed of skis...

Losing a ski (almost)…

On Tuesday, I veered into a steep aspen glade that appeared well covered with new snow, cut a few great turns, came across an aspen shoot and thought I could pass over it, but instead my downhill ski went under the one-inch, thick little tree, my binding released and I barely finished my turn on on ski and fell 40 feet (12 meters) below.

By the time I managed to extricate myself and getting up, taking off the other ski and climbing back to the point of impact, I was warmed-up fast in that otherwise freezing day. Then, I proceeded to look for my right ski and could not feel it anywhere, as I was both probing and digging with my ski poles. 

I was already reminiscing a similar incident that happened to me at Snowbird in early May of 1995 when I lost a ski, also while skiing deep powder, could never find it and had to ski from the top of Little Cloud back to the parking lot, 2,800 feet (850 meters) in the valley below! 

Where I was now wasn’t fun either and I wasn’t looking forward to ski on one ski down a forest of aspen trees. Since I am extremely stubborn, I insisted some more until I hit the shovel of that ski buried under some 15 inches of bottomless powder. 

I was relieved, it took me a dozen of minutes to solve the problem, but I had recovered a full pair of ski to pursue my epic descent...

Failure? Never forget to try again!

I’m always reminded that when I fail at something or not execute what I was going to perform to my satisfaction, I should always redo it to erase the “loss” and the imperfection associated with that. 

This is situation not only clearly illustrated with my skiing (falls, etc.) but present in all other aspects of my life. A little bit like leaving no stone unturned, and let’s face it... my own form of OCD (obsessive, compulsive disorder)! 

Why not after all, as long as it remains harmless to others...

Second Amendment? Obsolete!

These days, unless you visit the Amish or the Mennonites, you won’t see to many horse-drawn buggies around. You’ll see Ram or Tacoma trucks, Porsche, Chevy or a few Tesla. You don’t see many fax machines, mini-cassettes or Kodachrome film either. Simply put times change and with it, culture evolves. 

This brings to what is unthinkable to a mass of well-behaved and patriotic Americans: The Second Amendment, as we knew it has run its course and it’s time to update our outmoded culture. For those who don’t know it yet, the American Second Amendment is the right to bear arms: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” 

The problem of course is that half of our Congress is stuck in conservatism that belong to the past and barely seems to tolerate the invention of the wheel when one listens to them. Just like the LGBT discussion, arm control and assault weapon abolition will take time but we might eventually get there. 

The first thing that need to be introduced is the concept of desacralisation of firearms that kill more American citizens than the automobile and drugs in general. We are still far from that and what we need is to start chipping away at these uncivilized concept of flooding a country with lethal weapon as this has been the case until now...

The ups and downs of skiing

The last couple of days of March and the first of April have seen a clear lowering of my ski performance. 

Should it signal that I’m now too old to ski like a young buck, is this just a passing trend, or is there a justifiable excuse that I could bring forward to explain my lackluster form on ski? Since I’m not ready yet to admit that I’m getting old, let’s explore the excuse. 

You see, during these three days we had some massive snowfalls that were much more than deep powder snow. In certain areas, it was almost like impenetrable concrete and since I’m a rather lightweight skiing on relatively narrow skis, that placed me in a precarious, unstable situation from the get go.

I fell twice on the flat, which resulted into some exhausting acts of getting back up, then after that when, I skied in steeper terrain, I was terrified of falling, knowing all the work that would be required to get back up on my skis, so the experience wasn’t as fun as one could have expected. 

On April 1st, I ventured in crossed tracks and fell again as the snow was catching my skis and the elements were plotting to put me down by all possible means. 

Finally, I opted for the true and know packed paths, and ended up these post-storm days with a few spectacular falls, but no lasting damage to my aging body...

Skiing by proxy

It’s not rare that I’m asked - or offer - to make a few ski turns FOR, or on behalf of someone. 

When asked or when I offer this service, I always promise to make some decent, well rounded turns instead of hard, angled ones. 

This happened again yesterday when my French friend Gérard who used to be a “Professeur” at the renowned ENSA, this Chamonix school that has graduated thousands of ski instructors and mountain guides and is arguably the best worldwide in its class. 

You see, Gérard has been a slacker this winter and has only skied a couple of times, which in my eyes is unbecoming of a former ENSA Professeur. So to make up for that questionable performance, I offered to make my best version of these turns on his behalf. 

Frankly, I don’t know what his own definition of “best turns” is. 

Meaning what kind of radius they ought to be, how inclined the slope should be and what kind of snow quality is acceptable to him, but reality is that the conditions weren’t that good that Saturday, so I did my very best, and in checking my tracks as I rode the chairlift over them, I could see half a dozen of them, flawless, and of large radius, indicating they were produced at a fairly high rate of speed. 

Of course, they got erased quickly, which is the nature of skiing, but for a while they stood out and honored my dear friend has I had said I would!

Poor travel advice

Not an April Fool’s joke! 

When they called their local travel agent in Florida to inquire about the travel conditions into Park City, Utah, this couple of sandhill cranes (Antigone canadensis) were told “All is well in the Rocky Mountains, it’s now spring time, haven’t you checked the calendar?”, until they found feet of snow everywhere and absolutely nothing good to eat.

I briefly spoke to them and they told me that next time, they’ll go on line and work with Expedia instead...