What's good for you and me...

Far too often, in life, especially when we're young, we don't always do what is good for us or what we want, but instead we acquiesce what's good for our parents, our teachers, our friends, siblings or even our institutions.

In other words, we often fall prey to becoming “what others want to see us become” instead of following our true desires. Because of educational or cultural rules, we often overlook the most basic question “what do I want for me?”

This question was asked by Noah, the hero in the 2004 movie “The Notebook” to Allie, the love of his life, and this was all, but a spontaneous question; it was obviously concocted by some smart screenwriter or perhaps the author of the book (I haven't read it), because it's not at all the kind of self-determination we usually pick for ourselves. It is so true, though.

What we want is essentially what's ultimately good for us and, when put it in practice, it will reverberate all around us and deliver a much better experience to us personally and to all people coming in contact with us. We'll be much happier, as a result, and it will radiate around us under the form of an irresistible, positive attraction.

So if you haven't yet decided to pursue what you want, it's never too late; do it just now! If you're partially sure, look for areas of neglect in asking yourself the question once more: “Is what I'm doing now, really what I want?” If you're true to yourself, listen to the answer and apply it to your life. Everyone around you will love you for it!

Welcome to YouTube University!

There isn't a week when I don't consult YouTube for solving a technical problem, repairing something or finding the solution to all kinds of problems.

I know, it takes time sometimes to find good quality advice out a plethora of videos that vary so much in quality, whether it's pedagogical value or decent production, but if I apply myself to the process, I always dig out something I can use and often, gets me out of a moment's bind.

I see YouTube as my passport to free continuing education. I've learned so much with it in the past twelve year that it save me years at any university.

So, if I were to include all the knowledge that doesn't necessitate a software fix, a screwdriver or a pair of pliers, like for instance the Kahn Academy, I'd have to rename this digital Swiss Army knife “YouTube Universit

Closing too early costs a lot

Whether some of us like it or not, Park City, first and foremost, is a ski town. Many of its inhabitants depends on the ski industry for their living. Yet, our two ski areas don't seem to care much about this reality. They run their business as they see fit.

This spring, both decided to shut down operations on April 7. At the same time, ski areas that are comparable in notoriety and volume (Vail-Beaver Creek and Whistler-Blackcomb,) exceeding the 2 million mark in skier-days, just like Park City Mountain and Deer Valley combined, respectively closed on April 21 and 23.

I call this “normal” closing date a win-win for the locals. A win-win for those who still wanted to enjoy some spring skiing, some extra revenue for those businesses that could have tapped into some extra Easter business activity and some more taxes collected for both the City and the County.

That wasn't the case for Park City, which ski areas closure date fell smack into the beginning of the local kids school spring break. Nice! The perfect win-lose scheme that doesn't buy brownie points for our two resorts.

One might object “these closing dates where known since sometime in the summer, why do you complain about?” Well, we simply were too trusting and complacent. This might change when next year's dates are announced.

So far, only Deer Valley has set its closing date, on Easter Sunday, April 12. Do I hope that Vail Resorts will pick April 19 or 26 for Park City? I just wish, I guess...

Let's also admit that the Park City Municipal Corporation, Summit County, Utah, the Park City School System and the whole Chamber Bureau were not paying attention that time. Instead, they should have been watching and have vociferously raised the issue because of the dollar-and-cent consequences of a premature closing date.

Now, this early closure date goes beyond the above-mentioned reasons. It paints Park City as being a “lesser” resort than its Vail or Whistler “siblings” by attaching to it a shorter season.

Once more, as the ski runs still look perfectly skiable from my house at the tail end of April, I just wanted to vent my frustration at two ski resorts that don't seem to care much about Park City.

Going from 20 to 1

Twenty Democrat candidates is a lot to sort out, yet alone, digest. This said, it's better to have too much choice than not enough.

With such a huge number, though, I can see how hard it might be to select the right person through the series of upcoming overcrowded debates and I propose a guide for doing this just right.

First and foremost, the main challenge and the highest priority are to find the right candidate who is best equipped to slay the Trump dragon. That's the key. Nothing else, not even the cleverest of programs will come close to that selection criteria.

To get there, the best candidates will have to establish themselves outside of the planned debates, through “in your face” media presence and creative communication that will show what they have “under the hood”. This won't suffice, however.

We, the voters, will need to do our share of research and analysis, by tracking what each candidate says through their website and the media in general, and not be shy about broadcasting what we've concluded and why we reached our conclusion.

At the present time, plain notoriety is buoying certain candidates like Biden and Sanders (I can't picture “Slow Joe” not being laminated under Trump's mockeries, something Sanders would be much better at), but thank God, this won't last, and through a right approach from the rest of the field and a discerning electorate, the right man or woman who is best equipped to annihilating Trump will emerge.

At least, that's what I hope!

Can skiing travel well?

In fact, the real question should be: Are skiers willing to travel far?

I still remember when I first skied at Park City, they were trail signs in Japanese to translate the existing signs in English.

At the time, the entire Japan was crazy about skiing and was a few years away from falling into the financial abyss that knocked the country out in the late 80s. All Nippon Airways was planning to bring skiers to Utah, to expose them to the joys of the Greatest Snow on Earth.

When I still was in France, its brand-new ski resorts from the 70s were betting that American living on the East Coast wouldn't hesitate much to jump on a plane and patronize their new places.

It sort of happened for a few years, but didn't develop. Instead, long distance skiers found that between jet-lag, change in altitude, not to mention a different culture they were too many “moving parts” negatively adding to the logistic challenge that skiing already is.

Later, American skiers started to shorten their stays and continent-hoping, just to ski, became a thing of the past. Well today, Aussies continue to ski in America (they generally stay 2 weeks), Japan and even Europe during their summer, while some Americans and Chinese come over to Japan, but these actions by a few are not making a huge difference in terms of skier-visits.

It simply is to demanding to travel overseas in order to ski. This only seems to compute in the minds of some imaginative marketing executives.

Right, everyone is crying for simplification when it comes to skiing and these observations make me doubt that the resort-hoping promoted by Vail Resorts and Alterra are going in that direction and, as a result, are with us to stay...

The American view of Europe

For years, American pundits have looked at the European Union with skepticism and have never ceased to speculate about its future and coming demise.

Call it a contrarian view if you want, but I see this mindset more as petty envy coming from a country utterly convinced it's the world's best. You might call this an expected outcome of “American Exceptionalism”, I guess.

The same holds true of course for the fate of the Euro that never could have survived as a prime currency, and yet it still stands strong on the eve of its twentieth birthday!

More dramatic yet is Brexit and its unintended consequences that are demonstrating that “breaking up is hard to do” and indirectly, that the value of a Union that's much more resilient and essential to the entire Continent than Steve Bannon's would like us to believe.

I'm not even mentioning the recurrent Airbus - Boeing feud and all the ugly disagreements that were generated by the ill-conceived Iraq war. Perhaps it's time for America to grow up a bit and reassess it's new, real place in today's world!

Notre Dame conspiracy theories

While Notre Dame's was still smoldering, there were already hundreds of conspiracy theories circulating about what really caused the blaze.

Yesterday, my Republican neighbor sent me one of these "fishy" messages that was clearly one of these made up stories the American extreme right loves to circulate.

I studied the origin of the news and found that it was from PJ Media (aka Pajamas Media), an American conservative opinion and commentary blog, founded in 2004. It's owned by Aubrey Chernick a billionaire entrepreneur and investor.

I told my friend that if the article came from a credible publication like the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post, I would take it more seriously, but PJ Media wasn't what I'd call unbiased, and neither is Breitbart that happened to be quoted as a source for this article.

I also checked the Figaro, a center-right French newspaper that cataloged all the the "conspiracy theories" that have flourished following the fire at the Cathedral and none appears credible. At this point, the French authorities seem to lean towards an accidental cause.

Of course, what will be critical is knowing the outcome of the investigation that is far from being over as it continues gathering facts. Hopefully, the investigators will find the real cause of the blaze, and then it will finally be time to free the weirdest and latest conspiracy stories...

How many ski passes do I need?

This past season, I had the Epic Pass, which is required to ski Park City Mountain and I also tried its Ikon, not quite “equivalent”.

So far, I've used the Ikon 15 times against 96 for the Epic. I get a much better value for my money from the later and I am now weighing the merits of renewing my “Ikon Base.”

The problem with that pass is that after using it 5 times at Deer Valley (which I consider "next door"), I need to drive, and even when it's just to our neighboring resorts, it means about two-hour behind the wheel each time!

Just thinking about it makes me feel tired. At this point I still don't know what to do and must make my mind up today.

Help me!

What are these folks having in common?

The obvious answer is that they're old.

In case you've forgotten, old is the opposite of new. I personally prefer new over old, whether it's yogurts, automobiles, planes and clothes.

Humanly speaking, one could say that Trump, Mugabe, Biden, Bouteflika, Queen Elizabeth, Sanders and al-Bashir among others, are of the resilient types that enjoy leading regardless of their age and abilities.

They absolutely don't want to let go and leave their jobs to younger, more talented people. They believe they're the best and ought to be in charge.

I respectfully disagree and am in a very good spot to attest that, after 70, one should be retired and perhaps, at best, advising, but not leading.

The French, in spite of their mixed opinions about their 41 years old Emmanuel Macron, don't know how lucky they are!

"Old" Orleans

This past Thursday, I had the bright idea to take my wife to see and hear “Orleans”, that pop and rock band, mostly known for its mid-70s hits like "Dance with Me" and "Still the One".

I used to liked these songs a lot as they reminded me of the first years I emigrated to in the United States. Besides, I also liked the soft rock songs from the related duo Hall & Oates and was looking forward to that evening.

The problem was that the recomposed band didn't sound good (only one surviving member, John Hall, was in, seemed to be out of place and couldn't hold a tune).

With the exception of Lance Hopen, all were shabbily dressed, looked pathetic as well as pitiful and let my wife comment: “To every thing there is a season” meaning that these guys should stay home instead of performing below audiences' expectations.

Something to keep seriously in mind next time we decide to attend a concert...

The video below is much better than what we had to endure... 

Am I a killing machine?

If modern contraception at existed when I was conceived, I certainly would not be here today, as I was an unexpected “surprise” for my parents. Since I owe my life to this, I feel extremely fortunate and thank heavens everyday to be alive and well.

I'm not a killer either. I have never committed murder and I'm against wars and revenge killing. Neither am I a hunter; this said, I realized that I'm a bit compromised by all the meat, fish and poultry,
I have consumed and continue to eat, even though it's no longer what it used to be.

I've only killed three deer with my car; in returns the animals made sure to wreck my autos as a way to say “thank”. I have also killed countless small mammals both with my car and other means. Finally,

I must also be guilty of the death of thousands of insects. I recognize that I'm and remain a human predator that's doing his share of wrecking a little bit more our beloved planet, but console myself by thinking that I'm not the worst one.

Will this suffice to exonerate me?

My take on the Muller report

I'm not a fast reader, so don't expect to jump with both feet into the redacted Muller report and tell you what I think of it.

I would just make one blanket statement: "Not enough evidence to charge someone with a crime" does not mean the person “did not commit a crime."

This said, I will read, listen and watch the news about this event and instead of impeaching the scoundrel, I think the best way to deal with him is to vote him out of office - in a landslide - come November 2020.

Alta devotees

Yesterday we skied Alta, our next-door neighboring resort, that is 4.5 miles over the mountains as the crow flies, in Little Cottonwood Canyon, but still is more than 40 miles away from my home.

As I might have expressed in the past, Alta is to American skiing what Notre-Dame is to Catholicism. It's not just a place and a picturesque setting offering fabulous ski options, it's simply a religion, or perhaps, a sacrament.

As we were riding the chairlift, we talked on two different occasions with two older men.

One appeared to be in his mid-seventies, the other told us he was 85. Both lived in California, but chose to spend their entire winter in Utah, in some pied-à-terre, at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, and skied literally everyday.

These two guys seemed to enjoy their lot in life and who could blame them?

Long-in-the-tooth President

Arguably, Trump's only great achievement as a president has been to make Americans accept that an old man leading a country isn't a problem.

That could have been until he began to contradict basic common sense when he recently made a bunch of demented suggestions like closing the border, bringing the asylum-seekers to San Francisco and New York or “re-branding” the Boeing 737 Max.

 I am 71, very active, thin, still pretty sharp and quite healthy, but I realize that I'd be far too old for holding such a big job and could only be of use in some kind of advisory role.

The same holds true, of course, for both Democrat Party candidates, Biden (76) and Sanders (77), that ought to take care of their grand-kids and pass the torch to young, energetic, middle-age men and women.

This is symptomatic of too many baby-boomers that won't quit at any cost, and are blocking younger generations for accessing jobs for which they'd be much more qualified, simply because they feel entitled to their post, want to amass even more wealth and are so selfish that it blinds them to nature's reality that there's a time for everything.

Let's quit voting for Trump-old candidates and choose young blood instead!

Powerless witness...

As a Frenchman, and just like the rest of the planet, I observed, in real time, and a world away, the destruction of Notre Dame Cathedral.

I simply felt like a powerless witness, watching the sad spectacle unfold in front of my very eyes.

I wondered if the firefighters intervened early enough and with sufficient means, but I know little about firefighting and the city of Paris.

This is a terribly sad day for France, religion and the world heritage.

The future of multi-resorts ski-passes

There's no question that even more than a great snow year, the flurry of multi-resorts pass visitors have been the subject of animated conversations and bitter resentment among locals, especially.

The real question we might ask, at a time when we're being hit daily with pleas for renewal, is whether that Epic and Ikon fever will last or will it just be “flash in the pan”?

One could speculate that after having “visited” many resorts this winters, a large number of skiers may have found that it costs money to travel from one place to the other, whether by car or plane and that it takes time to get to a new place and come back (make it two days in most cases).

Skiers would also have experienced that it cost even more to find accommodations, that finding food for one person, a family, or a group was never cheap in an unknown ski town, and finally that, unless one is the adventurous type, each new resort takes a lot of time to be explored, understood and start offering as much familiarity as the ski town people are used to.

Then, as resorts want to extract more money each year, their price increase far outpace inflation to the point where the benefits of these passes inevitably come in a collision course with their affordability.

It's true that these multi-use passes are no different than the 500 TV channels we have at our fingertips when we only use, in practice, the same 1 or 2, over and over...

Sure, it's quite likely that sale of these passes and the cross-visitations they engender won't drop like a rock next season, but the novelty will start to wear off and soon, the most adventurous of us may conclude: “been there – done that!”

Off-season in Park City

On Friday, we went on Main Street, Park City for a stroll. It was cold, snowy with very few folks in the street.

It was sad and depressing like any gray, off-season day in any mountain town on the planet when the ski-lifts have stopped, from Aspen to Zermatt, including Bariloche or even Thredbo, down-under.

No more skiing, no more sparks, no more joy. Not my kind of town, my kind of day or my kind of vibe either. Well, a perfect opportunity to feel blue, down and hopeless.

Thank God, this was only temporary as the weather forecast was promising some sun for the week-end along with some good skiing, still available for us to enjoy at nearby Little and Big Cottonwood Canyons!

The hypocrisy of “cheap disruption”

As Uber is preparing for its IPO, Airbnb continues to shelter us inexpensively, cheap air travel makes globe-trotters out of most of us, and Bengladesh keeps clothing us for next to nothing, we're clearly seeing that it's very easy to take advantage of what is super cheap in our daily lives and turn a blind eye on the exploitative or destructive new economy that has become a new normal within our lives.

Just like Facebook, most of us know that patronizing of these resources is very bad, but we keep going to the well... I might add: Just for how long will we continue and maintain a straight face?

The bogus warranty...

Less than three years ago, the two-years old dishwasher we had died on us and we had to replace it. We did plenty of research to buy the most reliable brand, but since we had been burned many times already by unreliable modern appliances, we purchased a five-year extended warranty.

On March 27, a part in that appliance broke, and sure enough, we called the reseller that immediately told us to contact a certain department that dealt with warranty issues.

After jumping through a series of hoops and bouncing back and forth, we finally were told that the company showed no extended warranty for our dishwasher.

In other words, the reseller had pocketed the premium and “forgot” to forward the necessary paperwork!

I was livid and escalated my complaint to the top levels of the company, and finally, received plenty of apologies from a variety of managers. Finally, almost two weeks later, a technician came to fix that problem, under, of course, full warranty.

Now, guess if I'll ever use this reseller again?

Beware of ski-tracks!

Last week, in my French hometown, near the Avoriaz ski resort, an out-of-bound Ukrainian skier jumped off a cliff some 150 feet to his death.

While this kind of accident isn’t unusual in the Alps, it must be noted that this poor man’s fatal fall might be due to a judgmental error many skiers can make when they ski powder in places they’re unfamiliar with.

The area where the accident happened is one that a number of paragliding skiers use for easy take off, and it’s quite plausible that the unfortunate 50 year-old skier might have unwittingly followed some fresh tracks left by paragliders while not quite seeing that there were huge cliffs beyond the visible edge of the slope.

Morale of the story: Never follow willy-nilly fresh tracks in an unknown area where there might be cliffs or other dangerous features, by simply trusting that they’ll lead to a skiable path down below.

Always remain extremely wary and when in doubt, proceed very slowly!

Magic, the Swiss version of Epic

Three winter seasons ago, a group of 30 Swiss ski areas, mostly in the French speaking region of the small Alpine country, decided to emulate Vail Resorts' Epic Pass and united in offering for about $400 their Magic season ski pass.

According to what I've been able to gather 85,000 passes were sold in 2017-18, then 102,000 this past season and next year's is anyone's guess, as skiers must commit by early May. At any rate, that's more than $40 millions in the till, more than six month before ski season starts.

For next season, the price of the Magic pass has been hiked by more than 7% to about $430, compare this to 5-6% for both Epic and Ikon.

According to Swiss ski industry sources this initiative is credited with a 10% uptick in skier-days for the whole country and a stunning 30% increase in visitations at participating ski areas.

What's notable is that weekend traffic on major southern Swiss highways has increased too, bringing Sunday returns to a snarl!

Unlike the Epic and Ikon passes, don't expect to see a roster of ski resorts chuck-full of prestigious names like Gstaad, St Moritz or Zermatt, but you'll still find places like Arolla, Crans-Montana or Saas-Fe among all the destinations offered.

So, just like for our multi-area passes, the future of the Magic pass is something that we'll follow with great interest over the next coming winters... 

When plenty of snow goes to waste...

This weekend was the last day of skiing at Park City and Deer Valley. Both resorts didn't care that it was the local kids spring break when they failed to listen to the pleas of the local community, asking for an extension of the ski season on the basis of our abundant snowpack.

It's paradoxical that early winter, our ski resorts spend millions of dollars manufacturing snow, and when it has finally accumulated in large quantities, they stop operations when they could have easily stayed open another couple of weeks.

Sure, if you're not a skier, you can't wait till the all snow melts around town. If you're passionate about skiing however, it's a totally different story. Personally, I would have loved to see both ski areas extend their operation till May, but I also realize that it would only benefit ski aficionados like me, that have long paid for their season pass, so it would mean an extra cash outlay to our lift operators without much income in return.

Further, the two resorts have no obligation to stay open past their stated closing dates. This said, both Todd Shallan and Bill Rock, the local areas bosses, should have better measured the place their respective resorts occupy within the Park City community by keeping some of their lifts running a little longer.

In doing so, they would have added to their “goodwill bank” for future needs, and thanked the locals for putting up with grid-locked streets and crowded slopes from those extra Epic and Ikon visitors. At a time when we get bombarded daily by emails and postcards asking us to renew our passes for 2019-2020, this too would have been a savvy marketing move.

Of course, I'm not suggesting keeping the entire mountain open till April 30, but just extending lift service by at least one week, or one weekend, and maintaining just a token number of chairlifts open.

Good leadership often means listening attentively and taking the customer's side. In this case, both general managers should have been the local skiers' advocates to Alterra and Vail Resorts by asking the two corporate heavy-weight to return a tiny bit to the community.

By apparently doing nothing or not convincingly forcing the issue, they've missed an opportunity to say “thanks” to all of us and, by the same token, forfeited a chance to add more appeal to the passes they're already trying to sell us for next winter.

Skiing incognito

Often times, when I return from skiing alone, my wife asks “Have you seen anyone we know”? All the time I simply respond “No”.

The only time I met someone I knew, this winter, was on the chairlift, when I rode up with Mark Seltenrich, a business associate I met in the early 90s and who successfully picked up my French accent as a mean of identification.

Several decades ago, it was fairly easy to spot friends while they were skiing on the mountain, and most particularly in a ski lift corral or on a chairlift. Today, recognizing an acquaintance while skiing slopes has become increasingly difficult, if not totally impossible.

This is due in great part to skiers wearing helmets, donning increasingly large goggles and wearing balaclavas hiding the rest of the face that used to remain exposed.

The bottom line is that we don't seem to see anyone we know when we're on the hill and it takes an individual's outfit, voice, or accent, to allow for some kind of identification.

Funny, in an era were we're losing privacy left and right, skiing is the only place were we seem to find it back!

Is Boeing in big trouble?

Around the middle of March, I was trying to explain how Boeing got in such trouble by modifying its hottest airplane, in order to keep it popular and continue making lots of money selling it.

Since the changes made rendered the plane almost impossible to fly, Boeing's engineers turned toward military aircraft technology, where all kinds of jet fighter designs that should never be able to fly the way they do, receive “help” from computers that enable them to be super maneuverable in spite of their lack of flying functionality.

They must have thought, “if we can make these machine fly, we can do the same with the 737 Max...” Problem is that these planes are used a great deal more than their military counterparts and that while software can make some miracles from time to time, it can't guarantee all miracles, all the time.

Now that all eyes are on the FAA, the cozy relationship that prevailed between that Federal Agency and Boeing is like to undergo increased scrutiny.

At the same time the Chinese and the European Union that used to defer to all FAA's decisions, may not continue on that path and could make life extremely difficult for Boeing, that might as a result of these other large clients' reluctance to continue buying the aircraft, fall into bankruptcy.

Sure the U.S. Government will have no other choice of saving the aircraft manufacturer on account of its share of military contracts, but this might have deep consequences for its civilian division...

Are some days bad enough no to ski?

A few days ago, I decided – against my best judgment – to go skiing in spite of a terrible snow and an awful visibility.

I took a first run, didn't quite like what I felt under my skis, then pondered as to whether it would make any sense to quit for the whole day, and wisely return home.

Against what I thought was my best intuition, I decided to stay and ended up having a pretty decent experience.

So, the morale of the story is that, in life like in skiing, some days never are to be as bad as they appear they could be, and it's always worth to persist!

Oldie but Goodies?

On Wednesday night, I was invited to attend the reception organized by the International Skiing History Association (ISHA), which mission is to preserves and increases awareness of my favorite sport’s heritage through its “Skiing History” publication and its website.

I do subscribe to the advertising-free magazine that I receive six times a year, never fails to read cover-to-cover and that I enjoy an awful lot, because I've always been interested in history in general, and even more so into the history of what's my lifelong passion.

When I was in the midst of these folks, I felt young because some of them are almost 20 years older than me!

So, my attitude is not see the advanced age of these people, but rather their wealth of experience, something along the lines of “what could I learn from these people, with their huge experience that I could apply to the rest of my life?”

Now, you understand, Oldie but Goodies isn't something to avoid, but rather seek, because it's high quality and classic value before anything else.

The never-ending slalom...

Only my French countrymen would do this: For a third year in a row, at La Plagne ski resort, organize a slalom competition in one run, covering a vertical drop of 2,625 feet, using 320 poles and taking more than 4 minutes 30 second to run for the men's winner, this time the up and coming French Slalom star, Clément Noël.

This race, the brainchild of French Team member Julien Lizeroux in cahoot with Julien Régnier a former mogul skier, attracted 470 competitors, all of them French, except for a handful of Swiss participants.

Only one run with costumes encouraged, loads of fun, no DQ that I could see, just a few DNF, and all in all, a great day of fun. We ought to have the same in America!

That last run...

It could be this last run of the day or of that very last descent of the entire season.

Each time it happens, I get mixed emotions as I'm sad that my day, or my season on skis, is coming to an abrupt end.

At the same time I want to squeeze these ultimate moments of ski pleasure that I know won't return till the next day on the slopes or the following winter season.

This makes me savor this last run like no other moment in the ski day. I soak in the feelings, the views rolling by and the last flush of speed in a way that could slow the time to give me a greater chance to fully appreciate every nano-second.

No matter the way I feel or the conditions, I always fully enjoy that special moment in time!

Skiing bad spring snow

Spring snow isn't always easy. I'm not talking about morning groomed runs that are the normal fare consumed by the majority of spring skiers these days, but about that slushy, changing and irregular stuff that raises its challenging head in the afternoon or early on, all over slopes that are exposed early to the sun.

That's when skiers quickly discover that there's a fine line between speed, turnability and safety.

These tricky conditions have to be matched with a commensurate skier's relaxation, plus ideally, a more adapted equipment, like heavier skis, even though ski weight influence can be mitigated by a seasoned, extra-sensitive skier.

There's also a need for heightened attention that defines the perfect compromise between all these "moving parts", along with an ability to scout for the less dangerous terrain and the appropriate line.

All the ingredients that go into keeping that ideal “fine line” are what make slushy or tricky spring snow skiing that much more interesting and a culmination of a great deal of various skills. I love it, but I also appreciate its danger and based on my long experience, always step into it knowing full well that it's never devoid of risk.

That's it, the magic blend. Maximum relaxation and utmost concentration; I know, we recently talked about these two...

Not 60 anymore !

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to ski with my good friend Dirk between Brighton and Solitude resorts, on the other side of Park City, in beautiful Big Cottonwood Canyon.

Not only was powder exceptional with more than one foot of new, untracked snow, but we did our share of exploring. I had never climbed on top of Evergreen Peak, which at 9,850 feet opens up the door to some great powder skiing.

To accomplish this, we have to climb, following a narrow and very steep path on the ridge of that mountain that made us struggle for a good half-hour, carrying skis on our shoulders.

I found that climb extenuating, as each packed step demanded a maximum effort as I had to extend my hips to the fullest, always on the verge of losing my balance.

The last time I did something similar was just on the opposite side, climbing Fantasy Ridge exactly 9 years ago. That's when, huffing and puffing, as we reached the top, I muttered to my companion: “I'm not 60 anymore!”