Was it the snow or my age?

On Thursday, 9990, my favorite chairlift opened up and I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I didn’t go in the morning, but took my time and made it an afternoon outing.

This was my first “athletic” and technically serious ski day of the season, but as always, I was quite confident in my ability to tame the hill.

The snow, which had not been skied this season and the high temperature combined to create a cement-like density, which made skiing extremely tricky and hard work.

Add to this the fact that with a relatively shallow cover, I was quite mindful of rocks and hidden branches or small trees and this was cutting into my flow and the speed needed to break through the crud, so I got tired faster and wasn’t building the kind of confidence I needed.

So was it all that or the burden of an extra year? I’d guess, it might have been a little bit of both, even though my lap times were still up to the level of the previous season.

We’ll need to verify this!

My ever-evolving view of skiing

When I began to ski, there wasn’t much involved. I side-stepped up the hill, skied down straight and ended my schuss with a hockey stop.

Then, I discovered the magic of lift-assisted ascent and my ski life suddenly changed. I loved to do the tuck position while racing my friends and experience a good modicum of speed.

The next thing on the menu was to refine my turns, nuance them with skidding and it’s only a few years latter that I discovered deep snow, slalom and marveled at a new world of possibilities.

Today, as I enter old age, I still love the huge variety of forms skiing afford, and except for competitive skiing, I still participate in all of them, at varying degrees, for sure, but my skiing remains diversified, opportunistic and always has an eye turned on new discoveries.

My ski adventure keeps on going on!

Why is wildlife invading Park City?

Gradually and over the past ten years we’ve seen a notable increase of wildlife around our Park City home. When we first came in 1985, the entire place was both barren and treeless and there was no way for us to observe much wildlife, except for ground-squirrels in the spring, magpies year-round and robins in the summer.

In the meantime, the small trees began their growth and in the last decade, they’ve created a true urban forest, producing its own life-sustaining environment and encouraging the settlement of pigeons, regular squirrels and occasionally, inviting a visit from the local coyote.

At the same time, in addition to aspen and fir trees, more decorative trees were planted, bushes of all kinds began to populate most gardens and with automatic irrigation, our town turned into an irresistible oasis of fresh, edible vegetation for deer, moose and elk.

And this abundance of fresh food and forest-like environment worked like a magnet on attracting all this wildlife, huge and small. The lack of natural predators (except for motorized vehicles) played also a huge role in this wildlife population explosion. But the idea that the poor creatures have been forced out of their habitat by our sprawling town just doesn’t wash.

Call it an urban legend if you will...

My way of seizing the day…

We all have different ways and styles of embracing a new day. Often times, outside events and personal moods are what direct the course of what we do during that precious fraction of time, and when the sun sets, we end up getting short-changed because we failed to take control of what we should have been doing.

In order to avoid that irretrievable waste, I try to adhere to the following process:

• I endeavor to maintain what I have as much as possible, whether it is my physical or mental capabilities, by not squandering them or exposing them to unnecessary harm as time and live become increasingly precious at my age. 
• I make a point of enjoying every moment, taking it as it comes and doing my very best in turning the mundane into precious matter. 
• I also try to always make the right decisions or at least the very best ones that I can identify at the moment, and move forward with them. 
• Finally, a brand-new day is an exceptional opportunity to learning something new or at the very least seeing life with a fresh and spontaneous view point. 

By achieving all these steps everyday, I keep on enriching my life, remain more in tune with the universe and feel really good...

Re-introducing convenient ski boots (continued)

Getting into and out of a four or three buckle front-entry ski boot is never pleasurable.

Whether you’re a guy or a gal, an individual on the heavy side, an expert or a ranked beginner, entering and exiting a four-buckle boot is work, especially on a very cold day.

This is something Georges Salomon had discovered back in the late seventies when he launch Salomon’s ski boot project, and had built his success upon offering all-out convenience to his clientele.

Salomon’s SX 92 was getting there too in terms of performance, and it’s obvious that had the industry been more patient, imaginative and self-confident, it could have brought the rear-entry design up to par with today’s best racing four-buckle boots.

Well, after a 25 year hiatus, the rear-entry design is rearing its head again at both Atomic and Nordica.

The Atomic Savor design, is clearly an “unsavory” waste of time, as it resurrect the cheapest DalBello or Hierling made in the 1990s. This is very strange, because at the very least, Atomic should have “copied” the excellent SX 80. This, if anything, speaks volume about the lack of good communication between Atomic and Salomon under the Amer flag.

Nordica, on the other hand, which came a strong second after Salomon back in the rear-entry product days, might have a product with potential in its HF (Hand Free) model. We’ll see if today’s brick-and-mortar ski shop employees get smarter this time. If they still frown at the product, this will be the perfect ski boot for their competitors, the internet ski merchants!

Who killed the rear-entry boot?

I left the ski boot business when a convenient footwear, called the rear-entry boot made its unceremonious exit, “helped” by a cadre of male ski shop employees (most of them of dubious ski abilities) that had decided that it was time to put that particular boot design on the chopping block, because it was too “girly”, not macho enough, and looked like a beginner product.

Yet, ever since Hanson invented the rear-entry, Salomon had worked relentlessly at perfecting the skiability of its rear-entry boots as evidenced by its latest and last SX 92 model, complete with good rear support, adjustable flex and decent instep adjustment. In these days (early 90s)

I was selling a rear-entry boot too, called the Koflach Intec, a good concept on paper, but poorly tested, terribly designed and put together by the Austrian company that would be taken over by Atomic.

The four-buckle made a huge comeback, even though three-piece shells were a better alternative. By 1995, the rear-entry boot was deceased and buried by the retail trade, that in the process denied a major convenience feature to a huge market skiers, many of whom dropped out from the sport as a result at a huge cost to the ski industry.

Would it ever resurrect? (To be continued...)

Park City’s “constipated” opening

It’s been years, since we haven’t had so much snow at the end of November, and still, Park City Mountain seems to be having a terrible time opening more of its mountain.

During the Holiday weekend, just the bare minimum of lifts were running, enough to pack far too many people on dangerous, narrow, short runs and claim that Park City, the largest ski area in the entire United States, was open early.

Epic Pass holders deserve much more than that, and their hearts aren’t going to grow fonder towards the kind of product Vail Resort is offering them. There were also plenty of visitors that came to town for Thanksgiving weekend and would have loved to ski too, but the value offered for a $144 day ticket just wasn’t there.

I wonder what makes Vail Resorts forget the elements that motivate skiers, but it sure isn't its measly offering at some outrageous price.