October Skies...Dumping all Over the Front Range

For me at least, skiing in October is usually non-existant or restricted to a narrow white ribbon packed with people and serviced by a groaning full-capacity lift. That's how last saturday started out. An early fall storm cycle began plastering the front range with snow last week, and totals at Loveland and A-Basin approached 20". After a couple of cloudy days in Boulder, I decided to ditch out on the shop with my partner-in-shredding TJ and our good friends Andrew and John to satisfy my fix for a little sliding.

A-Basin was packed as usual, full mazes and a gaper slalom situation on the slopes. Things were decididly unsafe, as Andrew sped into some variable terrain and tweaked his knee. We headed back to TJ's mountainmobile to reassess the safety situation and found a huge cluster in the parking lot. A friendly family from Nevada had driven their minivan into the treacherous icy depths of the Basin's early riser lot, and through a combination of poor tires, surprisingly icy conditions and lack of driving skills had gotten themselves stuck. Utterly bewildered as why their sweet ride couldn't handle the conditons, the family kept spinning tire up the slope looking more and more dejected after every failed attempt.

Enter Teej to the rescue with his larger-than-life gnurly tires. A quick chain up and a little pushing dragged the hapless minivan out of the lot and off to tackle the pass. Oh, and they gave us $100 for the trouble. Thats karma for you. After gaining another unsolicited $20 from the owner of a similarly stuck Camry, we took another stupidly clogged run and decided that it was time for the angels of A-Basin's lot to check out the BC scene.

We loaded up and convinced the laid-up Andrew to pull shuttle duty for us and cruised up to the top of the pass for what was sure to a rock strewn scouting mission. We rolled up to find some more of the DU crew, including our buddy Bryant (soon to be father of some 190 Praxis pow missiles, congrats) whose condo in Breck saved our lives many times last season (yo, tell me what scotch you like and its yours).

It was a dumping gray-jay day and we set off into the bowl to see what we could find. And we found face shots! Incredible. The storms had dumped 18-20 over the past week and some light winds had packed some gullys with waist-deep blower. One turn would be base-painful and the next would be oh-so-floaty and an arc of the white stuff would curl up and over your head. There was enough coverage that most lines were skiable, but not so much that everything was covered. Some sweet tree jibs were available as were nice stylee hops over downed boulders and steep rock shots. We lapped the bowl 4 times, each time getting knee to waist deep shots between gouge inducing rubble. No core shots though, but that wouldn't matter anyways since the shop just picked up some sweet tuning gear, ah the perks of being a shop boy.

All in all, minus the knee tweakage (get better soon Andrew) and plus the face shots and $120 for being prepared for the winter weather, it was the raddest day I've had in October, and counts up there with some good mid-season days. Just goes to show you that life is like a box of chocolates, you gotta poke everything until you find the one with caramel in it.

Yours in P-Tex,

Geoff
alpine-sports.com

Gaper of the Week

Here's your Gaper of the Week...sadly again from my neck of the woods.


INDIANA, Pa. (AP) - The long-standing rivalry between Coke and Pepsi took a physical turn Friday when a Pepsi deliveryman allegedly punched his Coke counterpart in the face at a western Pennsylvania Wal-Mart, state police said.
The two deliverymen were "apparently bickering back and forth" while unloading their wares at the Indiana County store, police said. When the Coke deliveryman left the store, his counterpart allegedly punched him in the face three times, breaking his nose and giving him a black eye, police said. No charges have been filed, but police characterized the incident as a misdemeanor simple assault.
(Copyright Associated Press, All Rights Reserved)


Mr. Pepsi delivery man, please step forward to claim your prize of a 1983 Nissan Stanza with a matching pair of Sears race stock skis. You've earned it

Opening Day: The Epic Begins

Unless you live in Ft. Collins or the East Coast, you've probably heard that ski season offically started on Wednesday at 9am when A-Basin started spinning their exhibition lift. I know what the die-hards say: "Skiing doesn't have a season, just a couple of month you need rock skis for." I somewhat agree, opening day being my 2nd day on snow since the end of summer. However my partner in crime TJ and I were there for the basin's first day and it feels more like ski season now than in August.

As we're both responsible students, the day began after our 8am classes. Stoked out of our minds, we cruised up 70 looking for any signs of recent snowfall. Oddly for opening day, the high peaks along the highway were mostly devoid of the white stuff. The drive up Loveland Pass looked more like July than October and we rolled to the summit with the windows down.

In the first look you get at the basin, there was no snow visible from the road save for a light dusting on the East Wall. Strange we thought as we bombed down the west side of the pass. Right around one of the last switchbacks we got the first glimpse of the run. A beautiful white ribbon of death was plastered on the side of the hill covered in little black dots.

The run has surprisingly good coverage and the basin had a rail and box set up for the big contingent of jibbers that showed up, as well as some fun side-of-the-slope airs that one could hit the first 1s, 3s and in one case, rodeo 5s of the season.

All in all, it was the best single run I've ever lapped in October. If you've got a pass check it out, perhaps you'll run into the pirate who went to one two many music festivals or the red-haired Sox fan that we had the pleasure of riding the lift with. Thats the good thing about the basin, no matter if its day uno, or a 24 inch dump, you're pretty much guaranteed to ride the lift with someone nuts. Not too bad for the earliest opening in A-Basin history.

N.B. 10-18 expected this weekend...

Here's to 2 days and 98 more,

Geoff

Breaking Freshies!

Check out the latest from the National Weather Service:

STORM SYSTEM HEADED FOR COLORADO.
.A STORM SYSTEM IS EXPECTED TO MOVE ACROSS COLORADO LATE TONIGHTAND SUNDAY AND MAY PRODUCE HEAVY SNOW IN THE MOUNTAINS ANDFOOTHILLS OF NORTHERN COLORADO AS UPSLOPE FLOW DEVELOPS. OVERLOWER ELEVATIONS PRECIPITATION SHOULD FALL AS RAIN ALTHOUGH RAINMAY CHANGE TO SNOW OVER THE PALMER DIVIDE SUNDAY MORNING BEFOREENDING SUNDAY NIGHT.


A WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 11 PM MDT THIS EVENING THROUGH SUNDAY AFTERNOON.SNOW WILL GRADUALLY INCREASE BY TONIGHT AND CONTINUE THROUGHSUNDAY AND MAY BE HEAVY AT TIMES. TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF10 TO 18 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE BY LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON ESPECIALLYON EAST FACING SLOPES ABOVE 7500 FEET.

Awwww Yeeeeah!

Opening Day!!

If all you skiers and riders out there have this funny warm feeling deep down in the cockles of your heart (maybe even lower than the cockles, in the subcockular region) its because high on a mountaintop in Colorado, mother nature with a healthy bit of help from modern snowmaking technology, ski season has started.

That right, A-Basin made the surprise decision to open yesterday; the earliest opening in it's 61 year history. One run, one lift, but it's good enough. America is .005% open with 9 acres and an 18" base. Pretty Rad. The run, from the base to the top of the first lift is pretty anemic and looks downright ridiculous. The front range has gotten barely any measurable snowfall since the beginning of October and the run is surrounded by the rest of the resort still in summer mode with one or two patches of snow.

I'm in between classes right now, so I don't have the time to do a full posting on the day, but suffice it to say my knee-droppin' comrade TJ and I were there and it was way better than being in classes.

Coming soon: Opening Day: The Epic Begins

Snowmaking 1, Global Warming 0

Geoff

Gaper of the Week Award

Here is a story from my hometown:

$1 Million Bill Buys Jail Time
By The Associated Press
posted: 09 October 2007 10:56 am ET

PITTSBURGH (AP)—Change for a million? That's what a man was seeking Saturday when he handed a $1 million bill to a cashier at a Pittsburgh supermarket. But when the Giant Eagle employee refused and a manager confiscated the bogus bill, the man flew into a rage, police said.
The man slammed an electronic funds-transfer machine into the counter and reached for a scanner gun, police said.
Police arrested the man, who was not carrying identification and has refused to give his name to authorities. He is being held in the Allegheny County Jail.
Since 1969, the $100 bill is the largest note in circulation.
Police believe the $1 million note seized at the supermarket may have originated at a Dallas-based ministry. Last year, the ministry distributed thousands of religious pamphlets with a picture of President Grover Cleveland on a $1 million bill.

Congratulations, Gaper of the Week. Please step forwards and identify yourself so that you can reciever your prize of a pair of Skiblades and a lifetime supply of Dallas Cowboys starter jackets. You've earned it.

The 7-Day Challenge

Yo, hey you. Yeah I'm talkin' to you. How about this. I have a challenge, nay a quest. It begins with yours truly, a year ago this week. As a poor college student, prostituting himself to higher learning for hopes of one day owning a Porsche with a ski rack I was unable to scrape together enough funds to buy that holy grail of ski paraphenalia: the Season Pass (cue angels singing).

The flakes began to fly and I found myself at opening day at A-basin sans lift ticket. If you've ever been to the Basin on opening weekend, you know that the pass is really just a ticket to stand in line for one or two hours between 700' runs with a bunch of drunk Front Rangers, so I gave it the big F-U and decided to walk it. I strapped my skins to the lightest set up I had, a pair of 175 Cabrawler Pro Model bump skis, BCA Alpine Trekkers, and my trusty when not agonizing to walk in Salomon boots and started trekking up the main and only run open.

I passed all the first day traffic, skinned up through the jib park they had set up to the cheers of those hiking to save the lift line and up to the top of the lift. I repeated the shot 7 times, which was the same number of runs my lift-riding buddies got in by the end of the day. I continued this commute for the next 6 days until some 3 of the hottest girls I know bought me a pass for my birthday and saved me from having to walk the rest of the season.

I mention this because those 7 days were probably the best first 7 days of a season I've had so far. I met tons of cool folks wondering what the crazy guy was doing, tons of cool folks who know what I was doing and joined me and got some turns how people used to have to get em. This wasn't a rad backcountry trip or the usual "earn your turns" kind of excursion, it was resort skiing in slow-mo.

So here's the challenge. For the first 7 days of your season, walk it. Try to walk it at the resort. It will kickstart your training and you might meet some cool people on the way, not to mention walking and getting the same number of turns as your hitchhikin' buddies is pretty bad ass. If you're at the Basin opening day, keep an eye out for me. I'll be the bump ski-touring guy with the green hat. I hope you'll go for a walk with me. All those who complete the task, let me know I won't send you anything but I'll raise my glass to you sir, for you are a worthy knight of the pow table.

Keep on truckin,

Geoff
www.alpine-sports.com

Sidecuts, Waist Widths and Tip Flex...oh my! (The Return of the Sidecut)

In the previous article, we dove headlong into the wide world of sidecuts and learned how sidecut shape (radial or progressive/quadratic) and sidecut radius affected the shape of a turn. Sidecuts are great for helping a ski rip an arc, but no ski alone will ski itself with a little input from the skier. When thinking about how a ski will perform while checking it out in a shop, how a skier's input makes a ski behave can be read in terms of the flex pattern of the ski.

Ski flex is what all those dudes standing around a ski wall and bending skis while talking about Jon's lastest kangaroo flip are testing. A ski makes a turn when the skier puts energy into the ski by bending it. The flexed ski deforms into an arc that cuts into the snow in a carve. This is all well and good except for a little thing called Hooke's Law. If you haven't lost your high school physics from brain damage yet, you'll recall that any force put on a springy object will have an equal and opposite force that wants to push that object back into its original shape. So, any ski that you bend will want to return the force you put into it and how a ski does this provides the energy to shoot the ski from one turn to the next.

The first way flex affect's how a ski skis is in straight up longitudinal flex, the amount of force it takes to bend the whole ski into an arc. Imitate your favorite ski connaisseur and pick up a ski, perhaps a 192 Volkl Race Stock GS ski put your hand on the boot center mark and push. The ski probably won't bend very much. Now try the same with something like a Salomon Pocket Rocket and watch the ski bend like a wet noodle. A stiff ski takes more energy to bend, and this means two things:
1. It takes more force to deflect the ski, so it will be more stable and predictable in high force situations (read here maching down early morning frozen baseballs of doom).
2. The ski can store more energy when flexed, and has the capability of releasing an equally huge amount of energy back into the skier.

So if you're a 230 pound linebacker who loves bashing hardpack at ludicrous speed, a set of Adamantium-strong planks will suit you better than a pair of wiggly boards that would kill it under a 150lb powder dancer. But for both of these folks, how the ski returns the energy is just as important as how the ski flexes under stress. This is where flex pattern comes in. A ski doesn't just flex up and down at the same rate all over. The tip, midsection and tail all can flex in different amounts for different reasons, and the whole ski can twist lengthwise as the skier applies an outward force against the snow while on edge.

The most often tweaked parts of a flex pattern are the tip and the tail flex, and they do different things. As a skier puts pressure forward on the ski to make a turn, the tip begins to flex. How quickly and easily this deflects is what gives a ski its "dive" into a turn. A softer tip will initiate into that turn more easily and smoothly, but will deflect equally easily when encountering chunks of mank and filling-removing chatter. At the opposite end of the turn, a reverse of events happens to the tail. As the ski arcs through the turn, more load is placed on the tail and as you start into that next turn, the tail unweights and releases this load back into the skier, making the ski spring back into the next turn. If your a racer, this gift of energy vaults your skis underneath you and around the next gate. These stiffer tails are also great for stomping landings regular or switch off of drops and tables but can be wily and unpredictable for a novice.

Penultimatly (word of the day), we come to that twisting flex I mentioned before. When a ski is on edge and carving, the skier pushes out and down on both edges of the ski. This force is only opposed on the edge of the ski that is in the snow, and as a result the unsupported ski flexes in the direction of the push, setting up a torque within the ski that will twist it along its length. This torsional flexion is something of importance to both Ice-Coast (what what...the right side of skiing represent), and Left-Coasties alike. A torsionally stiff ski will have better edge hold on steep and/or icy slopes while a twistier ski will porpoise buttery smooth in the dope white stuff.

So all this flex (admittiedly one of the more confusing aspects of ski design) affects the activity of a ski into, in the middle and out of a turn and how a ski will feel in different conditions, speeds and loads. "Sha," all you park rats must be saying, "I don't care bro, I be too steezy to care." Not so fast Tanner, the last bit flex affects is how a ski gets into the air. A ski can either give all of its flex back at once, "poppy"-like, or give it back slowly and smoothly making it feel "damp". A ski with a wood core, perhaps with the the pop-inducing steroid carbon will be quick and nimble releasing its energy all at once to launch from one edge to another or into a sweet cork 9. A damper ski, maybe a a foam core with fiberglass, aramid or kevlar woven in will be a little gentler, being more predictable and silky feeling while losing some livelyness.

So all these 3-dimensional forces and counteracting forces on a ski make it twist, bend and deform in different ways and the amount of energy it takes to do this in different places produces a set of characteristic reactions that causes a ski to act like it does on the snow, whether its a bruiser big-mountain ski, a laser-like GS ski, a super steezed jib machine or a forgiving and friendly grom setup. So use the flex, Luke. It's like a personality test for a ski.

Next Time:
"I see your Schwartz is as big as mine...": Ski Length and why it matters.


When in doubt, air it out,

Geoff
www.alpine-sports.com

Sidecuts, Waist Widths and Tip Flex...Oh My! (Part Deux)

So last time we figured out that narrow skis float poorly but initiate turns quicker than their portly counterparts. The width of the ski affects the performance into and out of the turn, but how about what that turn looks like in between?


This is the realm of the sidecut. Back in the early 80's skis underwent a radical change from being long, straight, hard to turn planks into the more user friendly and performance oriented designs of today. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this revolution started with the Elan Carver, marketed as the first true "parabolic" ski. Anyone who has spent time on a pair of 210s from the 60's can tell you that shaping the side of the ski makes it much easier to handle than having two parallel edges. I could go into a lengthy discussion of how a sidecut works, but thats for another article.


Instead, I'm going to get right into how a sidecut shape makes a ski handle. Most sidecuts are basically segments of a huge circle. The radius of the circle is the sidecut radius and this circle is the shape of the turn that you will get if you simply tip the ski on edge and go with it. The shorter the sidecut radius, the tighter the natural turn of the ski will be. Pretty simple. Bending the ski harder will tighten that circle by a predictable amount.


But what if you want to turn really hard? You can either push on the ski harder or go with a ski that has a "progressive" or "quadratic" sidecut. This time the sidecut is not a section of a circle, but a section of a parabola or a smaller radius circle cut into a larger radius one (depending on the company). If you remember your calculus (that would make one of us), a parabola's radius is smaller the closer you get to it's center so a ski with a progressive sidecut will turn much much sharper with a comparatively smaller flex put into it.


Lastly, where a sidecut is centered on the ski makes a difference depending on what you want to do with it. Most manufacturers put the deepest sidecut where the foot is, which for all but park skis is about 4/6th of the way back from the tip. Mounting a pair of these skis centered on the ski but not the sidecut won't help any switch riding you want to do and mounting a ski with a symmetric sidecut in a traditional alpine manner will reduce it's performance.

So for those of you who slept through the lecture here's the cliff notes: A deep sidecut will make you turn harder, a progressive sidecut gets deeper the farther you push into it, and a symmetric sidecut is good for all the switch, fakie, gnar gnar you can throw at it. Believe it or not there's alot of math that goes into making sidecuts on skis work they way you do (stay in school, ski bums) and that technology is all about making you arc some sweet tracks.

So while you're maching those killer turns, take a look down at your ski. Its moving and its bent...this is flex and the topic for our next article.

Excuse me while I integrate my natural log,

Geoff
www.alpine-sports.com

Sidecuts, Waist Widths and Tip Flex...oh my! (Part 1)

There are two kinds of skiers: Ones that buy skis because they look pretty and ones that ski pretty because they buy good skis. If you're the first type and you're fine with that, you can stop reading now, but if you are the 2nd type (or would like to be) keep reading. This is a basic primer for narrowing down the purchase of some sticks based on things you can look for in the shop.
The best way to buy a pair of skis is to demo em'. Many shops have demo days or can tell you when one is going to be happening at a resort near you. Demo skis are pretty much like rental cars, you can take em' out, put em' through their paces and return them without having to shell out a ton of cash for a new pair. But if you don't have the chance to demo every pair you're interested in or just plain don't have a clue what you want, a good shop and some knowledge of what affects a ski's performance is a good thing to have.

A ski's performance can be generalized by 4 criteria:
1.) The Waist Width
2.) Sidecut Dimensions
3.) Flex Pattern
4.) Length

The effects of waist width on a ski are pretty obvious. The wider the ski, the more surface area it has to float on top of powder. Less obvious is how the width underfoot affects the "quickness" of a ski. Take a pair of slalom skis vs. a pair of pow skis. A typical FIS legal slalom board will have a width in the 65mm range, much less than the 100-130mm width of today's radest powder skis. How quickly a ski transitions from one turn to the next depends on how quickly the skier transfers from one edge to another.
A greater distance between the edges means a slower transition, so in theory a powder ski will go from edge-to-edge slower than the slalom ski, which is why you don't see Ted Ligety rockin' Prophet 130s in a World Cup event. Keep in mind that this is just what the skis are most efficient at doing. If you don't physically make the ski transition quickly, you won't turn quickly. A pair of wide skis in the right hands can make turns almost as quickly as a pair of narrower skis, it just takes more effort.

So to summarize, wide skis = more float, slower edge-to-edge transition while narrow skis=less float with faster edge-to-edge transition.

So width affects float and "nimbleness" in a ski, but the actual turn shape depends on what the sidecut is and how you use it and this is a subject for the next article. Stay Tuned!


"If you french fry when you should have pizza'd, you're gonna have a bad time."

Geoff

Breaking Freshies!

On my cruise into the shop this morning, it looks like the Front Range has gotten a dusting. North Arapahoe peak got a fair bit of white on top of her and snowlines look to have reached below 10,000. Stay tuned.

To those about to rock...

If I had a choice on how to greet customers when they come into the shop, I'd go with something like "Hello, my name is Geoff. How may I rock you today? " It's a little a la Bill and Ted's but I think it could work, especially in the context of the rockin' tunes we try to keep rollin' here in Alpine Sports. Its a relevant question considering more and more people are taking life with a side of music, and by the way we're selling audio compatible helmets and mp3 player stuff, more and more of the pod people are taking to the hills.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, I've stood at the top of many drops wishing I was amping up to a killer power anthem. However it seems like there are too many folks silently bobbing their heads on the chair to the music in their head and giving only the tersest replies to the typical lift banter. Its a bummer, especially when you're skiing by yourself and trying to meet up with some buddies to hit the trees with (remember ski safe...ski with a friend).

There is also a growing concern over the safety issues created by skiers and riders not being able to hear whats going on around them. Last season I was passed on a skin track on Loveland pass by a group of riders all tuned out while they were hiking. I couldn't help but wonder if they could have heard someone yell "Slide!" or some other critical piece of information. So when is it ok to cruise with some music? After some careful consideration, I've compiled a list of rules (ok, they're more like guidelines) for the responsible use of music in the hills.

1. Unless you're sitting next to some gapers on Spring Break, try to keep one ear open on the lift. I'd like to see how your day is going.

2. If you have that one earpiece out, turn down the volume. There's enough bad music in the air at the base lodge.

3. Never listen to music in avalanche terrain. Ever.

4. If you're on a bluetooth thing and you look like you're talking to yourself, I'm going to laugh at you. You look ridiculous.

5. Whatever you're listening to, be sure it rocks you.

I hope this helps clear up any confusion.

Keep em' on the snow,

Geoff
http://www.alpine-sports.com

Day 1

If you're the kind of person that spends their winters on the snow, you'll know the feeling you get right around the middle of September. I think its triggered by the first few clumps of leaves that start turning yellow in town here in Boulder. Its like that hungry feeling you get when you really, really want some of Grandma's home cookin', but all you have is the Boston Market down the street. Winter's coming, you can feel it.
A couple of days ago, the divide got upwards of 5 inches and the skiers and riders started coming out like ants at a picnic. After all week of hearing "Yo man, Breck got 5 inches" and "I think I'm gonna go with the Prophet 130s this year, my old 110s just won't keep me afloat anymore" I couldn't take it anymore.
I finished out my classes on Friday and rode home disappointed in the outlook for the weekend. Sure, there would be plenty of the like, totally awesome bars and the one dude's friend that said he was getting 3 or 4 kegs thing that goes on every weekend in Boulder; but the thought of the 48-hour parade of sorobots and stumbling football fans didn't bring the same grin to my face.
I crashed out on the couch, dejected and bored. It was a reverse Groundhog's Day...3 more weeks of summer because the marmot saw its shadow. As I lay there broken-hearted, salvation came in the form of a 5'11" bundle of radness that is my roomie and fellow Alpine Sporter, TJ.
"Lets go skiing," was the conclusion of the conversation, though how we arrived at that idea is still a little hazy. Within 15 minutes, a small accomplishment in itself, we loaded up the back of TJ's 4runner and were rockin' out to Pepper on 93-south out of town.
Another hour on the road and 30 on the trail brought us to the bottom of St. Mary's "glacier", a permanent snowfield caulking a valley on the shoulder of James Peak. The conditions were a step or two below epic, but it was skiable and it was a Friday afternoon in the middle of September. We bootpacked up around 400 vert to where the snow stopped and booted up and pushed off.
It was awesome. It was like one of those animations of sped up evolution. Man makes skis, man puts on skis, man slides on skis, man discovers edges, man discovers shredding. Foot high sastrugi made for a nice and crusty mogul feel. TJ was bombing down ahead of me, dropping his knee into the troughs workin' some mad tele steeze for all he was worth. I followed close after trying to channel some Wayne Wong into my Cabrawlers.
After about 200 feet of Wong Bangin' and heel-freeing we skidded to a stop above a sick ski width narrows that we would have to straight line to survive. We got a "nice" from some bystanders that boosted our courage enough to huck it. I led through the mank and TJ cleaned it up beautifully. Now 5 or 6 hop turns down a 40 degree slush pile to a cobblestone run out.
So far, it has been the best run of the year. And I certainly cured the feining for a couple of hours. We rolled back to Boulder with the windows down to celebrate numero uno in true Boulder style: a couple of beers, some yoga and house parties. Besides, "I went skiing today" is a great pick up line. Try it some time.

Days in the Mountains: 1

When in doubt, use you edges,

Geoff