Visions: the MG preseason psych from one ski bum to another
What's new (and what you forgot you knew) in the Rockies for the 07-08 ski & snowboard season
By Wayne SheldrakeOkay, maybe you don’t think you are a ski bum, but we think you are (or at least we think you want to be).
Doubt it? Here are three ways to test yourself. If any one is true, you’re a ski bum by MG standards. And, therefore, you will find this little on-slope compilation handy.
#1) Read the sampling of what’s up in the Rockies for this season below and see if you don’t find yourself fantasizing about dropping out, tuning in your boards and turning on to runs like you’ve never had before.
#2) Somewhere around the Grand Targhee and Jackson Hole listings, you may find yourself plotting your finances in order to rationalize the season pass you know you are going to buy, even if it means refinancing the house and/or declaring bankruptcy.
#3) This epigraph will sound like something you might have written about yourself:
I’ve lived my whole life with the sense that something particularly fine was about to happen to me—something that would solve all my problems and make life simple and clear. My earliest memories are filled with visions of this simplicity and clarity. Even when the path ahead seemed tangled and dark, I felt the promise of a full future and I knew that all I had to do was wait. Thus, everything I’ve ever done was temporary, part-time—what I had to do until the expected came to pass. I never had to wait long. I always got what I wanted, because what I was waiting for came once a year, every year: winter.
At the instant the first September cold front crosses Colorado, I can’t think straight. The coming of winter has profound overtones. As with no other season and no other experience, except perhaps sex, it distorts my grasp of reality. In winter, my fantasies seem profoundly real. The unstable structures of the season collapse on my psyche, and the rest is a slide away from normal life toward a dreamy neverland. In winter it’s easy to give up on everything, everything I’ve planned, everything I’ve accomplished, everything I believe. In the face of the first snowflake, I see the face of God, and in those that follow lesser but infinite gods, bringing mundane existence to a freezing halt, and I feel convincingly that I’ve arrived in exactly the place at exactly the time I was meant to be.
Like gout, my raison d’ etre swells again. I have numbness in my upper thighs. The micro-fibers of my calves twitch. My coccyx tightens like a mealworm. My feet become achy and distended. My forehead is lacquered with sweat while the eave of my brain stem drips with icicles. I hallucinate. The bed sheets are infested with spiders. My memory fixates on distorted visions, like a damaged DVD’s broken digital images graphing the screen into calico. The blank squares of the malfunction flood with a crossword puzzle of flashbacks.
Why not live this way? Wait, for what comes. “Deal with brute nature,” as Thoreau said. “Be cold and hungry and weary.” Make up your own names for each type of snow you ski, as the French, in the midst of revolution, made a name for each day. Wait!—I say—for nothing is finer than the arrival of what you have always been waiting for.
— Excerpt from my recently released book, “Instant Karma, the Heart and Soul of a Ski Bum”
Big Sky, Montana
Put on your Big Pants. Load your Big Skis. Bring your Big Mamma. Home of the first triple chair lift in the world (1963), these guys committed to big when they put in 13 new lifts between 1988 and 1989. They’ve added yet another this year. The new Dakota triple lift on Lone Peak opens up another 212 acres of black-diamond glades and intermediate bowls. Big means big. Big means chutes, bowls, tree skiing, groomers, whatever. Big means less crowded. Hey, it’s Montana; the entire state has less population than a high rise in the Bronx. 4,350 feet of vertical and 3,350 acres gets even bigger and even less crowded if you decide to climb Lone Peak and ski over to Moonlight Basin, where there’s another 1,900 acres of lift-served skiing. They need every inch of the 400 inches per year they get just to cover this place, but they still have a family-owned attitude, and price. All-day tickets are only $40. www.bigskyresort.com
Whitefish, Montana
For 20 million dollars, the mountain formerly known as Big Mountain has two new express lifts. One goes from the base of the mountain to the top, covering 2,353 feet of vertical. One’s an old lift that was upgraded to high-speed. The rest of the lifts aren’t as fast, which is good when you’re there and a couple feet of the 300 inches or so of snow they get every year is falling. It doesn’t get skied up so fast. By the way, the mountain didn’t change its name because it got smaller. There’s still 3,000 acres of plenty to go round. It’s just that Big Sky was getting so big something had to be done on the nomenclature front. For all you repeat offenders, you can get there by Amtrak. www.bigmtn.com
Sun Valley, Idaho
Ask not for whom Baldy Mountain tolls; SV’s 3,400-feet of vertical and some of the sunniest bowls in North America tolls for thee (and Bruce and Demi). Remember, this is where the idea of the destination ski area was born and destined for it were the likes of Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper and Bing Crosby, not to mention Ol’ Papa himself. I get a little nervous when a ski area stars new snow-making and new lifts on premium beginner terrain (Dollar Mountain), while I can’t find the average annual snowfall on their website, give them credit for committing to early season, when you’ll ski on just about anything anyway. There is a new Superpipe, 425 feet long. Bring your pitons, your carabiners and your Errol Flynn rope skills. The walls are 18 feet high. Might be your best chance for a good hair day on the slopes. They say it’s the least-windy ski area in America. www.sunvalley.com
Tamarack, Idaho
“The nation’s newest destination resort,” they say. 300 inches of snowfall. 2,800 vertical. 1,100 acres, plus 5,000 acres of backcountry. East-facing slope, minimum wind, maximum snow retention. Diverse terrain: glades, steeps, cornices and cruisers. 41 runs, 7 lifts, including 3 high-speed quads. Limit of 2,000 skiers per day. I’m plugging the place because my favorite ski bum emeritus lives in a waterfront teepee on Lake Cascade and he just got his first cell phone and he keeps calling me in the middle of the night to get up there before everyone finds out about it.
www.tamarakidaho.com
Grand Targhee, Wyoming
I don’t think Bing Crosby skied here. 70-percent of the mountain is rated “difficult.” If you ski Peaked Mountain, it’s 2,419 feet of 85-percent difficult served by a high-speed quads. Oh, and they get over 500 inches of snow annually at 5-percent water content. (That’s superfreak lite.) If you hit it on a bad day, they’ll give you a “Snow Check” for another ticket on any other day of the season. Is there a better reason to quit your job, get divorced, start drinking again and do what you know you were meant for? Add this for incentive: new employee housing. Embrace you inner ski bum, dude. (I’m leaving right now.) www.grandtarghee.com
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
What does say about a place if the avalanche probe and Croakies were invented there? I’ll help you. It means your sunglasses could fall off before or after you die. They name gullies, ditches, couloirs, crags, chutes, cornices and ridges here after really ballsy (and some really stupid) people and their near-death experiences. (I’m afraid if I do go, they’re going to end up naming something after me.) Think Wild West. John Wayne’s first speaking part was in “The Big Trail”, filmed in Jackson Hole in 1932. Think self-sufficient, rugged-individualism. Way back in the day, kids here replaced the bases of their skis with melted down phonograph records. You’re allowed to ski anything you see, including what you can hike to. (You’ll be able to see a lot when a new 100 passenger tram opens in December 2008.) Jean-Claude Killy said, “If there is a better ski mountain in U.S., I haven’t skied it.” He lived. Snowfall: 469 inches. Vertical: 4,139. Acres: 2,500.
www.jacksonhole.com
Snowbird, Utah
A member of the illustrious and exclusive 500-inch snowfall club, Snowbird is the only place I know that has a lift in a tunnel. Some people will get technical to squeeze out a little extra vertical (3,240), and a technical upgrade on the aerial tram squeezes 2,900 of vertical into a six-minute conveyance this season. There’s a new Superpipe (above ground) and SB carries on with a commitment to jibsters. (Thought I’d mention it since no one else went out of their way to say so.) For all you steep-and-deepers, check into the free Rescue Training Center, which simulates avalanche rescue with virtual “victims.” www.snowbird.com
Alta, Utah
You can’t really tell if there’s anything new going on at Alta. I hope not. 638 inches of snow last year — I’ll take that same old same old to Judgment Day. The joint comes so universally and so highly recommended, you should just go there. I am (on my way to Targhee). www.alta.com
Crested Butte, Colorado
You’re going here for the Extreme Limits Terrain, so invest in the “Extreme Limits Ski Guide” ($5) and remember there is “no substitute for good judgment and expert skiing ability.” (Tip: The ELT gets really good when the base gets up around 60 inches.) This is one of the great places to get away from chairlifts while having the advantages of them. The Butte got new owners a couple of years ago, people who actually dig skiing, which translated to improvements on the mountain. Among the best was the replacement of the East River Lift with a high-speed quad. The lines used to pack up back there, and it’s the only way out from some of the more-remote bowls, glades, cliffs and gullies. I hear CB has a new Winch Cat. (It’s rumored you can groom super-steep stuff with one of those.) By the way, if you know an adaptive athlete who wants to get into skiing, CB hosts one of the nation’s marquee programs. www.skicb.com
Winter Park/Mary Jane, Colorado
In case you’ve fallen behind in the maddening and ever-specialized competition for HIGHEST-CHAIRLIFT-IN-NORTH AMERICA!, Mary Jane has one of them. They have North America’s highest high-speed six person chairlift, aptly named the Panoramic Express, which is (also aptly) powered by renewable wind energy. What used to be an eleven-minute ride to the top is now seven. Of course, since it is a six person, you won’t be the only one unloading at 12,060 feet. Fret not. The crowd will thin out fast. There are 1,123 acres of terrain devoted to that sprawling view. That’s part of the character of the rest of WP/MJ, too. The 3,060 acre sprawl (plus another 1,212 off-piste acres) absorbs and disperses crowds. www.skiwinterpark.com
Vail, Colorado
Big time—if you’re at Vail, you’re making it. At Vail, your heaven will be a Big Ski Heaven and you will pray to the Big Ski God and get 348 inches of annual snowfall, 3,450 in vertical and 5,289 acres in return. Yup, bigger than Big Sky. On an average day, there are only two skiers per acre, on a busy day, four. (True.) And most of them will be concentrated on the chairlifts, so that means you won’t have to share the slopes with anyone, right? (Maybe not true.) The Highline and Sourdough lifts are upgraded to high-speed quads. Both make the ride to China Bowl and Blue Sky Basin faster and you’ll only have seven minutes to recover from your seven-minute non-stop bumpers on Highline run. Like everything at Vail now, they run on purchased wind power. What you really want to know is how much for heated parking this year? I checked: Non-heated, $18 for 5 to 24 hours. (Tip: by some odd machination of the Butterfly effect, Vail gets better-than-average snowfall in January.) www.vail.snow.com
Durango Mountain Resort (Purgatory), Colorado
Purgatory changed its name a few years back to Durango Mountain Resort, but everyone who skis there kept calling it Purgatory. Rather than change the name back again, it goes by both names now. I guess it saved on new letterhead and a logo, but everyone still calls it Purgatory. They have something new you’ve never heard of, a Beacon Park. The Beacon Park, according to Director of PR Loryn Kasten, “is free to any guest with a lift ticket. The park will feature 13 buried beacons. Guests can bring their own gear and test their beacon skills, learn how to use the equipment properly and prepare for the backcountry. Purgatory (see, even she calls it Purgatory) is home to the largest snow cat operation in the lower 48 states, which has 35,000 acres of terrain available. Plus, we are neighbors with Silverton, where beacons are mandatory.” Vertical 2,029. Snowfall 260. Acres 1,200.www.durangomountainresort.com
Wolf Creek, Colorado
What’s new at Wolf Creek is what’s not new. The clumsily Texas-proposed mega-village isn’t happening, not for a while anyway. The big shot developer had some legal problems with the details — like those pesky state permits and year-round road access. After several years of botching, the courts have asked him to start over and actually follow a legal plan. This leaves the ski area to its family ownership — as we prefer it — and their comfy Little-Big-Wolf approach: only five chairs and less than 2,000 vertical, but 1,600 acres and 465 inches annual snowfall. The weekend and holiday crowds boost every year, but “Locals’ Appreciation” discounts ($27) are the best reason to miss work on a Wednesday, especially since you don’t really have to be a local. Just show up. (Better take Tuesday off, too; it’s a million miles from anywhere.)
www.wolfcreekski.com
Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico
“TVS remains one of the few family owned and operated resorts in North America. To this day it is still run by the founder’s children and grandchildren. Because of this long tradition, no other ski resort can make you feel as welcome.” That is, as long as you aren’t a snowboarder. Despite a persisting “Free Taos” movement, Taos remains “100-percent snowboard free.” It helps if you dig steep stuff, too. The best of their 305 inches of snowfall comes from mid-February to spring. A vertical of 3,274 feet includes the hike up 12,841 foot Kachina Peak. (Yes, do that.) For Best-Skiing-For-Shortest-Hike take Reforma Chair to the West Basin Ridge and drop in on any of a dozen BYOB (Bring Your own Balls) walls. Catch TVS with a base of 80 inches or more, and it’s all skiable. www.skitaos.org
Frequent contributor Wayne Sheldrake’s book, “Instant Karma: The Heart and soul of a Ski Bum,” was just released by Ghost Road Press. He lives in Del Norte, Colo.
