The Views That Could Have Been
· Mar 5, 06:06 AM
Yesterday afternoon, in an effort to escape the clouds and rain of our mountainside home, a few of us took a field trip down to Chambery. We spent a few hours walking around the old city. We saw at least some of the tourist sites, including the Cathedral, the residence of the Dukes of Savoie (not to be confused with Le Château) and the (former) residence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We sampled the sweets from a few bakeries, and I learned that local banks won’t turn Francs into Euros unless you are a client. I am not a client. I still have my Swiss Francs – which aren’t very useful here.
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Hello Silver Star (Take 2).
· Dec 8, 08:56 PM
We’re back. And I’m excited. Very excited. After two weeks in Montana we made the two day drive across the border and I’m again settling into a condo on the Knoll at Silver Star (if it sounds fancy and resorty, that’s because it is). Yesterday’s drive (Bozeman to Spokane) was smooth sailing – 400 miles and 6 hours of I-90. Today wasn’t particularly hard, but it just didn’t go as fast. Between crossing the border (3 minutes) and shopping for food in Vernon (more than 3 minutes), it took somewhere between 7 and 8 hours to get up here, but we still made it in time for an evening ski.
Two Weeks
· Nov 11, 08:43 PM
What a difference a week makes. When I left, we were seeing highs around 50, clear skies and snow up around 8000 feet – really, quite nice for October. Now, we’re looking at winter. There are 18 inches (and counting) up at Bachelor. “Tumalo Langlauf Club”: is getting after the grooming on Century, which means my appeals for a groomer have been answered. There’s not too much else to ask for right now. Well, “snow in West Yellowstone”: sure would be nice.
Faking Photos
· Nov 6, 05:30 PM
And now… pictures!
Silver Star Day 1
· Nov 3, 09:16 PM
When Marshall and I decided to come up here on Wednesday there was more than a foot of snow on Main Street and perfect tracks pretty much everywhere. Since then late October and early November has happened. There’s been some melting, some transforming and 16 inches has turned into about 6 or 7. But, that’s still 6 or 7 more than just about anywhere other trail system has in North America right now. So I’ll take it.
We skied at Sovereign Lakes this morning and Silver Star this afternoon. The conditions at Sovereign were significantly better than they were for the first round of Nor-Ams last year. The track is rock-hard but it was covered with a dusting of fresh snow, which made kicking pretty easy. It would have been good if someone, anyone really (we’re staying with Kuzzy and Liebsch), had brought some binder – but I guess we can buy some if it really becomes necessary.
One thing I didn’t consider when we decided to come up here was that we’re still 7 weeks away from the equinox. That’s like mid-February style sun. It packs some punch. Hopefully we won’t end up on rock skis, but even if we do I’ll be okay with it. Real skiing on November 3rd (Happy Birthday Marshall) is not a bad way to start the season.
Kuzzy took some pictures.
Groomer(s) Wanted
· Oct 27, 08:01 PM
The ideal candidate will have experience making good skiing (classic or skating) with less than 12” of snow on unfrozen ground. The option may exist to groom on smooth, road-quality grades, which would make the production of good tracks much easier. Must provide own grooming equipment (snowmobile and track sled recommended). Borrowing said equipment under a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy may be an option. There will be no financial compensation, though you will build up lots of good karma. It’s imperative that the groomer can start tomorrow, as these conditions may only exist for a few days.
In all seriousness, things are starting to look pretty promising for an early winter. There’s about a foot of snow up at Bachelor right now, and unlike the first snow of the year there’s not a lot of warm sunny days in the forecast. Of course it might all get rained away by this weekend, but I hope not. Either way, I’m hopeful that if there’s this much snow (or more – there’s still hope!) in 10 days, the groomers up at the mountain might start driving around. That would be great, because I already had my hack-around-on-rock-skis-without-it-really-being-training day, and I don’t really need another. But it would be pretty awesome to be on snow actually skiing before West. It sure worked for APU last year!
Corvallis Camp
· Oct 12, 04:36 PM
I have a couple of complaints about our camp this weekend in Corvallis. 1. The OSU/Stanford game was at 4pm on Saturday which made it impossible to train twice and go to the game. I chose training. 2. I got a little poison ivy (or oak or sumak) on my legs. Beyond that it was fantastic. We had perfect weather, a sweet house and some really good training. I would have been happy to have camp continue on into this week.
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