Category: RecSports

And so it ends?

Could it be? Did I pull my skis out of my truck for the last time this season? Dude, it’s the middle of April, and it hardly snowed this year. The winter that barely started is coming to a definite close. Some areas have been closed a month already, the last few will be closing after next weekend.

My brother and I sent the season out packing with a bang though. I picked him up at the Seattle airport Thursday morning, and we drove up into British Columbia. It seems the closest place to the border (Apex) closed already, and none of the others do night skiing anymore. We made it to SilverStar by about 4:30pm, then turned back to town where we stayed at a Super-8. I bought a medium pizza at Little Caesars for $5 Canadian (came to about USD$4.38), and my brother got a 6pk of some frenchie beer for dinner. Flipping through the channels, I made sure to stop on MuchMusic for a few minutes (even though it was some random rap video), to spite Justin.

Awake at 7:30am I jump in the shower, grab by continental breakfast (read: toast… no fruit, no cereal, no waffles, just toast and juice or coffee), and we’re on our way back to SilverStar. Snow conditions were very icy, but I enjoyed myself, as I’m from Minnesota, and grew up skiing on icy snow. Things loosened up a bit, after finding a patch of powder for a run or 2, we decide to head to Big White at about 11:30. We had “free” tickets to both these places (plus Apex and SunPeaks), but SilverStar and Big White are under the same management or something, so we only needed the one ticket for the day. We were driving in the clouds and snow for about half the drive up there, and the snow was excellent. We skied until close.

Then we figured we could either ski for maybe 2 hours at SunPeaks on Saturday (and risk my brother missing his flight if traffic was bad or something), or ski all day somewhere in Washington. We decided to take the full day of skiing. Neither of us really making a decision, we ended up at The Summit at Snoqualmie, and skied Alpental all morning (they have like 4 sections of ski area, Alpental is across the highway, has more advanced terrain, and had more snow, yay). Then around 2ish we drove around to Summit West and dodged the people and rocks for a couple runs.

We went to a bar in Seattle and each got a brew and some munchies before I dropped my brother off at the airport. Then I had to make the decision if I wanted to ski solo today. I did drive to Crystal Mountain, and slept for several hours in the parking lot, and decided about 4am that I would rather ski that place during a good snow year with better condititions.

So here I sit. At home. With people bugging me to blog more often.

My final count on the year: 20 days skiing, 11 ski resorts (Hoodoo, Willamette, AnthonyLakes, Bogus, Bachelor, Targhee (Cat ski), Tamarack, Meadows, SilverStar, BigWhite, Snoqualmie) in 4 states and 1 province (OR, ID, WA, WY, BC). Not bad for a shitty snow year. I’m trying to find my count from last year to compare, but this blog doesn’t go back that far. Stay tuned. [edit (9:23pm): Last year I only got 16 days of skiing at 6 ski areas in 4 states. I quote from my final skiing entry of last season, on April 1 2004: “Not too shabby considering my season pass was in a diffeent state, and I’m a college student without a lot of money.”] Also, it looks like I may be participating in the alpine leg of a Pole-Pedal-Paddle competition next month, I sure am looking forward to it if I am indeed competing.

Aside from all that skiing stuff, I’m pulling together a waterski club sport team this year at UO. Woohoo!!

Some links:
No more cookies for Cookie Monster
Master of Penguins?
Ye search mecha?
Cheap ink.

Ouch.

Well I’ll try taking a crack at this blogging events when they happen thing. Even though I’ve already mentioned this to several people.

Today I was up skiing at Hoodoo (with my skiing class). Towards the end of the day, I was skiing along, just got out of some bumps, picking up speed… I look down and noticed my left ski had fallen off. So the only way I could think of to stop was crash, and crash I did. As I was getting up, I realize my wrist hurts a little. Anyways, if anything was wrong with it, I didn’t want to know, so I skied a few more runs. We went in, and I got all my gear off, then went to the Ski Patrol building to have it looked at. The Ski Patroller didn’t think it was broken, likely sprained. Wrapped it up, gave me a baggie of snow to keep it cold, and said if it didn’t feel better by morning to go see a doctor.

Typing is less than fun, but I think I’m managing ok. Tomorrow morning will be more telling though.

[editor’s note: I couldn’t find an appropriate graphic for this post, hopefully I’ll find something for that soon]

Skifest 2005 Redux

Skifest 2005: Episode II kicked off a little over a week ago. I was running a little late for catching the bus for my skiing class, so I decided to make the drive and extend the trip by nearly a thousand miles (I had been thinking of doing so all week, but I sortof made an impulse decision to actually do it). I called Grand Targhee and reserved a spot on the CatSkiing trip for Sunday the 20th. Drove to Hoodoo and went skiing for the day, had my lesson (blah!), and continued driving.

I’ll say I got a traffic ticket which I fully intend to fight, as I don’t feel I did anything wrong. Got to Boise around midnight and slept a bit. Hung around my brother’s house most of Friday morning until early afternoon (I knew there was now new snow at the ski hill, and I have a hard time skiing for extremely long periods of time alone anyways). Headed up towards Bogus and picked up my [$199] 05-06 season pass at the office along the way. Skied for 4-5 hours and made my way back into town. On my way through town, I saw the bar I left my debit card at (during MLK weekend), so I stopped to grab it and found a pizza shop not far away to grab some dinner (and lunch for the following day).

When I went to bed, I was fully intending on going skiing Saturday at Bogus again, but I woke up later than I expected, and felt I should really change my oil before the next leg of my journey. So I went to Schucks and picked up a case of oil, a filter, a drain bucket, and an air filter (realized I was due to change that anyways, and they had a deal when you bought both Fram air and oil filters). By the time I was done with this and packing up my ski stuff, I was still and hour late taking off, and I was on my way to Wyoming.

My brother had some friends renting a house about 30-45 minutes from the ski hill, and arranged for me to stay with them over night (as I had to be at the mountain by 8:30am). I got there, and they were a little soupy and playing Cranium. They asked me to play but I wasn’t much help. I ate my frozen lasagna and drank a beer and got to bed.

I woke up 30 minutes before I was planning to leave which was more than adequate, people were starting to wake up anyways. Lisa called up to the ski hill and there was TEN inches of fresh pow up there. I clicked into 4wd and drove up there, signed my release form and got dressed in the parking lot. Met everyone on the trip and we were off to cut the rope with the guides (who are also ski patrollers). The skiing was INCREDIBLE!! Snow was knee deep at spots, most of the runs we made were quite long. I’ve even got pictures!! They served us a nice hot lunch in the tent, chicken fajitas, rice and salad. At the end of the day there was stale grape juice and cheese (I’m not a huge wine fan). After it was all over, I drove back to Boise thinking I would ski on Monday, but that wasn’t the case. Monday I ran some errands with Pete and the kids, and left for Eugene in the early afternoon.

Skifest 2005 Part 2: Skied 3 states in 4 days, nearly 2000 miles on my truck.

Stay tuned for another installment of Skifest 2005 over spring break!!