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November Banter

George BM

By George BM,
in Mid Atlantic

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RDM

RDM

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, Bob Chill said:

The "earn your turns" lifestyle was my favorite. Yes, I loved inbound lift access skiing but the "religious" experience was getting a small group of friends together loaded with proper gear (avalanche transceivers most importantly) and just going for it. We'd plan descents for days. Waiting for the right weather/avalanche conditions and then nervously going for it when things were right. Hiking above 13k' is on a whole new level of cardio. Your heart would pound in your ears for hours and you learn how to speed up and slow down your pace so you didn't need to stop and catch your breath every 10 minutes. Took 3 years to get in really good shape. I no longer needed to stop for anything after a while. The first few years I always thought I was going to have a heart attack or something. lol. The really weird thing is that below 13k isn't too bad. Almost easy in a way. Once you cross 13k the whole atmosphere changes. 

When dropping into the descent it was always heart in throat. We used to draw straws for who went first. Out of 100s of descents I only witnessed one serious avalanche and nobody was caught in it. It was a sympathetic release thankfully. We were pretty smart for dumb guys. We had the gear and we dug our pits and didn't take too many big chances but it was always on your mind...

Bob,  

   Your pics and posts brought back many fond memories of skiing in the Alps, and other locations around the world, with a lot of backcountry mixed in.  I'm a die hard telemark skier - aka "pinhead".  Tried the long skinny skis in 1990 and never went back to alpine gear.  Really enjoy putting on the televators and skins and climbing beyond the lifts and noise of the slopes...  The off-piste options in the Alps are a hard-core skiers heaven.  You mentioned beacons...  When going off-piste you can tell how much your friends cared about YOU by the size of THEIR avalanche shovel!  Haven't skied much in recent years, but still have my dual freq beacon, Ramer poles that are also avalanche probes and other specialized gear.  

   Grew up skiing the hills in Ohio.  All 350 vertical feet of them!  Never skied in Colorado, nor much at all out west.  Skied Squall Valley a couple of times and it was disappointing.  The snow quality was good and they get tons of it.  However, the length of the runs and overall difficulty of the terrain was a letdown from the expected.  A black diamond at Squall would be an intermediate slope in the Alps, if that.  That may generate some responses, but it's all relative.

   For sheer snow volume and arguably snow quality, the western resorts in Japan on Honshu are hard to beat for snow depth and snow type.  There are places that get 70+ feet a year on average.  Zao for instance is known for its snow monsters, which are the snow covered tops of pine trees sticking out of the slopes.  They have absolutely incredible snow there, not just in depth but the type of snow is about as perfect as there is.  Light and dry, but not too light.  (Trying to ski on depth hoar is not that much fun IMO).  Enough substance to provide buoyancy, yet light enough to let you sink in to get that rolling action off your legs.  The challenges in Japan are the long lines and extremely high skier density.  That said, the Japanese are very hesitant to go off-piste and there's typically incredible snow just off the beaten path.  Naeba is a great location too.  Had the opportunity to telemark down Fuji san with two snowboarders (the mountain was officially closed at the time).  That was an incredible experience...

   If you (and other readers) ever get a chance to hit the Alps, you'll never forget it.  Collectively I had the good luck to spend 6 seasons in Europe.  Skied all over France, Germany (blah-skip it), Austria (great hosts and more laid back) and Switzerland (my main stomping grounds).  When it comes to sheer vertical and challenging runs many resorts in the Alps have much more vertical than any place in N. America.  In Zermatt you can ski 8500 feet of vertical in one run.  Yes, that's 2x the max vertical in N. America which is either Whistler or Jackson Hole who vie for the title.  Go to the top of the Klein Matterhorn at 13,500, ski down to town at 5000 feet and repeat and you've covered a full day and a hard day with some great slope side cuisine options along the way.  Can easily interlace on-piste and off-piste runs if you know where to go.  For those focused solely on the back-country experience the hut route from Zermatt to Sass Fee is a memorable experience.  If you go off-piste in Europe separate ski insurance is a must.  Being evacuated from an off-piste location is incredibly expensive.  

   Then there's the South Island of New Zealand.  Spent two weeks there heli-skiing when I lived in India.  The Kiwis are truly some of the kindest and most hospitable people you could ever hope to meet.  Not overly developed resorts, great back-country, reasonable heli-skiing options.  Just have to watch the high altitude parrots, which love hats and gloves (not joking, its a very real threat - haha).  Everyone there takes extra gloves and hats when they hit the slopes because it's not a matter of if you'll be the victim, it's when.  

   

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Jebman

Jebman

Posted
Posted
23 hours ago, RDM said:

Bob,  

   Your pics and posts brought back many fond memories of skiing in the Alps, and other locations around the world, with a lot of backcountry mixed in.  I'm a die hard telemark skier - aka "pinhead".  Tried the long skinny skis in 1990 and never went back to alpine gear.  Really enjoy putting on the televators and skins and climbing beyond the lifts and noise of the slopes...  The off-piste options in the Alps are a hard-core skiers heaven.  You mentioned beacons...  When going off-piste you can tell how much your friends cared about YOU by the size of THEIR avalanche shovel!  Haven't skied much in recent years, but still have my dual freq beacon, Ramer poles that are also avalanche probes and other specialized gear.  

   Grew up skiing the hills in Ohio.  All 350 vertical feet of them!  Never skied in Colorado, nor much at all out west.  Skied Squall Valley a couple of times and it was disappointing.  The snow quality was good and they get tons of it.  However, the length of the runs and overall difficulty of the terrain was a letdown from the expected.  A black diamond at Squall would be an intermediate slope in the Alps, if that.  That may generate some responses, but it's all relative.

   For sheer snow volume and arguably snow quality, the western resorts in Japan on Honshu are hard to beat for snow depth and snow type.  There are places that get 70+ feet a year on average.  Zao for instance is known for its snow monsters, which are the snow covered tops of pine trees sticking out of the slopes.  They have absolutely incredible snow there, not just in depth but the type of snow is about as perfect as there is.  Light and dry, but not too light.  (Trying to ski on depth hoar is not that much fun IMO).  Enough substance to provide buoyancy, yet light enough to let you sink in to get that rolling action off your legs.  The challenges in Japan are the long lines and extremely high skier density.  That said, the Japanese are very hesitant to go off-piste and there's typically incredible snow just off the beaten path.  Naeba is a great location too.  Had the opportunity to telemark down Fuji san with two snowboarders (the mountain was officially closed at the time).  That was an incredible experience...

   If you (and other readers) ever get a chance to hit the Alps, you'll never forget it.  Collectively I had the good luck to spend 6 seasons in Europe.  Skied all over France, Germany (blah-skip it), Austria (great hosts and more laid back) and Switzerland (my main stomping grounds).  When it comes to sheer vertical and challenging runs many resorts in the Alps have much more vertical than any place in N. America.  In Zermatt you can ski 8500 feet of vertical in one run.  Yes, that's 2x the max vertical in N. America which is either Whistler or Jackson Hole who vie for the title.  Go to the top of the Klein Matterhorn at 13,500, ski down to town at 5000 feet and repeat and you've covered a full day and a hard day with some great slope side cuisine options along the way.  Can easily interlace on-piste and off-piste runs if you know where to go.  For those focused solely on the back-country experience the hut route from Zermatt to Sass Fee is a memorable experience.  If you go off-piste in Europe separate ski insurance is a must.  Being evacuated from an off-piste location is incredibly expensive.  

   Then there's the South Island of New Zealand.  Spent two weeks there heli-skiing when I lived in India.  The Kiwis are truly some of the kindest and most hospitable people you could ever hope to meet.  Not overly developed resorts, great back-country, reasonable heli-skiing options.  Just have to watch the high altitude parrots, which love hats and gloves (not joking, its a very real threat - haha).  Everyone there takes extra gloves and hats when they hit the slopes because it's not a matter of if you'll be the victim, it's when.  

   

This.

Excellent post.

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RDM

RDM

Posted
Posted
8 minutes ago, Jebman said:

This.

Excellent post.

Thanks Jebman,  much appreciated.  Been fortunate in my travels around the world the last 30+ years to experience some of the most stark weather mother nature can muster.  The collective experiences only added fuel to life-long weenie wannabe aspirations.  Beyond experiencing the blizzard of 78 in the mid-west as a 17 year old, here's a few memorable examples:

3 meters of snow in 2 days in Saas Fee, Switzerland - yes you can have TOO MUCH SNOW.  The powder was so light under a thin crust it was impossible to ski.  Snowcats got stuck.  Took us 4 hours to ski down one short run.  Get on top of the crust from the sun the day before and it was sheer ice with no control.  Find a way to break through the crust and you were engulfed by many feet of snow so light it could not support you - like depth hoar.  I was lucky being on telemark skis that don't release.  Many lost their skis and w/o powder straps it was worthless to try and look for them.  A ton of people took off their skis and swam on their backs through the crust to get down.  Had to evacuate many with snow cats.  Some skiers were evacuated with helicopters.  Slopes were only open long enough to create chaos for several hundred poor souls.  Was a surreal experience I never want to have again. 

True white out conditions in Austria:  During a summer ski outing on the glacier in Hintertux, Austria our group experienced true white out conditions during a freak snow squall.  We saw it coming from miles away over the Alps, but thought nothing of it given the occasional flurries that day.  In less than 5 mins it went from partly cloudy, to light snow, to winds about 40mph and extreme snow.  My friends and I were only 15-20 feet apart and we could not even begin to see each other and barely hear each other.  After several moments I didn't realize I'd developed white-out vertigo and was falling over until my head hit the ground.  As an extreme tele-mark skier (at the time) I was at the expert level on pins and seen a lot.  Never encountered anything like that anyplace else.  All we could do was lay there until it passed.  It was over in about 20 mins, but only after dumping well over 6" and leaving carnage on the slopes.  It really freaked out a lot of people, especially those with summer ski attire.  Several Austrian ski teams were on the glacier that day training and they immediately called it a day...

Then there was the heat in India where I lived 3 years.  One summer we maxed out at 123F in Delhi after weeks of temps between 112 and 118.  Add the humidity when the monsoon rolled in and the heat index was way off the charts, which end around 140-150 or so.  Brutal is insufficient to describe it.  Had water holding tanks on the roof of my house that were fed from a cistern buried in the ground in the back yard (normal for Delhi).  Even in the early morning the ambient water temp in the tanks was much hotter than you could stand to shower in.  First thing you had to do was turn on the "cold" water in the shower and drain the holding tank enough to start the pump in the back yard to pump "cool" water into the holding tank from the cistern.  Took about 10 mins to cool the water enough to take a shower.  Repeat at least 2 times a day - sometimes 3 or 4.  They say it was a dry heat?  haha - nope.  Then the monsoons came and it would get even more uncomfortable.  - the only rain I've seen even close to the monsoons in India were the monsoons in Thailand.  Delhi would get many inches an hour for hour after hour...  The impact on infrastructure was an annual challenge.  On top of it, try to imagine a country the size of the USA east of the Mississippi with over 3X our population - that's India.  

Speaking of Thailand - the Thunderstorms and monsoon rains are some of the most electrifying imaginable.  Nearly constant lightening for hours on end.  And pouring rain, flooded streets, and shorted out power.  Electrocution is a very real danger there.  Plus, you had to really watch out walking around in the flooded streets because the manhole covers become dislodged and you can't see where the holes are.  It's not mere myth that some Thai simply disappear during monsoon to never be seen again. 

Then the aforementioned snows in Japan.  Truly magnificent landscape with start contrasts in terrain.  Can go from the plains and semi-green to mountains and tons of snow in a few miles in some locations.  Naeba is pretty cool.  Tons of snow, but no issues in town with snow removal.  The entire downtown area is interlaced with perforated rubber hoses that leak hot spring mineral water to constantly melt the snow.  You get used to the putrid rotten egg smell in a few hours, but it works.  Go just outside of town and they don't hardly mess with snow plows.  No place to push it.  Everything is blown to the extent some of the nearby passes the snow is so high they often can't keep the roads open because the blowers can't chuck it high enough to get the thrown above the snow banks.  It's surreal to drive through a narrow gully of snow 60 feet high...  

If we ever get anything worthwhile here, we'll all get out and have a group Jebwalk in your honor.  Hope all is going well for you in TX...

 

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H2O

H2O

Posted
Posted
16 minutes ago, Round Hill WX said:

SCUD and Chuck(Afewuniversesbelow). Just awful and I wonder if they are one in the same?

Who knows.  I'm just glad it wasn't me that got the ignore hammer.  Mappy I would understand.  Or Bob Chill.  Like they know anything.  :devilsmiley:

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mappy

mappy

Posted
Posted
22 minutes ago, H2O said:

Who knows.  I'm just glad it wasn't me that got the ignore hammer.  Mappy I would understand.  Or Bob Chill.  Like they know anything.  :devilsmiley:

it would not surprise me in the least to find out that many have me on ignore. 

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