Monday, April 28, 2008

Climbing up a big mountain without a lift


I like big lifts. That's one thing I learned this last week. I like Mt. Shasta. That's something I already knew. Right now there are no big lifts open on Mt. Shasta so what's a boy to do if he still wants to ski? The answer for many is to ski up and then ski back down. I had never tried this Backcountry skiing business, but I had some thoughts about it. I figured that it is sort of a "pay to play" plan. Work a bit more for your vertical but basically the same sport. Brian is a backcountry skier in addition to his alpine skills. He has been trying to entice me into giving it a try. Last week it all came together. Time to pay for a little play!

Brian, his father Pedro, Rich Meyer of Shasta Mountain Guides (https://shast7.sslcert19.com/node/60) and myself all met Thursday morning to do some skiing on the really big hill. Between Brian and Rich, I was set up with skis that had Randonne bindings and skins to allow me to walk uphill and then convert them back to Alpine style and ski down. My pack had an avalanche beacon and a probe as well. Some food, a variety of clothing layers, water, eye protection and the like were brought along by all. We started up at about 8am.

There had been a welcome snowfall of about a foot Wednesday and so we would be skiing fresh
powder. Excellent! Only a few cars were in the Bunny Flat parking area. With the fresh powder everyone on the mountain knew where everyone else was going by simply following their trails going up. Rich chose to deviate from the main trail towards Helen Lake and get fresh tracks on a few bowls called Powder Bowl and Sun bowl. Off we went.

I have seen people using randonee gear many times and it looked pretty easy. In the end it was more challenging than I expected. I felt very clumsy at first and medium clumsy even after a day of practice. I went through overheating at times, being chilly at others. I got a bit altitude sick. I pushed myself to exhaustion climbing in the the thin air. In the steeper sections it became 20 yards and stop to breath, then 20 more yards and stop to breath. After about 5 hours we had achieved our first goal. We were now overlooking Sun Bowl so we took a break for some food. After lunch the others climbed more to do Powder Bowl. Me? I took a nap. We met back up in about an hour and began our decent back to the car.

How glorious it was! Fresh tracks the whole way. A nice bowl shot followed by easy skiing through trees and meadows. Unfortunately our trail ran back to the parking lot in what seemed like just a few minutes. I was just getting warmed up and the skiing was over! We milled around for a bit by the cars and got to look back up and see our tracks in the bowls. Pedro even thought to bring binoculars so we could really get a good view. Pretty cool to see your ski tracks from this perspective. After a burger in town we headed back south towards Berkeley.

At the end of the day I reflected upon our adventure and decided that while it was fun, it was a lot of effort for the return you got. Five hours of climbing to get one ski run seemed like too steep a price to pay. I wasn't sure if I would want to go again or not.

Over the next few days however, my perspective changed. I didn't think as much about the short decent but about the bigger picture. The climb as a separate component for instance. The climb was hard for any fitness level. My fitness level made it brutal. Like any other endurance sport, hard work and practice would ease this part of the day. If I could climb with less fatigue, I could get higher up the mountain in the same time frame. If I could get higher up, I could ski farther on the way down. There were lots of great lines to ski on the mountain visible from Bunny Flat, and certainly many more from other access areas. Picking them off one at a time would be fun. Lighter gear would help too. I both dreamed and daydreamed over the next few days about doing the trip again. The dreams were not about the decent but of the climb. Pushing myself and enjoying the outdoors are both a big part of my life and this was actually an awesome combination of the two. I even found myself considering staying up at Shasta for a week or two and doing multiple acents to see how far up I could go in one day after acclimating to the altitude. I thought of one day seeing my own ski tracks from the very top in the binoculars. I was getting hooked,

I like big lifts, but I enjoy backcountry skiing as well. I think in the end I will go back to Shasta. Maybe this year, maybe not, but I will be back. Next time I will go higher than sun bowl.
Special thank's to Rich Meyer for his time and expertise. Rich is a great guy in addition to being a hard core backcountry guide. Rich works for NASTC (http://www.skinastc.com/) as their backcountry expert in addition to his Shasta gig (which has taken him to the summit over 80 times). He has also worked in Alaska and South America. If you are interested in doing a trip you can email Rich at richmeyer555@hotmail.com.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Skiing with a Hart on...


Sorry for the off color title today. Couldn't resist. Wednesday Brian and I skied Sugar Bowl. The goal of the day was to take a good look at Hart skis hence the bad title pun. Hart skis you ask? Yes, Hart skis. Started in 1943 by Hartvig “Hart” Holmberg in Minnesota. Hart had been a force in the US ski industry and peaked in the freestyle ski era of the late 70's and early 80's.. In particular you may remember the Javelin model or images of Billy Kidd or Susie Chaffee (if you are old enough) on Hart skis. The companies ownership changed hands at some point however and US distribution subsided or went away completely for some years. Until now. The next chapter of the Hart story puts ownership in the hands of the grandson of Hart Holmberg and the headquarters are back in the USA. Current production is in Italy and all the skis are hand made and hand finished. Plans are on the table to move production back to the US in Minden Nevada (just over the hill from Heavenly Valley). Interesting. Another Stockli perhaps? A US built Stockli in a few years? We went to Sugar Bowl to find out!
We met Eric, the local Hart rep at 10:00. Erik is a good guy. We enjoyed our time with him. Nice guy and fun to ski with. He has come on board as the West Coast representitive and has only been at it for a few months. Eric doesn't have all the answers yet but he was honest when he wasn't sure of things. Eric had four skis for us to try. A 63 waisted model called the Attack, a 67 waisted Phoenix, an 86 waisted Fuelie Scarab and a 91 waisted Fuelie Boss. These were 07/08 models and there would be changes for next year including a change to bamboo for the cores. Prices would go down a bit from this year but we are still talking about $1000 skis. Expensive but worth it? Click in to the Markers and let's go see! I am not going to do a full review here but overall the skis were good. Not mind blowing, but good. We had taken a Palmer, a Fischer race ski, a Stockli Stormrider XL and a Head iM78 to use as comparison skis. The Head and the Stockli stayed in the car as there was no competing Harts available. The Fischer and certainly the Palmer were more exciting than the Harts overall. I would rate the Harts a shade below excellent. The jury is still out however. There were some questions about the tune and set up of the Harts that I would like to check into more. There are also a few models that were not there to ski that we will pick up and take to Mammoth. I also see the line changing and evolving over the next few years- particularly if they make the move to Nevada. I like the idea of precision skis with a traditional bent being made in the US. There are currently a number of new US makers that all seem to have a "big mountain" only mentality. Hart does race, freestyle, and all mountain models. I am not ready to load up the ski wall with Hart models just yet but I would love to be on board from the beginning if Hart can achieve it's goals over the next decade. Mammoth will tell all. At the price point we need to find a ski that can compete at the Stockli level of excellence to be able to sell them effectively. It will be fun to find out!
For more information on Hart, you can visit their website at: http://www.hartskis.com/home.php

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Final Exams are like Clearance Sales?


We have a closing date now. May 11 will be the last regular retail day of the year. The days at work are different now. The end of the road is in sight and there is a tendency to just relax and wait. "Dudeman" has it about right in the photo to the left. Customer pressure is low so there is plenty of time to do nothing if that is ones choice. Instead of doing nothing we should be staying hard at it so that we have less to do in late May after we are technically closed. To keep motivated we are running an advertised sale from the 25th till the last day. This means pricing all the inventory, creating sale tags and doing all the merchandising. It is also a good excuse to schedule everybody for the weekend of the 25th and 26th and have an end of the year dinner the evening of the 25th. It should be fun. I expect to sell a lot of gear and the prices really are going to be down and dirty so the customers will be excited too!

In the meantime in addition to sale preparations, we continue to do inventory counts and the shop is starting to do the yearly maintenance on the rental fleet. Martin added some machinery that speeds up the waxing process for rentals and it maintains a bath of melted wax which makes the shop smell good! End of season tune ups are the main labor request at this point, but many are still at it and coming in for spring snow wax jobs. Todd's last official day was Saturday. His wife Ashley is doing job training on the East Coast for a few weeks so he is Mr. Mom until she is back. So it's mainly John, Martin and myself holding down the fort and everyone else has lost their work hours until the sale starts. Brian still comes by most days to work on his "frankenboot" project, and Christian, JJ, and others come by just to hang out for a bit. All in all it's kinda like the end of senior year of High School. It will all be over soon, there is not a lot of pressure to work too hard, final exams (or clearance sales) are upcoming but overall the hard work is done and we are just enjoying our final days together before we do what we do in the summer.