End of summer thoughts

I lost a good one this summer. Todd has moved to Maine. His wife Ashly is in the Coast Guard and she has been relocated so off they went. It should be a good move for them. Maine is a slower pace and they were looking for that to settle down and raise their kids. If they love it there, Ashly will not re-enlist and they will stay. Losing one of my employees is always rough. Everyone can be replaced they say, and I guess this is true. But it is never the same. Just as good maybe but never the same. I miss Todd already and his family too. My wife and daughters baby sat for them quite a bit and all three were in tears saying good bye to the Thomas family. Todds presence will be missed around the shop as well. Todd is a great guy and worked into our shop dynamic in a special and unique way. We all wish them the best!

Well, on August 1st my summer officially ends. Shipments start coming, and preperation for the big Fall Parking Lot Sale are in full swing. The store upgrades are just about done. The carpet is in and the entry way has paint drying as I write this. A few more precious days to golf, ride and play and then it all ends. Tonight is a BBQ with sand volleyball. I will appreciate it all the more. Martin is up at Mt. Hood training and racing. The master class kicks off their season pretty darn early and Martin hopes to pick up points so he can go into the winter as the leader in his age group. John and I offered to go up with him and be his personal ski techs. He must have thought we were joking however because he took off on Tuesday without letting us know. Maybe he thinks his skis will be faster if he doesn't let us mess with them!

I got an email from Yelp! last week. This is a site that consumers can go on to rate businesses. I looks like our ratings have been great so they sent me a little packet with some stickers and other promotional dodads. I guess if your average rating is above a certain level, you get this package. I was thrilled to check out the reviews and want anyone that has contributed to them to know that I love ya for it! Thanks! If anyone else cares to add a review I'll love you too!

Sale dates are August 23,24 and August 30, 31 and September 1, 6, 7. Hope to see you there!

Summer Time and the living is easy

Skis lean against a cabin with no snow. It can be done. Skiing is still out there. I'm not. Too much effort. Neil has been going to Mt. Hood. Brian is already up there- fighting fires. Except that as of the 15th there had been no action in the fire business so he was splitting his time between skiing and Mountain Biking.

John is in Hawaii (not skiing). Me? Tentative plans to hit Hood late July but so far nothing epic as far as skiing is concerned. I have graduated a daughter from high school (Rebecca-above). You may know her from the store. We then spent a few days in Chico for her freshman orientation (the best part was shad fishing the Sacramento river- we killed it!). Graduation week means Friends, family, parties. My dad was out from Colorado for a week or so. Graduation means good times! This took us through the middle of June.

Now I have ramped up the golf and bike outings and have been working at the shop about 15 hours a week. I'm chipping away at computer input for next years items and reviewing all the order confirmations for next years merchandise. Lot's of mistakes are found in this process. It's pretty much a dead heat in the competition for most mistakes, but I think I am slightly ahead of the sales reps at this point. Customer appointments and random drop ins have kept the cash flow pretty solid too. Lot's of insoles for things other than skiing. Plenty of golf shoe inserts. Next Wednesday I'm doing some for a pair of hockey skates. Some tune type labor and hardgood and soft goods odds and ends for the group that is still backcountry skiing too. A duke binding one day. A pair of socks "with good shin padding please" yesterday. It also always surprises me how many of you see the front door open and just stop by to say "hi!". It always makes my day when this happens...

Now I am turning my attention to the retail space. John and I cleared out the back shop and pressure washed all the mats and cleaned the floor as soon as we got back from Mammoth. Yuck, what a grungy job, but it's done now. Now we are in the sparkle and shine mode. Yesterday a new carpet was put down. Finally some relief for aching retail legs- we now have a pad under the rug! We had to clear the floor and the walls up to 5 feet install it. Now we will procede to finish clearing the walls and scrub, dust, scour, and polish it all back into a sparkly winter wonderland. After that we will re-do all the merchandising. Both daughters will be involved with this process. Neither would be interested at all except that gas is now bleeding them dry and they need extra income. I'll be glad to have the company. Once we get it cleaned up John will be back from Hawaii to help set up the sales floor with the girls. I will migrate back upstairs to work on next years signage and finish all the purchase orders by August 1st.

It has to be ready by then because after that it all starts to happen pretty fast. All the product for the year comes in the next two weeks. I call this the "Every day is Christmas" phase of my job. So there it is. Biding our time, prepping the space and waiting around for Christmas!

A Brief Spring Fling

Well, we have another Mammoth trip under our belts now. Good times! Six days of skiing consecutively- awesome! I had a really good time both on and off the slopes. A bit different than the last few years, we actually got normal spring conditions. It turned out to be that week in the Bay area when San Francisco hit record temperatures over 100 degrees. It was much better to be in Mammoth where it was only 80 degrees. Super soft snow. I sunburned my knees between my boots and my shorts. We would ski from 7:30 (more like 8:30) until 1:00 (more like noon). Then a quick tasty lunch and a beer on the deck of the lodge and back to the homestead for some hot tub action or a sauna perhaps. Maybe take in a museum in the afternoon or a hike or a bit of fishing. It was a very relaxing way to wrap up the retail year.

Interesting going's on at Mammoth centered around the US Ski team being there at the same time as us. Mens and Womens A,B, and C teams all seemed to be there. It was cool to watch them running the courses. Better still for me was hanging around with the tech's that support the skiiers. As we know many of the techs we got to check out the rooms they employ all the new tricks and tweaks they are using to help people ski really fast. Very cool stuff if you are an equipment geek. The downside is that John has another list of "must have" boot fitting tools that will be very cool to check out and will then maybe get used occassionally on customers boots. Worth the purchase every time! ;)

So now we are back and doing the summer thing. John, Todd, Erle and I golfed last Friday together. I shot a 92. Not bad for me right now. Erle shot an 82- nice! I am riding with Becky tomorrow. She wants to see some more East Bay mountain bike trails so I am happy to help out. John and I have been spending some time at the shop as well. A fair number of you have asked for appointments to shop for boots or skis plus we need to take care of the yearly maintenence stuff around the store.

So now it is graduation for my daughter Rebecca and all the hoopla that will surround this big event. Then...who knows. I have a list of things I would like to do. We shall see how many items I get to cross off over the next few months. I wil keep you up on my progress!

Thanks for a Great Season!

Yesterday was the last day of regular store hours for the 07/08 season. It was another great year for us and we hope you had fun too! Of coarse today what did John and I do? We met down at the shop and waxed, buffed, and polished about ten pairs of skis. This time it was not for any customers but in preparation for the staff trip to Mammoth. Brian cannot make it as he was called upon to fight forest fires in Oregon, and Mitsi has Nursing school obligations. The rest of the crew will make it for all or part of the trip. In addition many previous years employees will show up. A few Reps as well. Somewhere around 15-20 people all together. Super Fun!

After that it is back to work for a few weeks and then a few months of time off. We will be available for appointments and will do a fair bit of custom bootfitting if things are like the last few summers. Other than that I will update the blog from time to time with tales of golf, bicycle tours, staff mountain bike/camping trips and the like. Then, just like that, it will be time once again to prepare for the now season and the big Fall Parking Lot Sale to kick off another year. And guess what...it will be our 20th year! Wow, I guess I have to start thinking about something special for our two score aniversary. Got any ideas? Drop me a line!

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.

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

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.