More Spring Powder

This season has turned out to be more than incredible.  Snowbird's season to date snowfall (let's just call it their STD) is at 756".  The average is normally around 500", so the snow conditions look pretty good up there, especially for June.  One of the best things about skiing in the Wasatch is the surprise powder day in the late spring.  I guess knowing that it happens every year shouldn't make it a surprise, but I'm always amazed at how good the snow can be this late in the season.
This season, a nice little storm with cold temps and some moisture made its way to the mountains here on Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.  About 15" fell between the two days, so monday was set up to be perfect.  What better way to celebrate Memorial Day than to ski powder?  Well, visiting my grandparents' graves would have been better, but I'm sure they were happy in heaven to see me ski.  The only problem with days like this is the crowd of season passholders that always shows up too.  There are 100 or so chargers that show, and 900 gapers that seem to make life on those days more challenging.  All of the passholders plus a late opening (10am) and no tram equaled a massive line on Peruvian, all the way up to the cat from the bypass road. It was definitely worth it though.  I got in about 6 runs before 1pm when I had to make my way back to work (yes, I had to work Memorial Day).  This day got my spirits up, and motivated me to ski as much as I could before the end of the season, which will be July 4th weekend.  Sweet.

Welcome to GaperStock 2011!  Bring your Rossignol S7's and Colombia jacket, and let's par-tay!

 Sorry Sam, your head is in gapershot #2

 "Alright, who's throwing snowballs?  That's not funny.  I say we find that guy and shove his face in the snow.  He'll probably think its funny, so we should do it."

"Those are Deer Valley gloves, did you work there or just buy them?"

"Well, I used to work at Deer Valley when I lived in New York.  I would fly out every weekend to work a day, then have a day to ski on my own, then I'd fly back to New York.  It was great."

Klint skis

Got a chance to ski some Klint Krypto skis last week.  They are a small company just starting out with a lineup for 2011/12 season.  The highlight of their lineup is the Krypto, which is about 189cm in length, and about 120mm underfoot, with a good amount of tip and tail rocker.  The graphic below is a demo graphic, the production will be a lot brighter.

Anyway, conditions were probably about perfect for this ski- 12" on top of sun crust, and even deeper in some spots that get wind deposited snow.  Only a few areas could you feel the crust underneath.  The Kryptos floated with ease, and extremely maneuverable, despite the length and me being only 5'7" and 150lbs.  I hiked Baldy a couple times, North first, then West, and the skis were solid in both areas.  North Baldy was a little shallower and more windblown and punchy.  West Baldy was deep, but sluffed off to expose some of that sun crust.  Tight spots were even easier because they pivot without much effort, so when I needed to dump speed, or weasel through some trees, I felt like I was in full control. When it got a little choppy and even on the semi-groomed the tails washed out a bit more than I am used to.  That might be the skis, might be me being used to non-rockered tails.  At higher speeds I could feel a little instability generating, and couldn't push the envelope to the max.  I'll be using these tomorrow, which will be a lot firmer snow, more groomed and Utah hardpack (packed powder), and some windblown dense powder.  At least, that's what I'm hoping for.  I'll report back tomorrow.

FWT

Having skied most of my life, and having adopted skiing into my life as more than just a hobby, I figured I ought to try some sort of competition to gauge my skillset that I've been developing over the past 25+ years. The Freeskiing World Tour Snowbird stop seemed like a perfect opportunity, so when registration came around, I went for it. Registration started at 10am, and within 3 minutes or less, the event was filled. Fully prepared with my credit card info already pasted to my clipboard, and somewhat acceptable web navigation skills, I was one of the lucky ones to claim a spot. That was the easy part. Now I had to start skiing to get ready for this trial. Just one problem... With a work week of 50-60 hours, finding time to ski was going to be tough.

So, 'training' began early fall, wrapping up soccer season, cutting out sugary soda, skiing West Baldy at every opportunity, and thinking a lot about skiing. Also had a good warm up at the Salomon Extreme Skiing Comp at Taos, NM, where I qualified in 10th, Semi'd in 20th, and ended up in 14th in the Finals.

To get to the point, I had a good qualifier run, putting me in 5th for my heat. A couple days later, I had a good run on Silver Fox, but had a bobble that cost me a spot in the finals. Also, my line score was a little low, so gotta work on that for next time. Not bad though for having never hit any of those drops, and feeling like I was out of my element. Ended up in 40th, and the top 35 went onto the finals. Here's my run, thanks to Nick for recording it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-slhYWG-9k

More to come, including the 'training' that went down to get to this spot.