blog.mattgoyer.com

This weekend I took the Mountain Madness Avalanche Level 1 course. I took it because the group I ski with has been in search of more fresh snow and skiing out of bounds seems like the most likely source. Being relatively safety conscious everyone thought it would be a good idea to make sure we were prepared before we hit the back country gates.

Before this course I was really only aware of two styles of skiing. Telemarking and downhill. I had sort of heard of Randonee / AT skiing but didn’t really know what it was. Not knowing about it I called and asked what I should do and the course leader convinced me to rent some AT skis. Boy am I glad I did! I discovered this whole new world of downhill skiing combined with touring. I never realized that you could ski up hill (using skins and free heel bindings) and then ski downhill on the same set of skis. It really is incredible. Unfortunately it is also expensive. Bindings are ~$400, boots ~$600, plus a pair of wide skis, ~$700 (I think I’m going to slap a pair of Naxo’s on my Monster IM88’s. Thoughts?)

Equipped with a pair of rentals I attended a lecture Friday night, then woke up early Saturday. I was a little nervous not knowing any one in the course and not feeling like I fit in because it felt like everyone there was way more outdoorsy then me and had summited all the local peaks. Fortunately, it turned out to be a good time. We skinned up the hill across from Steven’s, practiced searching with transceivers and dug a pit. After a full day on the mountain we had a few more hours of lecture’s in a meeting room at Steven’s. It proved to be a long exhausting day. I really cannot remember going to bed as early as I did that Saturday.

Needless to say I also had to get up at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday. This time we headed to a slope a little east of Steven’s, geared up, skinned up, practiced a group rescue (five people found three transceiver burials and two non-transceiver burials in fifteen minutes), did some route finding up the mountain, dug another pit, did an individual multiple transceiver search and then skied down. Unfortunately the snow sucked, too many hot days and cold nights.

Looking back on the course, I think the instruction was good, two days in the mountains was great but the problem is that I now know how dangerous the back country is and feel like I’m going to need sign-up for a few more courses to gain more confidence. I think the next courses I’m going to take are: backcountry touring and ski mountaineering.

…I really recommend the Pieps transceiver. They say that the best beacon is the one you practice with, but in the distance test the Pieps was tied for the longest, had no issues narrowing in on other beacons, and is able to flag found beacons when doing a multiple recovery. Also know that there are a bunch of other gear you need to buy: shovel at ~$50, probe at ~$75, saw at ~$50, backpack and on and on. Sure you save on lift tickets but the gear outlay is at least twice of regular downhill.

More photos on Zooomr, AviLevel1.

Comments(4)

Both Rob and I need to get away this weekend but it looks like there is no new snow anywhere on the west coast. Does anyone know of any secret stashes?

Comments(0)

Left home at 5:50 a.m., got back at 8:15 p.m. Going to bed now!

Comments(0)

Ming is taking off to China for a month which will likely leave me in a bit of a lurch for a key part of the ski season since I don’t trust the Neon to make it up to the ski hill. I am also going to be taking a avalanche course next weekend up at the ski hill and have a trip to Whistler in February that I won’t be able to carpool to.

So I’m kicking around the idea of a cheap 4WD/AWD vehicle. There seem to be a few mid-1990’s Jeep Grand Cherokee’s in the ~$4000 range (see Edmunds TMV for 1995.) Good idea? Bad idea? Other recommendations for cars in that same category? (i.e. something with 4WD or AWD drive)

Use case scenarios for the vehicle:

• Driving to hockey twice a week year round: ~30 miles/game
• Driving to skiing once a week during the winter: ~160 miles/trip
• Driving to week night biking during the summer: ~45 miles/trip
• Driving to weekend biking during the summer: ~100 miles/trip

Clearly I’m not putting a lot of miles on it since I don’t drive to work and don’t drive around town much.

Update: Ford Explorer seems to be in the same category. Though they’re a little big for me.

Update 2: Ford Bronco seems like another good option.

Update 3: Links about Jeep Grand Cherokee’s:

• Guide to the mid-90’s GC’s
• Wikipedia on the Jeep GC
• Jeep Forums on ZJ/WJ

Comments(6)

Yesterday I got a last minute request to help out at the BASES Career Fair at Stanford tomorrow so I hopped on a plane this afternoon to Oakland and am now crashing at a co-workers place in the Mission (in his words ‘a hovel’, in reality a monstrous 1300 sq ft flat in the bottom floor of a church.) Hopefully we can find some good kids but I hear the market is tight. Don’t know how long I’m here until, maybe tomorrow evening, maybe Friday.

Comments(0)

• Park City Quick Start: Free lift ticket!
  

  The Park City Quick START (Ski Today and Ride Today) Vacation lets you convert your airline boarding pass into a same-day lift ticket to the Park City resort of your choice. It’s your chance to get a free same-day lift ticket at The Canyons Resort, Park City Mountain Resort or Deer Valley Resort.

• Future Phone

Comments(0)

Last week was a very long week. I worked something like eleven days in a row and each day was at least a twelve hour day. And in the middle of it all something outside of work made it even worse. So on Friday at the bar eating dinner barely able to stay awake, when Andre said he was going cat skiing my ears perked up.

Sure, he didn’t have reservations, it cost $400, they were probably full and I was drunk off the one beer I had at the office, but I said yeah, let’s do it.

He called Cascade Powder Cats Saturday and at 2:30 they let us now that they had a spot for us on Sunday.

Sunday at 5:30 a.m. I arrive at Rob’s house to meet up with him and Andre. We then bust it over to Skykomish (okay, ten miles past there) to this little blue cabin. We’re twenty minutes late and are convinced they left without us. As it turns out we were the only people signed up (the day before they had twenty people.) Lucky us! (Note: always go skiing on major football play-off days.)

We loaded up in the cat and slowly made our way up to their Yurt. While the cat was cold it was not nearly as cold as it was outside. Plus they had an iPod hookup and we rocked out to Wolfmother.

We then proceeded to ski in the driest snow I’ve ever felt in the North West. We got in three runs before lunch and probably another five to seven runs after lunch. Unfortunately it hadn’t snowed in five days so occasionally we would cross over some other tracks but for the most part it was freshies all day long. But the best part was that it was a clear sunny day. Those are extremely rare around here!

At $400+tip (how much are we supposed to tip!?) it wasn’t cheap and I probably won’t repeat at that price unless there is a major dump. Primarily because you only get around 10,000 vertical feet in (the gating factor is the slow speed of the cat.) My feeling is that $100-$200 is more around the price point where I wouldn’t think twice about cat skiing. Though they do have a $3000 season’s pass (their season is at least three months long.) Very tempting for next season!

Anyhow, the trip to the mountains was just what the doctor ordered and for the first time in a long time I got more than five hours of sleep.

See all the photos.

Comments(2)

So it snowed here again last night… And I encourage all my Canadian readers to watch this King 5 video shot in Portland, Portland Home Video [wmv]. It’s hilarious! It’s like pinball but with cars.

Comments(1)

• SF Bike Map
• How to buy a mattress
• Shave My Face Forum
• Style Forum
• T-Shirt Rack
• The Easiest Way To Add Google AdSense On A Blog

Comments(0)

We did it! My team (I’m the product manager of Redfin’s Map Team) just launched a new version of the Redfin site. You can read more about the features of the release in my post on the Redfin Blog, Twice the size, Virtual Earth and Meebo. The funny thing is that in the Pacific Northwest you cannot escape Microsoft and so while I may have quit Microsoft I’m now very dependent on Microsoft technology as our new map is built using Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.

This of course has been a lot of work because needless to say, if your core business is mapping real estate listings and you switch out your map, it is going to be an epic endeavor. I likely worked about 145 hours already this new year to get us ready for release last night (24 hours ahead of schedule!) and I wasn’t even responsible for writing a single line of code. So, a big thanks to my team for kicking ass. I have never worked with people with such a huge amount of commitment and dedication to perfection. Jane, Jeff, Michael and Sasha thank you. We also had two new testers start in the last two weeks and it feels like they’ve been with us for months. Llewellyn and Mose, you’re part of the Redfin trial by fire family now :) .

Hopefully we can all take a few days off and recover (before we release a dot release to fix all the bugs we triaged out to make the date as well as the new ones you find and e-mail me about.) I for one, have no idea what I’m going to do with myself, though I know the first thing I have to do is sleep. We pushed the button on the release last night but I still can’t sleep! And of course, I’ve found out that a release isn’t really done until the blog posts are up and the press embargo has been lifted. The next thing I’ll do is take care of the birthday present and Christmas present I still owe a friend and then laundry.

For more details on work related stuff I’ll likely be updating my real estate blog much more regularly now realestate.mattgoyer.com.

Comments(1)