Quattro De Mayo at Alpental
This weekend we hit up Alpental for one last day of resort skiing this season.
As you can see there is lots of snow left:
Many dressed up:
Tecate Chutes was the best run of the day:
At Whistler, Behind on Blogging
This weekend the guys are up at Whistler for the Telus Festival. Thursday afternoon we arrived to fully stocked condos (thanks JJ) and then that night we went to the pro photographer showdown before drinking too much, skied Friday (it was cold with a little fresh snow), then a fashion show last night (too much ski gear, not enough summer wear) and today it’s hot and sunny and Ming is cooking up some bacon and eggs (I didn’t sleep last night, too much Redbull at the Beagle.)
In other news I’m way behind on blogging. I still need to post photos from Ben’s 30th birthday weekend at Hood Canal and the trip Chelsea and I took to Steven’s Pass last weekend.
First Trip To Tahoe
Friday night I caught the 6:20 flight to Reno. Of course I screwed up the date when I bought the ticket and had to go through the stress of paying a change fee, flying stand by, etc but did end up catching the flight I wanted :).
I then caught a cab to North Star (supposed to be forty five minutes away) which was a bit of an adventure since the cab driver had forgotten his chains, chains were required, he then got lost trying to find his buddy with chains,… The trip ended taking a little longer than it should have but eventually I made it. Funny enough the cab ride was the same cost as my flight (pre-change fee.)
The next day we skied at North Star (6″ new), the resort some at Redfin referred to as the Snoqualmie of Tahoe. However, after skiing there I don’t think that’s a fair characterization. North Star doesn’t have a lot of steep crazy runs but it does feature lots of rolling easy nicely groomed blues, appears to be very family friendly, and features a pretty new plush village. Since there was some nice dry new snow I was able to get in some good runs even late in the day since the major of folks kept to the easy runs :). The tree skiing was also pretty nice.
Here’s Katrina, her sister Suzanne, and Peter:
At times it was dumping:
At other times it was sunny:
At lunch there was a big band:
Apres ski had a skating rink and outdoor lounges similar to Vegas bars:
Sunday Katrina and I headed to Squaw (2-4″ of new). Squaw, unlike North Star, appears to be stuck in the ’60s when they held the Olympics. I wouldn’t work there just because their staff uniform is so dated (sorry no photo.) But they did have some steep runs. I spent a lot of time on KT-22 and Headwall and we had lunch up at High Base Camp which features a hot tub, swimming pool and skating rink at 8200 feet. We also lucked out with a three and half hour drive back to San Francisco.
More…
Heli Skiing Videos!
If you watch just one, check out day 3.
Day 1: No heli skiing just fast groomers.
Day 2: First day of heli skiing! Sadly our group leader lost his camera.
Day 3: Second day of heli skiing!
Thanks JF!
Comments(1)Redfin visits Whistler
After staying up almost all night releasing a new version of Redfin last Wednesday a group of us from Redfin headed to Whistler Thursday night. We were hoping to leave early but of course did not leave the city until 6 PM. Fortunately we made great time and got to Whistler in a record setting four hours. The next day we spent a great time on Whistler riding a ridge repeatedly off Peak chair. Of course the only reason some of us ride is for apres ski and at 4 PM we hit Merlins for round one of beers and nachos:
For round two we headed over to Merlins as we had ski in/out accommodations on Blackcomb. There we got round two or beers, nachos, wings and poutine.
Before:
Close to after:
Having sampled nachos across a wide variety of Whistler venues I have to say that GLC has the best quality and that Merlins has the most quantity.
Unfortunately having consumed so many nachos and beers our team was mostly asleep by 9 PM!
The next day was beautiful sunny day and we got some great runs in on Blackcomb. Here’s Brandon who is about to marry our marketing whiz, Ellie (I also happen to play hockey with him):
Later in the day we headed to Whistler where Donald had a nice jump:
And of course afterwards we headed to Merlins for two rounds of nachos:
We then ended the night with Sylvia’s Wii and Settlers of Catan.
A note to our investors: Don’t worry this was an employee paid for trip unlike our competitors Squaw Valley junket :).
Related:
Early season skiing
It’s just barely December and I’ve already hit the slopes 5 times :).
Whistler
For American Thanksgiving we headed up to Whistler for the best Whistler trip ever. What made it the best trip ever was, of course, the people. Teresa, Ming, Tom and I stayed together in the heart of the action in a suite atop the Whistler Professional Building (at night you could hear the thump thump of the bass from Tommy Africa’s but we didn’t go to bed before 2am so it didn’t really bother us. Also be warned that even the people at reservations can’t find this suite so best of luck to you if you book a suite at ‘The Plaza Suites’.)
From our base camp we ventured out to Thanksgiving dinner at the only #2206 cabin in Whistler with the soccer crew. We also did a lot of dancing, drinking and we even hosted our own wild bash on Saturday night attracting 30 or so friends in town for the weekend.
Of course we skied a bit (Andre and I even skinned up for fresh tracks one day) but the snow wasn’t great, though the blue skies were nice. Our schedule was basically a communal breakfast (each better than the previous) followed by hitting the slopes after noon until nacho and beer time at 4pm followed by nap time and hockey watching. Followed by more drinking.
The only downer for the trip was getting pulled over just past the border for street racing in Ming’s Audi A4. But I’ll save my run in with the RCMP for another post. In the meantime, know any good BC traffic lawyers!?
See the rest of my trip photos.
Baker
With our ski legs back it was a no brainer to skip work for Baker opening day last Thursday. Of course the 5:30 am wake up was painful but the skiing made it worthwhile.
Joe took some photos of the fun.
The only snafu this trip was a little fall I had at the beginning of the day when I ejected out of my new bindings and then subsequently slammed my face into my freshly tuned ski edge cutting my face up. Ouch! Fortunately, no teeth were broken but it made it hard to hide the skiing secret from co-workers on Friday.
As you can see it was a rare sunny day at Baker which we thoroughly enjoyed:
Normally we hit Baker once a season (we don’t like the three hour drive) and I thought we were done for the season but when it started to snow Saturday IN SEATTLE we rallied and planned another trip up on Sunday this time departing at 5:30am. Unlike Thursday’s merely pretty good conditions Sunday’s conditions were absolutely epic. Knee deep powder almost all day long. We skied straight through lunch and didn’t leave until they shut the lifts off at 3pm for 100+ mph winds.
Avi 1 - Day three
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.
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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.
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More photos on Zooomr, AviLevel1.
Where’s the snow!?
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?
Spur of the moment cat skiing
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.
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