Skiing Magazine
Big-mountain expert

• Atomic Sugar Daddy -- Power/Finesse: 81:19, Speed 3.4, Turn 2.9, Off-piste 2.8 (Ed: rarely have I seen a worse web site than Atomic's. I couldn't find the freakin' page for these skis!! I finally had to play some Google tricks and after 2 pages of links, I found a deep link into the freakin' nordic skis, which allowed me to horizontally traverse into alpine skis. WTF?!)
• Fischer Atua -- 60:40, 3.5, 3.3, 3.1 (Ed: WTF?! They say their web site isn't ready for this year?! Find last year's on your own, since this site doesn't enable deep linking very well...)
  
• Fischer Watea -- 55:45, 3.0, 3.3, 3.3 (Ed: Ditto.)
  
• K2 Seth -- 62:38, 3.4, 2.8, 3.0 (Ed: Finally, a site that *gets* it.). These really intrigue me. I think I might like these.
  
• Rossi Scratch BC WRS
• Salomon 1080 Gun
• Volkl Gotama -- 59:41, 3.8, 3.4, 3.8 BEST IN TEST (Ed: Their site may not be ready, but at least they have a PDF with this year's models in it.)
  
• Volkl Mantra -- 49:51, 3.5, 3.6, 3.1 (Ed: Ditto.)
  

Powder Magazine
Big Mountain

• Atomic Big Daddy
• K2 AK Enemy -- These look really good too. Maybe too good. Gotta try these.
  
• Rossi Bandit B-Squad
• Salomon XW AK Rocket
• Salomon 1080 Gun
• Volkl Sumo -- genuine leather topskin?!
  

Deep Powder

• Atomic Pimp -- same as Sugar Daddy with a twin tip
• Fischer Atua
• K2 Apache Chief
• K2 Seth
• Rossi Sick Bird
• Salomon XW Sandstorm
• Volkl Gotama -- these are getting such good ratings they're hard to pass up. Must. Try. These. Skis.
  
• Volkl Mantra

Other

• K2 The Silencer -- just because they're cheap and I wouldn't mind having a pair of these to play around with. Rumor has it they're just last year's Public Enemys.
• K2 Pontoon -- just because they're so radically different. I can think of more than a few days at Baker where these would have been helpful.
  

Last weekend a few friends and I went and did some kick ass summer skiing on Mt. Baker.

I already posted about the trip before we left, and it went pretty much as planned. We didn't get all the way out to the snowfield below and to the north of Coleman Pinnacle, but we made it most of the way out there. We ended up at a spot where we were getting about 500 feet of vertical for a few runs. Not bad for a relatively easy hike in and a pretty mellow run overall.

On Sunday, we did the hike to Coleman Glacier (which is what Rob, Dawn, Malone, Melissa, and I did last year). Wicked good views of Mt. Baker from the north and the Coleman Glacier up close.

Pictures are posted here. And yes, that's a ski chair Josh is sitting in. He made it himself. Out of skis. Cool.

Next month? The goal is to return to Baker (since there's still a fair bit of snow) and hike all the way out to the pinnacle this time and ski what we intended to do this time.

Actually kid, it's just Flockstar. That's it.

I just signed up for Google AdSense. I'd rather have the ad layout that's off to the side rather than on top of the blog, but oh well.

C'mon folks, start clicking on some of my ads so I can start making some big $! I can't wait for the day I get my first check for US$0.17... :)

Update: I just checked my AdSense account and guess what -- I've had a big first day.

Today's Earnings: $1.04

:)

Silver this time. Shoulda been gold, but whatever. I'm pretty happy to end up in second place. Ask Bill or Melissa for details.

A few crazy friends and I are going for our August turns in a couple of weeks up at Mt. Baker. Here's a view of our approximate hiking trail (in red) and our approximiate ski decent route (in blue). We'll hike back out the red trail after a few runs. The trail starts at the end of 542 and basically follows Ptarmigan Ridge to the SW. We'll use the cabin as a basecamp. Skiing by day, nachos and hot tub by evening.

Have I mentioned how cool I think Google Earth is for stuff like this? I read a great article in a magazine recently about a group of guys who tried to do a spring traverse of the eastern Sierras, and they used Google Earth and Maps to try to visualize their route. Needless to say, they ran into some difficulties. :)

Here's a topo version of it (you can barely make out the trail as a dotted line) from Topozone.















And here's a local.live.com version of it (you'll have to visualize the trail...).

BTW, here are August 2006 TRs from Turns All Year. Note that all the good August ones are on Mt. Baker. :)

My Discovery Park route

This Gmaps Pedometer site is way cool. I have my own special trail running route in Discovery Park and previously I'd have no way to know how far my route is. Gmaps Pedometer tells me it's 3.1813 miles. That's pretty precise, if not completely accurate (although any inaccuracy is mostly due to me not knowing exactly where my route goes through the trees).

Anyway, that's cool.

I posted a manifesto about 6 weeks ago, right before official summer started.

(Your honor, sidebar please: my 1/3 to 1/2 reference is really unofficial Seattle summer vs. official summer. I'm one of those weird Seattle folks who counts July, August, and September as the summer months, which would mean we're only 1/3rd of the way through the summer. If you're counting official summer, we're about half way though.)

This is my part way through summer checkpoint. How am I doing?

1. No TV. Period. (Okay, at least no TV while I'm at home--I'm not going to walk out of a bar or something if the TV is on. And World Cup doesn't count.) I'm sick of wasting time watching TV. And I didn't really even watch that much--maybe 3 hours a week?
   
   I'm doing great on this one. Arguably the best of any of my goals. I can't remember the last time I watched TV. I'm pushing Melissa hard to get rid of cable entirely. :)
   
   
2. Happy hour at least once a week. Remember, not ever getting to hang out with friends after work was one of the reasons why M$ sucked.
   
   Not doing so well on this one, unfortunately. Or is it? I haven't been staying late at work much, mostly because my evenings have been completely full. Hiking, climbing, sailing, boating, doing stuff with friends, etc. I'm perfectly willing to make that tradeoff.
   
   
3. Sailing. Often. Weekly at least is obvious. If I only had a Laser, it'd be more often. :)
   
   Check. :) I think that last sentence is rather prophetic: there's a lot of Laser planning activity lately.
   
   
4. Hiking. Regularly. Weekly, perhaps? I could get used to this after work hiking thing, I think.
   
   I don't know that I've done it absolutely weekly, but I bet it averages out pretty close to that.
   
   
5. Skiing at least once a month. Backcountry, sidecountry, frontcountry. Doesn't matter. I'm thinking maybe Whistler, Mt. Hood, and some serious hiking.
   
   Indeed. Two days with turns in June, two days in July, and I'm shooting for at least one in August on Mt. Baker.
   
   
6. Power boating. Early and often. Maybe once a week to a happy hour? :) We didn't use the powerboat very often last summer (crazy, eh?), and I'm fixin' to change that.
   
   Not so good. Sorta streaky, in fact. Oh well, could be worse. I still have plenty of time later in the summer. :)
   
   
7. One backpacking trip (overnight) at least once a month. I'm on track so far, I think. Gotta get some more on the calendar.
   
   Again, on average, I think I'm doing okay. Need to make sure I get something in Sept. though.
   
   
8. Reading 30 minutes a day.

Yeah, I've done worst at this. I've been going to bed relatively early, and waking up pretty early. So no time for reading, I guess. Maybe I'll have to step that up when it gets dark earlier and starts getting to be crappier weather...

So there you have it. I'm biased, but I'll call that achieving 6 of 8 goals for the summer so far. I do believe I can live with that...

Got back from Whistler last night around 11. Nice accident we had to drive around in Vancouver, thank you very much.

How was it? Pretty darn good. Not great, but close enough. It’s not that I had high expectations for snow quality in late July, but the weather could have been better. The drive up Friday afternoon/evening wasn't horrible. After some QT in the hot tub, the intention was to go and get dinner in the village. Hmm, must have missed that somewhere. Ended up spending some chill out time at Citta's and then strolling back to the condo (by way of 7-Eleven, of course).

Since the lifts didn't open till 11 for skiers, we slept in (okay, I got up early and the rest slept in). Coffee? Check. Morning hot tub to properly set up for the trifecta? Check. The more I found out the way that riding the glacier in the summer works, the more I was surprised. We drove up to upper Blackcomb base where we had already heard that's where you start from. Really? Why not ride the gondola? Then we find out you ride two lifts and then take a bus ride over to the bottom of Seventh and ride it up. Really? Why not Glacier Express? Huh. At any rate, we had a bad case of "valley fog" (or was that high-alpine fog?), so visibility wasn't ever very good. Snow had melted out at the top and the bottom of the Horstman t-bar, so we were only able to ride it in the middle section. The glacier was showing through in places, so you'd be skiing along in some nice slushy stuff and then all of the sudden you'd be on barely-melted glacier ice. How 'bout those edges, eh? They also had a couple of sections roped off because of crevasse danger. Nice. We stopped for a quick break and hiked up to the lower entrance to Couloir Extreme. Didn’t look nearly as burly without any snow on it. We only rode till about 1 -- that's when we heard some Merlin's nachos calling us.

The rest of the day? Hot tub, Jay's juice, cuba libre, k-os, brewpub, pizza, Savage Beagle, and 7-Eleven. Can't beat that.

Not much to mention on Sunday except that we apparently are very good side street navigators when it comes to N. Vancouver.

Pictures? Libby took some that I'll point to after she posts them.