The Ahlers

Friday rolled around and the usual suspects (Josh, Bill, and I) headed up. The trip up didn't go exactly as planned, but let's just say that 1) Sumas is a little farther off 542 than I figured and 2) Bob's Burgers and Brew in said border town is a good place to stop. For burgers. And brew.

Saturday's riding was quite good. Rob (Big Kahuna), Scott Rough, Josh (Capt.), Bill (Dr. Flask), and I (Wild Turkey) all spent the day chasing the secret stashes left over from the new snowfall a few days prior. One highlight of the day was Bill's crash which did something to his bindings that I've never seen before. A little percussive maintenance via ski boot was all it took to fix it right up. And yep, Dawn showed up with Malone a little before lunch and she learned to ski. Okay, mom had to carry her up the hill by the rope tow, and mom tied some twine around her to slow her down as she did a modified snowplow while decending towards The Fish but hey, everyone needs a little help now and then.

Brett, Theresa, and Libby showed up Saturday night, just in time for them to cook us an outstanding dinner (thank you!!), and Melissa arrived shortly after that. Sunday's snow wasn't quite as good, but it was as bluebird a day as you could ever want in the North Cascades in the middle of winter. Cold, crisp, and hardly anyone on the hill. Welcome to Baker! (Did I mention Sunday was my 10th day skiing this season? Crazy...)

Pictures are here.

A bunch of us headed up to Stevens Pass last Wednesday for Sturtevants Demo Day. Capt, Dr. Flask, and I all arrived early and ended up with all three pairs of Gotamas that the Volkl guys brought with them. Sweet. :) We were probably 12th chair up on Big Chief, and the winds were pretty solid.

But maybe 10 chairs behind us, they stopped loading. The nerve! It was windy, but certainly not the strongest winds I've ever ridden a chair in. Whatever. I'm gonna make the most of my time on these skis -- after all, we're supposed to bring them back in 2-3 runs, right? I ski out the little cat track a ways thinking, yeah, play it somewhat conservative, take a few turns on the groomer, then go look for some freshie (which appears to be all over the place). But wait, that little hill between the cat track and the groomer below looks so damn tempting. Two turns on that, then to groomer -- that's pretty mellow, right? Uh huh. First turn in the soft stuff and wham! Into the famous forward right shoulder roll, coming up with a mouthful of snow. Guess those 77 mm waisted skis I've been riding haven't exactly prepared me for what the Gotamas have to offer. Oh well, the rest of the run was epic.

Unfortunately, the rest of the day wasn't. They opened Daisy, so we rode that for a few runs. We hiked a bit to get a few more turns in all the fresh pow-pow, and arrived at the bottom of Hogsback with perfect timing, just after they opened it. Got two solid runs in there before we heard, "Last run, boys. We're shuttin' 'er down!" They closed the whole mountain. Someone in our party heard 120 mph winds were on the way. Dang.

The verdict? Awesome skis. Could be very happy with them. Now the question is, do I wait to demo the Seths, or do I just step up and get the Gots? (BTW, that's pronounced "goats", since their full name is pronounced like "goat-ah-mah".)

Josh, Bill, and I went up Friday night and rode Saturday. Not a spectacular day; no new snow for awhile, and kinda warm. But given that, the snow was better than we expected, with outstanding coverage for this time of year. By the end of the day though, heavy, heavy, wet snow was falling. Guess it could be worse...

On Saturday night, our friend Callum (from Scotland) joined us. We paid a visit to Grahams that evening, of course, and we skied on Sunday. Rather, we drove up to The Fish on Sunday and found it raining there. We kept driving, just to see what Heather Meadows looked like, and low and behold, it was snowing up there. That was how the entire day was to go -- snow the entire length of chair 1, and rain any time we dropped down any lower (e.g. the bottom of chair 6). Good snow considering how warm it was. In fact, I'd say there was about 4-6" new at the top of chair 1, which made for great riding anywhere beneath chair 1.

And what's this about Josh eating the box? Josh decided to spend a bit of time at the mini-terrain park at the top of chairs 3-4. The good news is that he finally conquered the box and can now ride it sideways. The bad news is that he took a beating (er, the box took a beating?) while learning how.

Pictures are located here.

I was an Alpentalic for a day last weekend. Actually, I've always been a closet Alpentalic. Even though I rarely go during the day, the times I've gone have been E-P-I-C. (Might have something to do with the fact that I only go on days when it's been dumping. :)

Libby, Bill, and I met our work buddy Steve up there and had a great time. Bluebird for the most part, tons of nice light freshie (for the PNW, that is), and opening day for the mountain made for an outstanding Saturday. I also ran into Matt Goyer in line waiting for chair 2 to open, and skied a few runs with him and his buddies.

Alpental is great because there are some amazing skiers and riders who call it home, it has some fantastically good in bounds and out of bounds (so I hear) terrain, and it's incredibly close to Seattle. And the scenery? Pure Washington Cascades.

We were planning to go to Baker for the whole weekend but that didn't work out. I was more than pleasantly surprised that Alpental more than lived up to my recollections...

Melissa and I had a nice Thanksgiving down in the OR with my parents, my brother, and his new wife. Even though the Ducks lost to the Beavers (do you have Beaver fever? Well, do you?), we still had a nice time down there. It was good to get all of us together because the next time scheduled for all six of us is in Greece next year -- much too long.

Of course, while we were down there, I was still keeping an eye on the snow up here at at Whistler (since we had so many friends up there for the long weekend). At Baker, it turned out to be not just the storm of the year (which is really a funny designation to have since it's so early), but the storm of all time. They claim it was the biggest storm cycle they had ever had, with something like 12 feet in 1 week. With all of this in mind, Melissa and I drove Andy and Tina up to PDX for their flight home on Saturday, and we drove straight through up to Baker, with a really quick stop to grab our ski clothes in Seattle. Skiing and riding Sunday was awesome; it was almost too deep in places. And it wasn't the heavy deep stuff we're all used to here, it was the light deep stuff (we had relatively cold temps to go along with all the precip).

The drive home was challenging. It too us over an hour to get down to Glacier (when it usually takes 30 minutes), and the drive from the cabin to the house was 3.5 hours, 1.5 hours longer than normal. And if you think that's bad, our friends at Whistler took 9-10 hours to get home, a drive that normally ranges between 4 and 6 hours. Ouch.