egibbons

My dad was the one who bought the Costco passes as I already had a PC student season pass. I think they were sold in books of five at $250 per book. $50 isn't too bad. If I could get the same at Solitude I would be stoked. I don't know if that is going to happen, though.

I moved away from Utah last summer for grad school and I am going to be in town through the holidays. When I was living in Utah, I would always get a student pass at Park City because it is cheap. While I can get day passes to PC relatively cheaply through Costco, I was wondering if such a deal is available for Solitude, as I would prefer to ski there (particularly during the holidays). Does anybody know if there are such deals?

I just started grad school in California. I grew up and have skied in Utah (Park City and Powder Mountain) exclusively until this point. I have realized that I will need to give up my expectations of the 30 minutes to the resort commute. That said, if I am coming from Palo Alto, what is the best resort (for carving) in Tahoe and how long can I plan on driving?

Buell, was that you guys at Powder yesterday? I went up for the night (it was freezing) and Kwik Draw was pretty cut up. The lines looked distinctly hardbooter.

I would shoot for the SLC area resorts. PC hasn't gotten much snow lately and Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons typically have a bigger base. You might want to look into Solitude. I would ski there if they would do cheap student passes.

Yeah. Hopkins. We'll see how the whole application process goes...I'm just thinking of the possibilities and how the whole lifestyle aspect would play into the thought process.

So I'm applying to Ph.D. programs and I'll likely (hopefully) be having to leave Utah after 23 years here. The big question is whether or not the areas I'm applying to has viable carving nearby. When I say "nearby" I mean a reasonable weekend jaunt without flying. I realize that the days of being on the slope in less in an hour are over for the next several years. I am considering picking up a plate for my last year here and I am trying to justify some long term use. The places I'm thinking are: Bay Area Durham, NC Baltimore Boston Utah (again...but it would be my last choice) At the end of the day I'll make my decision based on the strength of the programs, but skiing would be a perk.

Oh, I'm sure you have figured this out, but if you join one of the ski clubs at the U, you can get PC passes for $350 and Bird chairs only passes for $450 or so. Just talk to the thugs in the tents outside of the Union building. All it requires is $15 or so and they'll also throw in a shirt. I've done PC for the last several years (since I was in junior high) and I'm getting sick of the tourist feel. I was hoping that Solitude would given the clubs a discount like PC, Bird, Canyons, and Brighton do, but, to quote my friend who was in on the negotiations, "They prefer old people." To be fair to Solitude, there isn't much money when you are selling discount passes to cheap-skate college kids, but it still irked me. Oh well. It was still a dream. For those with the experience, I've got a question about the Ogden area resorts. It will likely going to be my last season in Utah as I'm getting married in the summer to a girl at Stanford with one more year of law school and I will probably off somewhere else at some point for a PhD program, so I want to go somewhere cool for this last hurrah. I'm just leaning toward PC but I'm sick of the drive and I am sick of the crowds/destination feel. I went night skiing last spring to Powder Mountain and loved it. Kwik Draw was amazing. However, I heard the rest of the resort isn't like that as it is pretty flat. Is that true? What is everyone's experience carving Powder Mountain? How about the Basin? In my experience it seemed narrow with a lot of the runs having stupid snowmakers down the middle. Anyone have any ideas? I've been there skiing for some time. Was my impression off?

Thanks for the reply. My concern with the Basin is the stupid snowmakers that seem to run down the middle of every groomed run. Do they take those down in the season when they have enough snow? or do they stay up perpetually? That is probably my big concern with the Basin. How many guys go up to Powder regularly anyway? more than the Basin?

The other day I got off from school/work early. I had the evening to kill, so I figured I ought to visit my routes and see how Powder Mountain night skiing has evolved in the last 10 years. Well, to nobody's surprise it was pretty much the same, down to the McDonalds style tables in the lodge. However, what did surprise me was the snow and grooming quality. Even at 4PM, there was still fresh corduroy on Kwik Draw. I appreciated the fact that the run was steep and maintained a good grade all the way to the bottom, unlike most of the runs at PC-area resorts where you ride on flat until a bit of drop and then more flat until the bottom of the lift (Silver Queen, most of the stuff off of King Con, Tycoon, etc.) I had a ball, and as I have thought about it, I wonder what the rest of the mountain is like. Does anybody carve there? I asked the lifties if they ever see anyone go through on an alpine rig, and they said it is few and far between. If anyone does ride there, is the rest of the mountain suitable for carving, and what is the grooming like? One more, I know the mountain is pretty empty in comparison to PC, but are there enough good carving runs to spread the few people out? I will likely buy a day pass and see what the rest of the mountain is like during my spring break (cheap midweek passes for locals), but I was just wondering what everyone's consensus is. Or is Snowbasin a better choice? I just figure that I am sick of the 1hr+ drive to PC when Snowbasin is 30 minutes from my home and Powder is 47 minutes. Plus, after 7 years at PC, I am thinking of changing it up. Nothing against PC and the ski-tourism in industry in Utah. The taxes generated from that revenue keeps the state alive and pays for my tuition... Still, Monday's excursion was the best $15 I spent all season.

I started when I was 15. My younger brother started when he was 13 or so.

Skategoat: I don't know about hidden problems in the future. So far, I have yet to see anything. I never even had a headache after the initial healing where my doctors told me I would have serious migraines for the rest of my life. I guess I'll have to wait and see. They told me that after 4 years after, I would be more or less fixed with my the recovery I had.

This topic hits home for me. I have written about my TBI countless times, so I am going to just copy the text from my Goldwater Scholarship essay over. Sorry if it is sappy, I had to jazz it up to get out some good emotions.:) In high school, things always came easily to me. I was ranked number one in my class of 728 with a 4.0 GPA. I earned perfect scores on my AP tests. I had a perfect score on the ACT and SAT II math sections. I had ambitious goals, and I felt like I had the talent and drive to realize them. That all changed the last week of my junior year in high school when a water-ski struck my head in a violent fall, crushing my skull, lacerating my brain underneath. After waking from brain surgery and skull reconstruction, I found myself in a foggy and frightening new world. I could not speak. I could not write. I could not think. A diagnostic evaluation revealed that my cognitive and reasoning skills were diminished to the level of the bottom 3% of the general population. Whether from fear or tenacity, I refused to accept the reality of this diagnosis. That summer, I spent my time revisiting my old math notes, re-reading simple children’s novels, and re-learning how to write and speak. And the unexplainable happened. I recovered. In six months, I was back in school, once again performing at the top of my class. My doctors and therapists had no explanation as to why I was fully functional when most people who suffer from a traumatic brain injury never recover. For them, my recovery was as much a freak accident as my original injury. (end essay portion) Months later I could read and write with the best of them. In fact, I got into MIT for undergrad nearly six months to the day of my cognitive diagnosis. Couldn't come up with the $200k they wanted for tuition and whatnot, but still is a testament of the turnaround. Six years later I am still fine. I have no memory loss of cognitive problems. In fact, in keeping with some Utah culture, I spent a couple of years in Taiwan and I am fluent (well, as much as a white guy ever gets, and having two years of not speaking it has understandably degraded) in Mandarin Chinese. Oh, and I was back on a waterski three weeks after the accident. I just went and bought a kayaking helmet. I also have pictures of my brain and my reconstructed skull if anyone is morbid enough to want to see them.

Hey, this is egibbons' dad. I used to hang out here when I was dabbling with carving. My kids told me I was way better at skiing than alpining, so I went back to skiing. I am 50 years old, a NASTAR gold medal level skier. I usually carve on Atomic 160 slalom skis with my 3 sons on their alpine boards. When it snows, they take their soft boots, and we go off-roading. For that, I use my 180 Atomic R11 all mountains, which are a titch long/stiff for me (@160lbs) when we go in the trees. Last time I looked, as I remember, Metro 10 Pulse Ti's were the cutting edge on all mountain skis. Do I recall that right? I am thinking about getting a pair of new-old-stock's. Are these going to be excellent performers in powder, chop, and bumps? I can't even find the range of sizes they were made in, but I am 5'7" 160lbs. Will 170's be best? I will only use them a couple times a year, predominantly using my beloved slaloms on the groomsters. Thanks for any opinions.

Cutting new screws is not a huge issue for me. When I did it before I just plumbed the insert with a micrometer and cut to length. I could do a better job this time around as I now have access to my school's MechE machine shop. Is it a necessary with plain OS2's?