revelation today

[1xsculler]

Today, after about 65 trips to Crystal last season and this, it dawned on me that I am not busting my ass in this endeavor just for the fun of it or for camaraderie.  I am doing it for my own selfish interest to learn to carve well.  I don't care about pow (I'll ski pow but not much interested in boarding it although I did heliboard 1/2 day and it was fun).

Today we had about a foot of great new snow, BUT, it was on top of ungroomed ruts and bumps from yesterday.  I made one run and got in the car and drove home because there was no possibility of making any progress on improving my carving.

I do love taking the grandkids to the Mt for whatever they want to do.

Edited February 16, 2018 by 1xsculler

[BlueB]

Just wait... eventually it comes in full circle, you'll like everything again.  

[daveo]

Agree

[Aracan]

16 hours ago, 1xsculler said:

I'll ski pow but not much interested in boarding it

Truly? I recently had occasion to try skiing in moderate pow (daughter wants to hone her skiing skills because she doesn't care to go on school wintersports week as the only boarder), and my suspicion was confirmed: Fresh pow on skis is okay, fresh pow on the board is much better. Less-than-virginal pow on skis sucks, is great fun on the board.

[Corey]

When I'm on groom, I'm focused on searching for a pure carve. Getting lower, being smoother, etc.

In powder, I'm a 15-year-old. Slashing powder, flowing wherever. No goals, no thoughts other than "yippee!" 

[1xsculler]

3 hours ago, Aracan said:

Truly? I recently had occasion to try skiing in moderate pow (daughter wants to hone her skiing skills because she doesn't care to go on school wintersports week as the only boarder), and my suspicion was confirmed: Fresh pow on skis is okay, fresh pow on the board is much better. Less-than-virginal pow on skis sucks, is great fun on the board.

Interesting.

It is all about the bottom, the depth, the quality of the snow and other factors. Tuesday it looked awesome everywhere and there was not a cloud in the sky.  I took my son-in-law to the top of chair 6 to show him the best and steepest run on Crystal Mt., Powder Bowl.  A foot of untracked super light new snow. He was on softies, me in Hard boots on my 176 Coiler AM. I knew I was not good enough to Hard boot down one of my favorite ski runs but I figured he could have fun on it and I could slideslip down it. Very unfortunately under that one foot of the lightest powder I had ever seen was rock hard, very slippery ice and the entire slope was littered with large and small chunks of rock hard ice which looked, at first glance, like you could just blast them away as you went, i. e. they appeared to be just little bumps under the pow. Our first clue should have been that no one else had made any decent tracks and neither did we. My son-in-law did make it to the bottom in one piece but while I was trying to get my back foot in my board immediately slipped out from underneath me on that ice and down I went on my back, on my front, head first, ass first, picking up speed rapidly as my body was on the ice with the snow so light that it offered no resistance. My Helmut, torso, legs, board, etc. we're getting battered by the ice chunks and I continued to pick up speed.  I literally thought I was not going to survive this disastrous situation and thought the best I could hope for was a hospital stay. After about 300' I came to a stop. I had exerted no effort as the fall was completely uncontrolled but I was so panicked that my heart was racing and my breathing was very rapid. It took me about five minutes to recompose myself enough to make an attempt to skoot off to the side of the run which was still very steep and I started another downward slide, this time heading for and richoching through a patch of smallish trees which also beat the crap out of me. I finally inched my way over to where my son-in-law was on some level snow, shook all the snow out of my gear clicked my rear foot in and we had a good rest of the day on groomers.

Never, never, never in all of my 60 + years in the mountains have I experienced any conditions similar to what we had on Tuesday, i.e. super rock hard ice with firmly attached ice chunks covered by feather light powder which offered no resistance allowing board or skis to go straight to the ice on which no edge would set.

Oh well, live and learn. The muscles on the top and outside if my right leg, ankel to hip, are still extremley tender to the touch but there is no discoloration or signs of brusing.  Everything about this accident is very weird and I feel that I am one lucky old man. I went back up the next day to another foot of new powder and made a few runs on my 172 Cooler NFCB but nothing had been groomed the night before and the snow underneath was very bumpy so there was no carving to be done for me. I had a little fun steering my board as if I had bicycle handlebars in front of me so I made some improvement in my general board handling skills.

[Gossamer]

Buy a Rossignol XV and you can have both. I'm soft booting turns that on a good day don't feel much different than riding my Monster. It can be more tiring and the boots cause more irritation, otherwise the board slices and dices the chop and up to a foot of pow better than anything I've ever ridden.