Every few years I take a deep dive into the women’s ski market, partly to re-visit the latest trends in the overall...
Checking in on the 2024 Women’s Market
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Revelations
Re-Thinking the Fundamentals
What if you had the chance to start over with a clean slate, not with something as monumental as a relationship -...
Cascading Rivulets of Thought
As the photo above attests, I've been composing my thoughts about skis and skiing for a long time. This week's...
How Not to Buy Ski Boots
Of all the nefarious practices in our little business, none is more inimical than a consumer shopping a website...
52 Weeks
Your Esteemed Editor en route to his next descent in the Wasatch backcountry. If you’re a skier, and you believe in...
Our Dear Readers Weigh In
At the Kalavrita Ski Center in Greece, $35 buys a lift ticket and a room for the night at a three-star hotel.One of...
Road Tripping
Among the many dissatisfactions of this most unusual season is that travel beyond one’s local environs has been roundly discouraged. Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful down to my socks that we’re allowed to ski locally, and my version of same is pretty sweet. Pardon the plug, but between Alpine Meadows, Squaw Valley and Mt. Rose I have a smorgasbord of savory choices.
But skiing close to home and skiing on the road are two different beasts. Nothing is the same, really, and therein lies a great deal of the road trip’s charms.
To shed light on my premise, allow me to pull back the veil on my favorite away game, an annual pilgrimage to Little Cottonwood Canyon. By the end of this brief travelogue you will probably hate me, so please fill your vessel of good will to the rim before proceeding.
It’s About Nothing
In the last week of January,2009 I was able to spend a few days skiing in Little Cottonwood Canyon, which is always cathartic for my ravaged soul. The conditions were all over the map, the mountains having experienced a long, hot spell followed by rain, grapple, wet snow and finally dry snow driven by winds that could flense an adult walrus in a few minutes. Couldn’t have been better.
I had been preparing for the trip for weeks, psychologically. Two back surgeries the previous winter had reduced my training regimen from semi-annual to non-existent. Scheduling conflicts such as work kept me from visiting the areas that abound at home near Lake Tahoe, so I had zero ski days on a body with more fat on it than a French duck. I had as much chance of surviving Snowbird and Alta as a rib roast in a piranha tank.
Fortunately, the Lord is merciful, anti-inflammatory drugs are powerful and there are techniques that allow one to block out pain. There are also many wonderful people in this world with which to ski, kind people who stand quietly by, pretending to be in awe of Nature, while my chest heaves so violently in its futile quest for oxygen that tiny lung particles break lose and make for the exits. One such person is Guru Dave Powers, a man whose passion for the sport hasn’t diminished after thousands of days of riding gravity down the infinitely variable slopes and crannies of Snowbird. The Goo knows this hill, and in knowing it well knows so much more.
The Making of a Skier, Chapter XII: Putting Words into the Mouth of God & Other Mid-Life Adventures
When I was cut adrift by Head on June 13, 2001, my once glowing prospects dimmed considerably. The date is etched in memory because I hosted a small soirée that evening in honor of my darling wife’s 50th birthday. One of the attendees was Paul Hochman, who would play several roles in my life as I wandered in the wilderness of unemployment during what were supposed to be my peak earning years.
During the gaping hole in my career that spanned 2001-2011, I would eventually spend every cent of my inheritance, plus most of what I’d saved from earlier bouts with gainful employment, just keeping the household afloat. Despite a river of red ink, my resume would suggest that I was not only commercially active during this epoch, but had my hand in all sorts of ventures.
Fit the Whole Skier
We bootfitters are naturally obsessed with feet, but the best bootfitters don’t just fit feet; they fit the whole skier. The “whole skier” includes more than just a quick survey of the lower leg and how it’s connected to the foot. It’s even more than all of the skier’s physical attributes, which include not only height and weight, but seated posture, stance, kinesthetic wiring, arch health and stiffness throughout the kinetic chain; the whole skier also includes his or her history with the sport and, most importantly, what sort of skier he or she wants to be.
One of the most obvious traits about almost all boot customers is his or her gender. (Please forgive me if I don’t overcomplicate what should be a simple point about body type.) The first step in a sales process that consists of winnowing all possible boots down to one is picking from the pile of unisex boots or the alternative world of women’s boots.
No-brainer, right? Not so fast. What if a particular woman were tall, with a long tibia and a tapered calf? Let’s add to her profile that she’s a good athlete with a background in dance. Up to now, she’s only been an occasional skier who rented her gear, but a new beau has persuaded her to take a deeper dive. She already has her season pass.
The Things We Do for Love
Dear Readers who regularly devour my weekly Revelations know that I have already written at length on the subject of Why Skiers Are Better than Everyone Else. Last Friday I was reminded of my timeless prose as I spent 45 minutes traversing a very short stretch of road that connects I-80 to Route 89, my proscribed path to Alpine Meadows. As I voluntarily descended into this automotive miasma, I could make out the dim form of the interstate traffic snaking down from the west, two dense strands of tightly linked vehicles stretching beyond the horizon.