Snow Sports and/or Surfing

Over on the Facebook Ikon pass forum every other post is a rant for or against using the safety bar on the lift. It reminds me why I don’t Facebook. I’m not looking to discuss it here, I’m just amused that this MTB forum has more snow content than that one.

Though I enjoy lurking the “Bad Colorado 14ers Advice” group.
 
Went up to my local Cherry Peak this morning. They open the peak chair on Thursday thru Sunday. Since Sunday the resort has got closer to 3 feet. Knee deep pow on the ungrounded, which is 90% of what accessible by the peak chair. I was the 2nd chair to the top. Best runs of the season so far! Got some fresh pow turns. Hope next Thursday is as good.

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Awesome. We’ll be watching the weather and hope to try that place out next season. Today is our last day in Park City. We had hellacious winds all night so we blew off today. Yesterday was our only full sunshine day and I was still finding 12” of powder in trees off the old, slow Thaynes lift.

Weather app says snow next Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday down here so you should be okay next week. Get some!! Looking across at Deer Valley yesterday

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Spoiler alert...

Shiffrin gets 86th career World Cup race win. She's pretty good. :thumbsup:
Caught up watching last week’s races at Aspen. Is it normal to put World Cup races on blue runs?
@mtbMike I'm starting to save money now so I can afford to ride at least ONE of the resorts down by SLC next year. OR, I'll just buy passes for Cherry and Beaver. That sounds like the bettter, more enjoyable thing to do.
pick the one you want to go to and buy next year’s pass today while it’s cheapest. Epic Pass(Park City) has lower prices but with Ikon Pass you get to choose among the rest. Ikon is $250 for a two day pass up to $1100 to ski every day. I’ve heard that Epic has 0% financing and Ikon’s interest rates might not be legal.
 
@tick I am not interested in getting season passes for ANY resort down by SLC. All of them are at least 1:45 away, Snowbasin being the closest. FOR ME it's not logical to make such a drive and pay the $$$ for tickets (or pass). When I can get to Cherry in 20 minutes and Beaver in about an hour 15. AND, both of these resorts will be WAY LESS crowded. Maybe I'll do a SLC resort just for the day, once.
 
@tick I am not interested in getting season passes for ANY resort down by SLC. All of them are at least 1:45 away, Snowbasin being the closest. FOR ME it's not logical to make such a drive and pay the $$$ for tickets (or pass). When I can get to Cherry in 20 minutes and Beaver in about an hour 15. AND, both of these resorts will be WAY LESS crowded. Maybe I'll do a SLC resort just for the day, once.
Understand. Since you mentioned saving for a “big” trip I was mostly trying to suggest the 2,3, or 4 day passes that they presell. The 2 day ikon pass is still $125/day but it would allow you to pick your two days spontaneously and not deal with a $250 walk-up price. I know that Solitude will have slightly cheaper tickets available if you buy a month ahead for a specific date. So you’d be paying $110 in December and hope that your day in January worked out.

We’ve only ever done this with Ikon, my understanding is that Epic has better deals for this sort of thing.
 
@mtbMike I'm starting to save money now so I can afford to ride at least ONE of the resorts down by SLC next year. OR, I'll just buy passes for Cherry and Beaver. That sounds like the bettter, more enjoyable thing to do.

@Redman No idea what next year will be like but we bought midweek tickets to Snowbasin for $99. Powder was $119 and Brighton was $109. I agree with you on the crowds issue.
 
*Winningest….or WOAT if you prefer.
Well, given that she has won in DH, Super G, GS, SL, Combined and Parallel and given the number of World Cup individual discipline globes and overall globes, and the number of World Championship medals, I think GOAT (in ski racing) fits.

If you want to go all purest and debate whether she is the best ski racer in terms of technical ability, I would still say yes.
 
Well, given that she has won in DH, Super G, GS, SL, Combined and Parallel and given the number of World Cup individual discipline globes and overall globes, and the number of World Championship medals, I think GOAT (in ski racing) fits.

If you want to go all purest and debate whether she is the best ski racer in terms of technical ability, I would still say yes.

Although I have a soft spot for the herminator and his all-time crash and basically coming back a couple days later and winning it! Remember watching that... He my GOAT Wipeout/ WinIt!

Austrian ski racer Hermann Maier makes one of the most dramatic crashes in skiing history when he catapults 30 feet in the air, lands on his helmet and rams through two safety fences at an estimated 80 miles per hour on February 13, 1998. Amazingly, Maier suffered just minor injuries and walked away from the crash. Several days later, he won gold medals in the giant slalom and super-G events.

 
Although I have a soft spot for the herminator and his all-time crash and basically coming back a couple days later and winning it! Remember watching that... He my GOAT Wipeout/ WinIt!

Austrian ski racer Hermann Maier makes one of the most dramatic crashes in skiing history when he catapults 30 feet in the air, lands on his helmet and rams through two safety fences at an estimated 80 miles per hour on February 13, 1998. Amazingly, Maier suffered just minor injuries and walked away from the crash. Several days later, he won gold medals in the giant slalom and super-G events.

I had the same skis, bindings, boots and poles as Hermann in that picture at that time in my life. Coincidence? No - he and Hans Knauss were my race heroes at that time (and Thomas Sykora in SL).
If you want to talk coming back from crashes to excel, look no further than Linsdsey Vonn. She had her Hermann Maier moments of winning races after frightening crashes the day before, but also came back time and again from agonizing injuries. To want to go that fast after being hurt that bad - time and time again - makes her a candidate for GOAT as well. Hers weren't at the Olympics though, so not as many eyes on her moments as on Hermann's.

And I thought Maier was dead after that crash, BTW.
 
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Well, given that she has won in DH, Super G, GS, SL, Combined and Parallel and given the number of World Cup individual discipline globes and overall globes, and the number of World Championship medals, I think GOAT (in ski racing) fits.

If you want to go all purest and debate whether she is the best ski racer in terms of technical ability, I would still say yes.

I'm a huge Shiffrin fan and I'm happy for her. Even Stenmark has said he could not have done what she has done...as far as competing in all the different disciplines. All even give you and support 110%, GOAT for women. But GOAT to me means the best off all time....period!!! The male competitors can't do what she does because the competition is too fierce across every discipline. I made the same argument when people were calling Rachel Atherton the GOAT in DH with no differentiation between men & women racers.
 
I'm a huge Shiffrin fan and I'm happy for her. Even Stenmark has said he could not have done what she has done...as far as competing in all the different disciplines. All even give you and support 110%, GOAT for women. But GOAT to me means the best off all time....period!!! The male competitors can't do what she does because the competition is too fierce across every discipline. I made the same argument when people were calling Rachel Atherton the GOAT in DH with no differentiation between men & women racers.
Women's World Cup skiing is stuffed to the gills with incredibly talented females. It's nearly on par with the men (at least for the top 40-50). Women's DH mt bike racing isn't anywhere close to that - there are very few women in the field as capable as the top two or three. Shiffrin and Atherton are not even comparable.

Shiffrin has made it look like there aren't many extraordinarily talented women in the field, much the way Gwin made it look when he was crushing the field and won 5 out of 7 DHs in 2011. Now just have Gwin be that dominant over 10 seasons and you have a comparison. But have him do that in Enduro and Cross Country as well.

PS: I'm a little jaded because Shiffrin's mom beat me in a slalom at Winter Park and Vail. In my defense, I ran the course about 80 racers after she did.
 
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Women's World Cup skiing is stuffed to the gills with incredibly talented females. It's nearly on par with the men (at least for the top 40-50). Women's DH mt bike racing isn't anywhere close to that - there are very few women in the field as capable as the top two or three. Shiffrin and Atherton are not even comparable.

Shiffrin has made it look like there aren't many extraordinarily talented women in the field, much the way Gwin made it look when he was crushing the field and won 5 out of 7 DHs in 2011. Now just have Gwin be that dominant over 10 seasons and you have a comparison. But have him do that in Enduro and Cross Country as well.

If I see Shiffrin compete on the same courses as men and beat them, I'll change my tune. Until then, she is the best female skier of all-time and the most accomplished.
 
Mt. High today. They received 6-10' of snow a couple of weekends ago and were closed until last Monday. Then it rained Thursday, Friday and Saturday, relegating that beautiful new stash of snow to less than half, and changing the texture considerably.

Today was the first non-rainy weekend day that they have been open since the storm - and I think everybody knew it. Very crowded at West. we arrived about 15 minutes later than normal and we could tell it was going to be a zoo. We still parked in the upper lot, but quite a ways back and it was filling quickly. A colleague from work (Will) was coming up solo, so I felt obliged to try to meet up with him. @tbarnesarc and I took a few runs and the lines were getting thick. We did two on the conquest lift with no line. The snow was granular and not too bad. Pretty soft. Halfway down our 5th run we ran into Will who was on the beginner lift/hill. After half a run with him, he said he wanted to stay on that lift for a while. We parted company and Taylor and I decided to shuttle down to East to avoid the lift lines. First, a trip to the car to put away the skis and change into my snowboard boots.

East was amazing! Zero lift lines. Looooong runs with good pitch, soft snow. After 4 solid runs, we stopped for grilled burgers on the deck. Will texted and said he was coming down to meet us. We took a couple of runs with Will, helping him learn a few things, then ended with an awesome run down a long black run (Sundance). So about 12 runs on the day - 5 on skis for me at West and 7 on snowboard at East. That's about 15,000' give or take. It was incredible! And I'm sorry - but 0 lift lines on a Sunday? I felt like I was cheating.

Two Handsome IMTBers!
Taylor and Chris Look Amazing on the lift!.jpg
 
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Having fun while spending quality time with your daughter & friends…you can’t beat that!! The last time I was at Mountain High was 2008, the same day those guys were killed in the avalanche. It was the best day we ever had there and we had been in “out of bounds” areas in the trees ourselves.
 
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All these storms we had recently and no one here skinned up Santiago Peak?
That would be kinda like the SS/bike packing mix of downhill skiing.
And, no expensive lift ticket.

 
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