Skiing the East 12/27

Yesterday my sister Jenna and I skied at Gunstock, NH. Gunstock is a relatively small, family-oriented ski area about an hour from our house, where all the trails and lifts are named after guns or gun-related paraphenalia. It is also where we both learned to ski in the 90s. Skiing in the east is sometimes something that can only be appreciated by those who grew up skiing here, and occasionally not even by those people. 

The snow was relatively cooperative yesterday: We got a classic "Nor' Easter" that gave Gunstock close to a foot of snow (and two feet at some of the more Northern areas). Unfortunately, it fell on top of manmade-only snow, recognized by skiers from Western states as "ice." Still, a good amount of the snow managed to stay on the trails instead of being blown off into the woods. While it wasn't a "powder day" in any sense of the word I'm now accustomed to, it made for pretty decent surface conditions.

Looking down on Lake Winnipesaukee from the summit. Gunstock's snowmaking team hadn't yet got to the right half of this trail.

In the 90s, and probably now also, this "trail", Tiger Steeps, was usually the only spot on the mountain left ungroomed. I remember it as a near-vertical face of sedan-size moguls. It is slightly less intimidating now.

New England breeds great park skiers because most of the time, there's really not much else to do. A 14 year old skied past me and did a front flip off the first jump here.

Ice frost on the chairlift bar.

Jenna, learning to snowboard.

By about 2pm we were cold enough that we were ready to call it a day. Ah, New England!

It isn't apparent in the picture, but we are freezin

g.

It was windy during the day. We could tell because all the snow had retreated to one side of the car by the end of the day.

Sierra Cement 12/17-19

California is in the midst of an epic storm cycle, with ample moisture being drawn up from southern latitudes. On Thursday, this was the forecast liquid precipitation over the next five days:

Typically, we would see snow ratios of 12 to 1, meaning that those 15 inches of liquid would translate to 15 feet of snow. However, because of the southern moisture tap, these storms that started Friday have been associated with warmer air and high snow levels.  Snow started Friday morning with snow levels around 6000 feet, resulting in fairly heavy snow at Kirkwood (7800 feet), but not unusual for the Sierras. It snowed steadily throughout the day, resulting in a pretty fun powder day.

Friday, we randomly ran into our roommate Justin at lunch and skied the second half of the day together.

Saturday and Sunday snow intensified and snow levels hovered around 7000 feet to 7500 feet. On Saturday the snow was the heaviest I've ever skied. Despite Kirkwood getting multiple feet of the stuff, you would only sink in a few inches. Make a turn a little wrong and it would grab your skis, resulting in a person size divot in the thick snow. Saturday only two chairs were open, but we had a lot of fun, especially after meeting up with a bunch of former cyclists, also randomly run-into.

By Sunday morning, Kirkwood had gotten about 4 feet of heavy, barely-snow, and the storm was intensifying. Around 930 they opened chair 5 for about thirty minutes befure shutting it back down due to wind. We weren't too disappointed in the wind hold: the snow was even heavier and harder to ski than Saturday.
 

Sunday morning. Buried car.

Ski patrol pow-wow. "Should we just tell everyone to go home?"

Kam, Aurora and Liz had driven up to South Lake Saturday night, then to Kirkwood Sunday morning. They did one run, then got stuck driving all the way around the lake to 80. Sorry guys!

13+ hours in the car; 1 run.

Core Shot Repair

In the first two days of the season at Kirkwood, I managed to put 3 core shots in my new skis (the first half of the first day) and 2 core shots in my old skis (day number two). For the uninitiated, a "core shot" is a gouge in the base of your ski that goes completely through the base material, so that the core of the ski is showing. Typically, base gouges are filled by melting additional base material ("P-tex") into the gouge. A core shot is harder to repair than a gouge that doesn't penetrate to the core because P-tex binds well to the base material and itself, but not to the ski core or metal edges. So, if you simply fill a core shot with P-tex, it is likely to rip out.

The bases on the Armada JJs are extremely thin, especially further toward the tips and tails.

Bases of old skis (Head Mojo 90s) are already pretty torn up.

Core shots can be fixed by either putting down a primer layer under the P-tex that will stick to the core material (such as epoxy) or by cutting out the affected area, and replacing it with a patch of new base material. My local ski shop (Cal. Ski Company) will do one of these for $15 per core shot, plus the cost of a regular ski tune (around $50) to smooth out, restructure, and wax the entire base after the repair. With my two pairs of skis and six core shots (including one from last season), this would cost close to $200. While Cal. Ski Co. do excellent work, a full ski tune is overkill for the kind of skiing I do. I'm really only concerned with not having giant holes in my skis; I don't really need (or notice) a full ski tune. Skiing in soft snow most of the time, it is not that important to have a fast base or freshly sharpened edges. I figured that it would be worthwhile for me to buy the equipment I need and learn to do the repairs myself. After all, my time isn't worth that much.  Plus, with the equipment in hand, I won't have to look at future encounters with rocks as a $100 day of skiing.

After reading about repair options and watching instructional videos online, I ordered the basic tools I needed to do the minimal repair. This includes a flat-tip soldering iron, base material, base cleaner (with wax remover), a metal scraper, and a panzer file for removing excess material. I decided to try a "primer" material called metal grip. This has a heat-activated adhesive and sticks to the ski core and to the metal edges. All in all, everything was about $100.

The basic steps are (1) Clean hole of rocks, remove wax from base in surrounding area, to aid adhesion. (2) Melt metal grip into the hole, let cool, scrape off to below the surface. (3) Melt base material on top of metal grip, let cool, scrape flat.

Area cleaned, metal grip applied.

After the metal grip cools it becomes rubbery.

Base material on top of metal grip.

After scraping excess base material and filing flush with base.

Older core shot re-repaired.

In places, the bases of the JJs are thinner than my fingernail and this made the repair much more difficult. It is hard to apply the metal grip thinly enough so that it remains below the surface of the base in all places. One can apply excess metal grip and then remove to below the base, but its even more difficult to do this without ripping all the material out. In the end I managed to scrape a very thin layer on with the soldering iron and then remove excess with an exact-o knife without pulling too much away from the base.

A thin layer of metal grip.

Finished product.

Powder Day 11/28

The Kirkwood ridge.

 It is crazy how good this early season has been for snow compared to the previous few years. The mountain is already filled in pretty well, whereas two years ago (and last year) there was barely any coverage going into late December. This also shows you just how many rocks get completely covered over the course of the season.

After a brief return to the Bay area for Thanksgiving after Kirkwood's opening day, we turned right around and came back up to Tahoe for a weekend in South Lake and a day of skiing on Sunday. We stayed at an awesome house and I did some snowshoeing (and football) on Saturday with Cathleen and Jesse.

It snowed all day Saturday in South Lake, adding nearly a foot of new snow to the few feet already on the ground there.

We met up with Owen at Kirkwood. Despite there being only a little over a foot of fresh snow (versus 10+ feet four days before) it was much lighter and just generally way better. Good times had by all! Also, two new core shots, this time in my old skis. So, it's either still pretty rocky or I just have less and less regard for my skis' well being.

Me, taken from Owen's iPhone.

Traversing out in Palisades.

Kirkwood Opening 11/24

This year, Tahoe was blessed with the biggest November snowstorm since 2004. Kirkwood recorded 128" of snow over the four day period from November 19 - 22. It was enough to cover the entire mountain in a decent base and gave us the November opening we've been missing for the past three years. We made it up for opening day on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Driving up after the storm.

Approaching Silver Lake.

First tracks of the season at the top of Chair 6.

Kirkwood Opening Day - 24 Nov 2010 from Kyle on Vimeo.

I got a chance to test out my Armadas in their natural habitat - Powder. They're going to take a little getting used to. The rocker in the tails means you can't lean back too far without wiping out, as I learned:

Kyle - 24 Nov 2010 from Kyle on Vimeo.

Now, It's not usually the best idea to use a brand new pair of skis on the first day of the season - cover is thin and there are plenty of rocks lurking just below the surface. But with all the snow I figured cover would be better than normal for opening day. Still, despite being extra careful, I still managed to put some big scratches and a few core shots in them, all before lunch.

Mammoth Trip 11/17-18

When Lauren got back from Geneva, on November 15, we took a preseason ski trip to Mammoth. Mammoth was the only ski area open within a "reasonable" driving distance (besides Boreal, but 200 vertical feet doesn't really count). On the drive, we stopped by a hidden hot springs in Bridgeport, CA, with an excellent view of the Eastern Sierra:

We skied November 17 and 18. I've been impatient to go skiing again since basically July, so any snow would have been enough. Considering Mammoth was only open for a week at the time, it was pretty amazing that they had enough natural snow to cover the upper half of the mountain. The lower mountain was mostly man-made, but skied pretty well. I rocked the park a LOT. 

... and Lauren is working on skiing in a more interesting direction on the groomers. You have to learn to ski switch in order to do a switch 360, after all.

Lauren Learning to Ski Switch from Kyle on Vimeo.

I tested my new skis for a few runs. They actually did better on the groomers than my old skis, thanks to new sharp edges.

On the drive home, we went over Monitor Pass (highway 89) and saw an amazing sunset. It looked a little like this: