First Turns of the Season

The first good snowfall of the season came around Halloween. Alta is nice enough to support uphill travel throughout their resort early season before the lifts start running, at your own risk. About a foot or so blanketed the high elevations while it stayed mild and warm down in the Salt Lake valley. It felt extra exciting loading up my skis and touring equipment while it was 65 and sunny at my house, it was time to break out the gear and see what it was like up there. My friend Marcus and I decided to go for a walk to check things out. We started up the summer road at Alta, headed passed the Sugarloaf lift and up toward Cecret Lake. En route to the Sugarloaf lift base we found some snowmaking whalebacks and a classic manufactured photo opportunity!

My first turns of the season were in fresh powder with no one around. Thank you, Utah!

Back to Books

I knew I had to make up for myself somehow after things didn’t quite go according to plan this summer… My immediate thought was I should run away to France to the refuge of my friend’s chalet in the Alps and summit Mt. Blanc on my birthday… You’ve got to dream big, right? And I hope that does happen soon, but not before I learn how to deal if and when shit hits the fan out there. 

Auberge Du Chalezan, Les Contamines, France - the base of Mt. Blanc

After I came back down to earth and returned home, I thought OK, I’ve got to add something to my repertoire in order to progress out of this self-proclaimed “failure.” Through a bit of research I decided to enroll in a wilderness first responder course and an STCW (standards of training, certification and watch keeping) US Coast Guard sanctioned course. These two courses, I feel, will build my knowledge and certification in areas I’d like to pursue, like outdoor education and adventure camps for kids, and continuing to work on yachts in ideal locations. Since my work experience in those areas lacked this summer, I might as well go back to the books and build from there.

Wilderness first responder came first, beginning the day after Labor Day, kicking off September on a great foot. The SOLO Wilderness Medical School in Conway, NH is base camp for a group of WFR and WEMT students for two and four weeks each. There are about 20 students in the WFR group and 20 or so in the WEMT group. For the most part we are separate, but share meals and dorm housing.
Day one consisted of the awkward introductions and uneasy feeling of not knowing what to expect, which quickly subsided as we jumped right into scenarios and performing care on pretend hurt patients. Coming into this with some basic knowledge of first aid after spending many high school summers as a lifeguard, I felt decently comfortable with what I was getting myself into. Yet this is a 10-day intensive course where we start from scratch with basic immediate care of a hurt person in the wilderness, CPR, first aid, bandaging wounds, treating allergic reactions and snake bites, to more serious trauma like broken bones, splinting, placing broken femurs in traction, properly carrying a victim out of the woods, etc. This is such pertinent and relevant material to have in my back pocket while doing the things I love most – skiing and enjoying the outdoors. Although as a coach, if I encounter an injured athlete, I am strictly forbidden to perform care on them due to lawsuits and I am to follow the protocol of calling ski patrol to let them do the dirty work, this kind of knowledge will be incredibly useful for my own adventures with friends in the backcountry.

"Because shit happens..."

The SOLO school is one of the premiere specifically wilderness medical schools in the world and has been operating for nearly 50 years. This kind of training drew an incredibly unique crowd to the SOLO School for their September courses. The typical crunchy post grad and current college students abound, yet we also have a young woman who’s contracted by the Army to provide cultural intelligence to special ops teams in Afghanistan, a man about to embark on building a hut-to-hut trail system through the Costa Rican cloud forest, a man who started the first and only on-the-ground mobile paramedic operation in Cairo in response to all the upheaval going on there, a former Navy rescue swimmer, a young man taking this course in order to immediately seek an Air Force recruiter to enlist for para-rescue, and a paramedic who traveled all the way from Australia. Based on the diverse backgrounds and far reaching home bases of the students here, I believe this must be the premiere wilderness medical training facility.

Practicing splinting with ski poles, a jacket and layers for padding - very realistic tools

ski pole make-shift arm splint and sling

The students are pretend victims in our practice scenarios - injuries got pretty real with theater makeup

I'm the victim with a splinted leg - please never let this happen in real life!

Make-shift head splint/immobilizer with air mattress, layers for padding and crevat triangle bandages as ties

Week one of WFR training is in the books and I’m now equipped with the know how to approach a distressed or injured person in the backcountry, gauge their condition and treat as appropriately as I possibly can with very limited resources in usually adverse conditions. Although I have all this new knowledge at my fingertips, in no way do I ever want to have to use it. Interesting that I took 2 weeks out of my life and paid a good chunk of money to learn these skills, yet hope to God I’ll never put it to use. However simply having the skills to remain calm and take charge in a shitty situation in the backcountry gives me a newfound confidence to continue going out there to do what I love. 

A fun way to learn what's in our guts in case we come upon an abdomen injury

Poaching Powder Week

The last week of February is the best week of the year for a select few ski industry players. February 2012 was my induction into the partying, skiing, networking and general mayhem that is Powder Week. Most popular ski magazines come out with the new season’s buyer’s guide around September to inform their readership about all the new skis and gear for the coming season. 

See my part in Powder's Buyer's Guide 2013 here!

Powder Magazine issues a buyer’s guide, but has decided to do their due diligence in a very unique way. Instead of tasking ski testers with index cards to grade certain features of each ski they’ve tested, churning out skis and accompanying grades like a factory line, each ski tester is paired with one brand for an entire morning, and a different brand for the afternoon. By skiing with one brand for a blocked out session, the skier not only gets to know the skis, they can chose a few different pairs in the line up and get an intimate knowledge of the brand from the rep and their sponsored athletes. Powder has been putting on “Powder Week” for years now, and has honed in on exactly how to organize the week.

First off, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is where Powder Week calls it’s home. Having this unconventional ski test at Jackson is key, in that more often than not, it dumps. The epic conditions and terrain of the mountain does justice to the magazine’s name while creating an ideal environment for trying out the hottest, fattest and radest skis for next year.

Gelande Quaffing World Championships, coincidentally during Powder Week

I was lucky enough to participate in the week as a “Fantasy Drafter.” The magazine invites the “ski testers” aka “Fantasy Drafters” to come in and pair off with selected brands to then write reviews about the skis. The group of “Fantasy Drafters” tries out all the skis throughout the week, then partake in a football-like draft to chose which skis they will write about in the September Buyer’s Guide. Other “ski testers” are involved, known as “Shop Rats.” These skiers are reps from ski shops around the country that are in the market to potentially put in an order with the brands, as well as inform themselves about the skis and gear to take home to their customers.

As we all know, the 2011-12 winter season as well as the current one are definitely not going down in history books for most snowfall around the country. Since the flakes haven’t been flying, so too have consumers not been buying. Ski shops and the ski industry as a whole have seen a decline in dollars spent, period. I believe this also affects the way brands are developing and marketing new skis, and how magazines are going about their buyer’s guides. Essentially, there’s no money, but brands and companies still need to spend money to make money. Spending money on marketing, advertising in magazines, providing enough equipment for the magazine ski tests to look like they’re doing well when really, they might be in the weeds. Given the brutal reality we’re facing with low snow winters, ski industry stakeholders are tightening their wallets just as much as the snow void between the “epic season” of 2010-11 to the current one. Dare I say out loud that this year's Powder Week reflects the decline in dollars since last season by tightening their budgets as well. 

See the Snowsports Industries of America's Industry Trends

All year I looked forward to Powder Week 2013, just as all the magazine people, Fantasy Drafters and Shop Rats were. This special week at Jackson is one of the only weeks in the season I get to ski for me all day every day and let go of the athletes I coach for a little bit. But this year, the magazine had different plans for me. I didn’t fully understand until I got up there this year, but I wasn’t going back as an official Fantasy Drafter this time. Instead, I’ll be reviewing 2014 boots. Still an awesome opportunity, but not nearly as much fun! I already carved it out in my schedule, and by god, I was going no matter what! So off I went, up to Jackson with my roommates who ski for Technica/Blizzard. It was fun to head up without a plan or obligation to do anything, just wing it and have as much fun as possible. Luckily through my experience last year meeting many of the reps and magazine people, I was pretty familiar going into it.

Day 1 I hopped in with the Blizzard crew and their first “Shop Rat” of the week. What’s cool about a lot of the skiers who participate is that they know the mountain extremely well. This shop rat was from Teton Village Sports, so he knew exactly what he was doing when he took us out the gate into the backcountry and up to Four Pines, a fairly short boot pack up a few ridge sections to some awesome terrain and untouched powder that fell days before. This set the week off right, even though I was huffing and puffing getting up there, it was SO worth it.

View atop Four Pines

Post-hike Eiffel Tower 

The major difference this year besides not being a Fantasy Drafter was that it barely snowed a trace. An inch over night here and 2-3 during the day there made for a vastly different experience trying skis as well as getting around the mountain. Last year I went out of bounds for a few laps, but was having so much fun and getting so deep in powder in the resort that I didn’t need to go into the backcountry to find the goods. This year, if you wanted soft untracked snow, out the gates is where you needed to go. Much of our skiing the rest of the week was done in bounds on hard pack, groomers and hard bumps with some soft snow here and there. This was still incredibly fun due to the high energy of the group, but was pretty hard on our bodies! (Not to mention the mass amounts of alcohol consumed each night at Spur and the Moose…)

To round out the week with a different take on things, I went out to Snow King to help out the Jackson Hole High School Ski Team. My friend, the Ski Prophet, coaches the team and asked me to come out to finish some video we’re working on while also giving the kids and myself a new opportunity. I volunteered to set a slalom course for them down lane 7 at the King as they prepared for State Championships at the same venue the next day. I didn’t know the hill or the kids, but thought nothing of it to come out, get the chance to ski and set a new hill and finish the project we’re working on. The kids absolutely loved it and were thrilled to get a new coach’s perspective on their home hill. It truly inspired me to see how excited the kids were with the course set that was nothing for me to do but meant everything to them. The energy and joy these local kids displayed reminded me of when I raced in high school and how much fun we had. The high school ski racing circuit has lower stakes than USSA racing and brings in kids that might never have an opportunity to try the sport otherwise. This sense of newness, no ego, no attitude after years of racing refreshed my view and sent me home smiling, ready to get back to my own athletes and get them pumped for their last qualifying race before U16 Junior Championships.

Powder Week 2013 was a whole new experience for me even though I’d participated the year before. Without a set guideline to follow this time around, I was able to explore the mountain, the skis and the community in a different way. Powder Week represents what skiing is all about for me and for everyone who experiences it. It’s about having fun with amazing people, skiing hard all day every day at the sickest mountain there is. Its truly an honor to participate and it holds a special place in my heart. I feel like once a Powder Week’er, always a Powder Week’er, and I hope to experience it for years to come in every way that I can. From being a Fantasy Drafter to an on-looker skiing the mountain alongside them, I hope I never stop skiing Jackson the way I was introduced to it, in deep powder.