Ok folks, here it is.
Friday morning the sun rose and shined its light all over the Wasatch. I awoke with the dawn and began to get ready. I had set my alarm early enough to be able to stop at McDonalds on the way to the canyon. Once my appetite was satiated I continued my drive towards Alta. It felt a little strange to drive by the BCC road, but I continued on. I arrived at Alta about 8:30, which to say the least is DAMN early for me.
I found Flykdog and Castro's waiting in line for lift tickets. Sidenote, what the hell is up with that lift ticket situation? They don't sell lift tickets until 8:45? They open the lift at 9:10, how the hell are you supposed to get first chair? If you arrived without a ticket or pass, by yourself, there is no way you could get first chair. The "locals" would toss your skis out of line and you'd be fucked. Soul, I guess? Heh.
Anyways, after we got our lift tickets we all assembled at Collins. We had 14 participants in the camp, a few faces I knew and a bunch I'd never seen. Gordy quickly scrapped the idea of a warmup run, this was going to be the best chance for soft snow of the weekend, if we wanted it we had to be quick. We all joined the line and began to wait for our ride up Collins. At the top of Collins we assembled once again, this time we were divided into two groups. We all voluntarily decided if we wanted in the fast group or slow group. Of course I wanted in the slow group, I'll be damned if I wanted to chase around a bunch of kids all day ;).
Let me digress a bit, down at the bottom Brant Moles was introduced as the guest coach for the day. Brant took the ripping group first and we were forced to go with Gordy ;). We immediately headed out on the High-T, I looked everywhere for gapers, but there were none to be found. Figures, just when I was ready to unleash some Pain Train on someone, no one was to be found. Oh well, I gave it a few train whistles just to be sure. We blasted by the toothbrush and took a look at Alf's, it was pretty chewed already, the group opted for untracked off the backside. During all of this Gordy just kind of watched us all. The next run down began the coaching, he began to isolate the little things each of us needed to improve our skiing.
As a whole we were a pretty damn good group of skiers, most of us had the fundamentals down, but we each had our little flaws. Mine was my hands, for years I've skied with a lot of hand movement, I tend to have one hand in front and the other behind me. After a few runs Gordy started videotaping us. One of the highlights of our first video run was Castro's spectacular almost recovery to complete destruction.
Our most exciting run with Gordy that morning was an excursion into the Nest, we ducked a rope and lined up above a rocky chute. Gordy tossed snowballs down to where he wanted us to turn. He then took off down the chute as if it were a blue run. I went first and charged about three turns, after my third turn I noticed the rocks which weren't visible from above. These rocks immediately became in play for my fourth turn, I went down and stomach slid over the top of them. I came to a stop and started removing the snow from my goggles and helmet about a 1/3 of the way down the pitch. Flykdog quickly followed, he began his slide a bit higher than mine and quickly gained speed. I sat there dumbfounded watching him slide, completely oblivious to the fact that he was coming straight for me. Too late I realized it, bam, I caught a ski to the wrist while attempting to help him stop. It was really just a cursory attempt, and I watched him slide for a bit longer. He got up with a huge grin and began removing the snow packed into his pants.
Being as this was probably the best snow day we decided to skip a sit down lunch, everyone grabbed something quickly and we switched instructors. For the afternoon we toured around with Brant Moles. Brant was probably the strongest coach of the bunch, he had us do several drills to reinforce turning with the legs. Many of us relied on the upper body to initiate our turns, the drills Brant had us do helped us to understand how to turn with the lower body. I know a lot of this sounds over simplified, don't get me wrong, each of the coaches had a very keen eye onto the individual problems of each camper.
We skied till late in the afternoon, we were supposed to be down at 2:30 to do beacon drills with Conway. The soft snow kept us on the hill till a bit after 3:00. After skiing we loaded into several vehicles and drove down to the Snowbird beacon drill range. Here we were once again divided into two groups, one group ran beacon search drills with Moles, the other group dug a pit with Conway. Jim Conway had a very good presentation on snow science and what you should be looking for in both a pit and environmental observations. After observing the pit and taking in the way this latest storm arrived Jim said there was no way in hell he'd go out in this snowpack. This proclamation was revealed as rather prophetic when I got home that night and read our board.
After the excercise down at Snowbird we drove back to Alta and settled into the GMD saloon. We commandeered the big screen and watched the video from the day. This was one of the best tools of the camp, you could see exactly what you were doing wrong and the consequences of it. Gordy and Brant were very attuned to these little failures of ours. Each offered various ways to try and correct these deficiencies. After we had watched the video several times, and Castro's crash I might add, we took a test Jim Conway had prepared for us. After Conway graded our tests we went over the answers as a group. I know I don't have enough knowledge to go out of bounds quite yet, but learning a bit from Jim definitely helped get me closer.
The group bonded very well that night, plenty of beer was drank, laughs were had. I imagine from this weekend we may see a few more user names posting regularly.
The next day I arrived even earlier, I pulled into the lot and like the day before showed no regard for the parking attendant. Each day the attendant attempted to get me to park where "they" wanted me to park. I really saw no reason why I should park halfway down one of the first few rows when there was a perfectly proper close spot by starting a new row. Each day I was treated to the evil eye, mad hand wavings and an attempted run towards me to enforce the natural order of Alta parking. Once I had started my own little row it was quickly filled with other cars, others who didn't see the need to park halfway down the row. This only fueled the attendant's obvious dislike of me. The steady stream of cars coming into the lot and their attempt to regain order allowed me to gear up and get out of there.
Once again we assembled at Collins, huge grins on everyone's faces. Jeremy Nobis soon showed up and we all loaded Collins. Gordy took our group this morning as well. We took a few groomers and then headed into Glory Hole. Once again I had my mad hands going on. Just before the lift Gordy suggested something I try. This was like an epiphany, I finally figured out how to keep my hands in front of me. It was a pretty damn good feeling, I had never really realized what I'd been doing wrong all these years. I've always been able to ski pretty well, I can usually make it down pretty much anything. But, I tend to get tired, tend to wear out. Hands in front and losing a lot of extraneous movement really helped my skiing.
We took a run down Eddie's High and was treated to an airshow by a few of the Alta players. Rockstars pulling 3's launching off the ridgeline, Sage smoothly hitting every piece of the terrain, Jamie Pierre hucking off the largest cliff nearby. We took a few runs down Ballroom after that, Flatlander performed a crash that rivaled Castro's, thankfully also captured on video and digital. Around 1:00 we attempted to all meet at Watson's for lunch. Watson's was quite crowded and we decided to move down to the GMD. We formed a large table and everyone had a needed boost of food energy.
After lunch our group went out with Jeremy Nobis. With full bellies we sidestepped up to the top of Gunsight. A few of us were breathing a bit hard and a bit nervous of the rock and exposure. The run down was quite nice, a few hop turn ledges and then a smooth carveable styrofoam surface. Joel videotaped our descent while Jeremy watched. By now most of us were getting the idea of what they were teaching, our group looked pretty darn composed. Jeremy gave us all suggestions on how to fix the details he found us lacking. He did a few stationary drills to show us the importance of balance and how to distribute it. We spent the rest of the day lapping the High-T and backside until we were spent at about 3:30 or so.
We adjourned to the GMD once again, once again taking over the spot in front of the TV. Plenty of beer, pizza, and more beer were consumed. Like the night before we had plenty of video to watch and analyze, both Gordy and Jeremy positively reinforcing our good traits and helping to correct bad traits. After the video watching was done we all followed Gordy down to the basement/activity room. Here Lee Cohen set up a slide show, our own private viewing of his spectacular images and the stories behind them. I left after the slide show and from what I hear missed some rather interesting stories from Gordy.
Part 2 in the next post...
(Excessive character limit)
