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I found that when your interest/physical abilities start to wane in your primary sport that you have excelled in for a long time (skiing), take up a new one that interests you where you suck and have to learn from zero (golf, ice hockey, MTB, pickleball) the longer the learning curve and more physical, the better.
I totally feel you on this. The whole reservation/parking & traffic cluster fuck around Alpine and that other name has made me salty and made me not really give a fuck about it the past year. Tearing my acl at the end of last season didn’t help, but the vibe is hindering my recovery motivation for sureQuote:
Originally Posted by Bunion 2020
I'm 48 and feeling the same about skiing. I struggled to go at all this season. I think I got 8 or 9 days in. Two were doing small tours with my daughter. I really enjoyed watching her ski as she's progressed quite a bit but I felt nothing for myself while skiing. It was like I blacked out and my mind was somewhere else. The thrill is gone and basic powder skiing didn't do much for me. I spoiled myself I guess and now I want to do other things.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bunion 2020
I've started to think to myself this is the same thing, over and over again. You go up then come down, right left right left yada yada. I'm too old for exciting progression and I've taken it as far as I likely ever will so what's the point?
Change is inevitable. I do know plenty of people that are super content doing the same things year after year day after day and I often envy them but that's not me. I crave new challenges and experiences.
I didn't feel too motivated to ski this season either. A big part of it was leftover burnout from the prior year and the insane amount of snow it brought - basically I was sick and tired of being cold and dealing with snow. The other part was it was just kind of an uneven storm season - low base in Tahoe for the first half of the season, then one gargantuan overhyped storm that made for terrible shitty skiing for a week. 8-10' of snow coupled with 100 mph wind doesn't make for good skiing.
I'm actually enjoying the conditions right now more than I did most of this whole season. Warm, soft corn, good coverage.
Skiing is different things to different people. I'm lucky that I live 15mins from WP, 30 from Berthoud so I don't need to invest much to make it happen.
10 gondi laps with good snow, sign me up. Mid winter weekends with, 17k people. No thanks.
I think about it, imagine a life where you could do everything? That would be stupid. I used to think I was betraying skiing by not going, but I'm over that.
As said above, I'm chasing the premium experiences, skiing or otherwise. That's said, if you aren't being productive and can't figure out what to do with your freetime, go skiing.
Sent from my Turbo 850 Flatbrimed Highhorse
I work at the bottom of a hill, makes it easy to get out for lunch laps, but yeah, if I had to make a parking reservation to ski, fuck that noise.
I’m always amazing how people keep motivated to ski day in and day out and get over 100 days skiing. But I guess many of those aren’t full days but a couple of runs before work?
I've had similar feelings about skiing locally lately, partly due to how fucking crazy skiing is around Seattle is now, how crowded and what incredibly intense anxiety I get over it. It used to be so fucking good for so long, best kept secret in skiing.
I own the anxiety, I just lose control over it in traffic jams, big liftlines and hoards of people in marginal control skiing down on me. So locally, I didn't get in a lot of days, maybe only about 25. With Alpental an hour away and Crustal 2 hours, the drive gets wearing. Spring at Alpental is a nice change, some friendly faces and lots of laps within a relatively short drive. Crustal used to be a home, a place with a good posse and reasonable crowds, but all that's gone there. A bunch of good buddies is priceless.
Silverton is still a great spot for a variety of reasons: easy access from town and a community of k00ks who exude love and respect for each other and the environs. I'm super lucky to be able to feel close to the deal there, help out when and where I can. The sparseness of people and lack of competition for resources is a huDge factor, but I can feel the change happening there and I wonder how until long the entitled groovy masses will ruin it.
Honestly though, the biggest recharge is finding new places, new people and skiing where I haven't much. I recognize how I kind of need to challenge myself to do this. Part of that effort is the rage through the Alps where I get ramped up on skiing, the culture, the little old villages and small businesses, the dinky churches and incredible vistas. Having a great clot of k00ks really fills it out, you know who you are and I thank you.
I also make note of the fact that I'm old and I won't be able to do this shit in 20 years. That puts some gas in the tank. Carpe skium.
Toxic work doldrums blow bigtime, I get it, I was in a really shitty situation for a while. When splitting isn't an option or a wise move, I just tried to slice the shit a new way. There's huDge challenge in that, no joke.
So refresh when possible, take care of yourself, count the good things and when down in the shit, do your best to refresh an angle on things.
I've gone through fits and starts of the crowd hating over the last 10yrs, and through times of shunning the resort in favor of more bc solitude.
I've been trying to shift that attitude for a grateful take on it, with a little self reflection on how fortunate I have been to get to ski for so long and with so many good to great days of pow skiing with good people over that lifetime. That and the last 2 yrs I've been able to ski with my adult 20 something children a ton too which has been off the charts fun.
54 and closing in on 5,000 days of skiing yet still looking forward to the next one and the next one.
When would you guys say you noticed the biggest shift in the skiing experience other than COVID? I didn’t really start paying attention until about 2012, but it still seemed pretty good then.
Love resort skiing - there’s something about hammering vert, getting strong, and seeing progression that I can get behind. Although can’t help but acknowledge the fact that it is a bit of a ridiculous pursuit when really reflecting on it. Maybe a lot of that has to do with how the clientele has evolved over time. Growing up, when my family took ski trips it was about skiing. No one expected the Disneyworld experience that is assumed to come with it now. Maybe that’s why resorts are charging $20+ to park for a day, or not including tram access with a regular day ticket.. the list goes on.
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don't forget some of the people here are skiing for a living, I could have easily done that if someone was paying me but that is so 10 yrs ago that i could physicaly handle itQuote:
Originally Posted by The SnowShow
edit: as for the crowd hating IME nothing will do that better than Whistler, I couldn't wait to get out of town at 08 world cup and again a month at the 2010 Olympics
I like the small town hill
They are probably stoners.Quote:
Originally Posted by The SnowShow
This is where we've ended up - local skiing is becoming a smaller and smaller part of our ski season. During "prime time" we only hit Wanker Park once and Copper three times. But now that things have calmed down, we'll probably get another half dozen days at WP/Copper/A-Basin.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buster Highmen
Well, I'm not sure what to say. I had to give up riding because my spine degenerated. It's not a choice I made because I got bored with the mountains. One of my legs is about 50% paralyzed and my back is like shattered porcelain. This also totally screwed me workwise and financially. Not something I can just forget as every step I take involves dragging a lame leg around. If it gets any worse, the best thing I can look forward to is a triple level spinal fusion
My hometown has been destroyed by dirt pimps. Theres probably 5 times as many houses here now since when I moved here and the cost of living just tripled over five years but my income sure didn't. All the new people post covid completely suck ass. I cant stand them. They are unbelievably lame and boring petite bourgoiesie who, for some reason, seem to think they discovered the Valley. None of them can speak to anything for more than two damn minutes without changing the subject to the houses they just bought or are building. Most of the people I liked are long gone.
Nevertheless, I'm not wallowing in it like some people in here. You guys need some perspective. Things may suck but at least you weren't some poor fool who got his face blown off by an IED in Iraq. You dont pick refuse in a 3rd world garbage dump. We all die in the end but at least you got a chance to truly live. About 90% of the people in the world never really do. Take some comfort in that. Its the nature of Americans to focus on how much better some have it while overlooking how much worse most people's lives are than our own.
I cant ride anymore but not many folks around here catch as many fish as I do and FUCKING NOBODY around here has as many mushroom patches as I do. It is what it is.
Buster Mofro '24
#make skiing great again
I think there is a lot of gratitude and levity here but maybe that's just me?
La Grave '25
A croque monssoir and a genepie and the P3 resturant and a sunset cruise to the village will make you love skiing again
Sent from my Turbo 850 Flatbrimed Highhorse
I've missed the k00keraderie with you over the last few years. Skied and had a great time with LB last Jan, miss Cletus, Hev and the old Coloradians.Quote:
Originally Posted by Foggy_Goggles
With L having the potential of a good right knee in the near future, we pine about our first time in LG in 1996 and are planning a return. But yeah, the Alps gas me up everytime, vendul is a big part of that heart and action. We got Splugened good this year and getting to know the jhposse of Djongo, Swerve and lindenle has been the foie gras on the lobstah. It's the search, the surprises arond the corner that give me moto.
I don't mean to convey I don't feel lucky, I do, I'm so fucking lucky in so many dimensions for food, shelter, love and place. But it's a mistake not to ack the dark that comes around, particularly when others feel it. Like it or not, we're a god damned community even though our touch is limited to the digital dactyls across the wires. So I think some commiseration is valid. And more BBIs (more on that as the year develops).
As far as timing, things started tp erode around here about 2000, when Crustal got the gondy and more ad space. More people moved here for the lifestyle and there's a vibe to that that's different.
For Silverton, it was covid.
For those that have faded away from skiing as your primary winter activity, what else are you doing to keep yourself fit / happy / occupied during those cold, dark winter months? I still ski a fair amount and enjoy it a lot of the time, but I've struggled to find something else to do in the winter to keep my fitness and spirits up. Going to the gym would handle the fitness aspect, but would decidedly not work for the spirit part.
The key for my enjoyment of skiing is low expectations. It's part of why I don't enjoy "powder days" (though I enjoy the hell out of powder skiing); everyone is so amped expecting the most awesome turns, and it feels stressful AF. But in general, I like skiing and like making turns and I structure my approach to include skiing but have low expectations for it. So I am often in the crack of noon club because that helps make parking easy, I try to ski lifts that don't see as much action but also don't tweak about lift lines, etc.
Yeah, that's the hard part for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by toast2266
Yeah, that's me. I haven't skied less than 100 days since my last year in college '95-'96. That said, skiing is really frictionless for me, I just put my ski clothes on and walk down the hall whenever I want. Sometimes I hit send on an email and notice it's 2:45 and think why not? and go... As much as certain aspects of condo living bug me, trading our little condo for a house 30 minutes away isn't a trade either of us want to make. I don't know how much I'd ski anymore if I-70 or LCC was part of the program, nothing about that looks easy or fun.Quote:
Originally Posted by The SnowShow
It's still way more fun than anything else I do, by a factor of like 100X. The bc is getting less interesting for me, after 25+ years it's hard for me to ski new things locally, and that's a big motivational factor for me for the bc.
Mountain biking is a struggle anymore, it was never my main sport, just something to do until the next ski season. That's getting worse and worse, I find it really boring for the most part but I do it anyway.
You guys think you're tired?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uai7M4RpoLU
I don't know how to solve life's problems, but I believe if you watch that film (again) you'll feel better, at least for a little while.
Sorry to hear about your back. Have you seen Dr Smith at TVH? He's a spine/ pain specialist and he's been helping me get through a back injury. What you are describing sounds way more serious than what I'm dealing with, but I've had good experiences with him.Quote:
Originally Posted by neckdeep
I'm a lame new person but I'm down to hang. In the summer I'm into some low impact stuff like floating the Teton and gravel riding. My neighbors and I play board games if that is of interest. Would also be down to grab a drink too.
15 is my limit on schnitzengruben!
What is this skiing thing you people are talking about?
Like 10 years ago I got almost 60 days in Utah while living on the east coast but since then new shit has come to light. At this point activities where impact is a likely result really need to be thought about. If I knew how to ski slow it would be a lot better. Maybe I'll learn to telemark.
Bahaha.Quote:
Originally Posted by Danno