Snowmass Reports 1/10 - 1/11

Too tired and fried to post anything significant tonight....but I'll just say that the next time someone tells me there's no steep skiing or burly lines in Colorado (heard not so much from those here, but other friends), they're getting slapped upside the head. Snowmass has the goods....Hanging Valley, Rock Island, and a few other hidden steep,tree, rock, and cliffed out areas with high pucker factors. Totally impressed.

HUGE thanks to Ubersheist for the roof, raddam and his super-ripper g/f jane for the tour guiding, iskibc for the pass hookup on the second day, and md9 for the driving company and keeping me entertained with his "water bottles of death" induced antics " :) This little trip would have a lot harder to put together and not nearly as much fun w/o the help of the maggots...thanks.

edit: oh and maybe pics and vid to come soon....uber shot some, raddam of course took some, and armchair has some hairball vid that will hopefully get posted once he gets settled.

Glad ya had a great time in CO. Hopefully, I'll be seeing you in Utah in a couple weeks, that's if my knee checks out and heals.

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Originally posted by funkendrenchman
Glad ya had a great time in CO.

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hey I'm still havin a great time here....leave Tuesday night....working all day tomorrow & Tues with colleague tho...dunno if I'll have much more free time here.

md told me about your knee.......you're strong, you'll heal fast, and be back in no time.

Just tried calling you Ty. Trying to get a Kirkweed condition report and Ms. Shoe tells me you're out in CO. Rockhard and icy here, glad to here there is some gettin in CO. Peace.

Sweeeeeet meeting ya Shoez
great skiing with ya as well
hope to catch up with you sooner than later
I will send ya some scans soon

Puke factor rising
good showing bro
:D

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Originally posted by Alkasquawlik
Just tried calling you Ty. Trying to get a Kirkweed condition report and Ms. Shoe tells me you're out in CO. Rockhard and icy here, glad to here there is some gettin in CO. Peace.

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Kirkwood was pretty good today - edgeable windbuff, but not too bumped out, and some spring conditions down low. Palisades was worthy . . . we rode all day and certainly didn't get bored. :-)

As tyrone mentioned above..there's no way we could've had the 2 awesome days we did had it not been for the hospitality of this community. Uber saved us tons of cash. Raddam showed us the goods and kept us scared.

I think my stomach is finally back in it's proper place. Snowmass has more technical lines than anyplace I've been. I'm sure years ago I wouldn't have even considered a lot of what we saw as lines. There are two huge cliff bands that stretch down the mountain for probably 1000 feet of vert. When you square up to the cliff areas there's probably a few hundred vert to be lost on each wall, but each wall is ridiculous. You could put together pillow/billy goat lines with 10 different steps/hucks. On one of these walls you add huge trees into the mix as well. I was scared anytime we were on either of these walls.

Raddam and Jane took us past both of the comp venues and pointed out some of the winning lines. Insane to say the least. It would take years to ski all the lines on that hill. It would also take some serious balls and a lot of pow. I get sketched just thinking back to some of the areas.

I've got to run to a meeting but will write more later (as I'm sure others will too). enough went down that it'll take quite a bit of typing to give the whole story.

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Originally posted by Tyrone Shoelaces
HUGE thanks to Ubersheist ...

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No worries... you guys were an absolute pleasure to be around. I don't have pics to post since I was using MD's video camera. Maybe he'll post 'em soon! Hint, hint!

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Originally posted by MD9
Raddam and Jane took us past both of the comp venues and pointed out some of the winning lines. Insane to say the least. It would take years to ski all the lines on that hill. It would also take some serious balls and a lot of pow. I get sketched just thinking back to some of the areas.

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Yeah, thanks a lot to Raddam + Jane. It was very cool of them to show us around.

I never knew about those areas that they took us to. I was blown away. Rowdy! Even that "Rayburn's Chute" was sketchy. That entrance was tight. I side slipped it and had both my tips and tails scraping the rocks. Rowdy! And that's a peice of cake compared to some of those areas out by Rock Island.

Thanks raddam for the tour of the place, lots of good areas to injure yourself all over Snowmass. Saturday was a great day for sure, it was great skiing with and meeting everyone. The wife and I skied Highlands yesterday and walking is difficult today. That place is steep.

Great crew and Great mountain! Lot's of scary, techy lines on that mountain. Shoelaces had a few scary moments and unbelievable saves over near Rayburn's chute and the wall. Can't wait to see that footy that Armchair shot. Gonna be some good stuff.

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Originally posted by iskibc
Great crew and Great mountain! Lot's of scary, techy lines on that mountain. Shoelaces had a few scary moments and unbelievable saves over near Rayburn's chute and the wall. Can't wait to see that footy that Armchair shot. Gonna be some good stuff.

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Tyrone definitely wins the Miller Lite Good Recovery of the Day
Award. I had fun gathering up his skis after that, at least I'm good for something.

Nice meeting you all! Sorry we got seperated on the FIRST run! Let me know when you guys get back in town, and we'll finish what we started.

Ireallyliketoski - Sorry we missed you Sat. night. We didn't do much anyway 'cause we were awefully beat. We had dinner with Armchair at the Red Onion in Aspen, then went back to my place and crashed. We stopped by the J-bar for some cougar sitings, but didn't stay long enough to see any. Maybe next time...

BTW - anyone who hangs out with Meatdrink9 should be VERY wary about accepting any water bottles with garishly colored fluids in them. ;)

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Originally posted by Ireallyliketoski
Tyrone definitely wins the Miller Lite Good Recovery of the Day
Award. I had fun gathering up his skis after that, at least I'm good for something.

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'Good Recovery'?? But you had to gather his skis?!?!:p

Can't wait to see some vid.

No steep or burley lines in Colorado?

Huh?

Put down the crack pipe and visit A-Basin, Highlands, Crusty Butt or Silverton.

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Originally posted by Ubersheist
Ireallyliketoski - Sorry we missed you Sat. night. We didn't do much anyway 'cause we were awefully beat. We had dinner with Armchair at the Red Onion in Aspen, then went back to my place and crashed. We stopped by the J-bar for some cougar sitings, but didn't stay long enough to see any. Maybe next time...

BTW - anyone who hangs out with Meatdrink9 should be VERY wary about accepting any water bottles with garishly colored fluids in them. ;)

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Same deal here, the wife and I went back to our friends place, sat in their hot tub for a while, had a few cocktails and were soon in no shape to go anywhere. Good times for sure that day though.

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Originally posted by lph
'Good Recovery'?? But you had to gather his skis?!?!:p

Can't wait to see some vid.

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Well, it was one line....but with one good recovery, then more sketchiness, and an almost 2nd recovery to complete ragdoll :D

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Originally posted by Tyrone Shoelaces
Well, it was one line....but with one good recovery, then more sketchiness, and an almost 2nd recovery to complete ragdoll :D

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Yep, that last one was like "Ohhh shit, what the... aaaaah, hey I can't believe I actually made it out of that without CRASH!!!

Sweet! Glad I missed it. I traded those 2 days for, 1/2 day backcountry, pats victory, paid bills, clean house, and the can't even keep water down stomach flu. Great weekend.

ouch about the flu mang.....and I'm sure I'll be back tho, so there will be other times for sure.

oh and I predict that Meatdrink will do well in the upcoming comps. He's already got a sweet line dialed in Hanging Valley with another super-rowdy line waiting in the wings. And if the venues are in Rock Island.....Hmmm, well, not giving up any secrets ;)

Conditions were a bit too firm (at least in HV) to trick off anything, but stuff was still huckable. MD had a few 20-25 hucks with fast runouts that were the shit.

Lord, a full report needs to be typed.

We went to a mountain and then we skied it. Then we skied it some more. Then just when you thought we might not have skied it. We totally fool you by really skiing it. It's just like that and then some. You know how as a kid you could walk along the gutter for miles without falling off. Imagine that gutter was actually on the edge of a 10 story building. That's how a lot of our turns felt. I knew I could make them, I make them everyday, but now they need to be made perfectly above an exposed line feet from the edge and the landing is large pines.

DAY 1: My bowels were doing some pretty crazy things (alcohol the night before and a breakfast burrito equal stinky egg cloud in meatdrinks pants that manages to slowly vent all day). The cloud may have killed a small tree at one point.

We meet at the appointed spot and head into the Hanging Valley. After our hike Tyrone sets his skis down to click-in and begins chatting with iskibc. At which point Tyrone's ski starts hauling down the mountain towards a big drop on the side of Robertos. Luckily it catches air, sticks nose-in to the snow, and comes to a halt before going too far. Tyrone heads down for his ski. The rest of us cruise around the side with raddam and jane who show us one of the comp venues. It's a short but rowdy line with a million cliff variations/straight-lines/and doubles. The first time through a I find a sweet 15-20. The landing is solid, but the hill is steep enough that if you land over foot it doesn't matter.

We head down to the next face which has some cliffs that are really more just sloped rocks. I plan a little 15, but don't carry enough speed. I land on the rocks and ragdoll a few times. Tyrone is up next further down the wall. He hits his air perfect and carries insane speed across the hill he goes to make a turn and notices that half of his pole is missing and promptly stops. Luckily they were adjustable poles and the bottom half just fell out. One of the kind maggots retrieved the lower portion of his pole and we were off again.

RUN 2: Back to the Hanging Valley. A more scenic place I can't imagine. There are huge cliffs and even a place where back when dinosaurs and ataris ruled the earth part of the huge rock fell away and created this weird cliff gap island thing. Absolutely beautiful. On the huge cliff there is chute called hour glass that is beyond steep. The choke is so narrow that it looks like you'd need to be on ski to straight through it. This line appears to be one of the far ends of the venue.

We went back to the same wall we were previously, but went in a different direction to a steep dog legged chute that rests above a huge cliff band. Everybody cruised through smoothly without any problems. I poked around a lot slower looking at various cliffs and features trying to see what might work in the comp. I got towards the bottom of the chute and found that if you cut out towards the rock low you can catch a good 20 footer. The rock needs to be landed though, because there are three huge rocks waiting below that will require a turn on landing to be avoided. Armchair came over and guided me to a good spot and everything worked out great. Again the landing as firm, but it was steep enough that it didn't matter.

The next face we came to had a nice cliff at the bottom of the face. At the end of the cliff was an old stump with a crazy set set roots that looked like tentacles. Raddam and Armchair set-up to shoot and and Tyrone stepped-up and aired it perfectly and skied right out. I was up next. I was looking at a line further to the left (I couldn't see what Raddam was seeing below and didn't realize the beauty of the air Tyrone took). After this air I realized I needed to trust Raddam. I hit off the end of the stump and launched down the hill. I extended for my landing a little too soon and just stuck in the snow.

more coming....

We went over here and jumped off this they we went over there and jumped off that.

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Originally posted by Foggy_Goggles
We went over here and jumped off this they we went over there and jumped off that.

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actually md9 is lying....we didn't suit up our Bogners until 10:45 AM each day and then proceeded to just lounge around the deck at the bottom of Fanny Hill and range bacon all day.

RUN 3 (I think): Back to the Hanging Valley. Tyrone eyes up a crazy straightline that involves jumping two separate mounds of rock littered with chocolate chips in both the take-offs and landings. I was like: "OK man, your funeral" and he was like: "whatever" and I was like: "have fun being dead" and he was like: "I'm so out of here". He dropped in and aired each set perfectly. He was carrying an insane amount of speed across an apron littered with debris. He held it all together and made it look easy.

I skied over to the lower cliff of a double I thought could make a sweet line for the comp. It looked do-able, but the first air would have to be perfect. After the second air there were again rocks that needed to be avoided so a stick and turn would be needed. A few feet away was the cliff I took first run of the day. It was a little larger than the second portion of the double so I went for it. I took it at a slightly different angle. Once I got in the air I saw a spine of the cliff coming dangerously close to my skis. I got a little sketched and got back seat. I then proceeded to ragdoll on landing and fortunately my body missed the rocks.

On the lower wall iskibc and Tyrone had some crazy idea for a side entry into a moguled chute that I just wasn't seeing. iskibc went first. To get out to his entry he would need to hang onto a tree and pull himself around to the the front of the slope. He side-slipped a big turn down the wall, but uncovered a rock on landing which re-injured his thumb. Tyrone was up next. Instead of hugging the tree he tried to cruise up the side of the wall into the deep snow. Upon doing so his binding realeased in a pretty sketchy place. Ty managed to keep his cool and click back in. He began jumping with all his weight on the snow trying to break some of the stuff loose. It wasn't giving at first, but eventually it let loose just as he was near the edge and he was going for a ride. Profanities were shouted as he fell into the chute needing to make a fast right turn to avoid armchair and iskibc. He made it out of the chute and the sluff, but was carrying so much speed that when he hit a ridge out of the chute he launched into the air took a tumble. Armchair should have video of this line to post once he get's settled in NYC.

I headed over to the air to the left of the tree I had eyed before. It was prolly 15-20. I managed to stick this one.

RUN 4 (or something, maybe I've just been listing the notable stuff): We head over to other side of the mountain to check out another set of cliffs. Unfortunately we're a little late and most of the gates have closed for the day. Tyrone and I eye a straightline through a nice band of rocks that requires a 10 foot hop over some rocks in the choke. Too bad the chute is just on the other side of a closed area. We ducked the rope to scope it. As we were scoping it out a patroller skied up and we backed out from under the rope. He was totally cool and told us that if we checked in with patrol the next day they would take us into the closed areas. We were both pretty blown away by how cool this guy was.

That pretty much ended day one. We thought we'd go out for drinks and try to get uber a cougar, but we were all beat. I think I fell asleep around 8:30.

Nice recap meat's...but you left out the part where Raddam introduced me to a tele-skiing John Oats.
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