The Official Skiing / Snowboarding / Playing in the Snow Thread

[Nbarbar]

So...kinda mixed feelings on the cat skiing. Rant incoming.

Conditions were awesome. Nice fluffy pow, blue skies, what more could you want.

I didn't get a nightmare group. It was me and one other party which I believe consisted of two older guys and their adult sons (we were 6 in total which is a light load for the cat--another group must not have showed). Some were better than others, but they could all mostly hang. Oldest guy was fighting a little to keep up and got stuck once but he was still capable--probably would have benefitted from some forgiving dad-pow skis (rather than an old pair of heavy metal volkls with at most a tiny bit of tip rocker).
Basically your classic rich-family group--one of the patriarchs was an orthopedic surgeon in Sonoma, bunch of prior cat/heli experience (including 2 guys wearing CMH-branded arcteryx jackets), but pretty moderate actual skiing skills, etc. So no like...Texans who have never skied pow and are just flailing.

I can't say for sure how much the old guys influenced the guide's terrain choice (vs snowpack/avy conditions or the operation's desire to "farm" their terrain). We did get some glimpses of steeper pitches and at least one run with some nice terrain features, but there were a lot of pretty moderate slopes.

We didn't get that much vert. Hard to say exactly from my GPS tracker (since the cat goes up and down some), but it seems like at best we did ~6500ft of skiing. Website promises 10-12k per day. We weren't the fastest group, but we still beat the cat on some runs (and whether you beat the cat shouldn't make THAT much difference). Maybe more driven by the fact that some of the runs had sections of relatively slow skiing on flat terrain that doesn't even let you make fun turns?

Also, the last run was garbage. I don't blame them because they warned us (and kept the old guy in the cat) that it was basically the "return home" run--south facing, lower elevation, bunch of sun-crust and variable conditions--basically a choice between ski the crap, or take a really unpleasant bumpy ride downhill ride in the cat. But that run was the longest of the day and was ~1800'. So more like only 4500' of good skiing? I could do more than that in a day of human powered touring. Having a **** run close out the day has a rough psychological effect...

We got back to base well before the other 2 cats the operation was running that day. The sample schedule they sent suggested we'd be returning to base camp around 5PM...but we finished our last run at 2:45, not sure exactly when we got back to base, but we spent 15 minutes having a beer at the bottom of the last run, drove back to base (20-30min?), and then I changed and hung around the lodge for a bit, and I was still in the car driving home at 3:55 at which point neither of the other cats had even returned to base...so we were probably back at the base by at least 3:30. That's at least another hour and a half of skiing we could have done.

Why did we get cut short? Group ability? Make people sit out runs then. There was something wrong with the windshield wiper in the cat--was it having to drive slower than usual?

We also didn't have a tail guide--someone had a family emergency or something. Did that lead to more conservative terrain choices (especially after the old guy got stuck), slower transitions, or the choice to stop early? Also..really...you can't find someone last minute willing get paid to ski pow? One of the owners can't fill in? Tail gunner doesn't have to know the terrain well like a lead guide. Kinda sketchy from a safety perspective to just assign a random person to follow every run (who may have no more than a brief avy-beacon demo) and that might force the guide to pick really conservative terrain.

So yeah...got a few really nice runs, but I paid a not insignificant amount of money and I'm feeling pretty let down. I know random groups are luck of the draw, but I didn't feel like my group was that bad.

My wife thinks I should call and complain...but I'm a little hesitant given it is a local operation and we're in a small town. Still I think it is better the owners hear it from me that I had a bad experience and maybe make good on it rather than me leaving an online review that says "Don't waste your money, got half the promised vert and ended early despite good weather and conditions."

This reminds me so much of Telluride Heli Trax. We were paired with a couple from San Fran who should not have been on that trip.

The woman was unable to safely descend the mountain at a speed that would allow us to get to the chopper in time for the next loop. The result being we did two loops while everyone else did five or six.

The sad thing is looking at photos this was 2015/16 season and I'm still upset about it!

 

[UnFacconable]

I think my conclusion based on what I've seen and reading random threads on Teton Gravity is:

A very significant portion of cat/heli skiing is just an activity for rich people.

It isn't for good skiers who just want to rip untracked pow all day long. It is for rich people for whom the pricetag doesn't matter compared to a day of resort skiing. They don't care if they are taking a long lunch or not transitioning fast because they aren't trying to maximize pow-per-dollar--they are just there for the experience and a day of skiing is a day of skiing. No different from the people who go to Aspen, ski 4 runs in the morning, have a sit-down lunch, ski 2 more runs, and then head to the Apres-Ski bar, the masseuse, or the art gallery.

Modern ski gear has made it super accessible for fairly weak skiers. Reminds me of the article I think @Omega Male shared in another thread about "premiumization" of everything. Why sell your services to small intersection of people who have money and are hard core skiers when you can instead add massages and gourmet meals and sell to a bunch of doctors, lawyers, and software developers who have money to blow but no time to actually get good at skiing. I mean...those people have always been the core audience, but it seems like 10-15 years ago before the emergence of fat skis with a ton of rocker and tip taper there was at least a bit of a skill floor.

My group was a pairing of rich families and the only strong skier was the son who teaches golf in Tahoe (I'm going to go out on a limb and assume he wasn't paying for the trip). Private cat that went at the same time seemed to be a big family including a number of fairly young children (with generic kids non-pow skis...I doubt these kids were little rippers). Cars were nice SUVs with local plates so I'm assuming something like patriarch owns one of those "ranches" or multimillion dollar homes on the lake/resort, family is in town so they take them all skiing...

There are a handful of "legit" operations out there though that don't require you to reserve your own cat. Most are multi-day only and book out a year in advance, but if you can get a spot, you'll be met with fun terrain as fast as the cat can drive.

Counterpoint - the ski industry is dying. There are a lot of intersecting factors, but the big one is the decline in boomer participation with insufficient offsetting growth from younger generations.

Over the last few decades we've seen a large decline in the number of ski resorts open and a consolidation toward fewer, bigger "lifestyle" resorts leveraging on-mountain real estate to offset operational losses.

There definitely has been a premium-ization of the sport, as you point out, but it's unclear to what extent the alternative is possible in this business climate.

Without reasonable priced opportunities, I fear that we won't generate more young skiers and the long-term decline is inevitable. This is without getting into the possible impacts of climate change.

So, as a business model, hard to critique a cat operation going after less than expert skiers with money, because there are only so many non-dirtbag expert skiers who would be filling up the cats. Basically, to generate the same gross margin, the industry has to soak the shrinking number of wealthy skiiers even more.

One of my good friends is on a heli-trip this week (I had a chance to join last year gratis but regrettably couldn't attend) and his experience has been much different than the cat operation you describe.

What I find interesting is that the resort I ski at seems more crowded than ever judging by the parking lot and activity in the village, but the lines aren't really any worse than they have been historically. The resort is an outlier in a lot of ways because there are a ridiculous number of ridiculous skiiers, including kids, so I'm hopeful it will continue to thrive for decades to come.

 

[otc]

I do think skiing is in an interesting business place, and that's one of the things where the megapass trend scares me--It is mostly good for people who love skiing and can commit to 5-10 days a year, and it is obviously short-run good for Vail, but jacking up the day pass rates really makes it hard to bring people into the sport.

I actually think the real estate thing goes the other way though. A ton of resorts were built on the backs of real estate (i.e. the resort was built and operated, possibly at a loss, in order to sell land)...but now most of the good real estate has been sold and they still need a way to make money.

One of my good friends is on a heli-trip this week (I had a chance to join last year gratis but regrettably couldn't attend) and his experience has been much different than the cat operation you describe.

As I said--could be luck of the draw (and helis are smaller, so your chance of drawing a bad group member are lower), but there are still operators that supposedly reliably serve up the good stuff.
If you can get in at Retallack, you're probably gonna be fine. They are known for having great terrain and they are constantly booked out to the point where casuals will probably just go somewhere else with availability. Allegedly the way it works is they basically offer you the same days next year if you ski there (and I suspect they don't make that offer if you suck)...otherwise you're hoping for a cancellation.

What I find interesting is that the resort I ski at seems more crowded than ever judging by the parking lot and activity in the village, but the lines aren't really any worse than they have been historically.

I do think that some of the "professionalization" of ski resorts has led to better management of operations. I can't speak to Palisades, but it seems like a lot of resorts have started to do a much better job managing their terrain/lift access. Not just building bigger/faster lifts, but thinking about ways to alter terrain/run layout/lift locations to spread users around the mountain without feeling forced.

E.g. personally I find Peak 2 Peak gondola in whistler kinda silly (unless there's absolutely no line, feels like you can bomb down to the base, ride back up the other side, and end up in the same place except with an extra run under your belt...why take a ride for zero elevation gain?)...but it really allows crowds to spread out as parts of the mountain get busy and takes traffic off of the base chairs.

 

[Fueco]

My son is starting to try to charge the blues hard and catch air on the jumps. Lord help us…

 

[otc]

Storms keep missing us, but I saw the forecast for south-western MT and made the call Friday afternoon to drive to Bozeman and ski Bridger Bowl.

Epic conditions. Saturday had a long avy delay for opening and I was still getting a feel for the mountain so I didn't quite get full value.

Sunday got more snow and opened on time. Schlasman's opened up mid day (the chair that requires an avy beacon to ride) after being closed saturday and rewarded me with a bunch of DEEP turns until it was time to head home.

Too busy skiing pow to take any pictures so here's a picture of a stranger that someone on TGR posted that captures what Sunday looked like:

 

[otc]

Tahoe dudes: Praxis is running their custom order sale to fill up their summer production schedule:

Praxis Custom Skis | Handcrafted In The Sierra Nevada

Custom skis handmade in the Sierra Nevada by skiers, for skiers. Praxis skiercrafted skis are sold factory direct offering a better value and buying experience.

praxisskis.com

Ordered a pair of MVP 108s to be my new daily driver. Obviously not something I can easily demo, but someone else local here bought a pair and loves them in our terrain and they sound like something I'd jive with.

Being able to select your own top sheet is huge as I'm admittedly not a big fan of a lot of their standard top sheets (although the MVP 108 stock mountain design is very nice).

I just have zero interest in having something like this on my feet:

I went with this which is much more my style:

May seem minor, but you spend a lot of time staring down at them...
If I was willing to go full on joke-ski, I get a kick out of this one:

 

[Numbernine]

Tahoe dudes: Praxis is running their custom order sale to fill up their summer production schedule:

Praxis Custom Skis | Handcrafted In The Sierra Nevada

Custom skis handmade in the Sierra Nevada by skiers, for skiers. Praxis skiercrafted skis are sold factory direct offering a better value and buying experience.

praxisskis.com

Ordered a pair of MVP 108s to be my new daily driver. Obviously not something I can easily demo, but someone else local here bought a pair and loves them in our terrain and they sound like something I'd jive with.

Being able to select your own top sheet is huge as I'm admittedly not a big fan of a lot of their standard top sheets (although the MVP 108 stock mountain design is very nice).

I just have zero interest in having something like this on my feet:

I went with this which is much more my style:
View attachment 1927971

May seem minor, but you spend a lot of time staring down at them...
If I was willing to go full on joke-ski, I get a kick out of this one:
View attachment 1927981

I had a pair of their first edition powder skis. They were a beefed up version of the Volant Spatulas one of the first versions of the modern rockered powder boards and a game changing tool for knee deep plus Sierra cement
They were huge, heavy and massively reverse camber single rockers. They were a lot of fun on the right snow but if you had to make a fast icy runout they were sheer terror like having cafeteria trays on your feet. Glad to see them still kicking. The top sheet was a photo of the view from the owners deck. Keith something IIRC. Good guy and a regular Kookwood maggot.

 

[UnFacconable]

I think I'm going to hold off on end of season skis - just not worth dealing with how to store yet another pair. I did receive an offer to get Peak Skis at 50% off but I've realized given how much money I'm spending each year on skiing that I would rather get exactly what I want rather than something suboptimal bec it's a few hundred cheaper.

This is the last weekend of ski team so I've been doing a sort of internal retrospective. As I mentioned previously, it was a bit of a rough season given all of the bad weather days and we got a lot more skiing last year for a lot less work. But so be it, I can't really complain about skiing being impacted by weather.

For anyone wondering how the ski team experiment has gone, at this point I am comfortable saying it has been a success. While the kids aren't always excited to head to the mountain, the feedback I've gotten from their coaches (and that I've seen in bits and pieces) has confirmed that they've had a blast and they've developed friendships and built confidence and pride. We were also fortunate to have consistency with the coaches this year (last year they cycled through a few different groups in part due to factors beyond anyone's control (one coach broke an ankle) and in part due to moving them between groups and for other reasons. This year, each kid had the same 2 coaches all season.

The technical improvement has been nothing short of phenomenal. Both kids have essentially "graduated" from the program after 2 seasons (they got to the level that the program wants kids to be at by the end of the program) with a massive improvement from the starting point. At the beginning of last season, they hadn't skiied since the pandemic started and had very basis turning and stopping skills. They enjoyed skiing but had lost a lot of what they had learned in ski school pre-pandemic. Last year, skiing with them was ... not that fun. I love my kids and enjoy spending time with them but slowly skiing on intermediate terrain isn't a substitute for skiing with just my wife or adult friends - it's something else. At this point, the gap between kids and parents has narrowed quite a bit. Just a matter of time before that flips.

We're still trying to figure out whether to keep them an additional year in the program or move them to the junior development program which is race oriented but still ~75% focused on general skill-building. They would have more weekend race days but I don't think at this level it will be overwhelming. After next season my older kid could either stop doing team, move to the regular development program or switch to a big mountain team. My younger kid would most likely stay on the junior development team for 3 seasons, unless they choose to stay in the regular program. One of the challenges we face is that for a variety of reasons we track the kids in the same activities - so the younger one is either going along for the ride or being given an opportunity to do things at a younger age, depending on how you look at it. I still definitely don't want them to be serious racers and I don't want to spend all my time hauling and maintaining skis, volunteering to help with races or doing any of the other myriad sacrifices that need to be made.

Just for some context, here's a couple of "race" photos for my older kid. Left side middle of last season, right side middle of this season (which resulted in a podium finish). I've also included the photos of my kids' favorite runs at our local hill (legit steep and challenging expert runs). Needless to say, they weren't skiing this stuff last year and I'm still amazed they can enjoy skiing this stuff with us now.

So big thumbs up from me on ski team. It's been a ton of work for us and required a lot of grit from the kids, but it's been paying off in a number of ways.

I had a pair of their first edition powder skis. They were a beefed up version of the Volant Spatulas one of the first versions of the modern rockered powder boards and a game changing tool for knee deep plus Sierra cement
They were huge, heavy and massively reverse camber single rockers. They were a lot of fun on the right snow but if you had to make a fast icy runout they were sheer terror like having cafeteria trays on your feet. Glad to see them still kicking. The top sheet was a photo of the view from the owners deck. Keith something IIRC. Good guy and a regular Kookwood maggot.

Oooh, missed this earlier. I skiied Spatulas before and they were an absolute blast in powder or smeary spring conditions but to your point they were really tough to control in hard pack. I remember trying to cut across a run at one point and the skis deciding they had different ideas - you really had no choice but to follow the fall line.

I had met the Volant rep and he agreed to sell me brand new mounted Spatulas for like $225. I also really liked the Volant Machetes (RIP McConkey) and was going to buy a pair of those along with the Spats but somehow it fell apart.

 

[otc]

Sick. FWIW, I've warmed to the race parent thing a bit as I've been hearing people compare it to other sports. Yes, skiing is expensive and can require travel to further away areas (and gets insane if your kid gets to the point where they need to do summer camps and stuff)...

...but the nice thing about it is you get to do a fair amount of skiing as a parent. You don't have to sit on cold bleachers and feign interest at a kids hockey game for hours...you have to watch literally a minute of your kid skiing and otherwise there's lots of time to ski with other parents you meet (at least when you aren't being hit with volunteer obligations). And usually good time for skiing with your kid after the race as well.
That at least jives with my experience as a not-very-serious high school racer--my teammates and I liked going to races, but we spent a lot of time just skiing the hill (especially at the daytime races we got pulled out of school for...we were there all day but still only did 2 runs plus some slipping/inspection).

On the skis, I'm with you on getting what you want. It is fun to take a flyer on a cheap oddball ski, but for a daily driver, you might as well pay to buy exactly what you want (especially since other than boutique brands, its pretty easy to not pay MSRP and still get what you want).
Fortunately these are what I want and I'm actually spending marginally MORE buying them through the custom sale as I was about to order them from CAST touring who has a bunch of stock Praxis skis at a low price.
But with custom order I can change the top sheet. And it doesn't look like I am changing anything about the layup, but that's an option--at the very least you have the option to call the owner (Keith) and actually talk to him about whether you think any adjustments would be good for your skiing style (or probably even go in in person if you are in town).

 

[Numbernine]

Just on the subject Lake Tahoe public schools used to give students day passes to go free skiing and gave them physical ed credits. I don't know if they still do it but it would beat the hell out of jumping jacks and push ups.

 

[UnFacconable]

@otc style post today.

Demoing Icelantic skis this weekend because they set up a tent here. Started on the Shaman 99 and didn’t love them after 3 runs - 1 groomed and 2 off piste. Decent amount of side cut in a traditional cambered ski.

At the end of the second run I looked down and realized I didn’t buckle my foot buckles which … could make a difference. But now I’m kinda biased against the ski.

Just grabbed second pair - Pioneer 96. Has some rocker and not as much side cut. First run groomed and it was much better. But maybe because these feel like my Mantras? Edit after second run: they are pretty good off piste too. Going to stay on these for a while.

Generally I have trouble separating my thoughts on a demo ski vs thoughts on conditions so we shall see how successful I am in figuring out what kind of ski I should be on.

When I demoed Nitro snowboards this way last year I got a lot out of it and ultimately decided I liked the style of snowboard I have had since day one so will be interesting to see if I’m really just a creature of habit or if I’ve adapted my skiing to my equipment. Or maybe I will like something new.

EDIT: stayed on the Pioneers for a few hours and continued to enjoy them. Had a rare fall (first ejection of the season!) which happened to coincide with a warning from Icelantic that the skis aren’t very forgiving of back seat. I had them get away from me at the bottom of a run in a circumstance that never would have been a fall on my Mantras. That fall resulted in some knee and foot pain that sapped some confidence but didn’t ruin my day. Let’s see how I feel tomorrow. They told me to take out some Nomad 105s for a different type of ski.

 

[otc]

I tried the 105 nomads a week or two ago and did not get along with them.

They felt better slid to a +2 mount but they just weren’t for me. On the line they felt like ass (although the conditions were **** so I agree it is hard to compare fairly). The design of the ski seems wrong for such a traditional mount point.

FYI even though they claim 105, they actually measure 111 or so underfoot and that made them feel pretty sluggish to me. Shop guy said they measured before adding the edges/sidewall. Next years model is supposed to be redesigned and actually measure 105.

 

[Numbernine]

'''

 

[sfo423]

I did receive an offer to get Peak Skis at 50% off but I've realized given how much money I'm spending each year on skiing that I would rather get exactly what I want rather than something suboptimal bec it's a few hundred cheaper.

I skied the 104 for a half day @ Big Sky earlier this year via a friend of the rep. Crowded market for Peak. They are 'trying' to get into Tahoe area hard via the 50% off deal getting tossed around generously. When I see someone on them I think of a ~decade ago when I would see someone on Stockli's (bro deal, free deal, over-under-wealth-to-ability or kudos).

 

[otc]

Probably got my last turns of the year after work yesterday (skinning in shorts and a t-shirt with 80+ temps in town)...mountain was looking like this 2/3 of the way up:

Still managed to plot out a contiguous route down to almost the very bottom, but that's probably impossible today.

Looked like this last year on May 10th at the same elevation:

The unseasonably warm weather is a factor, but it really shows how low our snowpack ended up this year.