2010-11 Ski-Day Count

[Staley]

Yep, home is Chicago. My powder percentage is clearly the result of a very flexible schedule. Despite being five hours away and without a car, I believe I skied every major storm cycle from January through April, plus I tend to ski a ton on powder days and take it easy otherwise.

I also tried to do a quick calculation on how much each day of skiing cost me this year. By spending only about $20 total on gas, getting a small refund on my pass and averaging dinners of $4 or so (breakfast and lunch are free), I spent approximately $27 per day of skiing. Of course I bought a bunch of new gear, but I don't feel that should factor in.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

in the East New England is above average and Quebec is below average.

While it's small potatoes compared to the Cottonwoods' 700 inches, Sutton appears to be an exception with an above-average 275 inches this season.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Geographically Sutton is an extension of the Greens, so not a surprise with Vermont likely above average. Le Massif had 225 inches, that's probably 90%, better than I expected given the moaning we heard during the season from our eastern Canadian contingent. The Laurentians were probably worse, but they are a snowmaking dependent region anyway IMHO.

 

[Bobby Danger]

77 days so far with a couple of warm skiing months left headed for 100 . snowbird -alta 61- snowbasin 10- powder mtn. 6 no where else imo worth going to for lift served just glorified eastern resorts !! hard to put a figure to powder vertical or total vertical for a season days can vary in total for a single day drastically . mainly depending on group and depth of powder that particular day not everyone skis with the greatest of ease.

 

[Tony Crocker]

hard to put a figure to powder vertical or total vertical for a season days can vary in total for a single day drastically .

I tallied one of BobbyD's days at 56,000 this year. The Utah locals' vertical by day does vary drastically by quality of day, but I suspect BobbyD's average is 2x admin's. Even by my picky definition I suspect admin & company were ~50% powder in a year like this since he was 25% in the lean 2006-07 season.

I believe I skied every major storm cycle from January through April.....I skied on powder days totaling 303" of snow

Since that's roughly half of Mammoth's season total, it does reflect either lots of luck or more likely deliberate timing of trips. The latter takes dedication =D> at 5 hours distance, especially without one's own car.

 

[Admin]

I suspect BobbyD's average is 2x admin's.

Pfffffffftttttt...I'm pickier than he is.

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

[q]

Any pix or a trip report?

No trip report as yet, I always write it more of a journal which takes ages and a lot of red wine.

I have not yet put my picture on flikr but they are on Facebook.

Pics 1

Pics 2

Blacktail starts about the 24th row down on the 1st link. There's also a bunch from Montana Snowbowl, Discovery, Big Mountain, Teton Pass and in the 2nd link it is mainly Utah. Not much action shots as I generally ski alone.

Q, wondering how your experience was at Teton Pass, MT under new ownership?

I skied at Teton Pass several years ago now so I had a little bit of a guide to go by. I drove 4 hours pretty much from memory to get there, the final hour between a a car in front and one behind up a pretty poor road from Choteau. Getting there at 10am on a Tuesday with 17 cars in the lot all day and 6-12" of 2nd day untouched powder(closed Mondays) made for fun.

At the base there was little difference IMO although they now have a restraurant open in the lodge which was not open on my previous visit and was actually closed for the day this time around. The bar was as it was.

The double chair has been repaired a little, I remember having a picture last time around showing a bolt simply lifting out of the wooden part of the chair I was sitting on.

The new lift opened up some wonderful terrain but no new vertical as such and next years lift opening up more terrain and vertical will be even better. Amazingly quiet it was my kinda place but the new owner will never make money on this. It is too far from anywhere, simple. A small town miles from anywhere with the nearest large cities being Kalispell to the Northwest and Great Falls to the Northeast and both have IMO better options closer to them.

I don't want this thread to turn into a discussion on your own plans but I would finish up by saying that I would come back here next year for a day and I would go to Alaska and ski at your hill for a day, but I am a mad Scotsman who thinks nothing of travelling miles to ski in far off places like South Dakota and small hills in Cali, Utah and Colorado. In essense there ain't many resorts out west now that I have not been to. But I am not the norm, the majority of people in Montana have never heard of half the small places even in their own state. Most know Big Sky, Whitefish and Bridger, beyond that they look blankly at you so immediately you have a problem. If the "locals" dont go then your struggling.

Money is no object to this guy, he can loose millions and still be rich, this is not the case with the MRA.

 

[Tony Crocker]

If the "locals" don't go then you're struggling

Absolutely. FTO is populated by many ski junkies who like to see new places. q may be the extreme in seeking out the obscure, but Patrick is not far behind and I enjoy trying them out too. But we're a tiny minority that will never pay the bills to keep these places going.

I'm wondering if Teton Pass has a snow issue relative to other Montana areas. It's way leeward of the principal mountain ranges, sort of like Red Lodge. q is well placed to address this question as he skis multiple Montana areas in the same season, which should be quite revealing in comparing snow conditions.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

q may be the extreme in seeking out the obscure, but Patrick is not far behind

I may be mistaken, but I believe that Patrick's ski-day count for the North American winter is going to be heavily weighted toward the Ottawa molehills.

 

[Patrick]

q may be the extreme in seeking out the obscure, but Patrick is not far behind

I may be mistaken, but I believe that Patrick's ski-day count for the North American winter is going to be heavily weighted toward the Ottawa molehills.

Yep, James is right. It is probably one of the least diversified ski season for myself in a long time. I knew from the start of the season with my 'Kid wants to race thread'. Became a 'voluntold' for the clubs events. Daughter got hurt at the near end of her race season so that killed Spring Break plans. Then work became sick for 6 weeks, only giving me 2 days off to ski (minus pre-booked days in NYC). I just got back on ski last weekend.

My season isn't over...plans about this weekend are still changing. Weather is the main factor now.

Edelweiss QC (Outaouais): 27 ***record for one area in one season (previous record was 17)
Camp Fortune QC (Outaouais): 7
Mont Cascades QC (Outaouais): 4
Vorlage QC (Outaouais): 1
Mont Ste-Marie QC (Outaouais): 1
Calabogie Peaks ON (Eastern Ontario): 2

Mont St-Sauveur QC (Laurentians): 1
Mont Sutton QC (Eastern Townships): 1
Jay Peak VT : 2
Mad River Glen VT : 2
Sugarloaf ME: 1
Whiteface Toll Road NY : 1

Local 42 / Non-Local 8 = 50 total so far...
October: 1
November: 1
December: 6
January: 16
February: 13
March: 10 (canceled spring break then work)
April: 2 (blame it on work)
May: 1 so far...

The day-by-day detail of my season is here: http://madpatski.wordpress.com/ski-days/2010-2011/

 

[Marc_C]

hard to put a figure to powder vertical or total vertical for a season days can vary in total for a single day drastically .

I tallied one of BobbyD's days at 56,000 this year. The Utah locals' vertical by day does vary drastically by quality of day, but I suspect BobbyD's average is 2x admin's. Even by my picky definition I suspect admin & company were ~50% powder in a year like this since he was 25% in the lean 2006-07 season.

Um....er....I think maybe one person tracking another person's vertical and /or powder ratio is kinda creepy. Maybe even stalkerish, in an odd sort of way.

....not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

[Bobby Danger]

i've been stalked by worse !! :-"

 

[soulskier]

Q, wondering how your experience was at Teton Pass, MT under new ownership?

I skied at Teton Pass several years ago now so I had a little bit of a guide to go by. I drove 4 hours pretty much from memory to get there, the final hour between a a car in front and one behind up a pretty poor road from Choteau. Getting there at 10am on a Tuesday with 17 cars in the lot all day and 6-12" of 2nd day untouched powder(closed Mondays) made for fun.

At the base there was little difference IMO although they now have a restraurant open in the lodge which was not open on my previous visit and was actually closed for the day this time around. The bar was as it was.

The double chair has been repaired a little, I remember having a picture last time around showing a bolt simply lifting out of the wooden part of the chair I was sitting on.

The new lift opened up some wonderful terrain but no new vertical as such and next years lift opening up more terrain and vertical will be even better. Amazingly quiet it was my kinda place but the new owner will never make money on this. It is too far from anywhere, simple. A small town miles from anywhere with the nearest large cities being Kalispell to the Northwest and Great Falls to the Northeast and both have IMO better options closer to them.

I don't want this thread to turn into a discussion on your own plans but I would finish up by saying that I would come back here next year for a day and I would go to Alaska and ski at your hill for a day, but I am a mad Scotsman who thinks nothing of travelling miles to ski in far off places like South Dakota and small hills in Cali, Utah and Colorado. In essense there ain't many resorts out west now that I have not been to. But I am not the norm, the majority of people in Montana have never heard of half the small places even in their own state. Most know Big Sky, Whitefish and Bridger, beyond that they look blankly at you so immediately you have a problem. If the "locals" dont go then your struggling.

Money is no object to this guy, he can loose millions and still be rich, this is not the case with the MRA.

Thanks for the feedback Q!

 

[lookn4powder]

25 days...but my season seemed ended before it began.

In mid-Oct my buddy, Denis, and I were bicycling down a hilly country road when a Kamikaze squirrel ran into my front wheel, locking it up. I slid and flipped and was found unconscious on the side of the road by two EMT's who happened by in a pickup (Denis was far ahead when this happened.) I quickly passed from ambulance to emergency surgery, where they repaired a collapsed lung. I got my first helicopter ride--not to ski--but for transport to a trama hospital. Fractures: 5 ribs, clavicle, 2 neck processes. A week later I exited the hospital in a "cone-of-shame" neck brace and a developing Oxycodone habit. Let it be said that even God's smallest creature can wrack ruin given enough leverage.

I missed the December skiing, but we skied as soon as my neck was cleared in mid-Jan. Not a lot variety of areas, but some good days, so far. Perhaps a couple June days at A-basin might be possible...

My count, so far:

6 Alta
1 A-basin
7 Breckenridge
5 Copper
5 Crested Butte
1 Winter Park... 25 days

Cheers--and wear your helmets during the off-season too,
Jeff

 

[jamesdeluxe]

bicycling down a hilly country road when a Kamikaze squirrel ran into my front wheel, locking it up.

Amazing that you got that many days in this season. I've broken my clavicle and that is no fun, but five ribs too? I just got off four straight weeks of oxycodone, so I feel your pain.

one person tracking another person's vertical and /or powder ratio is kinda creepy. Maybe even stalkerish

Yes, we ECers have been following this budding bromance from across the continent.

 

[Tony Crocker]

bicycling down a hilly country road when a Kamikaze squirrel ran into my front wheel, locking it up.

I think the 25 days is quite impressive too. As most of you know I had a much less serious version (3 ribs, 3% deflation of one lung) of this accident 3 seasons ago: viewtopic.php?t=6752

developing Oxycodone habit.

Thankfully I needed the really strong drugs for only about 2 weeks. The ski layoff was 7 weeks.

 

[lookn4powder]

bicycling down a hilly country road when a Kamikaze squirrel ran into my front wheel, locking it up.

I think the 25 days is quite impressive too. As most of you know I had a much less serious version (3 ribs, 3% deflation of one lung) of this accident 3 seasons ago: viewtopic.php?t=6752

developing Oxycodone habit.

Thankfully I needed the really strong drugs for only about 2 weeks. The ski layoff was 7 weeks.

Thanks for the support. You don't simply walk away from the worst thrashing of your life without strong emotions. Squirrels are no longer cute although I respect their spot in the environment; high performance 20 speed Trek bikes are no longer the marvels of technology I once thought they were even though they're heady to ride.

With just 25 days on snow this year I want more; I wanted more from the moment I awoke in the ER, as I realized that I was very damaged but I believed that I would survive to ski again. As my bike was going down (~2 sec), my last conscious thought was that it was possible that I would never re-awake. Imagine my painful joy when I woke up, and knew it was likely I would ski again (plus a bunch of other things on my bucket list).

Tony, your post was very much on my mind in the first days. Yours is the most vivid description of a collapsed lung that I could remember. I took courage in your summary which indicated that a good recovery was possible.

I left he hospital with a lung capacity of 1600 ml, but expanded it to 3600 ml two weeks later. I have lost 10% permanently. But that which does not hurt may be the most dangerous. My stay in the ER was prolonged by the broken neck processes. It seems that we have pair of arteries that pass up our neck to the rear of or brain. The docs were concerned that I had damaged them with the fractured neck fractures. These fractures were the least painful but the most dangerous. Anyway, these healed ok.

I guess I feel more candid with the members of this board because I think most of us are cut from the same cloth. Some of us have taken similar hits--the rest of us know we've just been lucky.

Good luck to all,
Jeff

 

[tseeb]

This lady may get 180 days and had 170 in a row:
http://unofficialnetworks.com/2011/05/3 ... ner-nancy/

My goal was 40 and I am at 38 days including 25 at Squaw. I may get one more over 4th of July when I already have plans to be at Tahoe. It will probably not be at Squaw who will only be running intermediate chairs and may want to charge me, even though I have 2010-2011 pass.

Next year my goal is 50. I'd like to try for my age, 56 next year, but also need to stay married. We bought my wife a pass for next year so hopefully she will get more than the 7 days, all Squaw, that she got.

 

[Patrick]

This lady may get 180 days and had 170 in a row:
http://unofficialnetworks.com/2011/05/3 ... ner-nancy/

That's nothing.

http://espn.go.com/action/freeskiing/ne ... id=5545263

As of August 11 (2010), I had skied 2,476 days in a row and logged about 81.5 million vertical feet.

Here is the thread I started a short time after he reached 1,000.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2231

 

[Tony Crocker]

I had forgotten that Rainer Hertrich is setting those ski records on telemarks. :-o