EarnYourTurns » People

Alpenglow Sports Under New Ownership

Dostie — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:52:51 +0000

Tahoe City, Calif. – January 16, 2012 – Alpenglow Sports, Northern California’s leading provider of backcountry and Nordic ski equipment, and most things outdoors, today announced it’s sale to long-time employee Brendan Madigan.

Long-time employee Brendan Madigan steps up and takes the reins at North Lake Tahoe's premier outdoor shop, Alpenglow.

After coming to the Tahoe for its famed winters and epic wilderness running, Madigan began work at Alpenglow in 2003 and has functioned in a managerial capacity since 2007. Extremely excited and humbled by the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of outdoor specialty pioneer Donald Fyfe, Alpenglow’s owner of 32 years, Madigan calls his ownership of Alpenglow a “dream come true.”

Madigan, a native of Virginia states, “Alpenglow sells fun. And luckily for me, my passion for mountain sports channel directly into that mantra. I literally get to eat, sleep and breathe fun. I love what I do, and there couldn’t be a more perfect combination.”

Under the apprenticeship of Don Fyfe, Madigan has evolved in his capacity at the well-known Tahoe City business.

Brendan Madigan: Still skiing, not bumming.

“I first signed on at Alpenglow as a classic ski bum in 2003,” said Madigan. “As the years went by I was immersed and enamored by the outdoor industry and its unique business climate. On a day-to-day basis, it quickly became apparent to me that the business of sharing the passion of backcountry skiing, climbing, and running with the amazing people of Tahoe was the way I wanted to spend my life.”

“Under Don’s professional tutelage and expertise, we have been able to blend a proven and successful business model with the exciting new prospects of social media, events, and thinking outside the box.”

Alpenglow Sports, located in the heart of downtown Tahoe City, specializes in backcountry and nordic ski equipment, snowshoeing, mountaineering, rock climbing, trail running, backpacking, and hiking. The shop prides itself on friendly, premier, user-based expertise and encourages its employees to play as hard as they work.

“Managing Alpenglow Sports has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life,” said Madigan. “I love coming to work, my coworkers, the mountain lifestyle and our amazing community. I find great honor in sharing the passion behind the sports we all love – whether a day hike or a big-mountain expedition.”

Madigan, climbing up Pinner Couloir on Denali's West Buttress.

Alpenglow’s core passion, backcountry skiing, is currently experiencing an immense increase in popularity. Alpenglow has always been known for its accomplished employee-athletes and has a well established reputation for early dawn patrol missions to ski virgin backcountry powder, climb peaks, or enjoy Tahoe’s trails. Madigan also champions this mantra, culminating in his 2010 ski descent of Mt. McKinley (20,320 feet) and a through-run of Tahoe’s Rim Trail.

“I was lucky enough to cut my teeth under local heroes Dave Nettle, Aaron Zanto and Mark Kircher,” said Madigan. ‘These guys had the goodwill to drag a youngster out of bed at 4am to ski pristine backcountry powder. Luckily, and with tremendous respect for them and the Alpenglow legacy, I’ve never looked back.”

Madigan also has the blessing of previous owner Don Fyfe. “Brendan has brought a unique sense of enthusiasm and professionalism to Alpenglow,” said Fyfe. “His ability to lead through difficult times and his tremendous loyalty to Tahoe City and the community at large is both refreshing and admirable. I have no doubt he will be successful. ”

“We’ve got a proven formula here at the shop,” states Madigan. “I’m excited to maintain a tradition of premier, unique customer service, and continue to provide free, fun and motivational events for the community.”

Madigan on top of Denali, overcoming the odds of denial.

Alpenglow’s major events include: the free Lake Tahoe Winter Film Series, which showcases both a world-famous athlete and raises money for community non-profits; the Lake Tahoe Backcountry Vertical Challenge, a community-wide fund raising initiative to benefit the Sierra Avalanche Center; free community avalanche seminars; women’s specific backcountry evenings; and the Lake Tahoe Alpine Touring and Telemark Demo Event at Alpine Meadows.

“I feel strongly about giving back to my community,” said Madigan. “We’re all in it together here in Tahoe, and at Alpenglow we are hopeful that our service, friendliness, expertise, and free community events resonate with the community. In this day and age it is our responsibility to support each other.”

About Alpenglow Sports:
Alpenglow Sports, established in 1979, is Northern California’s leading resource on all things outdoors. Specializing in backcountry and Nordic skiing, mountaineering, snowshoeing, rock climbing, trail running, backpacking, hiking and climbing, Alpenglow provides premier, user-based expertise. Come in and let our friendly staff help you for your next adventure! Located in the heart of Tahoe City, Alpenglow can be reached at 530.583.6917.
###

Bryan Allegretto: Tahoe’s Weather Guru

Nicholas Miley — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:08:46 +0000

Last February I had the pleasure of interviewing the creator and author of the increasingly popular blog Tahoe Weather Discussion. In that interview, founder Bryan Allegretto shared his unique take on weather forecasting, his predictions for the winter’s snow totals and his idea for an interactive forum focused specifically on Tahoe winter weather.

Tahoe Weather Discussion. Lots of beta & insight.

Allegretto has a knack for long range, localized weather forecasting. This propensity has lead him to make annual, pre-season predictions for liquid precipitation and the resulting snow totals in the basin.

Last November (2010), Allegretto officially called for 125% of average snowfall, but he revealed to me that he was hedging his bets with that number. Unofficially, he thought that the number could be much higher. With reports of 130-145% of average (depending on location), it’s fair to say that he hit the mark.

Although Allegretto has only two years of formal training, he is no stranger to winter weather, climate patterns and storm prediction. Born in New Jersey, he took an interest in winter weather around the age of five. His father was responsible for calling in the local snowplow drivers when weather was on the way. It was his father’s need for accurate weather predictions that gave him his first hands-on experience in forecasting. At that time “there was no weather.com, there was no satellite or radar that you could call up on your computer,” he explains. “You had to watch the local news or call the National Weather Service on the phone.”

Despite the difficulty in gathering the data needed to analyze weather, Allegretto describes himself as having been obsessed with snow storms early on in life. By the time he was in high school, he was accurately tracking storms heading for the Poconos and Catskills. Seeing a big storm on path, Bryan would often load up his car with friends and drive into the mountains with the intention of getting buried. The resulting adventure provided a legitimate reason to miss school and work.

A storm brewing, or merely tufts of moisture twirling in the days final rays.

It’s no accident that Allegretto now makes his home in the Tahoe area. The thrill he got from a really big dump of snow, and the love of riding a snowboard on top of it, left him only a few places in the lower 48 to pursue his passion. Since his arrival six years ago, he has been tracking storms, learning the local geography and studying area weather with a keen eye on historical patterns. In 2009, Bryan launched Tahoe Weather Discussion to create a place for others to read his forecasts, as well as discuss, learn about and contribute their ideas about pending weather.

This week I had the opportunity to reconnect with Bryan and see what’s new with the site, and to get his take on the winter to come. As per usual, his comments were conversational, informative and interesting.

Always open for suggestion, Allegretto has responded to requests from readers and stacked the web site with tools for forecasting, and planning your next big pow day. His easy to navigate site posts resort snow totals, links resort web cams, and loops satellite, radar and jetstream feeds from NOAA. Moreover, there are several features (such as posting your own backyard snow totals) that allow the reader to get involved with the discussion.

This site is truly a user friendly educational tool that will engage forecasters at all levels of the game. One way I’ve used the site in the past is to first look at the raw data found at Tahoe Weather Discussion. I then try to make my own forecast before reading Allegretto’s post. It’s a great way to test your skills. But, don’t be surprised when his post points out a huge piece of the puzzle that you may have missed.

Bryan is admittedly a stickler for comparative review of weather models. He likes to take current
conditions such as ocean surface temperatures, the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), the Pacific-North American Pattern (PNA), and a verity of other teleconnections (global patterns of atmospheric pressure, temperature and precipitation) and compare them to historically similar scenarios. In this way he has an actual pattern with which to critique and analyze the current models.

For example, last season we were in a strong La Niña pattern following the El Niño winter of 09/10. There are four similar patterns on the books from which Bryan could draw data for comparison. With this global-historical perspective he then looked at how these macro patterns played themselves out in the Lake Tahoe basin. From there, Bryan explains, “its just a matter of calculating the average.” Simple, no?

The problem is that detailed climate records only go back about seventy years in the Tahoe area. Beyond that, it’s just written anecdotal evidence and general environmental evidence.

Currently, we are in a weak to neutral La Niña pattern coming off of one of the strongest La Niña winters ever observed. According to Allegretto, there is little in the records from which to draw comparisons to this particular pattern.

Bryan points out that during episodes of weak La Niña conditions, other forces come into play that would otherwise be marginalized by the force of a strong La Niña. The local water temps off the west coast become a stronger factor, as does the MJO and the high pressure ridge that likes to sits off the coast of California.

Despite the limitation of the weather records, Allegretto is making predictions with the data available. This winter he’s calling for average precipitation in the Tahoe basin. However, he qualifies that statement saying that “its going to be a cold winter.” That prediction means that the ratio of liquid water to snow will expand. Meaning that despite average precipitation, we could see above average snow totals. Furthermore, Bryan thinks that this winter will be much more compact than the last, with “a late start and an early finish.”

I’m sure that we’ll all be watching to see what happens. In the meantime, tune into
tahoeweatherdiscussion.com and get involved.

Ode to John Holleman (1960-2011)

Dostie — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:44:41 +0000

John Holleman pauses on a powder trail above Lake Tahoe, March 2009 after 5 months of chemotherapy.

Nobody likes talking about it, so it’s weird when you have to deal with it regardless of what you know or, more importantly, what you believe about death. It is that season for my friend, and thus for me and a small group of friends who have rallied around John since he was diagnosed with colon cancer just over three years ago.

The day he found out was the day that my relationship with John Holleman was transformed from casual to close. My response has been the signature ingredient of our friendship ever since. My response was prayer. Some of you may think that quite appropriate, and indeed I agree, but at the time it was a very unnatural response, not just because of who I am, but also because of my relationship with John.

John was my ski bud, a man who had entered my life as a roommate when I first moved to Truckee to put Couloir magazine in high gear. According to my other roommate, Corey Stern, John was a ripping telemarker.

Shredding the effects of chemo, John Holleman rips fresh pow.

We didn’t ski together that much initially, but whenever we did we just made small talk on the trail, pumped each others egos and rarely discussed anything beyond the bro-brah level. But John and I had a deeper, unspoken understanding and agreement on other things. It was a sense, based on mutual nods of incidents we observed whenever we were together. Talk remained superficial because sharing the mountains was enough to sustain an uncomplicated friendship.

When John called in late July, 2008, I was shocked that he would call to tell me what was going on. I’d never heard that tone in his voice before but when he said, “I’m scared man” he was dead serious. And understandably so. He had just gotten back from seeing a doctor and was going in to surgery the very next day.

The doctors had determined the reason he hadn’t been able to go the bathroom for a week was because of a tumor. Then he reminded me of when he had gotten violently sick six months earlier. That had been the final warning in a decade long series of symptoms that something was wrong in his guts. But he didn’t investigate, he just toughed it out like we men do.

Trading chemotherapy for snow therapy.

I couldn’t do much. I felt helpless. I knew I needed to call in the big guns but felt weird about it. John knew I went to church regularly but never let on any interest or belief in such things. It was understood that he and I wouldn’t discuss that stuff. But I offered to pray anyway.

Again he shocked me when he say, “that would be awesome,” because I could tell he wasn’t just saying that to go along with me, he meant it. Then I was on the spot so I asked God for a miracle that the diagnosis was wrong, that it wasn’t a malignant tumor but if it were, to give the doctors amazing hands to remove it all and at all costs to bring John through the surgery alive.

“Holy Crap!” I screamed after I hung up.

That was three years ago. Several doses of chemo ensued after which the doctors claimed the cancer was gone only to remove what was left of his large intestine four months later still. The result of that second operation was for the doctors to call the family to say to hurry up and say your goodbyes because John won’t be leaving the hospital ever again. I’ll tell you more about that one later and you can decide for yourself if it was, as I believe, a bona fide miracle of God. Suffice it to say John walked out of the hospital five weeks later, Sept 5th, 2009 and did his darndest to live the best way he knew how until last June 2011.

Still makin' it look easy.

Since then his body has been on a downward slide towards the yawning crevasse of eternity. His determination to live has allowed him to beat the odds offered by the gods of better living through scalpels and pharmaceuticals, but not forever.

That’s the most interesting part of this whole drama. Since that day when John called unwittingly for prayer, that aspect of our relationship has dominated. Not like we are prayer warriors together. Not hardly. We’d still rather make small talk on the skin track and just enjoy the face shots. Except when it matters. And it matters now.

It’s hard talking to a friend about their imminent death. It’s hard when they look so unhealthy you can’t deny they’re dying. It’s hard to assure them with nothing more than words from a book that 90% of the people on this planet deny is anything more than flagrant fiction. Both of us once agreed with that perspective. But both of us now know that, but for God’s grace, we would have dealt with this conversation two years ago, or perhaps worse, have missed the ability to have it because our understanding of death was so unprepared.

So it is bitter sweet that a two year extension is now drawing to a close. But it seems that those two years were granted to allow John to come to terms with passing on to eternity, and having the faith, though it be as small as a mustard seed, that he will cross that expanse and land on the other side in the twinkling of an eye in better shape than ever before. Such is the hope of heaven.

For now though, it remains a wrestling match between John’s fear of death versus a faith in what lies beyond. Dealing with the pain of a body rotting from the inside out, and daring to believe that there is a spiritual body awaiting is an amazing concept to consider, especially considering we can’t earn it and we don’t deserve it. So all I can do at this point for my friend John is to pray that the passages of scripture that I read and my insufficient explanations will help him, assure him and strengthen him for the path he is walking and the destination I believe he is bound for. Before long I believe we’ll be making turns together again in a far far better place than here.

John Holleman enjoys one of Tahoe's finest views.

Printer ready PDF version

JH rips tele turns during his chemo years (~ 5 min):YouTube Video

Additional comments at TelemarkTips.com

Profile: Steve Barnett – Telemark Prophet

Dostie — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 04:43:04 +0000

We’re in the middle of talking skis and tele and tours and gear and the state of the art back in the day compared to now when Steve unequivocally declares, shifting his voice for emphasis, “I’m not kidding, that’s probably the best backcountry ski ever!”

Steve Barnett rips Sierran powder on Matterhorn Peak, 1993.

Steve Barnett should know. He’s been telemark skiing since the late 70s when Nordic skiing had its last boom; prehistoric for today’s generation. In that time he’s skied a pretty fair range of skis, from the toothpicks of the time, to the obese planks of the new millenium.

At the time he was a math major at Harvard. On a visit to Colorado he became intrigued with the idea of heading off into the wilderness on skis. So he rented a pair and took off. The simplicity and adventure of it all simply buried a hook in his heart and changed the course of his life.

Alpine skiing was fun, but the locked heel and closed boundaries didn’t match his spirit. Although he liked the freedom Nordic skiing delivered, it couldn’t compete in the turn department. But, he’d read an article in Powder magazine by Ric Borkovec about making telemark turns with free heeled nordic gear, so he decided to try it.

The book that turbo charged the tele revolution with the cover that defined the iconic image of telemarkers ever after.

After a year of experimenting he was so enthralled he wrote the book “Cross Country Downhill.” It was a compilation of all the tricks he had learned for turning nordic skis telemark style, and lots of other generic backcountry advice thrown in for good measure. While it was instrumental in starting the telemark revolution in America, what it is most remembered for is the cover, a shot of the bearded Barnett with hands to the sky telemarking somewhere in the Cascades. A Boulder ski shop, Neptune Mountaineering, made a bumper sticker with a caricature of his image and the icon of telemarking has been so defined ever since.

On skinny skis it’s a pose that, while not recommended, is certainly inevitable. And yet I remember a day in the Sierra when we’d headed out late and the snow was eight inches of gloppy mush. The widest ski any of us had was maybe 63 millimeters at the waist. Fat for the time, but obviously not enough for any flotation. As long as the snow was consistent, we could figure out how to link turns, except when we hit a rotten patch. Then we simply augered in and rolled over. Not Barnett. His tracks told a story of serpentine synchronicity. So we watched to see what he did when he hit the rotten patches. Barnett agrees, keeping your hands low is the most stable position, yet when his tips started to dive, his hands went up and his tracks didn’t even wobble.

Summer turns on the north side of Mt. Baker.

Since then, the changes in tele gear have all been towards making the downhill aspect stronger. Barnett calls it heavy telemark. Compared to what he began on, and for what he continues to use the majority of time, it absolutely is heavier. While Barnett doesn’t disparage the trend, he does lament it.

For Barnett, the touring aspect is supreme, because even when you’re turning, you’re still on the tour, you’re still moving. And mobility is the heart of it for Steve. Not many people have ever been up for walking 20 miles along a road to ski Mt. Olympus, but Barnett did, and for that sort of tour, today’s plastic tele boots don’t work. “Excursions might,” he admits, “but those are still kinda stiff.”

A comical view of telemarking, but old stereotypes die hard.

Steve isn’t blind to the necessity, or appropriateness of heavy telemark, stating plainly, “I won’t say anything bad about skis today except you need big boots to use ‘em.” It’s not like he doesn’t see the correlation and the benefit of bigger skis and bigger boots. In fact, ask him what the most influential piece of equipment was that catapulted telemark to it’s current popularity and he says unequivocally, “Oh, it was the boots by faaarrrrr,” dragging out the last r for emphasis, then adds, “by a mile.”

Is he surprised at the popularity of telemark today?

“No. When I wrote the book I was surprised then (1976) that so many people wanted to know, not necessarily about telemark, but they wanted to know the secret way to ski everywhere. I wrote the book because I thought, ‘this was the greatest thing ever’. I still do in a lot of ways.” So Barnett saw its popularity as more or less inevitable; the basic motivation remains the same – all those thousands of acres of pristine untracked snow surrounding every resort. Back then it was about combining cross-country mobility and downhill ability, for which telemark was the preferred turn.

“A lot of people say, ‘look how far we’ve come’,” says Barnett, “but it doesn’t look that way to me.” He knows that makes him sound like a curmudgeon, so he attempts to explain his perspective based on what attracted him to it in the first place.

For Barnett, there were a number of things: cost, simplicity, mobility, and safety. “It’s not cheaper than AT skiing, or more expensive, but pins used to be $10 at REI. When you add cables and release and all, it’s not simple anymore. You can’t hike any distance in the boots, they’re heavy and restrictive. I like complete freedom of ankle motion – fore and aft. And where’s the inherent safety? I think the more motion you have, the safer you are. Heavy telemark has the same limitation as alpine where you can rip your A.C.L. if you fall backward.”

“So if you look at the key features, it’s all been given up. In terms of touring, you’ve lost everything that made it attractive.”

The rig may be different, but the general features of lightweight and mobility remain.

Barnett practices what he promotes. His favorite touring rig? Glittertinds with Salomon BC boots and bindings.

“The step-in version,” he says pointedly. “Why not go for the holy grail, right?” he adds with trademark sarcasm.

What’s so great about Glittertinds?

“They can be made to turn beautifully through all kinds of cruddy snow. Even breakable crust, not just for a skinny ski (55mm waist), they do it well because their flex is so uniform. Keep in mind I’m skiing them short, only 190cm. I took them to an area and you don’t go bashing down things like you can with an RT-80, but with the right technique you can reliably make turns on just about anything.”

Therein, perhaps is the crux of Barnett’s lament. It isn’t that he doesn’t like the bigger equipment, it just doesn’t fit with his flavor of telemark because it puts more emphasis on technology than technique.

How important is technique? Barnett is quick to extol its virtues, “It’s better than buying equipment. Put the time in and then you’ve got it for life. And if you learn on softer equipment you will learn better because you actually have to do the technique, you can’t rely on the equipment to do it for you.”

Indeed, if you’re arcing telemark turns on 190cm skis with a 55mm waist using Salomon BC boots and bindings you better have some technique.

The pinhead from hell, a caricature of the classic hands high tele pose.

He gives an example of a snowboarder he met at a trailhead and they went on a tour together; Barnett on his Glittertind’s and the rider with his splitboard. At the summit the splitboarder said, “I absolutely must learn that telemark.” He bought a pair of Heli Stinx and some Asolo Snowfields and “he’s goin’ to town,” says Steve, then adds, “His snowboard skills are really helpful because he’s not afraid of falling. It takes about a month of a lot of crashes to learn to telemark.”

“I can see why a lot of people are chosing AT over telemark these days because heavy telemark doesn’t have any advantage.”

Again, Barnett is quick to recognize he doesn’t represent the majority. “Let me put a proviso on things,” he says. “I’m 63 now. So no matter what gear people are using, most are passing me. And no matter what gear they’re on, or what type of tour they’re doing, everybody has a good time. My own predeliction is for the skinny stuff and that’s where I see the future of telemark going because with the Glittertinds I telemark all of the time. With my RT-80s I only telemark some of the time.”

Though it is but one man’s perspective, it reveals much about how far tele is gone.

The Religion of Weather

pkray — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:47:49 +0000

For a skier, watching the weather and waiting for great gobs of precipitation exacts the faith of a farmer. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a skiing atheist. Everyone seems to have his or her own prayers and promises and sky-gazed mutterings that are supposed to bring on the clouds.

It’s as timeless as anything on this planet, the western, purple, rolling appearance of a storm, and the eastern rising of the sun—as old as any idea of God. And who’s to say that the shafts of gold light that break through the gray of a day at four p.m. are not the corridors through which divinity is descending? That we are not the powdered pilgrims sucking up all the sunsets we can for some definition of soul? It is a miracle, that’s for sure, the way each pattern of cirrus and cumulus and stratus can conjure a different emotion a separate image of the world.

...who's to say that the shafts of gold light that break through the gray of a day at four p.m. are not the corridors through which divinity is descending?
click to enlarge

In the summer, there’s not as intense a belief in the cosmological order of wandering clouds. It seems more opportune and self-reliant to get off the peaks before noon and knock a little wood to keep the snow snakes from the knees. But from October to April every order of snow worshipper wonders how often winter will break the fast and let the harvest begin: pagan snowboarders, alpine altar boys, and telemark priestesses holding their breath for the sacrament of the season, the constant blessing of falling flakes. We thirst for powder, the transubstantiation of the sky. Over the jagged spires of the Rockies or the Tetons or the Cascades or whatever range constitutes a horizon, it is expected to arrive looming black and terrible, howling with a bitter wind, and depositing a white blanket of cold peace.

And when it comes, we immerse ourselves...

Ascetic hermits in their basement apartments watch the Weather Channel for its progress, fingering the neckstraps of their Pieps. Something is always moving there, rippling in the jetstreams of the heavens with the chance to bring the best day that has ever been. Perfection travels in low pressure systems so moistur-laden they rip their fat bellies on broken ridges, or suspended aerographic columns of snow that plop deep on the pockets of ground where the heat has risen to welcome them. It is evoked by the feasts of New Year’s and Valentine’s, called for by bodies flailing around the ski bonfires where the emptying of kegs is accepted as the cure for drought, as well as through the sacred chants of snow dances in which each footstep has spent centuries in rehearsal. And when it comes, we immerse ourselves in the act of skimming the earth, balanced on the crystal weave of winter, with the speed of wings.

We want rapture...

We want rapture: faceshots in a swirling galaxy of flakes, a waist encompassed by the fallen sky-thick as a milkshake and parting. And a run of fresh tracks which extends for a thousand vertical feet…for a mile…for forever. When it’s January, and zero degrees, nothing is as buoyant as snow.

There is a quiet, too. The white reverence of padded powder broken only by laughing crows and skiers, trespassers on the robes of frost eying the forbidden glow of icicles and carving sinuous wakes. Plunderers of the flakes which have crossed continents and ages to land where they lay. Prometheus come for the fire.

Of course, there can be too many blessings, and that deepest fluff which seems the essence of life can spell the end of it, as well. Every backcountry skier knows that, perhaps considering it an integral part of the joy. The power of any deity is to be indifferent in bad and good, and each mountain has it share of saints. In Wyoming, prayer flags flutter from lines strung between spruces for a patrolman who announced his final vision in the morning and went out to have it fulfilled. There are crosses in Colorado like crucifixes on the mounds. In Alta, an etched rock marks the spot where Jamie lay for three days underneath the snow. The pessimism of death is foretold in skeleton clouds.

The mountains will not remember us. We don’t expect to change the crowns of stone that have been shaped by a millennia of ice and wind. We can only hope to read the signs. I happened to be standing on a porch next to Pepi Stiegler, the Olympic skiing champion who runs the ski school at Jackson Hole, during one of the continuing days of a blizzard in ’92. “It keeps snowing,” he said, nasal and factual in his Austrian accent. “That’s not good.”

Religion is not danger though, and it is the guideline of life, hope, and the ethereal freedom of carving out a set of tracks beautiful in their undulations, resplendent in their rhythm of descent, and exact in their interpretation of gravity’s glacial call. Avalanche is shark attack, the gray-eyed inevitability of nature. So get turning, cavort in the northern shadow of chutes where the snow holds fast.

Every run helps stem the impatience of the plea for powder, until the days grow long, and the heat and the corn become the standard condition. It’s the high pressure then, a bright bubble which shows the deepest blues of the sky and all the stars of the night, and sweats the mountains until the waves are smoothed to slate and the rocks have grown gigantic and invincible again. The evening cold makes everything sit still, then loosen its hold through the warming morning, when steel edges can sink into the enamel and roll it away in balls of slush. Then the world is a spongy tabletop and the vertigo of open air makes it seem possible to step from peak to peak, from range to range. Each turn is the speed of spring, like senses coming unfrozen with the waking ground, loose and reaching for the light. And the completeness in that repeating mantra of linked arcs and burning, breathing lungs, is that every melting thing has followed the same path down the hill.

It will be fall, then winter in Argentina and Australia and Chile by then. And rain in the cities of Europe and the U.S. The cycle repeats, and our bones and muscles grow weaker or stronger because of it. Our minds remember the quirks of the season. Each month is a name in the pantheon of our mental galleries, where the mention recalls the sight of snowflakes or sunshine, or a lone cloud spilling dew to reflect refracted rays, and the sense that something glorious is about. In the scurry of ascent and descent and anticipation, there is something holy and irretrievable about the fog rising out of the valley and the lenticular stretch of a cloud, permanent and vanished, as if it would be enough for any day to be spent standing in the way of the wind.

Reprinted from Couloir VIII-1, Oct. 1995

Author: Peter Kray

Dostie — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 21:34:36 +0000

Before the next post goes out, let me introduce Peter Kray. There are a lot of writers in the world, especially on the web, who can only dream of words spilling out of our brains onto paper the way Peter Kray weaves a story with a view.

Peter Kray researching an article on Sorcerer Lake Lodge.
Click to enlarge.

When he first introduced himself on the phone, he wasn’t sure if I would be interested in his, for lack of a better term, poetic writing style. I wasn’t sure either, but thought I understood what he meant and replied I had never published anything of that caliber because no one had ever submitted anything like that.

He sent it in, and the rest is the history of our working friendship spanning over 15 years. Pete wrote some of, if not the sweetest words ever published in Couloir to the skiing world. Give him a keyboard and let him run free and you’ll be right there with him in thought if not in deed as he wanders through the wilderness, sharing thoughts on the climb and the road back home. He evokes the evisceral strings of the heart like he’s playing a spiritual harp.

Captain of the Shred, White & Blue...Peter Kray.

Most writers in the ski business are just trying to justify getting pro-deal on equipment. Peter is there to talk about the world and show his skill as an outdoor loving wordsmith. He puts words together the way an artist blends colors to reveal something more than mere paint on a canvas. It shows.

Lucky for us, he’s a skier, so there’s natural motivation to read what he writes. You’ve seen his words all over the place, but you might not have realized it. In the months ahead I’ll dig out a few of his stories from the pages of, um, how do you say it? Cooler…right?

Next post — a timeless reflection on something that all skiers and snowboarders can all appreciate — the religion of weather.

You can read more of Pete’s words at Shred, White & Blue.

Turns with Pepper John

Dostie — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 02:56:13 +0000

I don’t remember how I got in to a conversation with Pepper John. That isn’t really his name. I never found out what his last name was, but John was his first name. He happened to be at The Back Country shop in Truckee at the same time when I dropped by to meet my friend Sigward before heading out for a ski tour. Somehow we got in a conversation and ended up inviting him with us to Pepper’s run. Hence I call him Pepper John.

Pepper John cruises Tahoe chowder.
Click to enlarge.

He was deaf so communicating was a bit difficult, but not impossible. He was good at reading lips and when he spoke he didn’t pronounce everything perfectly, but he was understandable and understood.

It was the second warm day in a row so dry powder would be unlikely, but soft like whipped cream would be easy to find. We ended up spreading out as a group, Pepper John and I, then Sigward and Brittany. Sigward was having pain with his boots on the climb again so he lagged behind. Since Pepper John couldn’t read my lips through the back of my head, conversation on the skin track was near impossible so I enjoyed setting track guilt free to the rhythm of my Zen player.

We weren’t the first people to reach the top of the ridge recently, so we opted to move west to untracked terrain. As we began turning back to town, pinwheels followed our serpentine tracks, rolling past us when we stopped, and in a few spots threatening to knock us over.

Spooning tracks in the trees.
Click to enlarge.

Pinwheels are classic signs of a snowpack that could avalanche, but these slopes weren’t quite that steep and we were in a forest of 100 year old trees who held the slope fast. This was an excellent example of the paradoxical reason you want to take an avalanche course. Yes, to know how to avoid avalanches, but more importantly, to be able to predict not only when they will, but also when they will not go, so you can ride slopes that are steep enough to avalanche, therefore steep enough to be great skiing, but without the risk of being eaten by one. It was excellent untracked chowder.

Whatever John lacked in hearing, he sure made up for when laying down his telemark track. It was great to see we didn’t need to worry about this stranger we had picked up at the trailhead, a gypsy moving through town who we were lucky enough to spend some time with for a day.

Review: A Life Ascending

Dostie — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 04:14:10 +0000

Everybody knows that ski movies are to skiing what porn is to sex; visually stimulating, but nothing compared to the real thing. It’s why I tend to avoid them both. Why bother when the real thing is so infinitely superior?

When it comes to movies I want more than a tickling of my visual cortex, I look for something that stirs the soul. Thus, my preference is for movies that have a story line and characters that simmer and develop as the plot thickens (or sickens). That’s a tall order in the world of ski porn.

A Life Ascending is ski film by Stephen Grynberg that doesn’t fit the mold of nonstop segues of skiers hucking their meat off cliffs and diving deep in bottomless stashes of powder synchronized to throbbing music. It is a whole lot slower and thoughtful than that. Ski mountaineers may appreciate it, but action hungry tweeners will only use it to cure insomnia.

Myself, I found it worth spending an hour to watch Grynberg’s portrayal of Ruedi Beglinger. Ruedi’s reputation as a ski mountaineering guide had grown to legendary status by the turn of the century for offering not just a luxurious backcountry hut experience, but a challenging one as well, regularly leading clients around the Selkirks for up to 50,000 vertical feet of untracked skiing in a week. But that reputation was severely tarnished on January 20, 2003 when we were all stunned to learn that 12 people had been caught in an avalanche on the flanks of Tumbledown Mountain and seven died.

This movie does an excellent job of framing that situation and how the Beglinger family has dealt with the tragedy, from the immediate grief of friends lost, to the personal growth it has required not only for Ruedi and his wife Nicoline, but their daughters and everyone involved in the Selkirk Mountaineering Experience operation. From my perspective, the movie is even handed. It accurately portrays their lives, attitudes, and the relationships among themselves and with clients without getting bogged down in lengthy explanations. There are some excellent skiing sequences, but best of all, there is character and a real, albeit tragic, story to be told. In short, it isn’t some fluffy, fictional portrayal of how awesome skiing can be, but a real portrayal of a man who has made skiing his life, and how that life is like any other, full of warts and sorrow and passion and joy. In short, what this movie lacks in action it makes up for with soul. At the very least, it reminds us that skiing is life, life can be short, so we had best make the most of it while we can.

Real art portrays and reflects real life,whereas ski porn is but a superficial version of the real thing. A Life Ascending shows that ski mountaineering is a form of skiing that captures and reflects what is real in life, not merely the highlights.

To obtain a copy for yourself, register here.

California TRs from The Back Country

Dostie — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 14:21:57 +0000

A few of you have noticed that I’m starting to make a bit of progress with filling this site out with content related to backcountry skiing. To that end, I’d like to start compiling a listing of great sites that post good trip reports. There are a ton of them out there so if you know of a good one, please post a link to it in a comment below and I’ll start adding them in.

To kick it off, I thought I’d start with Mike Schwartz, the owner of The Back Country in Truckee. Not only does he have a shop with all the toys we love to play with (skis, bikes, kayaks, climbing gear, etc.) but he uses them himself on a very regular basis. From the outside it appears he is doing a stellar job of balancing work, play, and family. Put another way, I wish I could get out and ski, climb, bike as much as he does. As proof, check out his website, in particular the forum. He calls it the message board, but it’s forum software. There are tons of trips posted throughout California, but especially the Lake Tahoe area and the East Side. Mike is the author of a majority of the trips listed. Even though he won’t claim to be a pro photographer, he takes excellent shots which make you drool with envy, or anticipation, for going there yourself.

Looking for beta on places in those regions? Read the accompanying descriptions with lots of local tips on which fork to take to get to the goods. It’s all at thebackcountry.net’s message board. There is also a Tahoe specific guidebook for backcountry skiing around the big lake. If you have never toured in the area and need specific info on trailheads and typical routes, this section provides downloadable topo maps.

The Back Country is also a good place to get your gear, especially if you want a little advice on which piece to get. Mike’s tried ‘em all and knows what folks they work best with. He does an excellent job of boot-fitting too. You might find some gear cheaper elsewhere, but you’ll be hard pressed to get any better personal advice or boot-fitting included when you buy boots.

Don’t forget, leave a comment with your faves below.

Tribute to Paul Ramer

Dostie — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 01:01:00 +0000

Paul Ramer circa 1995 wearing his elusive Avalert that never quite made it to market.

While there are many people who have contributed to the growth of ski mountaineering in America, few were more instrumental than Paul Ramer. It was his vision, more than any other single man’s which accurately defined, perhaps prophesied, the current landscape of the sport. Some of you reading this became aware of backcountry skiing through more contemporary voices, but they all stood on the developments and ideas first promoted in America by Paul Ramer.

Against America’s tidal wave of enthusiasm for Telemark, Paul was adamant that Alpine Touring (AT) was the way, not Nordic. It was an uphill battle all the way. Steve Barnett’s book “Cross-Country Downhill” distilled the enthusiasm for backcountry skiing in 1976, and his choice of telemark gear cast the mold for those who followed. He was just following Ric Borkovec, who chose Nordic as a rehab option to a ski injury, and then found exhilaration in the freedom it provided. Others, like Doug Robinson, Paul Parker, and Alan Bard began to wax eloquent on the telemark turn and the die seemed cast. When the first all-plastic telemark boot arrived, the Terminator, American interest in AT practically dissolved.

Paul Ramer never wavered. He knew that alpine skiing would remain the major discipline because he wasn’t promoting cross-country skiing with downhill turns thrown in, he was promoting downhill skiing with a free-heel thrown in for mountaineering caliber cross-country mobility outside the resorts. Unfortunately, he was about 20 years ahead of his time and the fruit of his labors and ideas didn’t catch fire in America until the last years of his life.

The binding that started the Alpine Touring revolution in America.

My introduction to Paul came as it did for most of us, through his binding. The mountains beckoned, I responded and in short order knew I wanted a binding that provided everything I had in my alpine bindings — locked heel performance and safety release — plus a free-heel for skinning uphill. The Ramer Classic looked like an erector set sort of contraption, but once I accepted it was the best option at the time, my faith in its performance was never disappointed.

It led, inevitably to my own efforts to proselytize ski mountaineering through my involvement with a section of southern California’s Sierra Club, The Alpine Ski Touring Committee, a group led by my personal mentor, John Wedberg, which led to the creation of a newsletter, Le Chronicle du Couloir, which became Couloir magazine.

While most readers of Couloir were of the telemark persuasion, that was only because at the time 80% of American backcountry skiers were using telemark gear. Throughout it all I believed as Paul Ramer did, that the future was with Alpine Touring equipment. It didn’t require any new skiing skills, just a new binding and climbing skins.

Paul Ramer's treatise on backcountry skiing, with his obvious AT bias.

In fact, what few people realize is that part of the motivation for starting Couloir was, despite my own eventual preference for telemark, to promote the sport of ski mountaineering all the way to the extreme level, for which alpine equipment is clearly superior. While telemark gear has shown it can keep up, it has not raised the bar for performance in the ski mountaineering realm. Besides, Paul’s main point, that it was simply easier for more people was also undeniable. That premise, more than anything else was why I chose to promote the alpine aspect of backcountry skiing because only by making the switch to backcountry skiing easy, which AT gear does, could the sport hope to achieve any sort of momentum and viable growth.

Thus, in launching EarnYourTurns.com it seems fitting to start at the beginning, with a tribute to one of the men who helped make the sport what it is today, and who was instrumental in my involvement, even the very inspiration for the “earn your turns” mantra.

On the following page, a rerun of an interview with Paul Ramer, first published in Couloir magazine Vol. XII-5, Spring 2000.