quite an interesting day. polar opposite of the last couple weeks and super super warm and heavy classic PNW powpow. everything was like in slow motion today. i was on bents today and my dad was on on3p BGs and they did awesome in the heavy snow.
learned today that everyone needs to that odessey skis for inventing the shaped ski.
no really, he's suing nearly every ski company for stealing his idea. some guy was on a pair of these things in the big chief lineup this morning and was giving them a good rep to the general public but a bad rap to anyone with any ski building or ski history knowledge. he could not answer my basic question about materials or the construction process. but no worries because he was "product testing for this ground breaking ski" whereas it appeared he was riding a semi-custom ski because the only input he could account for was selecting the graphics and flex. he also informed me that a former ski magazine employee now working for K2 stole one of their skis at a ski test at mount baker and thats the real origin of the rockered K2 skis. nevermind mcconkey or the spatulas because it was 9am and i wasn't quite feeling like being a jackass yet. i'm sorry if you know this guy who was there today, because he really was spreading misinformation. almost as bad as boone's ads up top there ^^^ that state that bamboo nearly rivals steel in strength. bamboo's allowable tensile stress is 4 ksi according to the US Navy and 3.5 ksi according to my tests..........a piece of rebar has an allowable tensile stress of 60 ksi. "4" is not rivaling "60".
yes double diamond opened for an hour. with pretty much the funniest/oddest events ever. they have not opened the lift all year so the chairs are completely full of snow. little line has built up in anticipation of the opening. two pro patrollers swing thru, and get on the chair, except the liftie does not even attempt to clean it off, so they have to sit on two feet of snow on the chair and then scoot around and wipe it off as they ride up. then a single pro patroller gets ready to get on the chair, the liftie bumps the chair, except its full of snow and the seat is up. so the troller tries to sit on it, his ass goes thru the bottom and he bails right before it gets too high off the ground. he swings back thru and everyone heckles him all in good fun. then they open the chair to the public. about third chair, then same issue happens (two feet of snow with the seat up, and the liftie does not even try to clean it off). so the two dudes trying to get on the chair end up falling off of it about at the first tower. they plop into the snow but its so deep they can't get up. but the liftie does not stop the chair even though two people obviously just fell off. we were probably around 5th or 6th chair and the guys hadn't gotten a chance to move yet and were wallowing in the deep snow. luckily the chairs were just high enough off the ground that peoples' skis weren't hitting them. but damn, that was the most eventful chair opening ever. double diamond was raped multiple times before we moved over to katz just before the crowds hit it.
oh look, open pillow field
but the snow is thicker than molasses
upper katz it was less than 40 degrees and snow could fly in the air
