Saturday January 24th, at Beaver Creek!
Last weekend we were both out training… Karyn took the A-basin tele steeps camp, and David took me out to rough me up on bumps all day.
At the end of the day I was a little roughed up, but pleased to meet up with Karyn and Becky, prepared to run 1 last bump run down Main Street or Standard. The snow was pretty good, but it’s been warm. At the end of the day, we were sure if there was no new snow, the talons would be ‘death bumps’ aka ‘Volkswagens’.
Sunday David came out on his Alpines to finish me off at Keystone. We found some good snow there, and quite a few rocks out in the Outback.
This weekend, was the official Talons Challenge. Last year this became a normal activity in the annual Telemark training sequence. The norm is preparation of days telemarking bumps, and steeps. But there is still nothing to prepare you for the run down Golden Eagle. The Men’s world cup birds of prey race course. Every year this run is a sheet of ice. I’m not talking east coast ice, I’m talking ice rink ice. 40 feet of this run takes on a blue/brown color. The brown must come from the dirt 8” below. And every year this section takes a hip of at least 1 monoskier. This year it took 2 for a ride… (Don aka “Old Dudes Rule” managed to stay up for that section.)
After nervous anticipation of skiing rock hard ‘Volkswagens’, mother nature tuned in, and gave us some fresh snow. Friday night Beaver Creek got 5” of wet and heavy… Exactly what we needed to cover those ice bumps up. It continued to snow throughout the day, providing poor visibility, wet ski gear, and a bunch of fog to make things exciting. When Ed, Chris and I were crossing from the bottom of Screech Owl over to Ruffed Grouse, the fog was so thick, I couldn’t see more than a blob behind me, so I let out the normal tree skiing Yelp (David agrees, it can’t be called Yodel, but that is another useful noise). Ed’s voice from behind comes “You’re like an F*$% light house with that Jacket on”. Apparently they were closer than they appeared.
Finishing at a respectful 1:30, David and Andrew on alpines were waiting at the Red Tail having cleaned up ½ hour prior to us. We stuck around to pick up the free beer and brat, a shirt, the hat and pin for finishing, and I decided to push David’s condition a little with 1 more run. (I can’t tell you where we went, because it’s the hidden secret of the talons course.) The 3rd annual success, and this year the crowd was limited to 1500 people.
Sunday was a tough day to get back out on the slopes. It was clear we were in shape enough to ski the talons, but we weren’t in good enough shape to ski the day after. 5 more inches of snow at Copper, and our latest start of the season, 9:30 on the lift. There was plenty of freshies to find on that mountain, but it snowed all day, and by 3 the wind was whipping so hard, we decided to cache in. (and Dad, we got our 20k in.;)
We got down late, still not managing to meet up with our friend flying in from Spain, but sorry to have missed Sarah’s birthday dinner at the Med.
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