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Headline RSS FeedSnow gods keep adding insult to injury
February 6, 2008 —
Injuring your knee during the storm cycle of the century after 33 years of virtually injury-free skiing is a bit like going undefeated during the regular season and throughout the playoffs then losing the Super Bowl.
You can tell yourself (and anyone else who’ll listen) how lucky you’ve been, how many epic powder days you’ve had over those past 33 years, how many incredible days you had this season before getting hurt, but the fact of the matter is, they’re out there in waist-deep fluff, hooting and hollering and holding up the Lombardi Trophy, and you’re at home with ice on your knee.
Apparently I was viciously mean to somebody or some small animal in some previous life, because this is one big, brutal karmic check I’m being forced to cash right now. Luckily, like Tom Perfect, I have a super-model wife at home to help me drown my sorrows … and keep stats like these away from me:
January snowfall on Vail Mountain was 98 inches (the average for the month is 64). That ties December’s 98 inches for the most snowfall in any month in the past seven years. The previous high was 96 in December of 2006.
The seasonal cumulative total at Vail on Jan. 31 was 239 inches, which is four and a half feet above the average of 186 and less than 100 inches from the seasonal average of 330 inches with two and half of the snowiest months left before the lifts shut down.
It snowed 24 days of the 31 days in January in Vail, the highest number of days in one month in recent history (at least seven years back). The second highest number of days was December, when it snowed 22 days of the month.
Beaver Creek also recorded its snowiest December and January since 1996, receiving 93 inches of snow in January compared to 105.2 inches of snow in January of 1996. The historical average for the month is 52.4 inches.
Beaver Creek got 90 inches in December compared to 100.9 inches of snow in December of 1996, and the historical average for the month is 54.6 inches. Overall, Beaver Creek got 234 inches of accumulative snowfall through Jan, 31, and the historical average through that date is 169 inches.
And the snow just keeps coming. So far in February Vail has had another 22 inches of snow for a total season-to-date of 271 inches. Crazy.
All of this means maybe the snowpack will be so deep the powers that be will extend the ski season and by some miracle I’ll get back on skis before the lifts shut down. Dr. Steadman is telling me that, despite the fact that my ACL is gone in my left knee, I may be able to get away without reconstructive surgery. After all, I’ve been skiing without a ligament for 16 years, so why start now?
Only thing is, if I get back on skis by, say, late March or April, it’s doubtful there will be acres of light fluffy powder waiting for me. Which makes getting back on skis after the storm cycle of the century (SCOTC) is all but a distant memory a bit like going undefeated during the regular season and throughout the playoff, losing the Super Bowl, then flying all the way to Hawaii for the Pro Bowl.
Still fun, but somehow not quite the same.
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Realvail.com photo illustration
'Money, it's gotta be the boots'
January 31, 2008 —
If Spike Lee’s Mars Blackmon had grown up in Beaver Creek versus Brooklyn, he undoubtedly would have told Bode Miller instead of Michael Jordan, “Money, it’s gotta be the boots.”
“Do you know? Do you know? Do you know?” … he would’ve been right. I’ve always said, get the boots right and I can ski on a pair of two-by-fours … rough-cut and un-sanded.
And one place that’s been getting boots right in Vail and Beaver Creek since back when Backmon was shilling for Nike is Surefoot, founded by local boy Russ Shay and his brother Bob (click on http://www.realvail.com/articles.php?artid=133 for more about the Shays or on www.surefoot.com for more about the innovative company itself).
Turns out the winner of our holiday boot giveaway, a random online drawing selected from people who registered for our Real-E newsletter – the first edition of which went out today (Wednesday, Jan. 30) – lives in Silver Spring, Md., but owns a place in Vail, where he recently purchased a new pair of Surefoot ski boots for himself.
Now, when Gerry Hartung, 51, returns with his wife, Petey, in March, he can pick her up a pair, courtesy of Surefoot and the realvail.com launch party giveaway, where we also handed out a bunch of other great product from Performance Sports in Lionshead and Roxy in Vail Village.
This is the launch party that keeps on giving, and we’re proud to say we had more than 100 people sign up for the boots (and we hope, to some degree, our incredibly enticing newsletter) and that our unique users (that’s right, you’re all one of a kind) continue to spike upwards.
In December we had 3,000 unique visits, and that number climbed to 3,500 in January – not bad for a grassroots start-up that went live in September of ’07. Hartung says his Sonnenalp Real Estate broker (www.sonnenalprealestate.com) turned him on to the site.
“What I like about it is I spend a lot of time in the office, and I can go to your site, sit and catch up quickly,” said Hartung, who owns a publishing company and is CEO of a medical education website called www.med-iq.com. “It’s quick and easy, very user-friendly, and I can take 15 minutes and catch up on the latest in Vail.”
Hartung said he was attracted to the site by a RealVail Real Estate article on the changing nature of second home ownership, a trend that sees more baby boomers spending a month of two of the year living, working and recreating out of their resort property. The Hartungs started out with a fractional unit in the Sonnenalp’s Austria Haus and have since upgraded.
“We have a condo in (Vail Cascade) and recently bought a lot in Cordillera with the idea we will move there in the future,” Hartung said. “My wife and I love your online paper. It really helps us stay in touch with what's happening in Vail when we can't be there.”
And so will our Real-E newsletter, a sporadic and not-at-all obtrusive email blast that hits the highlights (snow conditions, business trends, big events) two or three times a month. Click here to sign up, and remember, “It’s gotta be the boots.”
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Special to realvail.com
Colorado license plates may no longer be green with envy
January 25, 2008 —
For years I’ve had a bit of skier envy when it comes to the state of Utah. Our neighbors to the west tend to get more snow than we do (storms usually hit there first), and their mountains are so close and conveniently located to their major metropolitan area: Salt Lake City.
Of course, anyone in their right mind would rather live in Denver than Salt Lake, and – other than Park City – Utah’s ski towns largely lack anything remotely resembling charm. So, better snow and shorter drives never conspired to make me want to actually move to the Beehive State.
One thing has always bugged me, though: I always loved their license plates. Not necessarily the reddish orange ones with a picture of Arches National Park (although those are pretty cool), but the white ones with blue lettering and picture of a skier that read “Greatest snow on earth.”
Truth in advertising there, although I would argue Colorado comes in a close second, but the point is that a state with less than a third of the skier days of Colorado (a little under 4 million compared to a little under 12 million) has usurped our status as the nation’s number one ski state, at least on the open road.
Finally, though, someone is doing something about it. Colorado Ski Country USA (CSCUSA), the state’s ski industry lobbying group, is spearheading an effort to offer a ski-themed plate in the Centennial State.
“Ever since I can remember, folks have been asking for a ski license plate for Colorado,” Rob Perlman, president and CEO of CSCUSA, said in a release. “We seemed to be the logical group to help work with the state to be able to offer one.”
CSCUSA must submit a prototype of the plate (see picture) and an application with 3,000 names of state residents interested in a ski license plate to the Colorado Department of Revenue (DOR), which has the final say on the design of the plate.
Not to be mean to the good folks at CSCUSA, but I’m hoping the DOR does a little better with the final design (provided they get enough signatures and move forward), because the prototype lacks inspiration.
I know we’re trying to be P.C., but do we have to have a snowboarder. It looks to me like the skier and the snowboarder are about to collide, and does anyone need a reminder of slope rage while they’re trying to control their road rage. How about separate skier and snowboarder plates. I know MLK Day just came and went, but in some things segregation may make sense.
Anyway, I love our standard plates with the green mountains and the white sky (the ones that have earned us the nickname “Greenies” in Wyoming), but sign me up for the new skier plates. The ski industry is second only to agriculture in terms of revenues generated in our state, and with beetle kill quickly turning our mountains from green to rust-red, an alternative to the old standard plates makes sense.
If you agree, put you name on the list by going to www.coloradoskiplate.comand including your full name, address, county and how many sets of plates you’d be willing to buy. Signing up is not a commitment to buy. When the plate is available, possibly as early as 2009, the extra cost is a one-time charge (right now $50 for special plates) on top of the normal vehicle registration fee.
That way when I take my next road trip out to the Wasatch, I’ll be sporting my new Colorado skier plates and therefore able to give our fun-challenged western neighbors one more thing to be jealous about.
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Courtesy of the U.S. Ski Team
Vonn, Miller making ski-racing history
January 20, 2008 —
So the torrid pace of snowfall has slowed a bit of late, with but an inch or two here and there the last week or so. Not that I care too much, given my knee injury and inability to ski (although I’m still pulling for all the able-bodied people who can), but at least the decreased snowfall has given everyone in the Vail Valley the ability to catch up on work and heal their battered bodies.
During the pounding period of precipitation earlier this month, work was piling up in in-boxes even faster than the snowpack totals, and people were starting to sport all sorts of nicks, bumps, bruises, twists, sprains and overall forms of fatigue.
And even though there are snow showers in the forecast every day for the next week, we can all now at least take a deep breath and think about things other than blower powder and full-on face shots. I, for instance - in my languishing exile on the couch - have been thinking a lot about the historic nature what’s going on on the World Cup circuit.
I’m sure I’m in the minority there, since the vast majority of America is not particularly enamored of the White Circus, as it’s been dubbed, but when you live in a ski town and can’t ski, you think about skiing – especially when it’s as historic as what Vail’s Lindsey Kildow and New Hampshire’s Bode Miller are doing right now.
Ski Club Vail’s Vonn won a downhill in Cortina, Italy, Saturday, her fourth win this season and the 11th of her career. Vonn, formerly Kildow, at the ripe old age of 23 is now tied for 28th on the all-time World Cup victory list and trails only Tamara McKinney for the most victories ever by an American woman. McKinney is tied for 18th all-time with 18 career wins and an overall title.
Miller, meanwhile, won back-to-back downhills earlier this month to tie Phil Mahre for eighth on the all-time victory list and for the most career World Cup wins by an American man (27).
Then on Sunday he won a combined event in Kitzbuehel, Austria, to top Mahre's mark by one. He now trails retired Austrian Stephan Eberharter (29 victories) by just one win and active rival Benjamin Raich of Austria (30 victories) by two.
“I remember when I was young it was one of my goals. I wanted to be the best American skier ever,” Miller told the press last week. “I think that's what I am. It's nice to have the numbers to back that up.”
If Miller catches Eberharter for seventh or even Raich for sixth all-time this season, it’s pretty rarified air after that. Swiss great Pirmin Zurbriggen is fifth with 40 wins and the still hard-charging Hermann Maier - second Friday in a super-G on Kitzbuehel’s famed Hahnenkamm – is second all-time with 53 wins.
Raich has one slalom win this season, but the Herminator is still winless so far. None of them, of course, will ever catch Swedish legend Ingemar Stenmark’s hallowed career record of 86 wins. Mahre, for the record, thinks that’s the mark to beat and isn’t too impressed with Miller’s feat.
But Miller nearly surpassed Mahre on Saturday by finishing tied for second in the Hahnenkamm, nearly winning the world’s most famous downhill. The former slalom and giant slalom specialist has made himself into the kind of speed-event skier Mahre never pretended to be.
Still, Miller’s all-around greatness and reckless abandon may be overshadowed historically by his lack of – and disdain for – an Olympic gold medal, something Mahre has in his sock drawer, along with three overall globes to Miller’s one.
And Vonn, also a two-time Olympian like Miller, can win all the World Cup races she wants, but won’t gain the fame of her idol and mentor, Picabo Street, if she doesn’t claim Olympic gold in the coming years. It’s apparently the only thing American ski-racing fans understand.
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