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back from beaver creek
I’m back from my trip to Beaver Creek. I spent 2 of the days at Vail. Both of these resorts are awesome. Unfortunately, it only snowed only about 2 inches over the 5 days. It seems like I am usually at the resorts on the wrong weeks for my out-of-state trips. Beaver Creek has a lot on nice groomed terrain. Trees are a little too tight or the terrain was too steep to ride the trees for the snow conditions. On the other hand, Vail’s back bowls still had lots of mixed crud and soft snow mixed with moguls. There are lots of tree areas that can be ridden. For this trip, I brought Hagans, Sherpas, and Lacroix Carbons. I skied the Sherpas the first day out at BC and met up with Matthies for about an hour in the morning. It was very interesting skiing with him and trying to help him get of that long ski posture that skiers use on skiboards. I had to stop and think at times watching his heels slide and think of how to instruct him to do something that is now so second nature to me. The rest of the day I skied with a couple of club members that knew the resort very well. The Sherpas performed great on all the groomers we skied. The only time I bogged down a bit was on the traverse going over to Arrowhead. I have the Sherpas and Lacroix edges very sharp. They are too sharp as I found out on this trip. At 88 degrees, I could feel the tips and tails of the Sherpas hook up every time I hit a really hard icy spot. This would sometime cause the tips or tails to wobble. I plan to reset the edges of both boards to 89 degrees. The sharp edges really saved my butt on top of the Birds of Pray downhill course though. They water down the top of the course to create a 30 foot sheet of steep ice. You either need to traverse across to the soft snow on the other side or ski straight down it. On the second day out when I was ridding the Lacroix’s, none of us had the guts to ski down the ice. The first two of my buddies skied out on the ice sheet to traverse across it and slid out and down. The third person made it across. I said to myself, this is the extreme test of edge hold for a skiboard. I stepped out and started across. I was amazed that I could not only could hold and edge, but I could even step up as I went to where softer snow was. When I got to the bottom of the ice sheet, another group of skiers tried skiing straight down. Two out of the three made it..so it was like pick your poison. I tried two mogul runs on the Lacroixs. The first time I tried to do it without poles to see if I could get this soft edge thing. I’m terrible at this. My friend yelled at me to use my poles. Until I could stick a pole on top of the bump and time my turn, I couldn’t ski them.
The second 2 days, we skied at Vail. This is the biggest resort I’ve skied in North America. I highly recommend a full week trip there. I definitely will be back. Vail has these huge back bowls. We stayed in the bowls all day and never even made it to ski the front side. On a good powder day, one could ski a single bowl all day. No powder day for me though for this trip. At Vail, I skied the Hagans. This is my number one ski. The more I ski it, the more I love it. I don’t think any skiboard can come close to the performance of this short ski. Many of my buddies with their long performance skis could slowly cruise past me, but considering they were riding sticks up to 50 cm longer than me, I was doing really great and loving it. In the bumps, I could make it down the run in about half the time it took my group. The variable terrain riding at Vail was a blast. My legs are in shape and ready for Shredfest.
Wendell
The second 2 days, we skied at Vail. This is the biggest resort I’ve skied in North America. I highly recommend a full week trip there. I definitely will be back. Vail has these huge back bowls. We stayed in the bowls all day and never even made it to ski the front side. On a good powder day, one could ski a single bowl all day. No powder day for me though for this trip. At Vail, I skied the Hagans. This is my number one ski. The more I ski it, the more I love it. I don’t think any skiboard can come close to the performance of this short ski. Many of my buddies with their long performance skis could slowly cruise past me, but considering they were riding sticks up to 50 cm longer than me, I was doing really great and loving it. In the bumps, I could make it down the run in about half the time it took my group. The variable terrain riding at Vail was a blast. My legs are in shape and ready for Shredfest.
Wendell
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