“Just wait, once it starts you will never forget it!” Right, we won’t forget this winter. Oh, I know, Miracle March three hundred inches, and then Marvelous May. Yeah right. I’m not going to say it’s over or anything like that, but as I write this, it sure feels like spring out there.

We have officially just hit a point in our snowpack that puts us above the ’76-’77 snowpack, barely, yahoo. But that last storm series also sent everyone runnin’ for the hills, to get a taste of what we have all been so starved for, sweet pow. For most the result was rewarding, that probably was the best skiing/riding so far this anemic season, but with so slim a base and such bad layers in the snow, the result was not so sweet for all. Everything from damaged equipment to “broke off bodies” to the two very sad avalanche fatalities here in the Tahoe area, and all from one little storm series. And I can’t believe how many people coming into the shop have asked how could there be avalanche burials with so little snow on the ground.

There are probably a thousand answers to that question. The first one is that we were all waiting for “that” storm, so when it hit we all kind of forgot what was underneath the fresh stuff and jumped on it. The storms dumped anywhere from two to four feet of snow, so first of all, that is enough snow to create dangerous avalanche hazards. But then several other elements added together to make it especially dangerous. Very light cold snow had fallen on hard in some places icy snow. This meant there was a poor bond at the bottom of all the new snow.

The storms were also very windy throughout the entire period. This means a huge amount of snow was blown over to the leeward side of peaks and ridges creating large areas of even deeper wind loaded snow. These are dangerous zones during and sometimes long periods after a storm, and they just happen to be where we tend to want to play because the best snow is usually there! This is exactly where these two accidents occurred with the crown (the point of origination of the avalanche) in the Carson Pass incident reaching five feet in depth.

Then just to make things even more interesting we had a shallow snowpack on the ground that went through some pretty cold temperatures causing some faceting down in the snow layers. To make a long and technical story short, this means there were (are and will be) some weak layers down in the older snow caused by snow crystals that don’t bond to each other which will tend to break loose and create slides on many different aspects.

I do understand how people are surprised by the difference between last year which was of course epic and huge with no local avalanche burials and this year with so little snowpack and already tragic results! Either way it is all a part of this passion we have for snow covered mountains. It is a beautiful, spiritual, exciting and dangerous place to spend time. We do know that any moment out there could be our last, but probably won’t. But then the same thing goes every time we climb into that metal box and drive down Highway 50, which is way more frightening to me.

All of this also brings up the subject of learning as much as we can about avalanche safety and carrying the proper avy safety gear. There are three levels of avalanche courses. Level one is a great class, always given out in the field and very good for raising awareness of the dangers, helping with the decision to travel through a zone or not and how to use beacon, probe and shovel. This is a class of basic knowledge that can save lives, plus it is pretty fun!

The level two and three classes spend much more classroom time and are more concerned with snow science. These levels are of course great for anyone who spends time out there, but are really aimed at those who will be working in some capacity on the snow, guides, patrollers, even Caltrans workers who deal with avy work.

One thing these classes always stress is the human factor. We can learn all sorts of information about the science of snow and avalanche prediction, control and avoidance, but when you are standing there at the top of some sick looking chute that you have worked hours to get to, you have seen some signs that say go home now while you are safe, but the ego says, “I just need to drop this line it will be just fine! We have all done it and been lucky.” It is hard for those classes to protect us from ourselves.

Another very useful tool for us is the Sierra Avalanche Center web site, updated every day it is full of great information that can keep us out of trouble.

I do love the Sierra. I was writing this yesterday looking out the window at a beautiful bright warm spring day. I wake up this morning to finish and there is a fresh coat of snow on the ground, and it is dumping!

We have lost two more of our brothers who travel on the snow. Our hearts and condolences go out to their friends and families.

Enjoy Earth, GB

What he was seeing was the tip and tail of my skis not touching the snow the way they should on a traditional ski. And to his credit they do look like they are broken or badly bent.

It wasn’t more than 5 or 7 years ago that when someone walked into the shop with a pair of skis that holding them base to base if there was any space between the skis just down from the tip, we would have told that poor sad person their skis were bent and should probably be added to the ski fence in the backyard. There is a chance they could be bent back straight, (they even made special bending jigs for this purpose although we would just stick the tip under one of the benches and give it a good ole heave ho in the opposite direction, sometimes it worked!)

Along comes our recently departed friend Shane McConkey with his Volant Spatula. I can’t say for sure when that first happened, 7 or 8 years ago maybe, but he started something.

So what is this rocker stuff? When you look at a ski sitting on the snow, a traditional ski with no weight on it would only touch the snow at the tip and tail with a little space under the binding not touching at all. This is camber and along with side cut is what helps a ski turn more easily on packed snow. But according to Shane, when you put that ski in deep snow, it is that same camber making the ski want to nose dive because it couldn’t flatten or even reverse bend easily enough to push the tip up for more than a second or two so we have to do that porpoise thing to make them work. His idea was to build that arc into the ski.

At first this concept seemed weird, actually it still does, but now every ski company is building some sort of rockered or early tip rise ski and there are many variations. Everything from fully rockered skis that look like barrel staves almost, where there is no flat section at all, to the more common style with a flat section under foot but the tip and tail both arc up to some degree farther towards the center of the ski. This does two things. First the ski has a smooth and comfortable “float” to it no matter how deep or weird the snow is. Second the ski is already arcing for the turn and it just lets the ski do it, where ever, whenever you want. You can point the ski instantly where you need it, you can just put it sideways instantly in deep snow, they will smear and slash more like a water ski or surfboard. I have to say it feels pretty amazing.

Another variation on this theme is the early rise tip. This ski can have some amount of regular camber or it can just be flat, but the tip of the ski will sit up off the snow anywhere from 20 to 40 cm back from the tip. What this does is give you a ski with plenty of surface for powder and a tip that just wants to float, but when you are on packed snow it skis shorter and more like a regular ski. This is where most of the really rockered skis suffer, when you come out of the fluff and onto not so fluff, they can be a handful and not much fun. It is for that reason that this needs to be a second or even third ski in your quiver, they just aren’t the do everything ski, yet. There is no doubt that if this trend continues and the technology evolves and our technique continues to evolve, a ski like this could become the standard all mountain ski. Also it is working well enough that snowboards are doing the same stuff. But if you spend most of your days riding the groomers there is no reason for this broken bent weird ski for you.

I bet that guy in the lift line thought I was really into Sammy Hagar!

Enjoy Earth

NTN is something that has been talked about for a number of years now, but has just this past winter actually started to take shape. NTN is a boot and binding system. The current telemark boot has the protruding sort of squared off toe area that encompasses the three pin holes which used to engage the three pins of the binding. I say used to because you would be pretty hard pressed to find a telemark binding these days that still has the three pins. Most modern tele bindings have no pins and some sort of cable arrangement around the rear of the boot that gives the binding its ski turning power.

On the NTN boots the square toe area has been greatly reduced to resemble a randonee or AT boot toe and the pin holes are gone completely. Then they add an additional binding interface area right under the instep of the boot. This is just a small lip facing toward the rear of the boot. Everything else about the boot remains the same as any current tele boot out there. At this point only Crispi and Scarpa are going to produce boots. Black Diamond is secretly working on their own NTN boot and binding. I am skiing the Crispi boot and it is their best boot yet, new bellows and heat to fit liner, it is their lightest big boot ever.

The binding is where the real changes happen. The cable around the heel is gone. There is a toe attachment and the part that clamps under the instep of the boot. There is a ski brake, climbing bar for the heel and two levers at the toe area which serve to close/open the binding on one and lock /unlock the free pivot for climbing on the other. This is also a release binding.

I had looked at some photos of the boot and binding together earlier in the season and was very excited by the look of the setup in the pictures. But then when I first got to touch the binding I would have to say I was a little shocked. First by the weight of the system, and second by the very mechanical nature of the binding, it looked to me like a device that some bridge engineer had designed! There are many moving parts on this device and I weighed it out at ¾ of a pound heavier per single binding than a current binding like the Voile or G3 (without the free pivot ascent mode).

Next I headed for the resort for a ski test. My first run was just an intermediate cruiser on firm spring morning snow, not ideal for ski testing. Right away the system felt very different, maybe a little stiff and restrictive, (this was a brand new boot though). Again not the first impressions I had been hoping for. On the second run everything changed. I realized what the conditions were. I was on a very wide powder ski and firm snow, something you just don’t ski very comfortably on tele gear, or any ski gear for that matter, yet without even thinking about it this stuff was really skiing fast and effortlessly, hmmm! By the third run I felt like I was about to have an affair and betray my regular tele setup which I love very much!

The next morning we were out again on the NTN gear, now feeling more comfortable the pure power of this setup became very apparent. There is so much more edge power and with the binding attaching under the midsole of the boot, it really keeps the ball of the rear foot down on the ski better than our current setups. This makes it amazingly easy to pressure the rear ski during any part of the turn. This aspect of the binding means you have to ski a slightly taller stance, something that the modern boots and technique are teaching us anyway, so if you ski a much lower, rear knee to the ski, feet spread out kind of stance, it will be a big adjustment.

Day three, time to do a little tour test. We start at Carson Pass and head to Round Top. With the binding in the free pivot mode it tours like an AT binding, both in ease of stride and weight but it is still lighter than most AT bindings. We reach Round Top and take skis off to kick steps straight up the Moon Couloir. Here is another advantage of the boot toe. It kicks a much more comfortable step in firm snow than the old duckbill tele boots. Once at the top clicked into the binding and looking over the edge things get real serious. It is STEEP and NARROW and probably not the place to be getting used to a new setup, dropping! My first couple of turns were alpine turns (which this binding does very well) just to get set up in the chute. Then amazing tele turns to the bottom, “That was sick!” Skins back on and we climb to the Sisters for a Life on the Edge drop then over to Emigrant for California Chute, and finish at Kirkwood with the last chair 4 ride up and finish with Thunder Saddle, that’s what it’s about!

The next morning I had to call the rep and beg to keep this setup until the snow is gone instead of the week I was supposed to have it. About a week later it snows sixteen inches of good quality winter snow at Kirkwood. In the morning I ski the telemark setup, then at mid day swap to a ski with an AT binding. Here is just one more advantage to this NTN boot, it steps right into this binding and skis amazingly well. Just a quick note, this is a custom made carbon fiber ski called One Reality, designed and built locally by a friend of ours, Steve. I was also giving this ski a test ride, more on that in a different article.

So now I am in a situation where I don’t even want to go back to my standard setup, I need to thank Ricky Newberry, the BCA and Rotefella rep, and Arlo Bock the Crispi boot rep for letting me do the extended test program on this gear and completely changing my plans for next season! Is it here yet? Well it’s my Friday and we are going hiking to do some corn hunting.

Enjoy Earth

GB

This might have been a conversation in the winter of 1860 between two miners after one of their downhill ski races. There weren’t many skiers in the U.S. at this time, but up in the Gold country in California the miners used skis to get around in winter. Naturally it didn’t take long for them to start racing each other. This was about the time when they figured out they could get a little more speed out of their twelve foot long skis by doping them. This dope was usually some blend of vegetable or tree oils, animal fats, bees wax and even sperm, (I am thinking probably from whales since whale products were still big at the time), brewed up and applied to the wooden bases of their skis.

It didn’t take long for some of the enterprising ones to start selling their dope. Black Dope and Sierra Lightening were two blends that were available. Then they figured out that candle paraffin worked very well in colder snow. The rest is history. Waxing as we know it was born in the U.S. during this period.

It wasn’t until the early fifties that ski manufacturers started to use plastic bases, these are now all polyethylene and are of the extruded type which is cheaper and less dense or sintered which is very dense or hard. These days they also add five to ten percent carbon particles which gives less friction on cold dry snow and helps avoid dirt sticking on wet dirty snow. It was probably another ten to fifteen years after the advent of these poly or Ptex bases for waxing to become a real science, even though these materials are very high tech, they still need a lot of help to handle the full range of snow conditions effectively.

The very basic idea behind wax is this. When snow is cold and fresh, the crystals are very sharp. This is when we use a harder wax to prevent the sharp points of the crystals from sticking into the base or the wax and causing drag and removing wax too quickly. As the snow ages or warms up, whichever happens first, the crystals begin to loose their sharpness and round out. These more round crystals don’t dig in as much and tend to move more easily across a softer wax. As a ski glides on snow it actually creates friction, and therefore heat, this melts some of the snow leaving a very thin layer of water on the ski base. This wet layer causes suction between ski base and snow; this can only mean slower skis and more difficult control in turns and such. We actually rely on the texture of the base/wax to break up this suction much like the dimples on a golf ball reducing friction as it passes through air. This is why a good base texture is even more important in spring conditions when there is even more water present in the snow.

The miners usually heated their dope and brushed it on the ski base. Currently our best way to apply wax is with an iron. This melts the wax and heats the base so the wax can be absorbed into the material. The wax will soak into the ski base approximately 0.1 to 0.2 millimeters. It is this wax inside the base that really does the work. This is also the reason that rub on waxes are not really that effective, they work for a short period and then they tend to get skied off rather quickly. Even a good hot wax is only going to last two to four days or until the snow changes temperature.

Our poly bases are very porous, and it is this porosity that allows the wax in. But it also lets water in and that is not good for the longevity of your ski. This is why it is always a good idea to put a good hot wax on a new ski and a softer wax is the best for this job because it will soak in much deeper and create a better seal for the base. Soft waxes are also better to use for summer storage of your skis and boards for the same reason. The harder your wax is the more difficult it is to work into the base material so they require a little more technique and diligence to get them right.

My original intention here was to get into the right way to hot wax your skis or board but I got so excited about why it all works that I ran out of space, so that will have to come at a later date. This means I can prattle on a bit more about wax types and why they work.

You hear about fluorinated waxes a lot these days. Fluorine is used in some waxes to replace some of the normal hydrogen atoms. Fluorine is one of the most electronegative elements known, it is essentially Teflon. This makes it extremely hydrophobic or water hating, this negative charge makes it repel water and dirt making fluorinated waxes very good for spring conditions.

Another popular wax these days is graphite based. These graphite waxes tend to be very hard and work particularly well on black bases which also have a bit of an electronegative charge which they will slowly loose. Graphite based waxes will actually help recharge those type of bases, not to mention how cool it sounds when you say “Yeah I did a graphite wax today dude, hope you can keep up.”

Now if all this sounds way too chemically to you, it does to me, we have found a small company in Canada making some organic waxes. We hope to have some in the shop soon. Maybe we are back to Cedar oil and sperm, uh maybe you better break out the rubber gloves instead of the iron.

Enjoy Earth

Then the only sounds you hear are your heart pounding and the snow hissing as it passes around your knees as you float effortlessly dropping a couple thousand feet of the most pure bliss that exists on this planet! Well that rain was ugly and worrisome for a bit, but we still got our bliss anyway, right!?!

Right in the middle of one of those storm sessions during the holiday I found myself at a resort, working the singles line and then of course sitting on the chairlift next to this couple that had suddenly appeared in my bliss. How’s it going she asks me. “WONDERFUL, how else could you be on a day like this?” I answer just as her male companion and I turn to look at each other, which is when I realize he is looking at me through his clear prescription glasses with one lens fogged so badly that I couldn’t actually see that one eye. He had that shoulder slumped forward I’m freezing posture, his hair white with the snow steadily building up on the top but not on the sides because he had his HEADBAND on just right! His jacket looked fast, you know nice and tight, form fitting, the bottom of it almost met up with the top of his ‘90s stretch race pants, yeah buddy. My jaw had probably dropped at that point but you couldn’t tell because my face gaitor was pulled up nice and warm. Now keep in mind that it had been snowing some of the day before, all night pretty much, and all morning so far so this weather was no surprise!

That was when she said they were hoping to find some nice powder runs and maybe I knew where they should go. What level skiers are you I ask. Expert he says, yeah we can ski black diamond runs she adds in. Right then one of those wind gust hits us, you know the type, the snow is going horizontally, the chair gives that swing that makes you reach to pull down the safety bar, and you are so happy you don’t have one bit of skin exposed anywhere. Suddenly that gust took me far away as I watched the snowflakes race from right to left across the field of vision through my goggles, the sound of the wind somehow went silent in my head and all I could hear was, “We are experts…experts…experts…”.

Wow, what a misused word in ski world. Yes perhaps you can ski or board down some black diamond or even survive some double black diamond “expert” runs. But doesn’t it mean something completely different to be an expert? It has always seemed to me that an expert skier/boarder would also have a very good understanding of their equipment, how it works, how it differs from other stuff out there, why they are riding that gear and not something else. Some knowledge of waxing, maybe not doing it yourself but understanding the importance of it and the difference between cold and warm waxes. An expert would be a good snow hunter which means they understand a great deal about snow, what affects it in the air and once it is on the ground, which means they can go find that snow condition they desire. Some knowledge of snow safety would be important as well. An expert would have a good understanding of weather and probably keeps an eye on it way too much. There are so many more aspects and so much knowledge that should combine to make one an “expert”. Oh did I mention being able to dress for the conditions?

Suddenly the sound of the wind returns to me, I had all but forgotten where I was for a minute or two there. Oh yeah my two chair mates, he is asking if maybe they could tag along for a run. It would be really fun to turn these two on to a nice little bit of bliss somewhere. But would old fog eye be able to see where we are going? I agree to let them follow for one drop. We start off down a run, where shortly I hook a left off and into the trees, knee deep and completely untracked, oh yeah blissfulness. I glance back just quickly enough to see the two of them standing there at the edge of the run looking down where my track went, oh well, I never even got their names anyway. Go get a hat and some goggles and maybe next time! Oh yeah, an expert should know better than to ride the trees on a storm day alone, hmmm.

Well if that start of the season was too much agony, you just might get a little break for the first couple of weeks of January, but after that, let’s get going again, blissfulness.

Enjoy Earth,

Gary Bell

The first one was born Jon Tostensen, April 30 1827 in the Telemark region of Norway. By the age of ten his family had moved to the western U.S. eventually Jon settled in the Sacramento valley for a life of farming and took on the more Americanized last name Thompson. It didn’t take long for Jon to grow restless, a Norwegian mountain boy trying to live the farming life in the flat lands! So one day he answered a government ad looking for someone to run mail back and forth during the winter months between Placerville and the mining district of Genoa western Utah, now of course Nevada. There were of course no other takers, surely this would be suicide! Others had tried in the past using wagons and horses or mules but had failed miserably, one was even killed by Indians. That would have been those Washoe out there trying to protect their powder runs right?

Jon remembered his parents carving long wooden snowshoes and teaching him how to get around in any type of snow that covered the hills. So he set out to carve himself a pair of “modern” snowshoes. He cut an Oak tree and started carving. During the 19th century the word skis was not in use yet, they were called snowshoes, and the pair Jon had made for himself were ten feet long and weighed twenty five pounds! Along with them he carved a single staff with a point on one end which would be carried and used to help push, turn, stop and generally balance.

During the winter of 1856 Jon made his first trip from Placerville up the American River Canyon following much of the Highway 50 route of today, over Echo Summit to Meyers then up and over Luther Pass to Hope Valley, down Woodfords Canyon and on to Genoa, 90 miles. The legend of Snowshoe Thompson was born.

Snowshoe Thompson made the round trip 2 or 3 times a month during the winter months no matter what the weather was doing. He carried 60 to 80 pounds of mail, sometimes ore samples from the mines back to California and even hard goods up to the miners who were ecstatic to have this mailman as their lifeline to the rest of the world! He didn’t carry a blanket or even a heavy jacket, no weapons and no navigational gear, it would all just slow him down. The trip took three days each way. Snowshoe Thompson skied that and few other routes over the Sierra for twenty years until his death in 1876 and he claimed that he never got lost! Now that’s a skier.

I could easily go on about Snowshoe Thompson’s rich history especially since he is thought to be the person that brought skiing to the Sierras. But there isn’t room today for that since there is a tie in here with the person that is my favorite skier, Martin Hollay.

Martin was born in 1920 in Hungary. By 1957 he was living in L.A. (another of those yuk moments) when the Peer Gynt Norwegian ski club brought him to Mammoth in January for a combined cross country race and jumping competition. They must have realized they had some talent in this young man because in February they brought him to Tahoe to do the Snowshoe Thompson race which went from Camp Sacramento to Heavenly Valley, a race of 20 miles. In this first race Martin got second, beat by a Finnish competitor, but the following year Martin got him. But when Martin passed the finish line he had to run off to work since he was now living here. Martin was working at Squaw Valley and parking cars at Harvey’s on the weekend (yep, they even did that back then). When he got to work at Harvey’s his supervisor came walking in with the Silver cup, first place prize for winning the Snowshoe Thompson race! It was such a big deal that Harvey Gross, owner of the casino, came down to get a picture with the victor.

Well instantly everybody wanted Martin to work with them. For a short while he worked at the Ski Run Lodge which sat where the Ski Run Center and Red Hut sit today. Then he met Stein Eriksen and was hired on at Heavenly to help clear trees for the West Bowl run and blast large rocks off of the Face run. At the time Heavenly only had two rope tows at the bottom, the Gunbarrel chair and one rope tow above that.

Then in 1959 Martin was hired to help design and build the courses for the cross country races for the upcoming Olympics at Squaw Valley. A few years later Martin became a full time ski patroller at Heavenly Valley and had quite a lot to do with the building of our little neighborhood hill.

Martin is now 90, and skis everyday at Heavenly. You may have seen him there if you get there early enough; it’s hard to beat him to that first chair in the morning!

As for the Snowshoe Thompson race, it has gone through a number of changes too. I believe it is now put on by the Auburn Ski Club at a different location. But even more important than that, The Friends of Snowshoe Thompson which includes another of my favorite ski people, Nina MacLeod, were instrumental in building and dedicating the monument to old Jon built in Genoa as seen in the photo with Martin holding his 1958 prize cup.

Long live the real skiers!

Gary Bell

Kind of like crazy squirrels.

Honestly. If you need a bike repair or tune Sierra Ski and Cycle Works always has bike tools and master mechanics ready to help you out.

Besides, dual leisure days rule!

Give us a call at (530) 541-7505.