Category: Skiing
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May the cliches flow like wine..
Enabled by the gift, for my 30th birthday last Thursday, of a helmet cam from my sister. I took Friday off and went skiing. M, as her gift to me, went skiing on Saturday. It was good. Warm and pleasent, but cool enough to not make the snow sticky nor have us sweating like mad…
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On not getting hurt by an avalanche
(Wherein I throw most caution related to my modest amount of training, knowledge, and experience to the wind.) While there’s no doubt that this knowledge can lead to better decisions, it is disturbing that the victims in this study that were most influenced by heuristic traps were those with the most avalanche training. -McCammon, 2002…
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On Roland Fleck
I interrupt a quiet moment at work (thanks to a cancellation) to bring you something of great interest: In a story that will soon be blowing up all over internetland; Roland Fleck, a 78 year old doctor from Jackson, was sledded off the slopes of JHMR in handcuffs this past Saturday. The crime? Skinning up…
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Fuck the Superbowl
Orgiastic display of heternormative dominance and commercialism that it is. A longstanding, annual tradition, in fact. Though if memory serves I celebrated “it” last year by studying. This year I celebrated by drinking a lot of coffee and watching both Meet the Press and This Week, both worthwhile, especially because of Cristianne Amanpour’s foreign expertise…
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Essenshell, examined
Amber dropping a knee last weekend. I should also note that today, below 5300′ or so, was the very first breakable crust day of the year. Fairly mellow icey rain crust, which I’m happy to report the Marquettes made absolutely inconsequential. Rocker is the shit. My quest for the best shell for ______ continues. Early…
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Wahoo!
Wahoo Creek, that is. It’s a good place to ski. I’m spilling the beans because I found out about it the old fashioned way: looking at a map and then going to investigate. Going up. Wahoo faces north. It traps snow, has plenty of shaded aspects, and the lower reaches seem to strongly resist being…
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Marquette Backcountry ski review
Are the Marquette’s real skis? In many ways this is the central question, because the answer dictates the criteria against which they are judged. If we take them at the face value of the marketing schtick (70% ski, 30% snowshoe, 100% fun) success only calls for an idiosyncratic and fun tool for bushwhacking. The performance…
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Cki Team weekend roundup (Whitefish Whiteout race report)
Sunset over Lake McDonald and the Apgar Range, today. Rando racing (skimo) is hard. Best analogy I can make is doing an XC mountain bike race with no flat and very technical descents on a rigid singlespeed. Analogy only as I’ve never done an XC-length bike race. And in all fairness, the skiing might be…
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(re)Defining Lightweight Backpacking
The difference between lightweight backpacking and ‘normal’ backpacking is obviously the gear. Winter has reached that point where we talk about summer. After a long weekend of rain, a bunch of us found ourselves in the Northern in Whitefish after an avy meeting last night, discussing not skiing and snow, but sunshine and fly fishing…
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Mounting tricks
As has been explored previously here, my tastes in ski gear (well, most gear, actually) is rather idiosyncratic. Driven by an overvaluation of simplicity and aesthetics, and at the moment, a strong need for affordability. I say all this as a sort of disclaimer: take my advice, and you may consider yourself misled down the…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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