Thoughts for 2007

Now that the Broncos lost to the 49ers, you’re free to concentrate on your turns this January, not football.

Expect the slopes to be a bit more crowded on Sundays with the Broncos out of the playoffs. Most years, you could have the hill to yourself while Broncos Nation was glued to a playoff game in January. With their stunning loss to the 49ners, the Broncos have freed a whole segment of Colorado skiers to concentrate on their turns this January, not football.

Twenty-five fresh inches at Echo Mountain from this past storm. Here you have a mountain devoted solely to terrain park skiing and riding getting, oh, about 24 inches more than Wolf Creek which is devoted mostly to deep powder skiing. That’s upslope for you, and that’s irony, too.

Echo Mountain is positioned perfectly in the Evergreen hills to benefit from these types of storms. But it’s a giant terrain park! I mean, what do jibbers do with 25 inches? Do they power through it and hope they can still get enough speed on the in-runs to clear gaps and table tops? Do they not care if they land on the flats because there’s a 2-foot cushion? Do they eventually say “screw it” and take their 150 cm twin tips into the fluff? Does the snow collect on rails? Can you get first tracks down a rail? During my Breckenridge days, I marveled at the focus of many of the terrain park enthusiasts on the deepest of powder days. Breck would groom everything out the best they could and the park folks would lap the hits and halfpipes instead of searching for face shots. I wonder, at Echo last week, was there anywhere to hide from the deep stuff? If this keeps up, the folks?who run the place?might start to wonder if they?have more on their hands?than they bargained when they opened last year - not only a new-school nirvana, but also a powder paradise.

It was darn windy atop the Continental Divide Friday and Saturday. I skied at Monarch and was nearly blown to a standstill on some of the flatter runs. You can really get a feel for the way snow collects differently on different sections of the mountain during days like this. Every aspect has its own unique tendencies, and when the wind is really ripping, those tendencies are exagerated. If you ski enough of the area on a windy day, you get a sense for which runs load snow and which runs tend to have it blown off. It will give you ammunition for how?to choose lines throughout the season. One other thing on the wind, I’ve never seen snow drifts as spectacular as the ones that collected at Monarch on Saturday. These were 5 to 6 foot pillows that just rose out of the ground. Skiing them was tricky, but if you were on your toes, they added a whole new dimension. If you weren’t on your toes: splat!

The paradox of white-knuckling yourself along an icy, crowded highway to get to the goods of fresh powder hit home once again last weekend for those of us that have to drive to the mountain. It’s an inverse relationship that comes out every storm. The better the skiing, the worse the driving. It makes for quite the emotional powder day roller coaster. You start with the tense crawl along Interstate 70 (or wherever you are coming from) to the lifts, then pick up steam when you get that first swath of powder over your thighs, then come back to earth for the drive home -?this time downhill and in the dark. It’s a true testament to the glory of skiing that people brave the roads during storms for a chance to enjoy the sport at its finest hours. It’s also as good an explanation as any why slopeside real estate?- the ski-in, ski-out variety?- is at such a premium. For those lucky enough to walk to the lifts when the skiing is best, kudos and make the most of it. For the rest of us, just keep it slow, use your low gears instead of riding your breaks and leave more space between you and the car in front of you than you normally would. Concentrate, respect your fellow drivers and stay safe and healthy to ski another day.

New Year’s Day on skis - it’s the only way to ring it in. It lets the universe know your priorities are straight and reduces you to your essence on the first day of the year. It’s a starting point from which you can tap strength and prepare yourself for everything that lies ahead. Most importantly, it’s a recommitment to your passion and a reminder that staying true to that helps make everything else fall into place.

Happy New Year.