Vicarious Ski Mountaineering
Don’t get me wrong. Having a new kid (and selling/buying a house at the same time) is a big adventure. But I am missing out on my favorite time of year—ski mountaineering season. So I’ll just have to live vicariously through friends…
Chris Dickey, who works for Jackson PR shop Stanwood and Partners, skied the Grand Teton last week and sent me these photos to prove it. Sadly, Dickey and his partner think they may have been the last to see local climbers Alan Rooney and Jonathan Morrow who were killed in a fall on the mountain on April 29.
I have been thoroughly enjoying Dougald MacDonald’s blog, The Mountain World. And any other year, I would be up for his not-so-subtle call for a partner to ski the north face of Long’s Peak. Dougald’s a fantastic talent—as a writer, editor, climber, and publisher—and I look forward to reading more of his insights and escapades.
Old friend and former Hooked Web guru, James Dziezynski finally wrapped up his Colorado Summit Hikes guidebook for Wilderness Press, and he has a brand new Web site to prove it. Look for James on tour (both on the peaks and in local bookshops) this summer.
And just in case you think I have been on my butt all season, here are some shots (from a few weeks back) of Max and I doing some jacket testing for Outside.
Extreme Parenthood
Kieran Jacob Schnitzspahn
On April 18, Radha gave birth to Kieran Jacob Schnitzspahn.
The stats:
8 pounds, 20” long, 13” head, blue eyes and his mother’s good looks
Radha spent about eight hours in natural labor and truly was amazing, pacing, breathing, taking time to watch Much Ado About Nothing, and, at 11:13 delivering a healthy boy.
Kieran joins a long list of K names on both sides of the family (Karen, Kyffin, Kip, Kari, Kay, Kelly, Kristen). The name means “little dark one” in Celtic, but we simply liked the sound and feel of it. The Sanskrit name Kiran means “ray of light.” He is. Jake was his great-grandfather Marcum’s name and Jacob was also his great-grandfather Schnitzspahn’s middle name.
So far he’s done what most guys do—eat and sleep. And he has had no problem with either discipline.
Farewell, Mr. Rosewater
“We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.”
“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes.”
“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.”
“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.”
Kurt Vonnnegut, Jr. 1922-2007
So it goes. Poo-tee-weet?
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad River Glen
I have a confession. I have never skied at Mad River Glen, yet I feel as if the place is at the root of the way I ski, the way I see a mountain. That’s because I have spent 10 years headed full speed through the tightest tree lines in Colorado and Washington with my ski-brutha Isaac Stokes. Mr. Stokes grew up at Mad River and the spirit of the place is written in his genetic code. I have never met another human being who enjoys lines that rip your fancy Gore SoftShell and poke your eyeballs out like Isaac—um, except I have become just as masochistic. And I think if I ever go to that hallowed place that some home-grown swine-eating, biodiesel-brewing, blue-ice-loving freaks believe is the center of the universe, I will feel at home.
Anyway, Mad River is going to replace its famed single chair (with a brand new built-to-spec single chair mind you) and proposed an essay contest to give away a few of the old chairs. Isaac suggested I enter and write some type of postmodern anti-essay about skiing Mad River although I have never even seen the single chair. Maybe some day. But now I think Isaac deserves the chair… and I wanted to post his essay here.
I’m one of the faithful.
I’ve evangelized Mad River from under a hood in screaming Cascadian winds on a lift at Alpental Ski Area. Yammered on to total strangers at Vail who were trying to type with numb fingers on their Blackberries. Swapped bug eyed tales with expatriate East Coasters at Taos who know the glory of Mad River firsthand. And cornered Euros, who spoke broken English at best, in huts on the Haute Route to spin soliloquies about “The River”.
My favorite part is when I tell them that Mad River, when the snow is right, is in my estimation the finest place to ski on the planet. That kills them. And it’s true. That’s “ne plus ultra” to you Frenchy.
Veins bulge, eyes bug, and some froth at the mouth ever so slightly. Bring on the polygraph and the bibles to swear on, I’m steely serious.
I grew up skiing at Mad River, and I didn’t have clue how good I had it. My family has skied there since the origins of the “resort”, enduring 5+ hour drives from Albany before the road was paved, my Grandfather at the wheel of a massive Detroit iron station wagon with 7 kids, a 120 lbs Newfoundland, and a steaming pot of stew aboard. Their original house right behind the Basebox was so lively with friends and guests, that a total stranger once poked his head in and sincerely asked “Is this a restaurant?” In good MRG style, I believe he was seated and served. The family actually had a hand in creating the trail system, cutting “The Rat” with a couple of chainsaws and highball glasses in hand back in the carefree Sinatra era.
But back to the skiing, always back to the skiing. I’m not just saying Mad River produces the best skiers – that goes without saying… Dylan Crossman’s 40 foot front flips on pins anyone? I’m boasting about the actual skiing, not the politically correct “snowsliding”, because skiing is all that goes on at Mad River.
Here’s the provenance: the shot between the trees on Lower Antelope, the nasty off camber 201 cm wide “ditch” between Lower Lift Line and Upper Glade, the fact that every molecule of snow had been skied up to an inch of the lift towers, Paradise – all of it, the observation that quote/unquote “Practice Slope” has enough pitch to make you pucker, the Grateful Dead warbling through the Green Mountains from the giant speaker that looks lifted from a WWII battleship. Schussing Eden is my book.
Yikes, 500 words and I’m only on Chapter 1, Verse 1 of my love letter to Mad River. I’d like go on at length about the summer I worked trail crew at Mad River (scything the trails by hand, only at MRG!) and how we came face to face with 2 fawns lying still in the tall wet grass – they blinked and we blinked – and we just left an island of pasture around them. I also discovered how all of the prominent rocks on the hill have been rounded smooth as river stones from a half century of p-tex polishing. I’d like to recount the day my college ski amigo Charlie blew out his only upper buckle on his rear entry 1980s vintage boots on Lynx, and casually used his forehead bandana to tourniquet his Langes, and then gracefully ripped the remaining moguls. I’d also like to chuckle with you about how an acquaintance in Seattle who had a MRG bumper sticker on his truck, thought he was being carjacked on the interstate by a maniac driving behind him flashing his lights and honking his horn. Only after the “stalker” passed by grinning and screaming “Ski It If You Can!” did he relax his grip on the wheel. That’s in Washington State folks – 3000 miles from Fayston.
I’m going on too long. I always do. I’ve been joking with my dearest and most loyal ski partner Doug, who has never skied Mad River, that he could enter this essay contest on the strength of what he has learned by osmosis over the years about MRG from my rants. The look in his eye told me he thought he could do a fine job.
I suppose this essay ought to have been more about the single itself? Well, to me the single is Mad River. Every truly great holy site has an icon, and the single chair is easily that. That sensation of sliding into the single, the gentle rocking that marks the opening of your “solo”, the aged soft spring resistance and distinct cluck of the safety bar? That’s poetry, and my 860 words or any verse won’t likely capture it soon.
If a chair becomes mine, or rather if I become the caretaker of one, I’d like to mount it on my sunny front porch and rock my 5 month old son in it. I’ll inevitably launch into some MRG tales that he won’t comprehend, but he’ll see me smiling, and he’ll understand that. I’m itching to introduce him to Mad River, but I can wait, most places the world over change – Mad River doesn’t.
Isaac Stokes
Boulder, Colorado
Chinese Carbon Offset Firedrill
Ah, some things never change. From the New York Times a day after the Supreme Court ruling that the EPA has to acknowledge CO2 as a pollutant…
“Mr. Bush made it clear in remarks on Tuesday that he thought his proposal to increase automobile fuel efficiency was sufficient for the moment; he gave no indication he would ask the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions of heat-trapping gases.
“Whatever we do,” he said, “must be in concert with what happens internationally.” He added, “Unless there is an accord with China, China will produce greenhouse gases that will offset anything we do in a brief period of time.”
So until the Chinese go green, we ain’t doing nothing. That’ll teach ’em. You know, the best way for us to be a global leader is to follow the lead of the Chinese, right?
Just try to wrap your brain around that.
Yes, EPA, Carbon is a Pollutant
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of states and environmental groups suing the EPA for not recognizing carbon dioxide as a pollutant. This is very good news for the emergence of state and federal legislation that will start cutting back on the amount of carbon pumped into the atmosphere. And according to the New York Times, it will begin in the state that’s the poster child for smog:
The decision also is expected to boost California’s prospects for gaining EPA approval of its own program to limit tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases. Federal law considers the state a laboratory on environmental issues and gives California the right to seek approval of standards that are stricter than national norms.
The battle is by no means over, however. The decision is sure to rile global warming deniers, but it the court also said that the decision had no bearing on arguments for or against global warming. Chief Justice Roberts stressed that it “involves no judgment on whether global warming exists, what causes it, or the extent of the problem.” It should however be the start of the federal government taking the issue of climate change seriously.
It also may represent a shift in the place of environmentalism in the popular cultural consciousness. My good friend and enviro-hero Mike Medberry once told me that being an environmental advocate simply meant speaking for and defending places that had no voice. Finally, the mainstream media might be picking up on that paradigm. Enviros are now being perceived as the dedicated, thoughtful, unselfish, tireless workers they are, instead of constantly being marginalized as freaks. Even better, the mainstream is starting to realize that enviros just might be out to make the world a better place. Imagine that.
Read the full New York Times story here.
Nothing New is the New News
In other words…
Syria is the new Cuba
Nau is the new Patagonia
Ahnu is the new Keen
Local is the new Organic
Bush is the new Nixon
Blogs are the new Resume
Blogs are the new Borg
Porn is the new Crack
Bamboo is the new Cotton
Individuality is the new Conformity
MFA is the new MBA
Is It Springtime Yet?
Blog Journalism Rising
I keep raving about the work of Josh Marshall and the Talking Ponits Memo crew—and how they are reinvigorating (and reinventing) politcal journalism. Well, the Columbia Journalsim review sure thinks TPM got it right with the US Attorneys purge story.
“If you wanted to force the issue — and we would be surprised if some MSM-hating critic doesn’t — the episode illustrates perfectly how the Washington press corps ignores the blogosphere at its own peril. But the story, and its implications, are actually far more complicated — and for journalism, heartening — than that.”