Video

Here's a video from last Sunday at Champoluc. I think there are a few things to notice. First, that I was able to get a video onto the blog. O'Doyle rules! Second, that the previous sentence was my second Adam Sandler reference in the blog. Ouch. Finally, we get to the important stuff.

There were a lot of people skiing on Sunday. The weekends were a lot more crowded than the weekdays. We had to wait about 45 minutes for one lift. Of course, this was a slow double chair that everyone had to take to get back to the base. Great organization, guys. But, Champoluc was closed Saturday due to high winds. I don't think closing an entire mountain is ever the correct call, but higher up on the mountain everything that hadn't been groomed was blown clean. Scary. Good thing Courmayeur didn't get that wind, or I wouldn't be skiing the Toula again this year. But, let's all keep in mind that they are all Euro weenies and will never ski anything tough.

You might also notice that all of the snow is in the middle of the trail. Euros wouldn't be able to create decent moguls if you spraypainted the snow for them. They just slide down the ice and push it into giant mounds. This is annoying, but means there is usually a narrow line of good snow somewhere.

Sex or Weightlifting

A damn good Adam Sandler skit. And now here's somthing I received today from my brother, which I shall call:

[Sex or Weightlifting, by Matthew A Johanson]

I had 7 hours of lecture today so I came up with a list of reasons why Utah is better than Italy. I won't rank them because they are all important. Enjoy!

The women. Utah has poster children for eugenics- blond hair blue eyed and inbred. Italy has the girls that work at intemessimi (or however you spell it) and thats about it

The religious sites. The Temple is at least THREE times as impressive as the Vatican

Food. Who needs Bisteca Fiorentina, gnocchi, and pizza when you have Shooting Star Burgers

3.2 beer vs. Chiantis and Barollos... this one might be a draw, but PBR is only $1 six days out of the week

Utah fashion rocks (temple garments, for example) You can't even pronounce most of the clothing in italy... Ver- say- si?

The mountains in Utah have ONE lift to the top, while in Italy you have to take three long trams. How inconvenient!

Utah has sick skiers shredding the gnar and telling you 1. how they turned down roles in TGR and MSP films 2. How sweet they are 3. How money/ill/blower/rad/gnarly that last run was; while Europe is filled with sissys who ski only the marked pistes at very slow rates of speed

Pictures

Davide on the lower Toula.

Looking up at the Toula. Our tracks are the highest that traverse and come down on the right side of the picture. We also got first tracks on the middle part the day before.



Alfredo coming into the lower part of the Cesso.



Alfredo coming out of the Cesso.

Yep, they are both snowboarders! Davide is probably the best snowboarder I've seen, and he almost, for a brief instant, made me think that snowboarders are OK. But then I snapped out of it. Sorry Dana.

I didn't bring the cable to Milan, so I can't put up any pictures from Thursday-Saturday, but they were all great days.

Shared Blog

I have invited some people who are going to be out here to write in this blog too. I don't really care if it happens, but at least I am not totally to blame anymore if the blog sucks. Feel free to write about preparation, or about skiing/climbing in New England.

If only Gucci made ski clothes

Europeans have always been famous -in circles where Liberace is still a hot topic- for their style. I only brought a pair of jeans and a tee shirt with me for six months (everything else is for skiing), so you can immagine where I stand on their ridiculous costumes. But, having vowed to discuss all things Euro-skiing and having aleady started this sentence with a conjunction, I will venture to delve into some style points.

Europe is not as cold as New England, due to the Jet Stream flowing smoothly up from the gulf (can we charge them for that?). But it was below zero (celsius - learn it!) for the past week. There were still lots of people skiing without hats or gloves. Granted, most of these people are still doing the "Noodle" alla Harkin Banks in Hot Dog... The Movie and are seriously overexerting themselves, but still... their ears are white! Is it worth losing over 50% of your sound reception so that you can look oh-so-smooth on the mountain? I would love to see someone get a finger amputated here. That would probably not teach them anything, or they would have started adopting practical fashions years agao, but it would still be justice.

Look at me! I'm sponsored! This is what Europeans are saying to you when you look at their jackets. In America we have a few of these, too. You can get a Spyder jacket for 500 dollars, or you can get the same Spyder jacket with the same sponsors as Bode Miller for 650 dollars. The only thing is, Bode doesn't pay for his jackets. I bet if he could get the same jacket without logos for free, he would. And Bode is not in the 1500 SAT range. Not even with the new SATs. In America, we laugh at this and at the rare New Yorker who comes to Killington with his Bode Jacket and his Rosignol Cut rental skis. In Italy, I am such a loser - the only company on my jacket is the one that made it!

So if the skier is wearing a normal jacket and a hat and gloves, evrything is wavy gravy, right? I think we all know I wouldn't have posed this question if the answer were a simple yes. The probem with Euros who wear hats is that they wear hats like this (minus the face paint, so far):Seriously. They wear these ridiculous hats with fake hair popping out of their domes in weird colors. And they think it makes them fashionable.

So we can take a few key points from these observations to avoid being ostracized.
1) Try to avoid functional clothing at all costs.
2) If you are going to use functional clothing, make sure it looks as close to useless as possible, while still looking like you gave up two weeks of lap dances at Club Super Sex to afford it.
3) When in doubt, maintain an air of total smuggness.

Europacks

Today I skied the “backcountry” again. Does anyone else ever look at some “bakcountry skiing” backpacks and wonder who the hell would buy them, much less which two items one would actually put in these packs before they were overstuffed? Well, the answer is Euros. When you don’t need to do any hiking, and when every tram stop along the way to the top has a bar where you can buy food and drink, you can use a 15 Liter pack. I need to imagine 15 Nalgene bottles too, it’s OK. The answer to the second alf of the question is, of course, shovel and probe. They really don’t bring anyting else, and really don’t need anything else (cell phones don’t count because they are generally safely tucked between cheek and shoulder). People think I am trying to compensate for something else by wearing a 3000 cubic inch pack. Now that is a measurement that’s easy to visualize.

Here’s a warning to everyone who will be out here: get in shape if you want to ski this stuff. The altitude and snow are killing me (I am also on tele boards, but still…) Yesterday I only took two runs, and today I only took three. The third hardly counts because I never linked more than 3 turns together before falling. Today I skied the Cesso again, which was awesome. The snow was a lot more stable today and there was some new windblown snow in the Cesso so that was sweet. Then we skied the Cesso again, except dropping in from higher up (definite no-fall zone). Than we skied the Passarella, which means “Tiny Passage” . It is steeper and narrower than the Cesso; as Wayne Cambell would have said, “So it’s not just a clever name.” Noone had skied any of these things. Although today there were probably 50 or more people skiing up there, almost all of them just ski the standard route. Those three runs did me in. It is about 3500 vertical per run, which is pretty sweet. The guy skiing with me today has skied from the summit of Mt. Blanc to Courmayeur (over 10000 vertical). Awesome.

I am trying t put up some pictures, because today it was sunny and warm, but it’s giving me trouble. Eventually you’ll see the Cesso and the Toula. Start running those stairs!

Added: Damn pictures wont go on the dialup connection. What's with the font change??

"I just lost a bet...to myself"

So after my last post I completely ignored my own thoughts and went backcountry skiing today. First, let’s keep in mind what backcountry can mean here. In today’s case, it means taking a tram up the mountain and skiing down a glacier. What, that’s not backcountry? This lift was part of the ski mountain until a huge avalanche killed a few hundred people in the seventies, or something like that. So now the tram is used to take the turists to 3000 meters to look around. And yes, I have done that. It is slightly unaccessible - you actually have to take three separate trams to the top.

Second, I didn’t go by myself. I am making friends (and valuable connections). I went with one guy who was a ski bum at Chamonix for two years and who moved here for the winter (“too many people in Chamonix”). There were three other guys, too, all with lots of experience and knowedge of the terrain (another ski bum, a ski insturctor and a mountain guide).

Yesterday I mentioned that the snow was already sliding off the crust, and predicted high avalanche danger today. I was right. There were three Swedes ahead of us (we eight took the first tram(s) up at 10:30), and the first guy on the first pitch got caught up in a slide. But the crust was really stable so only the top layer was sliding, which might have been enough to bury him, but I doubt it. We had localized releases all, and we soon learned to jump on crests to cuase the slides before we started skiing them. I personally did not go first, on purpose. The skiing was decent. Our first run was the standard Toula glacier, which is not very steep, and the conditions were variable due to wind, which resulted in me taking many high-speed facepants on the tele boards everytime I hit windrift or got tired. I definitey felt the elevation, and I was dead after this run. Luckily, the trams close for two hours at midday, so I had plenty of time to recoup. My pals decided that they wanted to ski a line called “Canale del Cesso”, which means “The Toilet Canal”. It is a steep gully (43 degrees) that basically avoid the five minutes of traversing of the standard route and dumps you onto the lower Toula glacier after about 1000 vert. Sounds stupid to do when the snow is sliding? My friends roped up and took turns skiing and stopping quickly, releasing lots of small-to-medium sized avalanches on top of anyone skiing the standard route. Then we skied it, and it was awesome. The snow was actually really good and it was pretty steep. So that was it.

My new friends are pretty cool and they know a lot, and do a lot. Hopefully I can keep tagging along. All these Euros have those crazy airbag systems for staying above avalanches but I would rather just avoid them altogether. So tomorrow I’m heading back up there in the morning and probalby leaving early to get some chores done. The tram from Entreves is now open, which is nice.

Most of you readers are probably wondering why I write so much, and I assure you that I will probably stop writing this once other people get here to keep me entertained. In the meantime, deal.

P.S. Did I mention how HUGE the mountains are here? They're the size of mountains that don't seem to get any closer as you keep going towards them, and seem to get higher as you go up them.

And on the second day, "God said let there be snow"

First impressions are funny little guys. Even if they are totally wrong, they stay with you well past the second, and third. So today I tried to find negative attributes of the mountain, while of course trying to find the gnarliest lines through the tree, and the only thing I could think of was that the visibility was really poor. So it snowed probably two inches last night and it snowed all day, and it is still snowing. That is very good news for anyone who received the snow report yesterday, because that crust was some of the worst skiing I have experienced this year (maybe even last year too). So we went from the worst day of the year to the second best for me (Cannon Mountain opening day was mint). Two inches does not seem like a lot of snow, but the crust also softened up today. Not the “break through me and you will never get your ski back” kind of softening, more like the “drop that three-footer and I will soften your landing” kind. This made for some good skiing, but the visibility was very poor, so I decided to stick to the trees to gain depth perception.

If you know me, you know how much I hate to ski trees. It was very hard for me to ski through all of the freshies when all of the snow on the groomers was getting scraped off, but I gritted it out and only skied the groomers when I had to. Bottom line: with better snow I got to scope out a lot of what is in between Courmayeur’s 100 km of ski trails, and it is very sweet. As I hoped for, the trees are generally thin and moderately steep., the kind of glades where you can go fast and not worry about turning into an unforseen evergreen at full throttle. I fell once (I know, I know) and slid until a tree stopped me, which although probably due to the slippery crust, is still my preferential measurement for if a trail is steep enough. I normally let Swick measure the trail angle this way. There were some places that I scoped from the lift that look pretty scary with (probably) mandatory airs or no access at all unless your name is Jamie Pierre, but I didn’t give them a close look with such poor depth perception and while skiing alone. The best part? I only skied sloppy seconds a few times all day. It is a Tuesday, and I am pretty sure Italians do not ski unless it is sunny and warm, but I counted five people skiing in the trees all day, and two of them had definitely made a mistake to get there. So take heart, because the skiing is getting better and it looks like there is some stuff to keep everyone busy.

Skiing here sure is different. There is no base lodge. There is no place to leave your bag or your shoes. There are no lift attendants (Well, there are, but they sit inside and don’t do a thing). I watched three Brits try to get on a two-person lift together, and the dude didn’t even slow the lift down. I looked into the lift hut, and it was a kitchen. Seriously. The “liftie” was actually cooking pasta over a gas stove when I checked him out. And no, I did not check him out like that. The actual trails are mediocre. And by mediocre I correspondigly mean medium difficulty. Some of them might be really good if the snow is better and if there are bumps on them, or if I can see where I’m going. The bars at mid mountain are pretty sweet. I ordered an espresso and then realized I didn’t have any money. The guy gave me the espresso anyways and put some steamed milk in it too. I told him I’d bring money tomorrow. There is a fairly sad room to sit in where you can eat your own lunch if you bring it, and it is heated, so I can’t complain.

Some odds and ends: -The woods I skied were no more than 1200 vertical feet, but as long as no one is in them, who cares? -It rained all night and all morning in town, so there is very little snow that is just now starting to accumulate down here. –Due to lack of snow, the tram from Entreves is closed until at least this weekend, so I have to take a bus to Courmayeur and get on the lift there. This sucks, but it is actually a shorter walk than to the tram in Entreves. In addition, Google is on vacation here (you know how they take all their employees on vacation every year?) and they have actually reserved a chairlift until Thursday. This would be totally inconsequential as it is a lift from town and serves only to access the upper slopes with snow on them, but for now it means that I have to change buses to ski. I am starting to figure out the bus system so it’s not so bad, and it is also free, so I guess it beats driving an hour to ski. –One guy today skied out of bounds from the top of the highest lift. He went down a steep (45-50 degree) chute of at least 1000 vertical feet, that ends back in the ski area. Can anyone tell me why this is out of bounds other than to make sure that I get first tracks? –Sorry about the lack of pictures, but it snowed today so I didn’t want to bring the camera. With the visibility, you would only have gotten some low-quality first tracks shots anyways. The views, by the way, were amazing yesterday. Holy geez. -But speaking of shots, I got one face shot today, which brings us to…

FORECAST:

Towards the end of the day it was clear that the new snow, now up to about 4 inches, was not bonding with the crust underneath and I experienced some mini-avalanches. They were actually slab avalanches which is surprsing because I didn’t think that it was snowing hard enough or that there were enough winds for heavy overloading. I guess that with such a hard layer underneath anything that is not Utah-pow will slab up. By the way, the snow is lighter than New England snow, but it is certainly not like Utah. I’d say it is similar to Colorado, buy maybe a little heavier. That’s fine for this snow cover. It is supposed to get cold and sunny until Friday, so that can only mean good things for this snow. Either way, I’ll be careful about what I ski tomorrow. Unfortuantely, this snow is going to make it hard for me to get up into the high mountains by myself, so I’ll have to wait and see if I can go do some recon .

I am by myself up here right now while Michela is in school, and it kind of sucks. I am considering staying until the weekend and then heading down to Milan, where I might remain until Someone gets here. Not having any interactions outside of the bus driver is depressing, but I am reading a lot. Of course, this is 100% dependant on the snow. I hope this gives you an idea of life in Entreves, and I hope everyone is excited to get here.