Ski the Fourteeners
Had a couple of choices for parties last evening (you would have thought it was Friday). Jordan White’s 14er skiing victory shindig was the one.
After all, who can resist a festival where the doorway decorations are a quiver of Dynafit mounted planks, along with the most worn out pair of AT boots on the planet?
I was touched when Jordan described how he'd page through my fourteener guidebooks while goofing off in his highschool classes. He's gone through a few, these are a couple of his copies that are in better shape.
Front door party props. A pair of Kilowatts and DPS Wailers. I've been meaning to get on the case with blogging some DPS planks, the things are lightweight and according to Jordan's strong skiing housemate Tyler, they ski great. He described them as an alternative to the Dynafit Manaslu, only with more beef -- but agreed it would be nice if they were white instead of black, to prevent ice buildup.
Myself and Lisa with the oversized Jordan, who enjoys his brew in an oversized mug. He likes oversized mountains. Everest poster in background, some kind of Freudian thing?
Party talk overheard: “Some guy told me that now hundreds of people are going to ski all the fourteeners, I guess he didn’t realize how many times Capitol got skied this year. Once. By two people.”
11 comments
Nice post, Lou, too many guest posts, you are slipping…. Where is the picture of the worn out boots? I wanna see it.
Congrats to Jordan. If was me I would have been on cloud 9 to have the book’s author at my party.
ski ya.
Thanks Mark. The guest blog thing is interesting… somewhat of an experiment, but also an effort after 5 years of mostly me to broaden the voice of WildSnow. I think what you’ll see is an ebb and flow. For example, last stint of guest bloggers was while I was traveling in Virginia for family stuff, and it worked well (thanks guys!). Other times, you’ll see mostly me… also have to see how much advertiser support I continue to receive as the economy influences their spend. So far so good, but there is quite a delayed effect as most of my advertisers are on a one-year contract.
The main thing to remember about our guest bloggers is that I work VERY closely with them. We work hard on getting beyond fluff, and because they get an editor and I don’t, I dare say that the guest blogs are often better than my own! Perhaps when I blog, I need a guest editor (grin)? I do have some behind the scene help now with line editing, to watch for obvious spelling and usage errors, but could certainly use a literary edit now and then! Such helps one avoid foot in mouth disease, if nothing else (grin)!
Wow, those boots are worn! I once saw some boots years back in Bozeman, MT that had been beat to death in the rocks and then sold at a second hand sporting goods store. I’d have a hard time letting such well-loved boots go.
Hi Lou-
Jordan did indeed live with those books, planning and dreaming of the trips to come. I might have the ‘original’ copies somewhere which are in pieces.
Thank you for all the support and encouragement and tempering and boot fitting and ski fixing and time and honesty you have given Jordan. He is a better man for it.
And thanks to Lisa as well, who helped him with the internship in Aspen and solidfy his love the that area.
I would have loved to have been there Thursday and hope to meet you soon.
Luann (Jordan’s mom)
Thanks Luann, indeed, we’ve got to meet next time you’re here!
First off, congrats Jordan.
Lou, I just wanted to stop by to thank you for two things. ONE — for the excellent photo of Star Peak’s south face in your Guide to Colorado Backcountry Skiing, and TWO — for selecting a book binding quality that causes it to completely fall apart after only a year of use 😉
Thanks to that factor, I had no reservations about ripping that page out of my book and sticking it in my pocket for the ascent of Star Peak. It turned out to be a God-send. Due to white out conditions we actually used that photo to count off each of the chutes as we passed them, to find the June Couloir and successfully climb and snowboard it. Thanks again!
Adam
He he, yeah Adam, always look for the positive!
FYI, the first printing of the Guide to Backcountry Skiing was indeed defective and a nightmare. After that and many other experiences with publishing (such as my fourteener guides not being updated more often) are all leading me to the conclusion that I’ll never publish a paper guidebook again. Other types of books, yes, but in my opinion most guidebooks are now better done on the web, with downloadable and printable content for use if necessary. Many folks probably disagree with that, but after publishing a number of guidebooks, I have to say that my bad experiences with paper publishing of information based content far outweigh the good. One has to go with their experience, and perhaps others might take note of it…
“I was touched when Jordan described how he’d page through my fourteener guidebooks while goofing off in his highschool classes.”
“but in my opinion most guidebooks are now better done on the web”
See a little disconnect there, Lou?
Like Jordan, my 14er book from my highschool days is heavily used and abused (in my case, the Borneman/Lampert one as I’m a bit older than Jordan and that was the only guidebook at the time.) No matter how nice online guides are on a computer or iphone, it will never be a prized possession like a well-worn book can be. My guidebooks have history that I can see on every page.
I’m quite certain that there’s a lot of difficult things with regards to publishing your book or making another edition. But if you consider how important and meaningful your books have been to many of us, perhaps it’s worth the cost?
Frank, believe me, I’m with you in spirit. You should see my bookshelf. Perhaps, with a larger user base the print guidebooks would be viable. Mine limped along for years, with too few updates, bad binding because the publisher was using incompetent people to bind it, stuff like that. Perhaps someone will step in to the fray in a few years, when ski mountaineering in the U.S. is as big as Europe, and their book will be viable. Till then…
That said, I think the future is simply having it on the web, and sticking the relevant stuff on your PDA if necessary, or even printing some stuff out — and having plenty of GPS info. Yeah, a cold heart approach, but with no printing costs, one can do so much more in terms of gathering information and keeping it updated. The difference is night and day.
My first attempt at an online guidebook is http://www.hutski.com it’s been interesting. Not as well used as I expected, but then, how hard is it to find a 10th Mountain hut located on a road, with the trail marked by plastic diamonds nailed to trees?
I’m with Frank, because I love page through guidebooks and keep them at hand, but from a publishing standpoint these days, going the paper route has a lot of drawbacks. Just ask Craig Dostie or others who have lived the highs and lows of such publishing. Some of my most prized possessions are out-of-print guidebooks that I intend to never get rid of. I’d like to think the bound paper variety will be around for awhile so I can continue to fill my shelves.
Hey Lou,
Great post on Jordan, excellent accomlishment.
I am digging for a little beta from you and your readers. We are thinking about a climb of Pyramid Peak this weekend, but are wondering what observations have been made by people up high, concerning the dust layer. Which is now clearly on top of the snow, up to 13,000 ft. Have we been getting enough cold temps at night to freeze the snowpack, or is this “snirt” holding heat overnight and not allowing the pack to solidify?
We climbed and skied Sopris last weekend, and the conditions were considerably different than years past.
Just wondering your input on the Snowpack, is it worth another attempt, or time to hit the desert for some crack climbing?
Thanks,
Matt
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