Important Life Acheivements

I was always an imaginative child with a abiding penchant for action movies, so it was natural that as soon as I rode a chairlift I began to daydream about climbing around on one. Specifically, three questions came to mind:

1. What is in the enclosure above the bottom station of a chairlift? Obviously, it's the machine that powers the chairlift, but more specifically, what does it look like? How big is it? Why is it in an enclosure that looks like it comes from a sci-fi movie?
2. What is it like to climb a lift tower? They have ladders on them, but you're never allowed to climb one. Anything that's banned is likely to be fun, so what's going on up there?
3. If the chairlift stopped in some kind of action-movie based emergency, would it be possible to climb up from the chair onto the cable, traverse along the cable and then get down via a lift tower?

Well, yesterday was staff day at the ski hill, and after the lifts had stopped running and everyone was slowly drinking themselves into a stupor in the bar, I answered all three of those questions and acheived a number of life ambitions that I had always assumed I would never do. And the answer to all three questions is:

AWESOME.

Of course, that doesn't make a lot of sense as the answer to question three, so for that question we should add the words "and totally possible".

Now that I look at it, it doesn't really answer question one either. The answer to that question is that the mechanism that powers the chairlift is pretty small. In fact, it's not much bigger than a truck engine. Given that those enclosures are pretty big and pretty sci-fi-ish, there's actually a lot of empty space up there. So that was suprising and slightly unnerving. But also awesome.

Question two is totally about awesome. It's fantastic on the top of a lift tower. You're up high, on a lift tower, there are enough safety railings that it's not scary, there's the thrill of the forbidden. It's great - I recommend it to you all.

As for question three - I should admit that I didn't actually climb onto a lift tower. A bunch of us climbed into a chair near the bottom station that was at a conveniently reachable height, and I just climbed onto the cable from there and traversed down it to the base station. But it was still most excellent. And everyone said the cable would cut up my hands, but it was remarkably smooth and un-burred. I guess it spends its days running over pulleys which must smooth it down. Anyway, it's totally climbable, so if there are explosions going off and you're riding the chair next to Steven Seagal and he tells you to get off the chair so he can kung fu some bad guys, just do it.

Just so everyone's clear on this: the chairlift was not running at the time. Doing life goals one and two with a moving chair would be fine, but number three would be worthy of an action movie - if you stuffed up the timing your hands would go through the pulleys, and I suspect they would pretty neatly cut all kinds of important hand parts off.

I hope this post inspires all of you to live your dreams. I'm available to act as a motivational speaker at high schools right away, and my fees are very reasonable.

All Good Things Must Change Hemispheres

After several months of blissful chairlift riding, Red Mountain has closed for the season. All around Rossland, ski bums are questioning their life choices, buying heavily discounted ski equipment and trying to work out what to do with their meaningless lives.

To be totally honest, the ski hill is actually still running. Today is staff day, and as I write this my housemates are up on the hill making merry. Despite not actually being a staff member, tagging along to staff day is encouraged and I could probably have snuck onto the hill for a few turns, but I figured that it's best to let them celebrate the season for themselves. The snow is also not very exciting and I am very badly sunburnt.

Traditionally, the last day of the season is Retro Day, where everyone pulls out their finest retro ski equipment. It also features a party on the deck of the base lodge and beer-drinking on the top of Granite Mountain - the highest mountain in the ski area. However, this year Retro Day and the deck party were on Sunday, and the hill closed on Monday, which meant that the drinking and shenanigans were extended over two days rather than one. The folks I ski with warmly embrace any kind of retro event, and it was an awesome sight to see them descend the hill as a large pack of tipsy, absurdly dressed miscreants. We extended our personal retro day to Monday as well, so most of us were able to sport different outfits on each day.

On Sunday, I wore a one-piece-ski-suit (or "onesie") in dashing purple with asymetrical fluoro yellow and pink trim. It was very hot inside the onesie, so I casually stripped the top half off and skied topless. Although I applied a fair bit of sunscreen at one stage, with the assistance of a middle aged lady who was somewhat too enthusiastic about rubbing my back, I still got very, very burnt. Of course, the novelty of the outfit soon wore off, and my housemate traded her rather svelte black onesie for my brightly coloured one for the deck party. This was at once a raging success and a terrible mistake. A raging success because the combined allure of the ultra tight ski suit and Tom Watson's now infamous "Clic" googles (see fig. 1) was so intense that I was awarded runner up in the male category of the best dressed competition and got some neat stuff (I would have won, too, but another contestant, the dubiously named "Phil Yourpants", pulled out some amazing dance moves which I could not match, partly because I'm not a competent dancer and partly because I couldn't really move in my outfit). A terrible mistake because the outfit was so tight I couldn't comfortably sit down, couldn't pick anything up off the ground and now will never have children. And people kept trying to stroke/pull out my chest hair, which I did not appreciate.

Figure 1 - it is tough to be so beautiful

On Monday I went with something a little more refined to balance the rigours of the previous day, skiing in a collared shirt and sports coat. The real reason for this change was to keep the sun off my neck, which is still a delightful rosy hue today. It did, however, make for a much more comfortable (and dapper) day on the slopes, and it's easy to see why the onesie went out of fashion right after people returned to their senses in the nineties.

Before I sign off, I should mention that my housemate rode a monoski (which I have previously reffered to as a monoboard) on Monday, with considerable success. I know I'm not supposed to think this, but maybe I was wrong when I said I was wrong about ever wanting to monoski. Could there be a second chance for my shattered mono romance?

Fernie, and The Dark Art of Ski Resort Profitability

Last week I went to Fernie, a pretty well known and popular ski hill a few hours east of Rossland, to catch up with Barrett, a friend and patroller from Broken River who works at Big Sky ski resort in the northern winters. Since then I've been trying for a while to think of a neat way to summarise the differences between Red Mountain and Fernie. It's not as simple as the comparison between here and Silver Star, where the feel of two ski fields and towns are about as different as they come. Today, however, during my many hours of solo chairlift time, I think I may have settled on the existential nugget at the root of our differences.

Fernie is what Red Mountain would be like if the operators of Red Mountain demonstrated even the remotest interest in making money.

Making money in the ski industry is not easy, but all the successful business plans have one common feature: They involve beginner and intermediate skiers from out of town. Why? Well, the alternative is to try to make money from locals and advanced skiers. Generally, there simply aren't enough locals near most ski hills. And once you've separated them from their money, they are broke and you have to wait twelve months before they've prepared their wallets for another ski-field-based-viking-pillage-fest. Advanced skiers, on the other hand, are mostly smelly wierd people who will own more toques (it’s Canadian for “beanies”) than socks, and whose most valuable possessions are their beards. There are a fair number of them scattered around the world, but you can rely on them to do everything within their power to avoid spending any money at the ski hill. They will soar to new heights of ingenuity and plumb new depths of indignity to avoid paying for a ski pass, let alone lunch. The only thing they will reliably spend money on is beer.

Beginners and intermediates from out of town, on the other hand, are plentiful, usually have genuine jobs that pay actual money, and are often accompanied by kids, who can be counted on to complain until money is spent on their behalf. And the best part of people from out of town is that once they've spent their money they leave, and can be replaced with fresh people from out of town with bulging wallets and a persistent sense of emptiness that only paying for things can fill.

These two markets create the central conflict that often lies at heart of a ski area. The locals, bolstered by the seasonal population of ski bums, want to maximise the radness of their ski area. But radness doesn't pay the bills, and the ski hill usually has to spend its resources accommodating visitors who usually value convenience, accessible skiing and good facilities over difficult terrain, cheap tickets, and a ski patrol who won't mind if you hurl yourself off something large and unwise.

Red Mountain and Fernie started out in much the same way. Red was a club ski field that built their first chairlift in the 40s, Fernie a small commercial field that started in the 60s. Both catered to the locals and provided rad skiing as affordably as possible. Both got bought out in the 90s (well, Red was 1989, but close enough), and that's where their stories diverge. Red was bought by a group of locals who kept the basic character of the ski hill the same. It still provided hard skiing, good snow, and a laid back vibe. Fernie, on the other hand, got bought by a massive resort consortium that started major developments including new lifts, more on-mountain accommodation, more groomed runs, and a baffling assortment of uniforms for their staff.

The result is that Fernie is like the skiing equivalent of milk that has just started to go off. Mostly, it's milk: Clean wholesome goodness that almost everyone will enjoy, ensuring a steady supply of beginners and intermediates from out of town to keep the hill’s finances healthy. But underneath that there’s the sour hint of something more potent – bits and pieces of good steep terrain, a few crusty lifts, the occasional patroller with food in their beard, and some locals who ski hard.

Compared to this, Red Mountain is like sour cream. It’s delicious if you like that kind of thing, is closely connected with tacos, and is not the kind of product you can get rich selling. Despite being recently bought out again by an investor from San Diego, Red Mountain still shows a breathtaking disregard for the concept of commercial viability. As an example, the current fashion that attracts people to your hill is fast lifts. Getting from the bottom of the hill back to the top is now a priority that people will pay for. Red’s lifts (which are mostly if not all second hand) are slow. How slow? About as slow as their website. Sure, there are some beginner and intermediate groomed runs here, and some condos near the resort, but all of this seems to be just a token effort to make it look like they’re trying to make money. This hill is great, and I’m super glad I came here, but I would not recommend it to new skiers or families looking for a fun and easy vacation. When I arrived, the hill was way too hard for me to take full advantage of, and after a few months of skiing here I’m still regularly schooled by the terrain. There are big chunks of this hill which I certainly won’t ski this season, and maybe never will.

So, Fernie was fun, and it was good to see Barrett again (even if he has shaved off his voluptuous beard). I could spend a season in Fernie and have a good time, and I wouldn’t even have to do that much laundry, but after skiing here I’d feel like I was missing something.

Oh, and I didn’t find my childhood pal Parri Gregory.

Silver Star, it's cleaner than Red.

Last week I put most of the important things in my life into my van and drove to Silver Star to visit some friends from Broken River. Silver Star is a ski field near Vernon in British Columbia, about 5 hours drive from Rossland.

Before I headed to Canada, I considered spending the season at Silver Star. It's probably good that I didn't because if I had I would have spent a lot more time doing laundry and worrying about my personal hygiene.

It's a bit difficult to explain exactly what the differences are between Red Mountain/Rossland and Silver Star. The first thing is that although Silver Star is near Vernon, the 20 minute drive between the hill and town make them separate in all the ways that count. The ski hill has a pretty big village at its base, and most of the people I met while skiing were actually living in the village. Red Mountain also has a bunch of condos at the bottom of the lifts, but no one I know uses them. The condos at Red seem to be an excuse to hire unhappy cleaning staff and make their lives miserable. After all, Red is only 5 minutes drive from Rossland, so it's easier to live in town and commute to the hill.

So, does this seemingly innocuous variation mean there's any appreciable difference between Red Mountain/Rossland and Silver Star? Well, yes, because we're really comparing skiing and living at Silver Star against skiing at Red and living in Rossland. And living at Silver Star means living in a condo. That means normal, regular people who don't necessarily make more money than me live in 3 storey condos with a hot tub. I live in a house that's furnished from the thrift store and smells like weed every time our neighbour who lives in the basement apartment lights up. Of course, I've been living in dodgy share houses and cheap huts in NZ for the last few years, so I'd actually forgotten that regular people lived in places where all the items of furniture had the correct number of legs and the decor was from the 70s. In fact, it's slightly unnerving to use a kitchen without lino, or sit on a chair where there's a genuine risk that people would notice if you spilled food on it. The delicate thrill of a small risk of infecting my sleeping bag with bed-bugs is a constant companion when I fall asleep each night. It's hard to nod off without it.

Not only do people who live at Silver Star have to live in nice condos that must be kept clean and not set even a little bit on fire, they have to pay rent for those condos. Ouch.

But it's not just the standard of housing which is higher in Silver Star. Rossland is full of dirtbags. At Silver Star, people didn't even know what a dirtbag was. I went from the ski hill into Vernon to try to repair my bindings, and my host asked if I wanted to go home and get changed. Get changed? Here in Rossland I get changed to sleep. And in NZ I didn't always go that far. I don't really want to live in a world where people will judge me harshly for wearing my ski gear to the grocery store. Here, I am considered a respectable guy because I'm wearing more than just my thermals. That's how it should be.

And just about no one has a beard! In Rossland, you either have a beard, or you haven't shaved recently. Even the normal "Clean Shaven" stage of the shaving cycle seems to be absent from local life. People somehow reduce the amount of stubble they have without ever completely removing the hair from their face (I must admit - I do this using clippers, but every time I use them I feel inadequate and like less of a man). Of course, this only applies to men, but there really aren't enough women in Rossland to get a sufficient sample space to provide any statistically valid data on their facial hair grooming habits.

Silver Star must do a roaring trade in shaving razors. Beardiness in general is much less frequent, and clean-shaven faces adorn the landscape. Plus, there are quite a lot of women, and none of the ones I met had beards. Here at Red Mountain, we do a roaring trade in P-Tex*. I think that pretty much summarises what our two towns are about.

"OK," You're saying, "What about the skiing?" Well, actually you're not saying that. Most of you don't seem to care about skiing at all. But I'm going to tell you about it anyway. Hopefully those of you who aren't familiar with the graceful art of sliding on snow can gloss over the technical details and find something to LOL about.

It's important to realise that I wasn't at Silver Star for a powder day. It was warm and icy while I was there, and conditions weren't fantastic. Despite this, I had a fun time. But it was a slightly silly kind of fun. Perhaps the best summary I can give of Silver Star is that I didn't faceplant there once in three days. At Red, I faceplant every day, probably several times. Sure, the terrain is challenging enough for a mediocre skier like me and I was a long way from ripping the hill up, but at no point at Silver Star did I look at a piece of terrain and think "Holy crap, I'd better stay the hell away from that." At Red, I basically spend most of my day avoiding things (like responsibility and the inevitability of middle class working life. But also cliffs. In fact, mostly cliffs).

The style of skiing at Silver Star is also very different to the way people ski at Red. My housemates have a word for the style of skiing that's popular at Silver Star, and it's neither politically correct nor flattering. I don't really think that's fair. When you see a really good skier making smooth, precise, dynamic, short-radius turns in all kinds of conditions and terrain it's really impressive to see. Good skiers at Silver Star manage to go fast while constantly turning and sweeping their skis from side to side. Good skiers at Red go fast, turn occasionally and spend a disconcerting amount of time in the air. Good skiers at Silver Star ski fluidly around and through the bumps. Good skiers at Red just ski over the top of the bumps, with or without touching the ground. Of course, I don't do any of those things.

So, you should go to Silver Star if you like clean, friendly people, convenient facilities and good accommodation. The skiing is accessible and fun, and you can change your undies every day without ever having to worry about soiling them. If you never really know which setting you should use on your washing machine, and you like linoleum, consider Red Mountain. The skiing is difficult and occasionally scary, and you can keep wearing the same undies for as long as you like, provided you can keep them free of your own waste.

* P-Tex, for the non-snow-sliding types, is used to repair the bases of your skis or board if you hack them up on rocks or trees whatever other sharp hard stuff there might be lurking on or under the snow.

Readers write

Regular blog reader Asher writes: "Can you do a post about the different types of lifties (i.e. the local pot smokers, Aussies who make the most of their accents, South Americans etc.)".

Thanks for writing in, Asher. It turns out that this is an unusually interesting question here in Rossland, because the standard stereotypes don't really apply. Red Mountain is unique among the skifields of British Columbia in that the entire workforce is still unionised. Everyone who works here is governed by a collective agreement between the hill and the United Steelworkers of America, who might do a fine job of representing steelworkers, but actually blow chunks as far as being a union for a ski hill is concerned.

All of my housemates are ski instructors, and recent upheavals in the ski school universe have meant that I, as the only member of the household to speak English as a first language, have actually read the collective agreement for the hill. Basically, in enshrines the right of management to do whatever they want to their employees, provides a few guarantees to employees that strike a careful balance between being pretty unhelpful to staff and making the ski hill costly and infuriating for management to run, and ensures that the union has its finger firmly embedded in the Red Mountain pie.

Anyway, the central concept that is enshrined in this pretty hopeless document is the idea of seniority. The ski hill is obliged to provide job security, promotion opportunities, shifts and pay increases based on how many hours each staff member has worked at the hill in previous seasons. Those seasons have to be consecutive - if you leave town for a winter or get a job poking racoons in the eye or something you drop to the bottom of the seniority ladder and have to work your way back up.

This system has some unusual results on the makeup of the workforce. There are a bunch of locals who have been working as lifties for years, and the hours they have built up over those years make them high on the seniority list. That means they get guaranteed job offers each season, lots of shifts, and the highest level of the laughable pay scales that people get for crappy jobs out here. Consequently, a surprising number of the lifties here are old guys who have lived in Rossland and swung chairs since the dawn of time. The vast bulk of the remaining lift hosts are young local lads and lasses who have either grown up in Rossland or moved here a few years ago. They work as lifties each season and in the summers they hibernate in cocoons woven from their own facial hair. As a lifty, you are strongly encouraged to snowboard. I don't think skiing is explicitly banned, but it would certainly be frowned upon by the senior staff.

Of course, most of these local lifties do smoke pot, but that hardly makes them "local pot smokers" as set out in the categories Asher suggests. Saying "local pot smokers" implies that the locals who smoke pot end up as lifties. In Rossland, the locals who smoke pot are pretty much all of the locals, so it's not really an informative category to use when describing people from here.

To my knowledge, there are two Aussies working here as lifties - one of them has been here for so long that his accent has eroded to some kind of unwanted international linguistic bastard-child, and the other has already used his accent to maximum effect.

I haven't met any South Americans anywhere in Rossland. The closest thing we have is Quebexicans. I would say that they're like a French analogy of regular Mexicans, but there are some people in Rossland who actually read this blog now, and I don't want to be beaten up, so I won't say that at all.

The system of seniority does have some practical applications in town aside from simply making it more difficult to run a successful skifield. I am currently campaigning for a system of seniority to apply to the single men of Rossland, as a way of dealing with the oversupply of single men with respect to single women in town. Under my proposal, men would be ranked according to how long they had been in Rossland and single . Spending more than a few days out of town in an area with lots of single women would reset your "lonesomeness timer", so to speak. Single women in Rossland would then be obliged to introduce themselves to the single men in town in order of seniority. If Ms. Single didn't find Mr. Single #1 to her liking, she would proceed to Mr. Single #2 and so on until the stock of single men was exhausted. This fair and equitable system would assist the lonely hearts in town and possibly also breach a number of Canadian laws and social conventions.