The monoboard

There is a monoboard in the ski patrol room at Broken River.

In the wee hours of the morning I can hear it calling to me. It whispers sweet nothings into my ear as I put my boots on each morning. While I eat my lunch in the day lodge I know that it is there, just beneath my feet, waiting.

Despite the never ending challenges of telemark skiing, I’ve never really felt like moving onto “normal” alpine skis. The joys of the rare moment when I nail a turn or a run and everything works outweigh all the frustrations of all the runs where things go wrong. Occasionally I wonder if moving to alpine gear might allow me to ski harder terrain in better style, but it’s not something I particularly want to try. I’d rather ski easier terrain badly on my teles than make the switch.

Similarly, snowboarding doesn’t really hold any attraction for me. For a start, riding rope tows on a snowboard looks like a sad and humiliating experience. But even on a field with chairlifts or other modern conveniences the whole sliding around sideways wearing a ridiculous outfit just doesn’t float my boat. I must admit that seeing professional snowboarders ride in powder on ski movies is pretty inspiring, but then that whole concept is so remote from what my ski trips are actually like that it’s hard for that inspiration to turn into motivation.

I don’t like to admit to a desire to monoboard. It’s something of a dirty secret in the modern ski community. Monoboards are like high-class prostitutes and crack. They’re probably a lot of fun, but it’s the sort of fun you’re not supposed to have. Any degree of respectability they may have had some time ago is gone. These days they’re associated with weirdos who drive vans with tinted windows and spend too much time parked outside schools.

And yet, something about monoboarding resonates with me. It could be that they’re the most ridiculous means of descending snow ever to approach the mainstream. It could be that they take all of the best parts of skiing and trade them in for the worst parts of snowboarding. It could be that they look like one of the best ways of ripping your knees apart aside from actually setting out to do so with specialised equipment. Imagine the retro chic that fixed gear bikes had before hipsters started riding them, then add the essence of a one-piece ski suit made from fluoro green and purple nylon and you’ve got the forbidden cool of the monoboard.

The only things standing between me and realising my monoboarding dream are the lack of alpine ski boots (my tele boots won’t fit into the bindings on the monoboard) and the small shred of self respect I have left. Since self respect has never really been an important feature in my decision making, once I find some size 26.5-ish alpine boots that I can actually get my feet into I’ll be ready to hit the slopes.

The best imaginable outcome is that I hate the damn thing and never want to monoboard again. The worst outcome is not even imaginable.

Hut Reading

I’ve been steadily churning through some of the quality literature that people leave in the huts and lodges at the various ski fields. So far, the best hut bookshelf is in White Star (at Broken River) which has a bunch of exciting murder mysteries and thrillers. Lyndon Lodge (also at BR) has a suspicious number of books with brightly coloured covers and titles like “The Married Man” that some reviewer will inevitably assure you is “wickedly funny”. Temple Basin doesn’t seem to have a bookshelf, but in amongst the dated snowboarding magazines piled in a corner of the dining room there are a few literary gems. The Bottom Hut at Mount Olympus has no books, and if it did have books they would be in some serious foreign language best suited to expressing suffering like Russian.

Anyone coming to these huts planning to find Pulitzer and Booker prize winners is going to get a rude shock. Mountain huts attract terrible books like fleece clothing attracts dog hair. When caught in the rip tide of terrible books I have found that it is best not to swim against the flow and instead embrace terrible writing. With this in mind I have made a point of reading the worst books I can find up here, and I have been constantly surprised by just how low publishers are willing to stoop.

Reading a terrible book is both a joy and a curse. The joy comes from the absurdity of the writing. Characters are typically absurd, the plots are nonsensical or contrived and the descriptions are alternately baffling or deeply troubling. Provided you go into the book with low expectations, all these flaws can bring great enjoyment. The curse comes from the fact that you’re reading a terrible book. At the risk of stating the obvious, the whole reason why it’s a terrible book is because it’s boring or infuriating to read.

The balance between pleasure and disgust seems to be a matter of timing. Early in the book, the terribleness is novel and funny. Slowly, that humour grows stale and you’re left reading a book that leaves you feeling let down by the publishing industry as a whole. It might seem like the easiest solution is to stop reading as soon as the book becomes terrible, but the matter is not so simple.

Unfortunately, by the time you realise that the book is terrible you’re already in over your head. There’s no clear line between enjoying the book and hating it. You’ve probably subconsciously hated the last couple of hours of reading by the time you discover that the last two chapters have been added to the book purely to fill your heart with bile. When it comes to hut reading disgust comes like a thief in the night. And once you’re trapped in the last third of a terrible book, the only way to put the issue to rest is to finish the book. Anything less would leave some kind of unresolved trauma.

This pattern of enjoyment and dismay gives hut reading two distinct phases. First, reading a hut book is like normal reading. You can read a bit before going to bed, or maybe turn over a few pages while you’re waiting for the sun to warm up the snow on a hardpack morning. In the second phase, you just want the whole thing to be over. This usually ends up in an epic reading session where you just put your head down and grind through the pain until you can emerge from the other side. Depending on when the second phase starts this can make for some late arrivals to the slopes (if it hits in the morning) or late nights.

One interesting difference between terrible literature and other forms of writing is that terrible books are clearly marketed at just one gender. Regular books are intended to be read by audiences with all kinds of body parts, but it’s almost inconceivable that a man would read a terrible book for women or vice versa. In the interests of a balanced and scientific study, I have made a point of reading terrible literature aimed at both men and women. Terrible books written for men are fairly safe. They tend to feature murders, spies, cops, submarines, violence and alcoholism. As a man, I am comfortable with all of these things provided they’re written down and not real in any way, although I could probably get along with a submarine OK.

Terrible books for women are completely different story. First off, their main characters are not cops, spies or gangsters. Secondly, instead of being about violence and whodunits and car chases they’re about feelings and friends and equally pointless crap. Third, the main characters are women. Finally (and this is a significant one), the main characters do not have sex with all the other women in the book that they are not directly related to.

At first, I thought that reading terrible books for women might give me an insight into the more baffling sex. It’s certainly true that men like violence and car chases and explosions and sex with women who aren’t related to them, and all these feature heavily in terrible books for men. However, after the two books I’ve read that are aimed at a female market, I’m not sure that this approach has merit.

In the first book, a young and attractive widow with two children chases an attractive married man around England. They almost get together but she finds out he’s a serial womaniser with a troubled past. So, instead of having an affair with him, she gets together with her late husband’s cousin (who turns out not to really be his cousin) who is also a serial womaniser but has secretly been in love with her all along. Meanwhile, her mother-in-law tries to take her children and burns her house down.

In the second book, two friends both get engaged at the same time. This is such a compelling coincidence that they agree to attempt to seduce each other’s fiancés. Despite misgivings, both have considerable success. One friend seals the deal by starting an affair with the other’s partner. Both couples break up, and the pair of people who didn’t have an affair get together, while the people who did have an affair discover they hate each other. The whole situation is confusing on just about every level.

There’s basically no defensible interpretation of these books that won’t be offensive to all the women I know, so perhaps it’s best not to get involved.

Powder days at Broken River

All last week a storm was brewing on the MetVUW website with forecasts for decent snowfalls early this week. Despite the usual overenthusiasm of that forecast, we did in fact get a few centimetres of snow on Monday afternoon and evening, and another top up on Tuesday night. These two snowfalls provided a 10-15cm layer of fresh snow and with the help of some wind some of the gullies loaded up a bit more. By the time Wednesday rolled around, there were fresh turns to be had all over the mountain and beautiful clear sunny skies. In short, it was a bluebird mini powder day.

So, how many people do you think jumped in their cars and drove up from Christchurch? How long do you think the phones ran hot as people tried to book accommodation? How long were the queues at the rope tows? The answers are: Roughly 5, the phones didn’t ring, I didn’t have to wait for a tow at any time during the day.

At one stage, Doug the mountain manager here mentioned that there were about eleven people skiing at the field. Eleven. On a powder day. In a normal world there would be fierce competition for fresh tracks, people would be rushing to get up the tows and onto the main field. But this is not a normal world, this is Broken River in September. Today there was so much snow to go around that people weren’t even competing for fresh tracks, they were competing for unskied lines. If someone had skied down a gully, the best option was to head to the next gully along, which was likely to be untouched. At one stage I ducked into the day lodge to get a drink and there was no one skiing in the main basin.

It must have been an awesome day for the guys who drove up for the day. All the regulars headed off the main field to ski in the basins to either side. I literally did not do a run on the main field during the whole day. Since the other four regulars and the staff were skiing similar areas, it gave the other seven-odd day-trippers the entire main field to track out all day. Ri Dick U Lous

You’d think people would be rushing through lunch to get back out on the hill, but not here. Everyone fires up the barbeque and cooks the various meat products they’ve inevitably brought up. Someone had some chopped up spuds to go into the deep fryer, beers are pulled from the snow and drunk. Life is good.

And after lunch, a few of us headed into one of the runs just outside the patrolled boundary and skied hundreds of metres of untouched snow. Sure, I admit that the powder wasn’t bottomless, and that you hit the crust underneath every now and then, but one of the guys here got out of bed at midday, rolled up the slopes at two and still got fresh turns. When you can do that at your commercial field you can write me a letter all about it.

So if you’re wondering whether you should ski at the club fields (with their nasty access roads and despicable rope tows) or one of the commercial fields I can assure you that you’ll have a much better time if you ski at the commercial fields. After all, you probably hate skiing fresh powder and lounging on a sun deck.

Oldies week

When I was younger I thought that life was all downhill from roughly the age of 25. As 25 approached I decided that perhaps I’d been a bit hasty – maybe the good life would last until 30. And now, as the years steadily grind away, I’ve just experienced something that suggests that in fact, the good life may last somewhat longer than any of my calculations have suggested. That’s right folks, I’ve just been to Oldies Week.

I’ve mentioned in a previous post the tradition of having themed ski weeks at the club fields. Well one of the most sacred weeks on any club field’s calendar is Oldies Week. This is chance for the pillars of the club community to meet, revive the traditions of club field life, ski, participate in baffling novelty events and drink an awe inspiring quantity of alcohol.

I must admit to a bit of scepticism when I arrived at BR on Monday to find that it was Oldies Week. The staff, however, assured me that this was one of the best weeks of the season. I figured that the field was pretty quiet and that I could just stay out of the way of the other guests. It turned out that it wasn’t necessary to keep a low profile. The oldies were awesomely welcoming and happy to have me involved in their shenanigans.

Oldies Week has been running at Broken River for 21 years. They’re so used to the older and more traditional Broken River lodge that they stay there despite the construction of the flashier Lyndon Lodge. Upon arriving the first order of business is to determine who is entitled to a bottom bunk. Broken River lodge has 2 bunkrooms of 6 double bunks each, which makes twelve precious bottom bunks. These are allocated according to age. This year, to receive a bottom bunk you had to be older than 67. That’s right folks, of the roughly 24 oldies that came and went during the course of the week half were over 67 years old.

The first thing you notice about the oldies is that they can all ski. Some are a little tentative, but from the spring chickens in their 50s to the venerable folk in their 70s, they all ski.

The second thing you notice is that they know how to have a good time. In the last 21 years of this event, the attendees have become masters in the fine art of extracting hilarity from a ski area. On Tuesday they had Drinks on the Ridge, where they all head up to the top of the ski field and drink spirits while the sun sets over the mountain ranges to the west. Then, in varying states of intoxication, the oldies ski back down the hill to the lodges below. During the event I had visions of tipsy old people tumbling down the steep and rocky slopes off the western side of the mountain, but somehow, despite snow, ski boots and a pretty serious amount of booze, everyone got home safely.

On Wednesday they played golf. A nine hole course was set out amongst the basins in the middle of the main ski area. All shots must be played with your skis on (or on your snowboard, for the one unfortunate snowboarder in the mix). This doesn’t sound too bad, but it makes for some awkward stances and occasionally you belt the edge of your skis with the club. Our team scored a fairly uncompetitive 18 strokes on hole 3 after our ball rolled some way down the hill. Although this put us out of contention, the extra shots did give us a fair bit of practise and we were pretty sharp after that.

On Wednesday night there was in international themed dinner. As soon as I walked into the dining room I was commanded to find a suitable outfit from the dress-ups pile downstairs. Those of you who know me will realise that a dress-ups pile is a very dangerous thing for me to be around, but I managed to find something chaste and gender appropriate to wear.

Thursday morning started with a champagne breakfast, complete with freshly baked croissants. The early start to the day’s festivities carried over into dinner, which was a birthday party for Broken River, to celebrate 60 years of skiing at the field. The theme was supposedly “Retro”, but basically someone badgered me into wearing a turtleneck skivvy from the 80s that was several sizes too small. Everyone but the skivvy’s owner agreed that the skivvy was exceptionally gay. I tried to explain to one of the staff that wearing a gay skivvy was one of the least serious sartorial crimes on my record, but after I’d described the outfit I wore to a manga party several years ago she looked distressed and I decided discretion was in order. Thursday night was also the first time I’ve seen anyone drink straight vodka from a mug since high school. This person also provided me with the skivvy, making it their second lapse of judgement for the evening.

The result of all this is that you can still ski and cause trouble at 75. And, since I’ve attended my first oldies week this year, I reckon I’ve got another 50 or so to attend before I finally have to pack it in.

Like smack to the veins

Hi all,

I'm back online. I've been back at Broken River for a while and they've got no internet. Right now I've tagged along with a staff trip to the pub to use the interwubs, and I'm in a rush, so forgive me if the next hit of updates isn't properly proofread or even vaguely coherent. I'll try to clean things up later.

OK, here goes...

Editorial Balance:

In keeping with the mythbusting content of the last few posts, today I’d like to consider other sources you may turn to for your skiing information. The skiing universe is full of glossy magazines devoted to selling the skiing or snowboarding image and the products that are associated with it. No one really reads or is interested in the content of these magazines, but they are purchased and left lying around because everyone tacitly acknowledges that these magazines support fellow skiers and boarders who have had the courage to try to make their passion into their job without having to get up at ungodly hours like the ski patrol.

After the invention of the interwubs in 1998 it was inevitable that people who didn’t understand paper would try to replicate the success of ski magazines online. There are now literally jillions of websites devoted to travel info for skiers, resort information, weather forecasts, gear reviews and all the other stuff that people think will make them enough money to keep skiing. A vitally important category of the ski websites is websites that feature amateur footage (of skiing – whenever discussing anything to do with the internet is important to clarify that you’re not talking about porn). The proliferation of cheap digital video cameras has allowed human beings to fulfil two primal urges at once: The need to show off and the need to try to make money out of the internet.

The problem with these sources of ski information is that almost all of them are absurdly enthusiastic. As a ski magazine writer or a budding helmet-cam-internet-video maker there seems to be some kind of unspoken rule that your descriptions and reviews should be bombastic, hyperbolic and viewed through inch-thick role coloured lenses. The academic literature refers to this effect as the helmet-cam transformation. Thus:

“We are about to go skiing at Temple Basin.” Viewed through a helmet cam becomes “Here we are at Temple Basin, about to epically shred some gnarly lines covered in sick powder.”

“I had an enjoyable day” maps to “We just ripped up the hill and hucked cliffs and surfed through bottomless powder.”

It is important to understand that the helmet-cam transformation will add words like powder, epic, lines, ripped up, shred, gnar, and so on to your sentence no matter what actually happened or is about to happen. You could look into your helmet cam and say with all sincerity “The snow is pretty bad today. I’ll probably sleep in and eat bacon for breakfast until it softens up, ski some runs, then come inside before it freezes up in the evening.” But the camera is not interested in your honesty. It will record “The snow is completely powder sickfest. I’ll probably rip up some bacon until it’s shredded, ski some epic gnar, then huck some fresh tracks.” I suppose by convention the camera isn’t lying, but it’s certainly exaggerating beyond all reasonable bounds.

The problem with all this is that it’s completely useless. Imagine that you’re considering a ski holiday to Japan. You want to know which of two ski areas gets more snow, which has better terrain, what the attitudes towards backcountry and off-piste skiing are at each field. In short, you want to know what it’s ACTUALLY LIKE to ski at each field. But if you ask the helmet cam people, they will tell you that skiing at either field is like delivering a baby (edited so that you only experience the good bits) while experiencing a crack high as you win the lottery while a million synchronised North Koreans cheer, wave and chant your name in adoration.

Now, I’m all for a little poetic license. Reciting the contents of this blog in court would certainly leave me open to charges of perjury and probably a hearty dose of contempt of court as well. But when I lie to you it’s in the name of truth. By telling you that I have met the Temple Basin lion (I haven’t – I offered to make him cry but something in my manner made his minders quite uncomfortable) I highlight the absurdity of relying on a single friendly lion to provide water from which to make snow for your ski field. But when ski writers lie to you it’s completely uninformative. If all you hear about is epic sick powder and hucking cliffs and awesome lines (even when it’s very likely that such things do not reflect real persons or events) all you know is that the authors have had their helmet cams on their heads for a little too long.

For two awesome examples of ski internet informatising that actually tell you something about their subjects, check out www.powderhounds.com and this quite beautiful movie about skiing in Gulmarg.

The powderhounds usually tell you useful stuff about what the skiing is like, how to get around, the small practicalities you normally only found out about by making mistakes over there etc. They still seem to feel compelled to be nice to every field they review, but I guess that’s understandable. Imagine how much more credible their website would be if just once they said something like “Mount Thingo... Well, it’s crap. Don’t go there.”

The guys in Gulmarg actually make a documentary in which they admit they went ALL THE WAY TO KASHMIR and IT WAS TOO DANGEROUS TO SKI. Not being able to ski because the conditions are crap/dangerous is part of skiing, but you’ll never see it in the glossy magazines or on anyone’s helmet cam YouTube channel.

So, for editorial balance you can rely on me to tell be blunt when things are crap and bitter and jaded when they're good. Porters ski area? It’s crap. Maybe if it puked snow and there was no wind, but there’s always wind, so don’t go there. Hanmer Springs? Not worth the drive. Absent mindedly letting your hand get sucked through a pulley on a rope tow? I wouldn’t recommend it.