Vanity Fair on the National Parks

by Erik Olsen on

It has taken me FOREVER to get to this post. I read the article a while back and have been meaning to write about it ever since. First a personal blurb: my first real job in the big, bad, plastic world (after working as a ski photographer in Tahoe and a junior rafting guide in Colorado) was with the Department of the Interior in Washington DC. Don’t ask me how I ended up there. It a rather long, convoluted tale filled with romantic notions of helping the world and crushed ideals about how one can do this inside a government agency. No matter. The point of al this is that within the Interior Department lies what is probably the best agency in the federal government: The National Park Service. The NPS takes care of all of our nations great parks, from Yosemite to the Smokies, as well as gobfulls of various monuments, recreation areas, etc. In general, they do a fine job. If you’ve ever spent time in a National Park, you know that the rangers are a dedicated bunch and the care given to interpretation and preservation is, in general, worthy of high praise. But there are problems, and the park service has typically had some difficulties with funding and upkeep, especially <slight reveal of political slant> during Republican administrations </slight reveal of political slant>.

One of the big debates this time around is whether to allow certain motorized vehicles like ATVs and snowmobiles into the parks. traditionally, most parks have been off-limits to these folks. For good reason, IMHO. They are noisy, pollution causing and, if I may throw in yet another potentially incendiary over-generalization, demographically unpleasing. I’ll not expand on that remark, but suffice it to say the parks are probably better off without motorized vehicles roaming around them.

According to this nicely done article from Vanity Fair a while back, it seems lots of people agree with me. Sadly, among them is NOT the head of the Park Service, Paul Hoffman. The article pays out the issues involved and some of the passionate characters who are fighting behind he scenes to keep the parks motor-free. Check it out and weigh in, should you feel compelled.

Half Pipes

by Erik Olsen on

Don’t know who’s into the skiing mindset yet, but for the heck of it I’m going to post about this piece from an old site that has kind of faded from view. Mountainzone runs a feature on the top ten halfpipes in the country. I have to say it’s cool that Mammoth Mountain gets number one spot. What’s so great is that Mammoth was afraid of snow boarders until just a couple of years ago.

They didn’t want them on the hill and treated them like untouchables. Then they realized all the dough they were leaving on the table and came back begging. They built some state of the art facilities for boarders, including the half pipe that gets a mention here. Anyway, next comes Breckenridge, Colorado (or Breck, as we used to say). Stratton Mountain, Vermont, Park City, Utah and on and on.

Squaw Founder Dies

by Erik Olsen on

(I know I’m a few days late here….but)

My first job after college…OK, not my firs REAL job, but a job none the less…was working as a photographer at Squaw Valley. No, not some shooter for one of the slick magazines, I was one of those dopey guys that hangs out at the top of the hill and will snap your photo for $25. That was all back in the day when we still shot on film and people didn’t carry around palm-sized cameras that shoot 10 mega pixel images. I don’t refer to them as the good old days.

Anyway, here I was hanging out reading the various blogs and news items and I see that Alex Cushing, the founder of Squaw Valley resort and major supporter of the U.S. ski team, died last week at the age of 92. Cushing was a big figure when I lived at Squaw, a towering figure, even if he had a reputation for being a bit ornery and even at that time was ancient-looking. But he still managed to get himself up and down the hill every week, and was an inspiration to the lot of us. He biggest claim to fame is that he was instrumental in bringing the Winter Olympics to North America in 1960. Even though Squaw fell on hard time for a while after that, the big tram that he built is still there, and the resort always kept its luster from having the Olympics there. So we bid you adieu, Alex. Good luck at the big mountain in the sky.

Summer Skiing Way Down South

by Erik Olsen on

Here we are reaching the end of a lovely summer, lots of vacations taken, a few scares here and there, but so far rather sedate for most. But perhaps you’re one of those skier types who did not get enough out of our last winter’s snowfall. Then what can you do about it now? Well, as most of you probably know, it is wintertime in the Southern hemisphere and that means that there is skiiing to be done in places like Chile.

Way down south, there are several excellent resorts to choose from, including Portillo, Valle Nevado, and Termas de Chillán. The snowfall in Chile is said to be excellent, with as much as 280 inches at Portillo and much “corn snow” to be shredded. I’ve skied Chile myself and consider it excellent terrain. And one of the best parts is topping off the day with a nice Pisco Sour. Yum.

Budget Travel is talking about decent package deals to get down there just you and your boards starting at about $1200 for a week.

Dune-Boarding

by Neil Woodburn on

A snowboard rental shop in the middle of the Sahara Desert may seem like fever-induced mirage, but such an oxymoron actually exists.

Dune-boarding is the art of riding a snowboard down, you guessed it, sand dunes.

Patrick Steel, writing for The Guardian, takes us on a journey to Morocco where $12 rents a typical snowboard and boots. This part of the Western Sahara is blessed with tall, steep sand dunes where one can actually pick up quite a bit of speed boarding down it before eating a mouthful of sand at the bottom. The trick, Steel writes, is to balance your weight on the back of the snowboard to prevent the front end from dipping in the sand and flipping you over.

It sounds pretty cool and it sure beats slamming your head into an icy snow bank (which is my usual method of boarding).