Matt Duffy
New member
I have known for some time what to do if the slope you're skiing starts to slide. I knew the correct response, but had yet to put into practice what seems like quite a daring manuver. For everything, there's a first time. <BR> <BR> Sitting in some figurative, worn down, yet high tech chair in a dark room with metal walls this morning, I was about to be plugged in. An <BR>electrode was inserted into the base of my skull at the back of my neck through a data port linked to my mind. <BR> <BR> Cold at first down the back of my spine, then as data streamed in I heard the fading voice of the operator requesting to download the Powder <BR>Program. <BR> <BR> Conciousness streams away into something else. Actual Reality. I'm on a lift chair. It's windy. Powder is blowing around in a series of snow devil sandstorms. There are no tracks beneath. The sky is a very deep blue, with a somewhat large, pale blue half moon tilted and staring back lazily from above the ridgeline. This is the view from Lift 9 at Loveland and I'm <BR>on the third chair of the day. Before me are 2 chairs and six snowboarders who all need to buckle into their bindings. <BR> <BR> Still chilled from the lift ride, I make it a point to move fast past those who have a foot loose. Not far out to skiers right, I'm dropping <BR>downward with snow rolling up my thighs. Upon reaching the runout, breathing heavily, excited, I look back up to look at the S-curves I just <BR>made. <BR> <BR> All fades away into darkness. Light reapears, I can see it through my eyelids while in the background some machine generated noises not unlike a Home PC humm and whir, and then it's gone. <BR> <BR> In the real world, I'm unloading from Lift 8, cutting hard and traversing skiers left out to a near vertical, 40 foot wall of powder. Diving over it, hovering on top to maximize speed, I come into the flat section with ample momentum to take me over the next roll. It rolls over gently at first, then drops away into a sustained 25-30ish degree pitch for quite some unspoiled vertical. This is the deepest snow on the mountain. I'm skiing down the edge of a wind deposited powder vortex. I'm on phats and it's well over my knees at high speed. As I go gently back and forth, powder streams up my chest and over my shoulders and causing me to choke as <BR>some of it just got inhaled. I coughed it up, exhaled and breathed carefully while gliding swiftly back and forth. Snow constantly flowed <BR>against my stomach with frequent bursts of blinding cloud rising and falling like a time elapsed moontide. My legs were being cooled by it. I could sense a bursting cloud all around leaving swirling snow behind me. I was so relaxed. And so excited. <BR> <BR> Somewhere back in the control room, somebody is very near killing the program as all my vitals pegged the needles. <BR> <BR> Outside, under a blinding sun and in a brisk breeze, I made lap after lap on Lift 8 down Into The Mood with identical results as the first. I got three perfect untouched runs through that euphoria, that addictive drug, creating a sense of savage pillaging with a primal lust for more. <BR>Eventually, fresh lines here were exhausted, as was I. <BR> <BR> I thought I'd been unplugged for a moment when I sat in my car, but I couldn't have been, because I was parked in the front row, just seconds from the lifts and in line to soak in the awe inspiring view of the summit ridgeline while I ate my lunch. The contrast of deep blue and bright white (or is that bright blue and deep white?) will always remind me of Loveland. <BR> <BR> An undetermined time later, I find myself riding solo again on Lift 9, this time with a mind to traverse the ridge far to skiers left to wherever the ropes stop me. A few hundred yards ahead of me, I notice two people, a skier and a boarder, traversing toward my goal. I vaguely see through the flying snow in the constant 50mph wind that the skier has a white cross on his back. I'm reminded of a few diferrent times at Smuggs, when spotting patrollers moving toward a rope. Always follow on these rare occasions. <BR> <BR> Before long, through the magic of Fritschi, I caught up with the two and sure enough, a rope was about to be dropped. The snowboarder was <BR>someone random who happened to be there, kinda like me, for this sacred event. The patroller, Matt, was about as adept and cool as any redcoat I've ever met. He told us to drop in wherever, one at a time, while he waited to go last. There was more than enough room for the three of us to make first tracks. Infinitely more. It was real, but somehow didn't seem realistic. <BR> <BR> The vitals shot off the charts again. <BR> <BR> I ended up back on Lift 9 with Matt for more of the same, just further out. He was on a pair of the old Atomic Fat Boys, which I believe are wider than Axioms. Converations shifted from that to this- this awesome place crawling under our chair. He was adamant that Loveland is the best resort in Colorado. Before I could get a word in, he quickly backed up his claim with several great points too difficult to refute. <BR> <BR> We were soon leaning sideways to counter the wind again, our traverse tracks filling in as fast as we could make them. Matt was too beat to go much further, it was after 3pm after all, but he encouraged me to hike up further if I wanted. He would wait for me and watch from the bottom. He pointed up to a developing cornice, suggesting it would be sweet to drop in over it. It had been cut by to patrollers in the morning for avalanche <BR>control (Two down-angling traverse tracks across the slope). He said they had bombed in the area too, and nothing slid, hence the dropping of the <BR>rope. <BR> <BR> I dismounted and started hiking up after I watched my new friend make some nice turns through the deep stuff. It was post holing at it's best, but I made it up to higher ground, which was most times invisible through the whiteout of winds that seemed to surge as I reached the top. I clicked in and waited for a calm. <BR> <BR> It came, I waved, and Matt in the low down distance waved back. The moment of truth. This was easily a fifty degree pitch, steeper than the <BR>steepest of Left Gully at Tuckerman Ravine. My heart started beating faster as I approached the edge. I started my plan in motion, which was to hop and turn in the air over the edge and into an eruption of powder. Just before the hop though, my plan was altered. <BR> <BR> It released. The whole thing released from under my feet. It was surreal. I could hear it. An authoritative, yet dampened rumble like a far <BR>away thunderclap muffled through the window. But it was all around me, I saw it fracture away on either side of me, it curved downward all at once <BR>like cracks in a windshiled shooting from the trigger point. Immediatley the snow below cracked up into shards of fluff and began flowing down the hill. No time had passed between the release and my reaction. None. <BR> <BR> Instantly, with no thought, I was straightlining downward. Pointing straight down, hoping for no rocks, cruising like a missile through whitewater down a fifty degree slope. In about a quarter of a second, I'd cleared it. Ended up being a smooth ride. I shot out of the moving snow before 50 verts had passed by and kept right on shooting. I was amped up on that feeling you got in the pit of your stomach as a kid on a big roller coaster. It was fear, but with a hint of sadistic pleasure. I was going <BR>faster than I've ever skied, hovering and hydroplaning a couple feet of powder. <BR> <BR> With a sense of urgency, I ripped across the slope in a big right turn before I hit the flat runout. The slide gave up it's pursuit of me and <BR>stopped about halfway down the pitch above Lift 4. I ended up settling in to a couple more blistering turns before coming to a stop next to Matt, who high fived me and said: <BR> <BR>"Man, look at that! Nobody got any better skiing in than that today!" <BR> <BR> Before he even said that, I had some kind of sense of victory, that under pressure I did not crack, or falter. Instead I did something more bold than I'd normally dare, and I did my best. There's no unplugging this, taking it back, or waking disapointed that it's only a dream. <BR> <BR>It was a climactic ending to what ranks high, if not highest on my list of "Best Ski Days Ever".
