16-17 Season Recap

Tony Crocker":3078gvgl said:
Marc_C":3078gvgl said:
That's what his spreadsheets tell him. It's not like there's a lot of actual, direct experience. :stir:
Says the member of this forums who's renowned for being complimentary about eastern skiing. :rotfl:
Eastern skiing can indeed be excellent. The problems are that timing it right is difficult, excellent conditions are often brief, and you get to put up with a lot of so-so to downright crap skiing in-between. *Those* are the things I'm not complimentary about.
That's a lot different than you saying Patrick's season didn't get good until he traveled this season. The other huge difference is 17 years of direct experience living and skiing there. Remind us again how many days you've skied New England.
 
Back to the re-cap...My season ended with a dirt bike crash on 6/30, about 8 hrs before I was planning to leave for Tahoe where I was going to ski Squaw on 7/2. With friend following me, I was able to ride dirt bike less than a mile to where it is stored and my car was parked and, after a couple Aleve, drove myself about 2 miles of dirt, then 10+ miles of pavement to nearest Kaiser. I could not keep seat belt on or drive using left hand as both were painful, due to broken, but not displaced clavicle/collarbone and four broken and slightly displaced ribs, all on left side. They gave me a prescription for Norco that I filled and let me drive the less than 10 miles home and had me return in 24 hours for an X-ray. After the X-ray (which my wife drove me to), I returned to urgent care to try to get better meds as I was in a lot of (not unexpected or undeserved) pain. Instead, they sent me to Emergency where I had a vent with suction installed to prevent lung that was separating from chest wall (pneumothorax) from collapsing. I spent my first three nights ever in hospital and was released on 4th of July after being told not to go to altitude for 6 weeks. The entire time standing or walking has been OK, but getting up or down caused a lot of pain to the point where, while in hospital, it took IV morphine and a switch to Percocet to control it. The area in upper chest wall where they put vent was the worst and today is the first day I got out of rented hospital bed in the morning without giving 1/2 a Percocet time to kick in. I think I can now make it on the 3 x 600 mg Ibuprofen they want me to take with meals. The advantage of these are that I can drive during the day which I did not feel comfortable doing on stronger meds and I can have a beer or wine or two in the evening which I did not do with Tylenol and opiod-containing meds.

Really back to the re-cap...51 days plus a 600 vertical foot morning of patch skiing from Carson Pass in June vs. 52 days previous year.
Vertical was 1,161K down 40K from previous year
12 days each Heavenly and Kirkwood
7 days Northstar
4 days Whistler Blackcomb (with new snow every day)
2 days each at Alta (snow started falling on Sat and 20" new by Sun), Bachelor (also new snow, but top never opened), Mammoth, Park City and Squaw
Single days at: Altabird - hiked toward Devil's Castle twice
Mt Baker* - deep new snow, but too warm and crowded
Mt Hood Meadows* - new snow, a lot of wind, top and Heather Canyon not open, but got two laps into Private Reserve
Mt Rose
Sierra-at-Tahoe - another great day here
Stevens Pass*
White Pass*
Notes: *=new to me area. On January 23 I skied untracked at both Northstar and Heavenly.

Besides all the powder days, my other season highlight was having my wife join me at EpicSki Whistler Gathering in March, at Alta in April and for trip to Mammoth for Memorial Day weekend.
 
Marc_C":34l0ipii said:
Eastern skiing can indeed be excellent. The problems are that timing it right is difficult, excellent conditions are often brief, and you get to put up with a lot of so-so to downright crap skiing in-between. *Those* are the things I'm not complimentary about.

That's a lot different than you saying Patrick's season didn't get good until he traveled this season. The other huge difference is 17 years of direct experience living and skiing there. Remind us again how many days you've skied New England.
That would be 11 days. My comment was a too much of a broad brush. I should have said that Patrick's eastern season consisted of 13 days at real mountains and 58 at molehills. :lol:

Tseeb and I have had some correspondence since the dirt bike accident, which bears obvious comparisons to my ski collision in April 2008: viewtopic.php?t=6752

Tseeb's accident was more severe as:
1) I had no broken clavicle.
2) My pneumothorax was never vented as it was only 3%.
3) I was never admitted as an inpatient.
4) I was off Percoset and driving after 4 days vs. 11.
Tseeb must have high pain tolerance to drive the dirt bike, then car to Kaiser and home. I'm really surprised no X-rays were taken on the first visit. That would have been a very serious mistake if the not-yet-identified pneumothorax had worsened.
 
Tony Crocker":2k9nfhc3 said:
Tseeb must have high pain tolerance to drive the dirt bike, then car to Kaiser and home. I'm really surprised no X-rays were taken on the first visit. That would have been a very serious mistake if the not-yet-identified pneumothorax had worsened.
The Dr. who saw me on the first visit did say something about high pain tolerance as she had seen me in waiting room or on way to/from X-ray. She was the same one who said I was OK to drive home after her assistant recommended against it. I had not taken anything other than Aleve for pain at the time. I would not have been able to get into a car, but my SUV only requires bending my neck to get through door and seat is good height to slide into. I have not tried getting into car.

They did take a lot of X-rays on first visit and would have like to have taken some more, but I couldn't always get into the position they needed as I could not bend forward or back. I was glad that they were taken standing up as sitting or laying down and then trying to move into position would have been very painful. I thought that it may have been too early for pneumothorax to show up. The did use portable X-ray in room every morning and maybe one afternoon. They would slide large plate behind me in bed once they raised back of bed. I thought I would start glowing from all the radiation.

So far my strongest pain is on upper chest between ribs, shoulder and collarbone. I'm not sure if it is from impact or from where they dug a hole between top two ribs (with a knife my wife who watched it said), but it's probably from impact as bruising is almost all above where they made hole.
 
My 3% pneumothorax was diagnosed in emergency at Mammoth. I was given the breath-measuring device when I was discharged on that first day.

What went wrong with me on the follow-up was the reduced oxygen uptake to 85%, which was fortunately resolved by descending to Bishop.
 
Area Sum of Days Sum of Vertical (x1000) Sum of Powder (x1000)
Mt. Baldy 1 23.5 0
Mammoth 27 603.7 11
Snow Summit 0.5 16.2 0
Bear Mt. 0.5 6.4 0
June Mt. 1 12.1 8
Squaw Valley 2 34.5 0
Snowbird 3.5 77.1 0
Alta 1.5 27.6 0
Brighton 1 20.4 0
Blackcomb 3 70.5 13
Whistler 2 48.3 14
Fernie 1 30.6 1
Red Mt. 1 20.3 2
Snow Basin 1 22.6 0
Big White 1 13.7 1
Castle Mt. 2 50.5 11
Lake Louise 1 20.2 0
Kicking Horse 1 23.4 0
Mt. Rose 1 27.8 1
Mustang Powder Snowcat 3 50.7 41
Lech/Zurs, Austria 3.5 73.9 23
St. Anton, Austria 1 22.5 3
Stuben, Austria 0.5 6.1 0
Davos/Klosters Parsenn, Switz. 1 14.3 0
*Warth-Schrocken, Austria 1 21.1 9
*Ski-Welt Wilder Kaiser, Austria 1.5 45.4 1
*Kitzbuhel/Kirchberg, Austria 0.5 14.1 0
*Pass Thurn, Austria 0.5 11.1 0
*Westendorf, Austria 0.5 14.6 0
*Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Austria 2 75.4 0
*Fieberbrunn, Austria 1 24.3 0
*Ischgl, Austria 2.5 50.4 5
*Samnaun, Switz. 0.5 12.2 2
*Valhalla Powdercats 1 10 8
*Mt. Baldy, B.C. 1 14.3 1
Grand Total 73 1609.8 155

* = new area

73 days edged out the prior record 72 in 2010-11
35 different ski areas exceeded the prior record of 33 in 2011-12, thanks to the extensive Austrian and B.C. road trips.

1,609,800 vertical was almost 300K more than the prior record in 2010-11. 2010-11 included 5 backcountry days while there were none in 2017. However, the average of 22K per day in 2016-17 is almost 3K above my lifetime average and is more typical of Tseeb's seasons than mine. I have had 4 other seasons over 22K average but none of them exceeded 24 days. A significant part of that excess came from that second week in Austria with 185K in 6 days, including one 40K day and two other 30K days. But there were 6 more 30K days in 2017, one at Fernie and 5 at Mammoth in April/May. 9 days over 30K exceeded the prior record of 5 in 2004-05.

2016-17 was below average for powder despite a normal 3 days of powder at Mustang. The only other destinations with much powder were the Arlberg in January and Whistler in early March. Once again we were skunked for Iron Blosam week, so my dubious record of advance planned Utah skiing now stands at 45% of normal snow over 111 ski days. I missed or avoided the huge Sierra storms, but Mammoth was in extremely limited operation for those anyway.

With Mammoth's extended season, the 27 days there were a record vs. 25 in 2010-11, though in 2010-11 I skied 12 consecutive months at Mammoth. 604K vertical at Mammoth in 2016-17 is a record for any one area in one season.

I should add that this was a new benchmark season for Liz. Her 59 days obliterated her prior record of 42. She probably exceeded 1 million vertical too. Aug. 3 was Liz' first August ski day and 2016-17 was her first 9-month season. I have had 4 seasons longer than 9 months.
 
Tony Crocker":3ewlsbw4 said:
That would be 11 days. My comment was a too much of a broad brush. I should have said that Patrick's eastern season consisted of 13 days at real mountains and 58 at molehills. :lol:

What is a ski area a molehill and where is it not?

I got 3 days at Mont Ste-Marie which has a 1250' vert which was the site of the FIS NorAm race. MSM has a better vert than Middlebury Snowbowl and slightly less than Bretton Woods.

PS. I've just updated my season recap post above with my California July ski days.
 
Okay, the lifts stopped spinning, I just updated my season recap post above. While I was in Oregon, it snowed in Northern Quebec and the top of Mt Washington. Our ski team's dry training starts this Saturday.
 
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