Part Two: The Accidental Bivouac

It started to snow. Imperceptible ice needles at first, but then in bigger clumps falling through the gray-white air.

We took turns breaking trail, but Davey O’Brien pushed the route most of the time. It was his “easy” overnight tour, his idea to ski from Woods Lake over the divide and down to the hot-springs ghost town of Dunton.

To bivy, or not to bivy, that is the question.

It was probably about this time of year, in 1978 or 1979, when Davey O’Brien, late of Olympic Sports, proposed a ski tour to Dunton hot springs.

Davey was one of Olympic’s ski equipment gurus back when the shop was next door to the Floradora Saloon, back before the United States Olympic Committee, citing copyright infringement, made them change their name.

Davey had a heart condition.

The Gasman Cometh

The meek shall inherit the earth. But not the mineral rights.

Oilman and miser J. Paul Getty said that. He was the richest man in America in 1957 but famously had a pay phone installed in his own home.

The sentiment is truer than ever. The rush to develop natural gas wells across the country has resulted in fracking-induced earthquakes in Ohio, in poisoned water wells in Wyoming and now, in the words of BLM Uncompahgre Field Manager Barb Sharrow, the “firestorm” in Paonia.

Messing With Ski Shapes, Part Two

The battle continues over new ski shapes dictated for 2013 by the International Ski Federation.

The debate blows hot on the slopes and in the blogosphere. (Although we haven’t heard lately from American giant slalom specialist Ted Ligety, who protested early in the season that the FIS was attempting to “ruin” his sport.)

Chooglin’ On Down the Road

Don’t you know it’s gonna be – all right. Shoo-bee-doo-wah. – “Revolution 1” by The Beatles

It’s not always easy these days to believe the John Lennon of 1968. Is it going to be all right? I’m not sure he believed the lyric himself. Despite what the Maharishi was telling him.

Christmas Tree of Life

Cecily showed me a picture of their Christmas tree, a scrawny little thing with branches on just one side. It’s so crooked it won’t stand up on its own, so they attached it with monofilament line to a hook in the ceiling. “It kind of rotates a little bit now and then on its own,” Cecily said. “But it’s good; Boden can’t pull it down.”

Send Lawyers, Guns and Money

My friend Pat and I sat in the back seat of his parents’ sedan as we approached the border in Tijuana. We had cherry bombs stashed in the trunk, in our duffle bags with our bathing suits and wet towels.

Turning Back the Skiing Clock

My mother says she doesn’t always “get” the things I write about skiing. Full disclosure, Mom: Look out! This one’s about sidecut and turn radius, and what some World Cup skiers – most notably outspoken Americans Ted Ligety and Bode Miller – see as an attempt to send ski racing back to the Hickory Age.

The White Ribbon of Death

I liked Brian Scranton from the moment I heard him say the words “white ribbon of death.”

This was a couple of years ago, very early in the ski season. He was talking about making the long drive across the divide to Loveland Basin for their opening day. It might have been the first day of lift-served skiing in Colorado that autumn, sometime around Halloween.

Scranton knew it was ridiculous to make the 275-mile one-way drive from Ridgway just to ski a lonely strip of man-made snow. But he couldn’t help himself; it was without question going to be worth it. Giving the ersatz ski experience a mock-terrifying sobriquet only made me like him more.

Part Two: The Squirrel

Later, after the adrenaline drained and the ranger left, we started referring to him as The Squirrel.