The outdoor industry has grown up quite a bit since then, but I’m still in a pleasant state of shock after spending three nights in a corner suite at the Beijing Hilton.  The room was almost bigger than my house and featured a free-standing sculpted tub with a waterproof TV, a suite “control panel” next to the bed, complimentary rubber duckies, a meeting lounge, work desk, assortment of beauty supplies, monogrammed robes and of course, 30-40 pillows on the bed.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to spend the night in a tent again.  ;)

The trip involved one day of work and two days of sightseeing.  Beijing is not known as a ski town so I knew almost nothing about it.  It turned out to be quite a bit colder than I imagined (Beijing is about the same latitude as Salt Lake City) and the cultural aspects were beyond anything I had ever seen before.  Of all the historic places we visited, The Great Wall and the Forbidden City gave the most impressive account of what China was like during the Ming Dynasties.

The Great Wall was erected as a northern boundary to China as a defense against the Mongols who were invading across the plains to the north.  Any one-mile section of it is overwhelmingly impressive, but when you see it stretching out in both directions, as far as the eye can see, over ridgetops, valleys and rugged mountain terrain, it really brings home how powerful and frightening the invading armies must have been. It is some serious defense.

The Forbidden City was on the same scale of impressiveness, but different.  It is located at the heart of Beijing and was the home of the various emperors and their thousands of servants and concubines.  The “Forbidden” part comes from it being forbidden to the average citizen and it was essentially a city within a city. Just outside the main gate is a massive courtyard “where they cut peoples head’s off.”  When I asked Spencer Lee how many had lost their noggin there, he answered “It depended how naughty the people were.”

After walking through the front gate, there is a massive pavilion that rivals any public square in Europe, which is capped by another towering gate.  Beyond that is yet another pavilion of equal size.  Beyond that, it gets down to hundreds of rooms for everything from contemplating serenity to appreciating nature or viewing timepieces.  Even in its current stripped down state, the scope and ornamentation of it boggles the mind.

Beijing was also much more affluent than I imagined, with some beautiful modern architecture, lots of fancy cars (including a Bentley dealership) and incredible restaurants.  There didn’t seem to be much skiing, but I’d still love to get back there.

I’ve put up a photo gallery here.

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Doc Brock rockin' the 25 degree Muff Mower.

Instead, I’ve been collecting some obscure crusty lines and piecing together long, low angle skiing circuits.  At first this doesn’t seem like that much fun, but it is a perverse challenge to put together an 8,000′ tour that never gets over 30 degrees and doesn’t involve repetitive laps.  More than anything, these tours are good to have in your repertoire for future high avalanche danger days. So far the skiing has always been better than expected and the snow quality itself is good, although shallow and sensitive.

Yawn. When life gives you dangerous, low angle conditions... go straight down them.

One of the keys to doing low angle tours is finding partners who are into it as well.  Finding partners for steep, exposed, fall-to-your-death terrain is easy, but finding people who are patient and willing to slog can be tough.  It is also hard to sleuth-out terrain in that coveted north-facing, mid elevation, moderate angle, sheltered realm that is new and therefore uncrowded.  The South Face of Superior is big and obvious, but The Eyebrow, Slimy Ridge and Freebird Trees are carefully guarded secrets because they can only handle a few sets of tracks.  Most of the time this type of skiing is just table scraps, but this season it has been the main course.

I am heading over to Beijing, China to present the “Golden Rhino Award for Best Climbing Spirit” on behalf of Mountain Hardwear and will be back on March 8th.  Until then, pray for snow.

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I’ve stood at the top of this couloir roughly five times over the last ten years and yesterday Courtney Phillips and I finally skied it, to use the term loosely.  From the top, it looks like it could be either a hidden gem… or a fiasco.  We brought a rope just in case.

Hmmm, looks good from here. The top of the Hash Pipe.

So far, so good. Forty-six degrees, southeast facing, 9,500', narrow, rock-lined & a big question mark down below.

The dead snag/verglass/rotten rock step-over crux. Why is Courtney smiling?

Unfortunately at the end of the first nice chute section, the party was over and the line cliffed out.  Oh well.  It turned out that a Mountain Goat had the same idea and had already done a lap on the Hash Pipe (he probably has a different name for it) earlier that day.  To help show us the way, he shit all over the loose, rocky, exposed traverse, which was aromatic and fun to walk through.

There are a lot of famous traverses in the climbing world - this one, the Goat Shit Traverse, is not one of them, but it avoids a rappel.

There she blows. (that little patch of snow in the middle of the rocks)

Although I don’t think I’ll ever repeat this, I enjoy lines like these as they are fun little mysteries and you never know what you are going to find.  Eighty percent of the time they are junk, but when you uncover a gem, it makes it all worth while.  You never know until you go. It has been kind of a poopie year in the Wasatch, so lines like these are a fun distraction while the bigger stuff slowly stabilizes.

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Some of the other techniques I’ve tried are the time-honored ski toss, which often results in a ski hitting the far bank, then bouncing back into the river and getting swept downstream.  Not recommended.  Crossing with poles in one hand and skis in the other is a recipe for disaster.  Putting your skis on your pack and using your poles for balance sounds good at first, but you inevitably turf on a slippery rock and go in, or at least I do.  The “find a log and try to shinny across it” sometimes works, but can also take a lot of searching and still leave you in the stream if/when it breaks.  Cut your losses, find a wide spot with shallower water and ski straight across. P-tex is cheap and edges can be sharpened.

Crossing with skins on is better yet, but best saved for the very end of a tour as water-logged skins are a glomming nightmare. Also, this technique works best in low volume creeks – raging rivers are a whole different story.
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The actual skiing action takes place on Saturday from 9am – 4pm at Brighton and features morning and afternoon clinics on just about anything to do with skiing, riding and the backcountry.  I’ll be teaching clinics on steep skiing and backcountry terrain assessment, but if I wasn’t, I’d love to take a clinic on filming or park riding. The cost is $75 which includes a lift ticket, the clinics, lunch and a ticket to the Shoot Out Party that night at Club Elevate.

The Big LePowSki is put on by Black Diamond and Arc’Teryx with the help of many other sponsors.  This is one of four stops for the tour (La Grave, Davos, St. Anton and Brighton) and it is a fun, yet casual event.  There’s something for everyone and crankin’ skills are not required.  For more info and to register, visit www.thebiglepowski.com

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The cure for crust is the Alpine Crawl, which is preformed just like you might imagine, by crawling up a slope on your hands and knees.  There is some booting involved, but the idea is to spread your weight out over your hands and shins so you get a little bit of extra flotation.

You can motor right along with an Alpine Crawl, but it gets tiring.  Fortunately, that perfectly awful zone never seems to last too long – it either tightens up and become supportable 200lb crust, or softens up to the point where it might be easier to switch back to skins. In the meantime, get on your knees and crawl.

180lb Courtney up to his 'nads in 150lb crust and loving it.

The disheartening thing about brutal booting is that it usually means the skiing is going to be pretty jacked as well, but not always…

Just keep thinking light thoughts on each turn.  ;)

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Looking up at the lower 2/3rds of Scotties from the White Pine trailhead.

Scotties, from the top, with feeling.

Scotties mid section... with even more feeling. Nice view.

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To help hold skis in place, a few companies (like Swix) make rubber devices that wrap around your bindings and pull the ski to your bench. Click here for details on my bench setup. I was tempted to buy one of these, but thought I’d try a piece of accessory cord and a hardware store cleat first. Much to my wallet’s relief, it works really well and the total cost was $1.19.

Start with a piece of accessory cord about 24″ long.  Tie a small knot in one end and use that to make a loop, which is then wrapped around the binding (this works with almost any style of binding).

From here, push the ski down, then wrap the cord around the cleat, as shown in the photo below.

The flex of the ski gives you a little extra holding power, and although the ski isn’t absolutely locked in place, it is close enough to allow you to reef on it for some heavy-metal base filing.  As I already had them, I still use the vises, but more for alignment than clamping power.

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From studying Architecture, this phenomena reminds of an architectural arch, where all of the compression forces are balanced and held in place by a keystone at the top.  Exhibit A below:

A collapsing valley is basically the same thing, except the arch it turned upside down, and instead of carved stones, you have a cohesive slab of snow.  When an unsuspecting skier walks along the base of the valley, he is essentially knocking out the keystone that holds the valley walls up, as illustrated below:

This type of avalanche is very difficult to accurately predict, but not that hard to avoid.  If the snowpack has pronounced collapsing (like the Wasatch has had this season), it means that keystone is being punched out and it would be better to stick to the high ground.  The chances of getting caught in a slide like this are about a million to one (unless you live in Colorado, where it is more like 50/50) and the best defense is to be forewarned.

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The tour below (Pink Pine, an excellent quick outing, or safe first tour) is created in Trimble Outdoors and has all sorts of download options, including sending it to your GPS enabled phone.  Since I don’t have one, I’d be interested in seeing how it works if anyone actually tries this.

The potential for this sort of mapping is vast as it has embedded photos, gps way points, a variety of terrain overlays (satellite, topo, hybrid, map) and it can be downloaded to devices like your phone, computer or GPS.

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