John LaPlante

While I think that the so-called “stimulus” bill that the new administration will enact is poor policy for a number of reasons, it’s now the reality. Perhaps some lasting benefits will come out of this pork-fest.

Something like, say, Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood, offering a base for both winter and summertime riding and skiing.

Perhaps anticipating another FDR-style flurry of government spending, the Wall Street Journal ran an article last month (“Shining Example: A New Deal Gift That Keeps On Giving,” January 23) about the lodge, one of the many projects of the Works Progress Administration.

The building of the lodge, finished in 1937, was a make-work project, designed “to employ as many artisans as possible.”

While government could pay workers to produce works of art, it couldn’t fulfill President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s dream of the lodge’s business venture meeting the test of the “workability of recreational facilities installed by government itself and operated under its complete control.”

Install facilities, it could do. Operating them well as another matter. As Leslie Hook writes, “Market forces [which is to say, the freely made choices of consumers] had nothing to do with the design or siting of the lodge, and the early operators struggled.” As a result, the lodge was profitable during only two of its first five years.

Lodge operators were renters only and not owners who could profit from eventually selling the place to someone else. That discouraged investments in facilities. (Here’s an experiment: How much renovation have you made to your house? Now how much renovation have you made to your last apartment?)

The lodge was closed during World War II and briefly reopened, but it soon became clear that “only one thing could turn around this government-made disaster: private investment.”

In exchange for a fee (4.5 percent of revenue) the U.S. Forest Service leased the business out to RLK & Co, which (despite being a renter) put in a lot of upgrades to the investments.

Even today, the U.S. Forest Service (that would be you and me, taxpayers) spends somewhere between $1.2 and $1.5 million each year on maintenance. Much of that money comes from fees that the company pays to the USFS.

Over the last 30 years, federal taxpayers have kicked in $8 million. Hook notes that the lodge company hoped that it would snag some money from the stimulus bill. (Since few people actually know what’s in the bill, it will be a while before we know whether they got their wish.) Meanwhile, the Friends of Timberline have coughed up another $4 million.

Hook concludes, “Don’t get me wrong: Timberline today is probably one of my favorite places in the world. But it thrives in spite of, not because of, the ideas it was built on.”

Another in a series of pet peeves: People who leave their equipment on the ground, in traffic, when the ski area has provided racks for customers to use.

Notice the skis on the ground. Then notice the nearby racks, which are nearly empty.

Granted, the offenders in this case were likely children–a traveling ski school had (unofficially) taken over the chalet for the day. But it’s still annoying and potentially dangerous. (Do the ski-school teachers tell the kids about this?)

My contribution to ski kitsch–some 1950s wooden skis–are standing up in a room in the basement, awaiting a suitable way to attach them to the wall.

But some people put their kitsch out for the world to see. In this case, I suspect that it is/was useful for the children, too.

This gondola, which from the looks of it was purchased from Loon Mountain, lies at the end of a long driveway. I suspect that children would find it a useful place to seek shelter from winter winds during their wait for the school bus.

On Saturday I visited my usual local place for snowboarding, but had an unusual experience: I met someone from the Grays on Trays^® bulletin board.

As it turns out, Bob and I share a season pass. If you put four people’s purchase on one credit card, everyone gets a discount. Bob and I had never met; we had conducted our business through e-mail and postal mail.

When you ride on our hill, those of us who are a bit older tend to stand out. Bob and I were at the top of one slope and started talking. Then we discovered — hey! — we already knew each other, though we hadn’t met.

Bob and I had a great time swapping stories about how we started snowboarding, what attracted us to it, where our favorite places to ride are, and so forth.

We also talked about gear (he wears Flow bindings; smart man), and he mentioned that he had a Rossignol mini-snowboard that is just 123cm long. By comparison, Bob’s was riding a 157cm, and mine is 162.

Once we were ready to wind down the day, we headed over to his truck and Bob pulled out the mini and let me try it on the bunny slope.

He has Flow bindings on the mini as well as his usual boards, so I didn’t even have to mess with strap bindings. Hooray!

The stance was set for a regular rider and I’m goofy, but the angles were roughly equivalent, the board is an asymmetrical twin tip, and the bindings are set in (duck) stance similar to what I’m used to and they were roughly equidistant from tip to tail. So I didn’t have much trouble riding the board the “wrong way.”

I took three or four runs on it, trying first to get used to the feel of such a short board, and then working on spins. At one time I did 7 spins in a row and stopped because I was getting near the flats. That was actually a good thing, because at that point I was starting to get dizzy.

I also rode it switch from top to bottom. It was definitely easier than trying to do the same with my longer, directional board, though the experience pointed out that switch isn’t my strong point.

So what do you do with a board like this? I didn’t have the time or knowledge to play with the board to its full potential.

As one review puts it, “The Mini board makes small mountains big, easy trails interesting, and little obstacles larger.”

More interesting. I can see that. The desire to make big, easy trails (and small , vertically challenged ski areas) more interesting is one reason why I started snowboarding.

I have very few freestyle tricks in my quiver. For those of you who are more experienced in this department, would a mini board help, hurt, or make no difference in learning some basic freestyle moves? If it would help, which tricks would it help me learn?

Can you be a holy rider? Absolutely. Brad Lartigue is a “recreational missionary” in Montana.

The Southern Baptist Convention mission board says that for 17 years, Lartigue has been a missionary at Big Sky, Montana (winter) and Yellowstone National Park (summer). Prior to living in Montana, the Louisiana native was at Taos Valley, New Mexico.

Lartigue says that the mountains are “where worship happens for us.” True enough. Whether your a theist, a pantheist, or even only vaguely religious, the scope and beauty of mountains invites worship, or at least pausing to reflect on something greater than yourself.

“What better place to do ministry,” he says, “than a place where people can be inspired, because God and his creation are inspiring.”

In addition, Lartigue points to the example of Jesus, who after all spent a lot of time outside:

“Jesus spoke to the multitudes from the bow of a boat, from the mountainsides, in the gardens, in the marketplaces. He met people where they were, in times of work and play. It’s a wonderful thing to have the opportunity of using God’s creation as a ministry tool to point people past that creation and toward the Creator.”

The Southern Baptist article makes it clear that Lartigue is a busy man, especially on Sundays:

“I am part of three worship services on Sundays,” he said. “I begin the day with an outdoor worship service at 9:30 a.m. at the Moonlight Basin Ski Resort. Then I drive back down to the Big Sky Christian Fellowship worship at 11 a.m., and back up to Mountain Village to conduct the skier/snowboarder worship service in the snow at 1:30 p.m.,” Brad said.

After a few hours of skiing or snowboarding, he closes out the day by directing a youth ministry for junior high students on Sunday nights.

He’s got a website. Looks like he’s a hard-boot rider.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle has a write-up as well, though that’s now five years old.

The Daily Coloradoan (article no longer online) had an interesting article last year (January 27) about injuries and fatalities on the slopes. Among the points made in the article:

• On average, 37 people die each year while skiing or snowboarding–about the same number of people who die from lightning strikes and tornadoes.
• Over the last 50 years, the annual rate of reported injuries from skiing and snowboarding has declined by 40 percent.
• Between 1990/91 and 2000/01, the rate of snowboarding injuries doubled.
• The most common location of fatalities is a groomed, blue slopes. (I’m suspecting that this is due either to collisions with riders and skiers, or collisions with trees just off the slope.)
• Helmet use is up. But while helmets can reduce the frequency and severity of less serious injuries, the rate of fatalities from head injuries has not decreased with the rise in helmet use. That’s because helmets don’t do much good for skiers or riders when they go over 12 miles per hour.
• The most common ski injury is to the knee; the most common snowboarding injury is to the wrist.

The lesson: Follow the responsibility code. Be alert. And wear a helmet–but don’t let it lull you into taking on more risky behavior than you otherwise would.

If you go into a sporting goods or news store and look for a magazine on snowboarding, you may end up disappointed. I know that I am. So here’s what I’m looking for in a snowboarding magazine. (It builds on what I previously wrote on the subject.)

Grown-up language.
By this I don’t mean salty or “adult” language. I know how to use those words but don’t necessarily want to read them in a magazine. What I mean by “grown-up” is high-quality writing. Think of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times and you begin to get the idea.

Information about snowboards and related equipment and supplies.
When I read magazines that offer reviews of gear, detailed rankings aren’t that useful. For one thing, by the time I get around to buying whatever it is that I’m reading about, the model may have changed. But some information about snowboard gear is a good thing. For example, I’ve read a lot about Magnetraction, available on some boards. A good magazine article would describe what this is, its usefulness and limitations, which companies offer it, how it came into being, and how it fits into the evolution of snowboarding equipment.

Information about ski areas and the resort industry.
What’s new within the resort industry, generally? If the next great thing will be lift chairs with individually programmable iPods built into the safety bar, let me know ahead of time. If Mount Whoozit has a particularly interesting guest service that relates to riding and skiing, talk about it.

Profiles of riders with professional lives.
I’d like to see some stories about people who enjoy snowboarding but who aren’t professional riders. I’m thinking of people who work as accountants, biologists, cardiologists, what have you, and who enjoy getting out on the snow. They’re are easier for me to relate to than the 20-year old bartender. Why and when did they start riding? What do they enjoy about riding?

First-person stories about snowboarding.
This is related to the previous item, but some first person stories would be worthwhile. There are hundreds of thousands of adult riders, and some of them must have some interesting stories relating to learning how to ride, developing skills in a new avenue of life, meeting new friends, and so forth. Let them tell their stories.

Stories about snowboarding trips.
All sorts of interesting things can happen when you go on a trip: Where did you go? What were the surprises, delights, and disappointments of the mountain? Any catastrophes with gear? Weather? How about rituals or group interactions?

What I’m not looking for.
I suppose it might help flesh out my wants by mentioning a few things I’m not looking for: news about the latest industry parties, eye candy that overshadows well-written text, and how to appoint that 7-figure second home.

There’s more I could say, but in short, I’m looking for something that’s both industry and consumer oriented, technical and literary–but always keeping an eye towards a sensible adult audience that has a life off the mountain. Tone is as important as content.

For the uninitiated, snowboarding is all about freestyle moves, being 10 feet or more off the ground, whether that comes about through soaring out of the halfpipe or hurling one’s self off a kicker, or ramp.

There’s certainly more to snowboarding than that, such as riding on groomed slopes, in powder, or in other ways that generally involved keeping some part of the board on the ground.

Still, the possibility of getting “big air” makes for a good story, as Sean Newsom wrote last year in the Times of London. His article was called Leaping the Fear Barrier.”

In the article, Newsom writes about jumping off a ramp onto a couple of giant air bags, which absorb the impact of poorly executed jumps–in other words, jumps such as he was likely to perform.

First, he describes the airbags:

I could only hope that the socking great airbag on the other side of the jump would stop my fall. This giant inflatable cushion is becoming a regular fixture in the UK’s “real snow” centres (which use man-made snow, very close to the real thing). The airbag contains two air-filled chambers. The first, lower chamber is similar to a bouncy castle. The second, top layer is softer, full of blown air, and is designed to soak up the impact of the fall rather than provide any bounce.

Then he calculates what will happen, and makes the jump.

A split second later, I was down on the airbag. It was an extraordinary feeling. There was almost no sense of impact. It soaked up the full force of my fall, and left me lying in the middle of an enormous and rather gorgeous pillow, quivering with laughter and relief. My system hasn’t been so flooded with adrenaline since the time I first learnt to ride a snowboard.

It’s almost enough to make me think of trying out something like that.

You’ve heard that some people allegedly have 250 different words for “snow?” Well, some people in fact do have more than one word for snow. They’re called snowboarders and skiers.

Sue Freeman, the author of the blog New York Outdoors, offers up 22 Snow Terms You Should Know.

The terms include “boilerplate” and “railroad tracks.”

Call me a rebel against rebellion.

Jake Burton Carpenter is once again striking the tired old song that snowboarding is all about–or to a large extent about–youthful rebellion and the tastes.

At issue is the nekkid-chicks design of some of their snowboards called the “Love” line. (For some other commentary on those boards, see Shayboarder on October 23, October 27 and Adam at Highly Obsessed.)

Well, Adam came through with more news on the “Love” story, which confirms that Mr. Carpenter is stuck in the past. He quotes from an op-ed that JBC pens for his hometown newspaper.

We also make boards for 18-year-old guys. This age group is the foundation of snowboarding, and we wouldn’t be here today without them. Thirty years ago, they were the ones who were willing to buy our boards out of a box, hike up the mountain and teach themselves how to ride it, and I owe everything to them. A very important factor to this crew is that what they are riding and wearing is something their parents would never be caught dead in. It was like that when I was 18, and it’s like that now.

JBC seems stuck on the 18-year old market. That may be a smart business move, since 18-year olds (and younger) are a very large part of the snowboarding market. But they’re not the only market.

I’ve had my issues with the Burton company before–notably, its poaching marketing stunt and continued whining about being denied access to all of three ski areas in the country.

But as to snowboarding being a form of rebellion. Uhm, yeah. In the 1980s some people were so upset about snowboarding that they couldn’t keep their ski tips uncrossed. But has anyone else noticed that middle-aged mothers think that Shaun White is cool, we had a 60-year old presidential nominee (John Kerry) who snowboards, and that snowboarding is widely accepted?

And will 18 year-olds be rebels? To be sure, 18-years old is always going to be a fine time to be a rebel, real or imagined.

I’ve passed that stage a long time ago, as, I suspect, many riders who are up there in years. Now if we could just fine some companies that don’t expect all their customers to be teenagers.