From: Erik
To: The Land Ski Page
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 12:48 AM
Subject: The Land
I have been very lax. My only excuse is that
I joined a rock and roll band (blues actually) and it has taken
much of my time. We don't even have a name yet, but there is talk
that our first public performance will be at Von Trier's on May
5th.
Skiing has continued to be outstanding all winter
long - including Midnight runs in the moonlight on our last trip
March 10th. (I'll try to report on this soon) As I write this,
Peter and I are planning to go to the Land tomorrow - hopefully
to ski (on March 31st !).
Forwarded here is an e-mail that I sent to Peter's
cousin, Jim, describing the ski trips on the week-ends of January
19th and February 2nd, 2001 - including Tom's first time on skis
in over ten years! Jim had e-mailed that skiing in Colorado was
so-so and that he was hitting rocks! - that the only place this
year that he had not hit rocks was at The Land!
Erik
----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik"
To: "Jim"
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 11:05 PM
Subject: Re: The Lland
Jim, You heard it here first. I have yet to post
these reports on the site.
You'll be happy to know that the land is still
"rock free". It is however, also pretty much powder
free as well. Ned, Tom R, Peter, and myself were out to celebrate
Tom's (Jan 19 - 50th) and my (Jan 22 - 48th) birthdays on the
weekend of the 19th.
The weather had warmed up and there had been some
drizzly rain the week before. We parked in the plowed lot where
Doug had parked his truck on New Year's. The drizzle had barely
washed away any of the snow but had left a crust - a firm crust.
It was just hard enough that I broke through (walking with full
backpack on from the car) only a handful of times. Peter was sick,
so it was just Ned and myself skiing. The main chute was bumpy
but manageable - no breaking through the crust on skis.
Then we did a Unicorn run cause that run had only
one track on it and was otherwise smooth. Good turns. But with
this firm crust on top of at least a foot of crystalline base,
we realized that the terrain had increased multifold. In fact
you could just about ski anywhere. Just don't run into the vegetation.
We were considering this effect as we stared up and out from the
trailer towards the road. Between the trailer and the road lie
several football fields worth of prime bunny hill - all crusted
hard.
So we walked up to the road with our skis and
did "tuck runs" from the road to the trailer. The snow
was fast enough to require putting on the brakes near the trailer.
As Ned and I finished our second tuck run from the road, Tom who
had been watching with Peter in the trailer, decided "I can
do that" and strapped on a pair of skis (he fits Peter's
boots) for the first time in about 12 years. And indeed he could,
and did do "that"!
This last week-end (Feb 2nd) Peter and I went
out. In the past two weeks there was more warmth and a little
more rain. This served to mildly wash down and smooth out (a little)
the heavily skied main run. It had also made the crust even firmer
- still over a good foot of base. Pete and I did a couple of Unicorn
runs each on very scrapable hard crust and then did some road
to stream tuck runs just for fun (Peter had not done that 2 week
before - he was sick).
Well you saw the pics that I took with my throw-away
camera on the web site. Since I made those reports, I have been
able to procure the disks from the rolls Peter had taken with
him funky Kodac. I am attaching selected shots from these disks
- which I have yet to post on the web reports - I'll probably
just copy this e-mail for the next report. (Editor's note:
the photos are at the bottom of this page.) You can really
see how much snow there was in some of the powder shots.
On a side note, I too am bummed about the Taos
trip. It was just too early in the month for me - the penalty
for being the only one who can do my job at work. I just today
got a (late) birthday card from my niece in Taos who was looking
forward to taking some time off to ski with me. Maybe I'll do
a short trip or something.
That's all for now - keep in touch
