Who Said Park Crew Was An Easy Job?

My day started bright (and I do mean bright) and early at 10AM out on Dutch Henri. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny morning for day 2 of constructing the features for tomorrow's rail jam.



The 1st action of the day involved Curt talking us into reducing our 20-foot-gap-on to about a 5-foot-gap-on, since our competitors will not be at the X-Games level of competition (Gee! Who would have thought?).


Then Greg assigned me, Tae-ho, Neil, and Kevin to shape the quarter pipe. I'm not sure about Neil and Kevin, but I had no clue what I was doing and I'm pretty sure Tae-ho didn't know what he was doing either. Then Curt and Zac helped us out by shaping the majority of the quarterpipe in like 20 minutes with the snowcat, as opposed to the 5 hours that it probably would have taken us by hand.


After that, we started building the take-off for the down-flat-down. We eventually banned Tae-ho from helping build the take-off because his "violence" was not helping, considering that we kept having to re-set the board that we were using to shape the take-off because he would move it while "violently" packing the snow.


Most of us disappeared for awhile after that to go eat lunch.


When we came back in the afternoon, we moved the down-flat-down into it's new location. This was not nearly as simple as it might sound. We drilled holes, moved it, got it all straightened out, sent a wheel of rope down the hill on accident (gravity and a steep hill have a tendancy to pull things downhill), began to build up a base around it (at one point, the legs were probably 2 feet off of the ground), decided that trenching it would be more efficient, so we moved it out of the way, almost sent it sliding down the hill because someone incorrectly believed that it would stay where it was once we released it (again, gravity and a steep hill are to blame), started digging a crooked trench, got the rope out again to provide a guideline for making the trench straight, "fired" Tae-ho from his job of holding the bamboo pole straight up and down, the trench was dug, we moved the rail back into place, still had to build the middle up a bunch (I'm not sure trenching it gained us anything), and then we buried the upper portion of the rail while Zac located tools to straighten out where the two sections of rail connected. Once Zac returned with the tools, we were able to straighten out where the two rail sections connected. Then we buried the lower portion of the rail. Meanwhile, Jeremiah, Zac, and I put up 3 rolls of CMC fencing.


Now came the fun. The rails and boxes were all in place, the take-offs had been perfected, the quarterpipe had been shaped, and the fencing was up. Logically, the next step was to test out all of the features. I personally did not ride any of the features, but I watched other people who did and it all looked like a lot of fun. It should be even better tomorrow when all of the snow has hardened up (assuming that it gets colder than the current 45 degrees).


Hope to see everyone at the rail jam tomorrow! Oh, and make sure you bring sunscreen! I remembered to apply sunscreen to my face 3 or 4 times today, but I neglected to put it on my arms since I went outside this morning wearing long sleeves. So, now I have this really weird looking sunburn on my arms because I was wearing a T-shirt and gloves that came halfway up my arms.

A Typical Monday Night At CMC

You may be wondering what a student does at Colorado Mountain College in Leadville, Colorado on a Monday night. Well, there is always the option of free swim night, but for various reasons, many of us are unable to attend swim night. Therefore, we must find another source of entertainment.

Last night was a fairly typical Monday night. I went to Public Speaking class (Free pool night was just too tempting for most students... there were only 4 of us in class out of the normal 12) and then I hung out with Randi, Marea, and Erin at the front desk while Randi had RA duty.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, Wes was paging through the latest issue of SAM (Ski Area Management magazine), which had a beautiful picture of the Whistler Peak 2 Peak gondola. After brief commentation on an ad for snowmaking, "Mountain Spy" was the next section that deserved commenting. "Mountain Spy" usually consists of an anonomous caller calling a few resorts and posing a question (the one that stands out most in my mind was concerning whether a customer could bring their miniature pony to the resort with them because the pony was their equivalent of a seeing eye dog). There are always the outstanding resorts that are extremely accomidating, and then there are those that are much less accomidating. This issue however, consisted of interviewing skiers and snowboarders on the hill about what effect the economy has had on their skiing/riding habits. Then it was onto looking at a picture of an Ohara snowcat. After that came the real excitement. CMC's very own Patrick Torsell was one of three young men featured in "2009 Recruit Of The Year".

"For the third year in a row, SAM held a contest among ski area management
programs in the U.S. and Canada to identify some of the brightest talent poised
to break into the industry. Here are the top three picks. Check out the full entries online." "So what were the entrants asked? Two questions:
1) What do you think is the most pressing issue facing resorts today and
why?
2) The winter resort industry has an extraordinary opportunity to
capatalize on the excitement and enthusiasm that the 2010 Olympics creates for
skiing and snowboarding. The Olympics draws a TV audience as large as NFL
football and nearly as avid as NASCAR. If you were a resort owner, how
would you take advantage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic fever during the
2009/2010 season to promote the snowsports experience at your resort?"

Patrick did not win, but we all thought making top 3 was pretty cool. The other two finalists were attending Sierra Nevada College and the University of Denver. After that, as far as I know, the magazine no longer held any excitement (looking at it now, all the rest of the magazine held was finishing articles that had been started earlier in the magazine).

Sure enough, Marea soon got hungry because she hadn't yet had dinner, so we went on an expedition into Leadville and got to Subway about 30 seconds before it closed. We then returned to the dorms with our sandwiches and Randi's milkshake and box of Reese's Pieces. Sure enough, someone had stolen the spot that I was sitting in, so Erin, Marea, and I, being the extremely talented girls that we are, managed to fit onto 2 chairs. Along with being extremely talented, we can also be extremely crazy at times, hence why two 18-year-olds and a 19-year-old were painting with water colors. Soon the guys that had gone to the pool returned and we had a discussion about Rihanna dating Chris Brown after he allegedly beat her. After the guys took showers so that they no longer smelled of chlorine, we headed into the MPR and piled onto couches and flopped onto beanbags to watch Role Models. Once Role Models was over, we all headed to our rooms because many of us had class this morning.

Well, that's a typical Monday night for you. The rest of the week's nights are similar, but I think Monday is the most interesting night because you never know what is going to happen with the group that ends up being around because we are all so crazy.

Murphy got tired of causing trouble

In continuation of my last blog...

Friday night we went to IGA (a grocery store with aisles going in about 5 different directions) and then my mom and I wanted to take the bus back to our hotel, so we went to the bus stop, and got on the first bus that came along. It turns out that that bus was not the bus we wanted. We ended up going 7 miles outside of Whistler and it was a nice enough drive, but we would have preferred getting to our hotel an hour before we did.

Saturday we took the Peak to Peak gondola from Blackcomb mountain to Whistler Mountain.

The Gondola can fit 28 people per cabin for the 11 minute ride across the valley.

Of the 2.73 mile ride, there are 4 towers (2 on each mountain) and 1.88 miles of rope stretched between two towers (while you are 1,427 feet over Fitzsimmons Creek).

The Gondola rides on two track ropes and a haul rope. The track ropes are each 4,600 meters long and 56mm in diameter. The haul rope is 46mm in diameter and 8,850m long.

2,050 people can ride each way in one hour.

My mom and I were delighted to find more trail signs on Whistler mountain, however there also seemed to be way more people. During one of our quests to avoid the crowd at the bottom of the Big Red Express, we ended up in the Kid's Tree Fort. The little kids, who were probably 5 or 6, did a great job of making it through, but my mom and I seemed to lack the necessary skills to go around the trees the way we would have liked to. Then we went up to Sun Bowl, and discovered that it was white-out condition up top, so we followed fog markers down to the Peak to Peak, took it across to Blackcomb (since we had a better idea of where we were going on Blackcomb) and went back to our hotel.

On Sunday we took a day off. Once I finally woke up at 11 (Hey, with Daylight Savings Time it was only 10), we walked around the village at the bottom of Whistler mountain to find souveneir T-shirts for ourselves and my dad and brother. That night I decided I was going to broil chicken, but I didn't feel like cleaning the broiler pan first (we'd used it to broil chicken Friday night) so I managed to set the smoke alarm off twice before my mom decided she'd finish cooking the chicken in the microwave. Later on that evening, we went to the 7-Eleven Fire and Ice Show and watched some of Whistler Blackcomb's ski and snowboard instructors jump and flip through a ring of fire.

We were back on the slopes on Monday morning. I had talked my mom into eating waffles for breakfast at the Crystal Hut. Unfortunately, Crystal Hut was at the top of a closed lift, so in order to get there, we had to ride up a different chairlift and then take a long traverse across to the Crystal Hut. Then we had our waffles and continued our day. At the end of the day, we took the T-bar up in order to try out a double black diamond run, but my mom managed to miss the path going in that direction (I think she was bound and determined to not go on a double black).

Tuesday the receptionist at the front desk allowed us to lock our luggage up in the conference room so that we could ski all day before getting on a bus to Vancouver that evening. We headed over to Whistler mountain to start our day. We were going to start our day off on a double black, but my mom missed the sign for that too, so I went on the double black without her and by some miracle we ended up in the same location. Later on, I made another attempt at getting her to go on a double black, but she did not like the "Extremely rock trail" sign. We came to the next double black and she said that a guy had told her "Extremely rocky" sounded better than what he saw when he looked down the trail, so we didn't go on that trail either. Then we went in Symphony Ampitheatre (basically a bowl that they didn't call a bowl) where my mom got to experience some wonderful moguls (she HATES moguls), I got to listen to a guy going past screaming about "What have I gotten myself into!?!" while going through rollers (little hills and valleys of snow... I thought they were one of those features that were on the extremely manageable end of the spectrum, but apparently not according to this guy), and then I was going up a hill and ran into powder and that didn't work out so well for me. Then I got to the next hill which looked nice and crusted over but turned out to be powdery too. By the time I was moving along again, I figured that my mom had probably found more moguls and managed to get through them again. Sure enough, she had found moguls, but she was still at the top of them, probably cursing me for taking her on such a horrible trail. Then we ended up at the bottom of Harmony Chairlift when we had meant to be at the bottom of Symphony Chairlift, but it all worked out because it turns out that the Symphony chair was already closed for the day. On the last run of our vacation we took an intermediate trail (intermediate = I [on a snowboard] could move along without my mom's ski pole and my mom could move along without complaining that her legs were burning or cursing me for putting her in yet another mogul field). Then we found the "Gun Barrels" and we just had to go down them so that we could tell my dad that we went down a gun barrel. The top of it was really nice, but then our nice open trail turned into a forest with paths that were approximately 5 feet wide. I side slipped down, convinced that sooner or later I found fall face first and probably hit a rock or a tree. By some miracle I didn't fall down. Then I waited at the bottom for 15 minutes because my mom decided that the best way to go down the skinny little trail was by taking her skis off and walking down, grabbing onto trees as she went to avoid sliding down the entire trail. Then we ended up on another beginner trail (my mom seemed to have a magnetic attraction to beginner trails which were incredibly flat and involved me having to either steal her pole or take my board off and walk... but this green trail actually appeared to be the only way down from where we were). Then we returned my snowboard and her skis to the rental shop, collected our luggage from our hotel's conference room, and got on a bus down to Vancouver. The Sea to Sky highway is a very nice drive at sunset, aside from the trees that interfere with taking pictures of the sun setting behind the mountains.

Wednesday morning we woke up bright and early to fly back to the US. Luck was beginning to work in our favor- someone had left their luggage cart (the ones that you get inside the airport that cost a ridiculous amount to rent) outside on the sidewalk, so I no longer had to drag my one-wheeled suitcase around. Then, since we were checking in on Air Canada, rather than United, we did not have to pay the $15 per suitcase fee. Then we stood in a rather long line to get through security but at least it was moving at a reasonably steady pace. Once I had safely arrived in Denver, I collected my one-wheeled suitcase and went out to get on the bus to the Pikes Peak shuttle lot where I discovered that I was supposed to know if I needed the "A" route or the "B" route. Apparently there was a sign in the parking lot that told me what bus route I should take to get back to my car, but I did not see that sign, and I figured I was doing good when I remembered that I parked in the JJ1 row. Then I found my way onto I-70 where I got to sit in stand-still traffic for awhile. Being from rural South Dakota, this concept of being on the interstate and not moving was a foreign idea. Then they had traffic slowed down in Georgetown because they were blasting rock on the side of the road. Finally, 3 1/2 hours later, I had made it to Leadville (in good conditions, Denver to Leadville is about a 2 hr drive).

Yesterday (Thursday), I enjoyed sleeping in and cleaning my room (it was a mess... actually, it still is a mess, but it's an organized mess right now at least). Homework was also on my agenda, but that didn't quite happen.

This coming week:

Ropeway Operations- We will be studying "Drive Control Systems and Safety Circuits".

Events Management- Our topic of discussion is "Sanctioning Grganizations and FIS". I'm sure we will also be wrapping up last minute details for the rail jam on Saturday.

Public Speaking- We have gone a bit astray from our syllabus, so I'm not completely sure what we are doing, but I believe we are going to be receiving instructions on how to do our Informative Speech which I think also involves the use of PowerPoint.

Trail Grooming- We will be learning about "Grooming Steep Terrain/Winch Catting" and "Grooming Man-made Snow"

Ski Patrol- We will be studying "Lift Evacuation"

Food and Beverage- We are to complete Chapter 9 which is titled "Production" and includes the topics of Production Planning, Food Production, the Preparation of Food (fresh fruits and vegetables, meat and pultry, fish, eggs and dairy products, baked products, and coffee and tea), and Control During Food and Beverage Production.

Events this week include:

Friday, March 13th and Saturday, March 14th-The Cripple of Inishmaan is a play that is being put on at 7pm at the Spring Valley campus in Glenwood Springs.

Sunday, March 15th- The Cripple of Inishmaan is being performed at 2pm in Glenwood Springs.

Saturday, March 21st- 4th Annual CMC Rail Jam

901 S. Hwy 24, Dutch Henri - CMC Timberline Campus, Leadville, CO

9AM- Registration

11AM- Practice

1PM- Competition starts

$15 registration fee at the competition

Competition is open to the first 50 competitors

6:30PM After Party and SWAG Giveaways at Doc Hollidays with live music from GrooveSpeek.

Must be 18 years or older to participate.

Mustaches and helmets strongly recommended.

Saturday, March 21st- En Fuego at Copper

Until next week, have fun! :)

Murphy's Law is in effect

Well, the skiing in Whistler is good. It is the ONLY thing that has gone as planned on this vacation.

Thursday morning started off with the discovery that I needed a passport to check in for my flight. I realize you need a passport to leave the country- I was not trying to leave the country without a passport. It's just that my mom had my passport and she was flying from Omaha (a flight she was rushed for because my dad turned the alarm off when it rang and she went back to sleep rather than getting up), so I did not have my passport in Denver. Luckily, the intelligent ticket agent at the United Airlines ticket counter was helping me. It turns out that I had lots of company in the area of passport issues- I at least had one (as opposed to the man trying to fly to Sudan, who apparently did not require a passport to enter the US... or the man who had a passport that expired 10 years ago). After sitting at the ticket counter for an hour and a half, the man decided that he would just ticket me to Portland and that I could present my passport once I got to Portland in order to receive my flight to Vancouver, CD.

Then, once we were in Portland, I did manage to easily receive a ticket to Vancouver. I also exchanged US currency for Canadian currency and was not charged a service fee. So, Portland was good aside from wondering if my suitcase (which had been red-tagged since I was not ticketed for the entire trip) would make it to Vancouver.

When it came time to fly to Vancouver, we had to walk across the tarmac in order to get to the airplane, and it was raining (something that NEVER happens in Portland). Then I annoyed the flight attendant with my backpack that didn't quite fit into the overhead bin. Once they served beverages, I succeeded in dumping a can of Coke all over a magazine that I was reading along with the clothes that I was wearing.

We landed in Vancouver and got through border patrol without a problem. I immediately found my suitcase on the baggage claim carousel, and was absolutely delighted at the fact that it arrived, and then I realized that it was missing a wheel and was a little less delighted. My mom was not at all delighted when she discovered that her suitcase arrived in Portland after we had already arrived in Vancouver.

Then we took a coach bus up to Whistler. The experience was interesting to say the least. My mom heard the driver say something about "I couldn't sit in the back row, my driving would make me sick". I thought maybe he was just prone to motion sickness, but I quickly caught on to the fact that that was not the case at all. We would just whip around turns at excessive speed. The fact that the trip started off with the bus stalling twice in an "airport exit" lane did not exactly improve my perception of the bus and its driver.

Once in Whistler, my mom got upset with the front desk guy who didn't seem entirely confident that her suitcase would arrive by the morning. Once we got to the building that had our room, we couldn't get the automatic doors to open (we checked in in one building because it was "after hours" and then had to go to another building to get to our room). It turns out that a room key makes the door open, once you locate the slot to slide it in, in the darkness. Discovering that our 1 bedroom unit had been upgraded to a 2 bedroom unit was a welcomed end to our day.

Friday morning (today) my mom was all excited about getting her suitcase. However, when we went downstairs to ask about it, it turns out that even though she was told she would get her suitcase around 8AM, she probably wouldn't actually get it until around 10AM. We went and got our rentals and my mom and I both ended up with skis/snowboard that are about 10cm shorter than what we use at home. Then someone had to go hunt down bindings that would work with the men's boots I was using (my mom's suggestion to this was: Can't you just use men's bindings? Yes Mom, they could, but they wanted to use women's bindings... but in the end, I received men's bindings anyway). We went back to the hotel room and my mom got her suitcase. Only problem was that somewhere along the way, the 3 digit combination lock had gotten spun and my mom didn't know what the combination was. She and I managed to both get dressed to go skiing with what I had brought for winter clothes. Luckily she skis, because if I (a snowboarder) spent the day in jeans, I would have been miserable after I sat down to put my board on two or three times.

We finally got up to the top of the mountain around 11:15 and decided to wait for the "mountain orientation" tour that started at 11:30 since we had no clue where we wanted to go. At the end of 2 hours, I had a good idea of where on the mountain I didn't want to go.
*It is a very long, flat traverse from the Solar Coaster chairlift to the 7th Heaven chairlift. I do not recommend snowboarders take it for the first run of the day.
*T -bars on a snowboard are almost as bad as Poma lifts on a snowboard.
*The T-bars are not in an enjoyable location to exit by snowboard.

After a lunch break, we got back on the mountain and made a few more runs before 4pm when our legs insisted that we stop for the day.

We then had a rather eventful trip to the grocery store, but that is going to have to be a story for next week's blog because I need to go to sleep so that I have energy tomorrow.

A week of inner peace

This week was "Inner Peace" week on campus. I'm not sure where the idea originated, but I think it was a good one.

I had a delightful afternoon in Silverthorne wandering around the outlet malls doing some shopping. It was at least 50 degrees that day, probably closer to 60. If you live in the area and have never been to the Silverthorne outlet malls, I definately recommend a trip there even if you don't do any shopping. Although with their prices, it's hard to resist buying something. Most of the stores cater to teens and women, but there are some stores with infant and childrens clothing along with a few stores that sold outerwear. When you get hungry, Chipotle tends to be the restaurant of choice for "gourmet burritos and tacos". There are 3 different "villages" that make up the outlet malls, but there is a very nice walking path between them.
"Inner Peace" week kicked off on Sunday night with star gazing. I did not partake in this event because the idea of bundling up to go outside and look at stars did not particularly interest me.

Then on Monday, we had an Events Management class where I think a lot of us felt the stress (for a week of inner peace, class was not exactly increasing our inner peace, lol) of things not coming together quite as nicely as we would have liked them to. Paul told my committee to have posters distributed by February 23rd, and here it was March 2nd and they were sitting at the front of the classroom. Luckily, everyone in class took 10 or 15 posters to hang up, so things are progressing now. The rail jam is 2 1/2 weeks from now, but spring break complicates things because we all keep thinking "Oh, I have 2 1/2 weeks left", but it's more like a week when you factor in everyone leaving for spring break. Then we had a Student Government meeting where the only people in attendance were women. The only item of business was hearing about an incubator program for the Entrepreneurship program. Next fall, for $50/month, students will be able to rent office space to start their own business. There is also an opportunity to apply for mini-grants to assist in off-setting the costs of starting your business. After the meeting, the 5 girls that were there along with Sarah decided that it would be a fun idea to have a women's retreat (March is Women's History Month) and go rock climbing and/or to the hot springs in Buena Vista. We were all quite excited about this idea because sometimes the testosterone levels around here get to be a bit overwhelming. :)

Yesterday (Tuesday) there were two shifts of students signed up to go to the animal shelter to walk dogs as part of "Inner Peace" week. The 7 students signed up for the first shift turned into just me. Sarah and I went to the shelter anyway and took Cedar and Kena for a walk around Leadville for about an hour. Kena is a Husky and she was a lot of fun to walk. Cedar was a Golden Retriever/Husky mix who was a little shy. Then we went back to campus, and once again the group that was signed up didn't work out. We did manage to recruit Erin and Josh though. Then we went back to the shelter. Sarah, Erin, and Josh walked 3 little dogs named Coy, Zippy, and Poncho. I got to walk Kena again. We had a nice 45 minute or so walk, although I think the 3 small dogs were rather tired by the end. It was definately a fun day though and we were all interested in going back again (Erin may have been more interested in looking at cute cats than walking dogs though, lol). The picture at the top of this post was taken during the first walk around Leadville. The mountains looked slightly more majestic in person. I'll try to get more pictures uploaded when I get back from spring break- Sarah is supposed to email them to me.

Today was relatively uneventful. A group went snowshoeing as part of "Inner Peace" week but I haven't heard how it went.

Oh, my mini-rant of the day. In Colorado, considering that there are signs on the interstate that say "Remove Accidents From Traffic", I think it is safe to say that if you get in an accident in the bank parking lot, it is not necessary to leave your car sitting right in front of the drive-up ATM. As a result of two cars that felt it necessary to remain parked in front of the ATM, I got to park my car, walk to the ATM, and then walk back to my car. I'm not complaining about this small amount of exercise, but I was in a hurry to get back to campus because this was during our lunch break and I didn't need to personally experience:

"Paul: You're late

Student: I'm sorry

Paul: You're not sorry, you're late".

It turns out that I made it to class in plenty of time though, so I guess I don't have a whole lot to complain about. During Ski Patrol class, Paul also informed us that for our co-op experience next year, it is not too early to be thinking about it and that we should have an "A", a "B", a "C", and a "D" plan as far as where we would be interested in working. Pre-registration for fall courses (at least at the Timberline campus) will begin when students return from spring break on March 16th.

Tomorrow evening is the final activity of "Inner Peace" week. There is going to be a beginner's yoga session. I would go take part in it, but I will instead be on an airplane on my way to Vancouver, Canada.

I will try to give an update on Thursday night or Friday night, but I can't guarantee anything. More realistically, it will probably be next Thursday before I have internet access again (or at least internet access that I do not have to pay for).