Category Archives: ski bum life

So last year was another hellish Year of The Boots in ski world. I’d skied enough days in my trusty Atomic 80s to pack out the liners. Some people can get away with cruddy footwear but I’m not one of them–for me, boots that are too loose lead to lots of falls and lack of control. But the counter is that I’m hard to fit. I need room in the toe box with a snug heel. That means boots with a last designed for a woman’s foot. Add to that the reality that I wanted to move up a level in responsiveness–that meant a stiffer boot. The 80 in my previous boot’s name reflected a measure of boot stiffness called flex–most beginners ski a 60 or lower flex. I wanted a bit more control.

So I went out to buy a new boot in April. Ski boot buying in April, in my size, sucks. I had a spare pair of boots around the house I tried to make work but they were too big, didn’t fit my arch, hurt my feet horribly and made me trip on the stupidest inclines. A short spell in rental boots in the right size pointed that need out sharply. But when I went shopping around PDX, I literally could only find five pairs of boots in my size, with the requisite stiffness, in the local shops. REI had pulled their stock for the summer and–well, given my foot issues, I’m not about to buy boots online. Nor was I going to forfeit six more weeks of ski season.

Ergo, the Dalbello Electras. I kinda sorta got used to them, but the crappy thing for me in buying boots toward the end of the season is that they usually don’t work well. If my feet are already unhappy in boots, they want to stay unhappy, and while I could feel the potential in the Electras, the reality was that I’d upgraded a level of stiffness in a ski year that already sucked due to packed out boots, a bum hip, and lousy May weather. I packed the boots away for the summer in June, planning to take them into the shop this fall to get some adjustments made to the fit.

I still haven’t done that. Part of my rationale goes back to carefully thinking through the process. The Electra is not only a stiffer boot by level (90), but they were on the stiffer end of a 90. They’re a higher skill level boot, so, instead of merrily pulling them on and going skiing, or hauling them off to the shop, I decided to suck it up and dedicate my Thanksgiving furlough break to breaking in the boots (and acclamating my feet to the dang thing). I look at it as being like a version of breaking in high-quality riding field boots–the more time I spend breaking the boots in and conditioning them, the better fit they’ll have. Rather than try to break them in and ski with them simultaneously, maybe it’s better to spend some time clomping around the house and doing stuff to break them in.

After all, there’s only two feet of snow at Timberline. No precip in sight. It’s close to ski time but not there–and no way am I going up with levels this low. My character Melanie would, but she’s also a hell of a lot better skier than I’ll ever be (and much more obsessed).

Last night I made it to an hour after wrenching the boots on. They came on easily tonight, and I did a light weight workout wearing them and I’m at two hours. One thing I’m figuring out is that perhaps I don’t need the heavier socks I’d started wearing in the Atomics (ulp, perhaps that was a sign of upcoming liner packing out). I’m starting to get the ball of the foot to spread out in the toe box for optimal ski tip control (it’s how I visualize the control) and the heel cup in the liner, while tight on my heels, is about the only dang thing I’ve run into that nails down my wandering heels hard and keeps them from wandering.

This could work.

Hmm. Maybe tomorrow night I’ll move beyond working out and clean tack while wearing ski boots.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking snow in probably one of the few places in the US that isn’t wet and snowy right now….which is unusual for us. And that makes me nervous in various other ways.

Yeah.  Bluebird Saturday skiing.  A wee bit of wind up on the Mile, but after one run in the icy slopes in the trees, we saw folks going up on the Mile and went for it.  Timberline left the chairs on overnight, so it didn’t take long to get it going.

Temps went from around 26 F to around 40 F by the time we left.  Nice crisp snow though, especially up high on the Mile.  We got in five runs on the Mile, six all told, and probably would have been more except I’m still reteaching my muscles about skiing correctly without flopping around in my boots.

Verdict from today is that the Boot Wars may be on their way to resolution.  I played around with buckle tension, and ended up having good control plus less muscle fatigue–though that clobbered me hard toward the end of our ski day.  The Lange boots are stiffer and more reactive than my old Atomic boots.  But putting in the heel lifts seems to have helped get me just that little bit more forward in the boot, and I’m committing to being more aggressive in manipulating and controlling the boot.  I had good spread in the ball of my feet and what started hanging me up was more in the tightness of the hip flexors rather than the foot flailing around inside the boot.  I even got a bit of spring going in shifting from ski to ski, and when I hit the chopped up, chundered snow I was able to cut right through it instead of wobbling around and fighting.

Now it’s just a question of feet in boots, boots on skis.  Turns on the Mountain.  Building up stamina and strength, retraining muscles out of bad habits.  And rehabbing these damned hips.

Once we were done skiing, we bought tea and coffee and sat on the day lodge’s upstairs deck.

Nice thing to be doing, sitting outside the day lodge on a sunny day, watching other people ski.

Yeah. Gotta love Saturday spring skiing.

Then we came home and my crocus are blooming.  Yay!

Had time to do some household chores, and then spend some time putting together a unit on Manifest Destiny.  Like the concept, the unit is starting to get pretty grandiose.  Let’s see how many different ways the technology can blow up THIS coming week (last week: laptop showed PowerPoint, document camera would not.  Document camera would independently work.  Next day, different laptop, PowerPoints run just fine…with no sound.  Fix that, can play YouTube videos with sound, and the next day?  Laptop cannot read CD-ROM.  That contains the perfect intro videos for Manifest Destiny.  That are not available on YouTube, and everything else I’ve found so far sucks.  Oy.  There Are Reasons I Still Use Paper Resources).

Oh, and nice quiet ride on horse last night.  More on that another time.

So the Boot Wars continue.  Today I rode the Lange Exclusives for the first time in something like four years.

I didn’t die.  Nor did I fall down.

But the experience was…definitely annoying. For one thing, it’s blatantly clear that I’ve picked up some bad foot movement habits from the previous boots.  The feet want to twist and turn in ways they aren’t supposed to twist and turn.  But…the Langes want to throw me into a deeper squat than I find comfortable.  I’m not forward enough and I still have wobble.  That said, I also got the solid feel of a boot that fits and had to spend a lot of time working on scaling down my control, because I was overcontrolling the ski. It was promising, though, to figure out that the foot part probably will work, because that was the problem before.  Now if we can just work on the angles…stopped by the bootfitter and got some heel lifts put in.

Despite the fact that I was working waay too hard, feeling the ol’ thigh burn, and all that good stuff, it was a good ski day.  I took some pictures but not a lot.  Hood itself was clear but the clouds surrounded everything around the Mountain.  There were a couple of moments up on top of the Mile where we spotted Mt. Jefferson, but for the most part, Timberline was a sunny outpost in a sea of clouds.

Damn, I hope I get this boot stuff figured out soon.  I’m tired of fighting my equipment.  I just want to ski….

Sunday was one of those absolutely gorgeous ski days.  Foggy and moody at home, but up on the Mountain it was crisp, bright and clear.  Driving up, we spotted snow whirls way up top and worried that they meant wind, but it was still at Timberline.  The snow was crisp and sharp underneath, and we got three runs in on the Flood chair before moving up to the Magic Mile.

Four runs on the Mile, two on an older section with a couple of interesting drops.  Sunny, sunny day, gorgeous time.

Today was mist and half-rain, half-snow.  Crisp, icy snow underfoot and a fresh wax job.  Both DH and I are still feeling our early season conditioning muscles, so we weren’t pushing it.  Kruser was a nice run so we did it three times.

But the second time, I took a fall. A real yard sale of a fall, as we call it in skiing, with both skis popping off and poles flying.  Not sure how or why I fell, really, just caught an edge on a little halfpipeish V curve that really isn’t that difficult, except…something caught.  I found myself overbalancing and going down, twisting in midair to catch the fall just behind my right shoulder joint, popping out of my bindings (good, I was thinking as that happened, I so do not want to feel that pain), and landing hard on my back.  My head thumped but the helmet absorbed the shock and my roll had me ending up half on my left side.  DH took a slow, careful fall, I was half-up by the time he was done.  We checked in with each other, then I stumped up the hill to retrieve my first ski and we snapped back in.  The snow was actually pretty forgiving; not hardpack, enough to have some give.  Less snow or a fall like that on hard ground would have hurt more.

So far, there doesn’t appear to be much going on other than sore muscles.  The abs I’ve been working as part of my Pilates program are achy tonight, which suggests to me that I subconsciously engaged them as I fell, my shoulder is sore, my hip is sore.  But I’ve had worse.  As a result, though, I got chilled and wet to the skin (not just that, some other stuff), and ended up feeling wiped out for the day.  Not surprising.

We did three more runs after my fall, and then called it quits.  By then the weather was an icy, sleety, snowy mix.  I was chilled enough that I had problems bagging my skis in the wind and needed help.  But once in the car and warmed up, all was well.

I keep thinking over the fall sequence, though.  Not from fear, rather, from thinking about how to describe it.  One thing I have noticed in falling from skis or from a horse is that I seem to have the same experience of intense focus and looking around for a place to fall.  I never seem to be able to do that if I trip while walking, but skiing or riding, I can.  It was odd because I had the same sensation of picking my spot to fall–there–and working with it.  Ski pops off here, I land here, other ski pops off here, head bonks here, roll onto side and stop.  Very clearly delineated.

The only thing I can’t account for is how my pole got bent.  Not bad, but clearly bent, enough that it was catching a little bit annoyingly.  I’ve got a spare, so that’s taken care of.

Anyway, that was interesting.  This year’s skiing is definitely less aggressive, mainly due to illness and to working my way back from last year’s hip injury/long term hip maintenance.  Getting back into shape.  It’s coming along.

ETA–looking back, these were ski days 5 and 6….

Today I remembered to bring the camera.  Lots of dry, fluffy snow, and alternating sun and clouds, especially up higher.  I even got to see a snowbow (pictured above).

DH didn’t ski today because his knee is still bugging him.  Timberline was hopping from the beginning.  I did a warmup run down Pucci–still don’t have my ski muscles back up and in line yet.  But a day like today helps.  A quick two runs down Pucci, and I continued on down to the bottom of Jeff Flood–where I decided I wasn’t ready to go yet.  So I moved over to Stormin’ Norman and stayed there the rest of the ski session, watching as the lifties worked to get the Magic Mile up and running.  It was still covered with rime ice from the last storm, and man, the snow depth is amazing for December.

I got in five runs on Norman, which isn’t too bad given the crowds later on and all.  About eleven the slopes started getting really chopped up, and I didn’t want to push my luck for the Mile today.  I didn’t start to see skiers on the Mile until after I’d taken my gear off.  Oh well.  It’s only the beginning of the season.  We’ll see what the end brings.  There’ll be plenty of good ski time.  Just getting my legs back.

And in the end, to be rewarded with this view….

Priceless.