Kootenay Mountain Culture Blog
Early morning rain, and cold temperatures have been lingering around Nelson, for the last week or so. All ingredients to a great late season of Skiing.
We followed the plow up this morning to Whitewater, and skiied what could be called something very close to pow. Coastal style.
I'd like to thanks Darren Davidson for his ski model prowess.
Kootenay Mountain Culture Blog
As Published in Skier Magazine:
The Lodge
By Mitchell Scott
Brand new ski lodges blow. Cold, big, crowded, fancy, expensive, like some downtown food court that crashed into a forest. Today most resort lodges are less lodge and more some kind of whacked hybrid of urban sophistication and mountain chic plopped down in some totally remote location—like a peak. A troika of unlikelies. Monstrous, cold, bright-like-you’re-still-outside-in-the-maelstrom pyramids of modern excess. You can’t call that a lodge. It’s not a lodge! A wood-hewn, millionaire’s mansion mimic, poorly placed apparition that sells pad thai and cappuccinos. Could it be?
As far as I’m concerned, the word “lodge” and “new” shouldn’t be allowed to share any sort of proximity. You shouldn’t be able to walk into a “new” lodge. Because when you do, walk into a “new” lodge that is, you’re walking into bullshit. Metaphorical bullshit of course, but who wants shit on their boots? Not me.
Real lodges are all about old and weathered. Lodges are warm because they’ve been worked in, like a good pair of gloves. They’re comfortable because you don’t care: You don’t care if your ski boot puts a dent in the door, or your jacket leeches fast melting snow down the wall. Kids can spill fries, squirt ketchup and let hot chocolate spill and soak into their mitts. The lodge smells that real booty, tangy, chilly life smell. Not that new varnish, new carpet smell that hides everything in new and takes decades to stifle.
The true lodge is a dying breed here in Canada. Resorts think we want fancy pants. Big space age windows and giant beams. Steel and granite and everything else opulent and expensive in the world. With giant windows everywhere. Whole trees even. I remember being a kid and not even wanting to see outside because the weather was so bad. You wanted a nice dark cave of retreat. Reprieve from the elements. To scam fries and bits of pop and warm up like you were in the basement beside the woodstove. Of course, if it were nice, you’d just eat outside the lodge. Duh.
But real skiers—from little tykes to old bastards—want the old lodge. I know it’s so. The dark, dirty in the corners, poorly planned, wood worn, bent, uneven, beer stained, story saturated spaces of skiing’s true self. You don’t give five shits about the interior as long as it has food, drink and warmth. Heck, it doesn’t even have to have food because hard-core badass skiers who really care about skiing bring sandwiches they eat on the chairlift. A hot chocolate machine maybe, but that’s it.
Why? Because you’re having so much fun outside. Because loitering over lattes in turtlenecks lost in poorly scheduled conversation is just plain wrong. In and out. Right back to the action. Let the good times roll. You don’t go to a ski hill to spend time (or quite worse, admire) the inside of the lodge, nor the food or the gift shops or the art. It’s like going to an NHL playoff game and spending unnecessary minutes styling your hair in the bathroom. Well, maybe not quite that bad.
And don’t forget. Ski amenities are a tax. Imbedded within every lift ticket you’re paying for at least a board foot of that fancy Douglas-fir window frame that extends way into the sky. A season’s pass covers part of the stupid bear sculpture in the stupid lobby. No, the lodge should be paid off. Completo. The bank said congrats way back in ‘82. It gets the odd reno because it’ll fall apart if it doesn’t. Maybe new bar stools every 20 years or so. But that’s it. That’s all we really need and should ever want. Shelter from the storm, a place so average kids would rather submit to freezing rain than hangout. Where the only loiterers are beat-down backpacks and the smell of the slopes.
Kootenay Mountain Culture Blog
As mountain and road riding start to float in off the horizon, I thought I'd share this.
Priorities, priorities
CONCERNED ROADIE
Dear Abby,
I've never written to you before, but I really need your advice. I
have suspected for some time now that my wife has been cheating on me.
I've witnessed the usual signals; the phone rings, but if I answer,
the caller hangs up. My wife has been going out with 'the girls' a lot
recently, although when I ask their names she always says, "Just some
friends from work, you don't know them."
I always try to stay awake to look out for her coming home, but I
usually fall asleep.
I think deep down I just didn't want to know the truth, but last
night she went out again and I decided to really check on her.
Around midnight, I decided to hide in the garage behind my road &
mountain bikes so I could get a good view of the whole street when
she arrived home from a night out with 'the girls'.
When she got out of the car she was buttoning up her blouse, which
was open, and she took her panties out of her purse and slipped them on.
It was at that very moment, crouching behind my bike, I noticed a slight
crack in the downtube, two inches behind the headset.
Is this something I can fix myself, or should I take it back to the
bike shop?
Concerned Roadie
Kootenay Mountain Culture Blog
This is a couple of years old. And we're looking a little dorky. But it gives you a good idea of what we're all about.
Check out: http://www.rideguide.ca/frmSearchSnow.aspx?&search=SNOW%20131&segment=3
Kootenay Mountain Culture Blog
I'm posting some press releases for the upcoming Kootenay Coldsmoke Festival here in Nelson at the end of February. This is really turned into one of the highlight events of the winter season, and we're honoured to be title sponsors along with Mountain Gear and our good friends at Arc'teryx. Make the trip, the event (and the Kootenays) are due for a walloping dump.
Kootenay Mountain Culture Blog
Well, we took our popular (in Nelson) Backyard Booty show to Revelstoke this past weekend (Jan. 10). We had the cards stacked against us a bit. No one knew where the Knights of Pythias Lodge was (that's where we booked). There were other events happening including the CAA's annual fund raising auction. But no matter, where there's a will there's a way. We wanted to introduce the show in a non-pretentious way and managed to attract 60 or so Revelstokians. Young and old, boarders and skiers, hairy people and not so hairy. It turned out to be a beauty. Heather Lea from Revy told a great story, the shows had the audience on the edge of their seats, and we shredded big snow on a MASSIVE mountain all weekend (www.revelstokemountainresort.com).
Revelstoke's coming of age. Look for the Backyard Booty to return to Revy bigger and better next year.
-MS
Labels: booty, multimedia, Revelstoke
Kootenay Mountain Culture Blog
La Ticla, Mexico, Dec. 8, 2008
Under a long roof of tinder dry, sun baked palm fronds, sitting on a white plastic table beside a giant bottle of tequila was KMC's winter issue. I had biked to MEC on Main St. in Vancouver three times in hopes of getting a copy before leaving for Mexico but it wasn't out yet. After two weeks, a gun point robbery, a shaman in the trees, and some nice fucking waves I found it in a small town on the Pacific Coast. Nelsonites - they're everywhere. Andale.
Photo submitted by KMC contributor Susan Hollis
Labels: babes, beach, beers, Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine
