From all of us at Snowskills.net, here’s to good snow in a cold and wet 2006!
Archive for the ‘General’ Category
National magazines report that the typical skier/rider gets between 4 and 6 days of skiing/riding per season. An avid skier/rider gets 7 to 12 days. If you’re getting up to 30 days, your employment is probably something other than full-time with a corporation or you live right in ski country. It’s may be difficult to hear such statistics, but it’s a reality of our sport that many factors can limit the number of opportunities to hit the slopes in any given season.
With such limited days, there’s no easy way to explain to a non-skier/rider the awesome memories that any day of skiing/riding provide. Join any apres-ski discussion at any bar in any country and the topic will be about all the great things that happened that day and all the great things that happened some other day. Skiing and riding builds memories strong enough to physically sense: I personally can still recall the smell of the rope rubbing on my gloves when I skied as a child at a local rope tow area. Even with a limited number of days on the hill, it doesn’t take many experiences to develop strong memories when skiing and riding.
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An old Maine sayin’ goes “An ounce of protection, is worth a pound of cure.” When that cure could be a knee operation or a cast on a broken limb, that ounce of protection will seem like a bargain to keep you enjoying the outdoors through the winter. According to sources on the Web, injuries due to equipment issues are one of the top five common accident causes. Downhill ski bindings have come a long way in design and materials to improve injury protection. The performance of your bindings relies on an annual maintenance check, however, to verify their condition and that takes a professional ski technician. Bindings will protect you when they are accurately set and functioning properly: only an experienced ski shop has the ability to assure you of both!
The 2005-2006 season officially begins with opening day at our home mountain, Sugarloaf/USA. We’ve already had a number of stormstorms that whitecapped the summit and the snowmakers added depth on a handful of trails for opening day. I’d guess there are a number of folks like me that can’t wait to get out there and rip it up…..wait a moment. Opening day is no time to get ahead of yourself. There are five months of winter ahead; there’s just too much fun before you to not think this through. The skiing and riding you recall from last season is old news; to start the season, start at the beginning and that means warming up the body through stretching.