Your most memorable winter

[randoskier]

My father was in the Air Force, so all over. I ended up in New York where I learned to ski. My father's parents came over from Poland around 1906-ish and set up in Brockton Mass. He ended up in Montana (Missoula) in forestry and became a ranger in the Beartooth/Absaroka area before joining up in WWII. His stories were so great, I decided to head to Bozeman.
Yeah, if you can ski ice (especially on tele gear!) you can ski anything. We need to get back to Austria/northern Italy. We're just waiting for the zombie apocalypse to end. When/where did your wife start?

Upstate? BTW MY buddy who is the B-52 pilot has a more difficult Polish surname than you. He is from Fresno.

The wife's start in skiing and alpinism? Iowa. Thus another story I will soon tell.

Upstate, as my wife says is north of the Bronx or west of Statin Island! I lived at Stewart AFB near Washingtonville. She's from New Jersey and went to college in Ithaca.

Nobody wants to own Staten Island! Wrong side of the Narrows. Norwegian Airlines used to fly in and out of Stewart, it is not far from my sister in CT so last time I flew back to Europe I flew from there. There is a new budget airline forming called Norse and they are going to revive that route. Do you fly for free on Delta?

[Montana St Alum]

Upstate? BTW MY buddy who is the B-52 pilot has a more difficult Polish surname than you. He is from Fresno.

The wife's start in skiing and alpinism? Iowa. Thus another story I will soon tell.

Upstate, as my wife says is north of the Bronx or west of Statin Island! I lived at Stewart AFB near Washingtonville. She's from New Jersey and went to college in Ithaca.

Nobody wants to own Staten Island! Wrong side of the Narrows. Norwegian Airlines used to fly in and out of Stewart, it is not far from my sister in CT so last time I flew back to Europe I flew from there. There is a new budget airline forming called Norse and they are going to revive that route. Do you fly for free on Delta?

I have flown the 737 into Stewart, after it became commercial.
Yeah. I do fly for free. Which begs the question as to why I don't non-rev to Europe to ski.
Good question.
The flights are wide open, as in 30+ first class seats available on the nonstop from SLC to Amsterdam (where we'd buy a ticket to Zurich or an airport in Austria.
During COVID, I don't want to be on the hook for 10 days of hotel rent if I test positive on the exit back home. Also, my wife doesn't ski and is passionate about mountain biking, so we do drive down to St. George during the winter.

[randoskier]

I grew up on the east coast and skied New York and New England.
In 1970, I took off for Big Sky country to go to school at Montana State University.
My first winter there can best be described as an epiphany!

The powder - quality, depth consistency - there were people who, jokingly, would wear a snorkel. You often had to wear something over your mouth to keep the powder out of your lungs from the face shots. The lack of crowds. The terrain. Almost like those YouTube videos where a deaf person gets a cochlear implant and hears their loved ones for the first time.

We joked about identifying someone who skied at Bridger Bowl around that time as having "Bridger Bowl Hands", where they had to keep their hands up so the powder wouldn't drag the baskets so much.

Bridger Bowl is the best ski area in the USA!

My wife also has the hands-up style, I call it the Hallelujah style. Also perfected "out west". She has a very upright telemark style and has never ever skied a ski with a locked heel. I remember years ago she took a telemark lesson at Livigno to try to learn how to better deal with steep Alpine ice here in Europe, we have plenty of it, but it was totally alien to her. The instructor told her to do something or other and said- "Just like you would do on your alpine skis". She replied she had skied only telemark her entire life and had never been on an alpine ski- he was like- "I never met anyone like that before" ...stumped the panel I guess. They are used to teaching people who already are alpine skiers and want to try telemark.

Where in the east are you from?

My father was in the Air Force, so all over. I ended up in New York where I learned to ski. My father's parents came over from Poland around 1906-ish and set up in Brockton Mass. He ended up in Montana (Missoula) in forestry and became a ranger in the Beartooth/Absaroka area before joining up in WWII. His stories were so great, I decided to head to Bozeman.
Yeah, if you can ski ice (especially on tele gear!) you can ski anything. We need to get back to Austria/northern Italy. We're just waiting for the zombie apocalypse to end. When/where did your wife start?

I met my wife in Schipol Airport though we were both living in Colorado at the time. Plane was seriously delayed, some how we started talking about climbing since we both climb. I asked her where she learned to climb and she told me the Iowa Mountaineers, I laughed I thought it was a joke but she was serious. From 1940 to 2006 they were a leading climbing organization in the US, very enthusiastic and inclusive- they climbed and skied all over the place from the Andes to Alaska, spent a lot of time out west on road-trips- she did Joshua, Devils Tower, Vedauwoo WY, Red Rocks, the big volcanoes in Mexico, the Diamond on Long's, the Grand Teton, etc.. This club was killed off by the Millennials/Generation -Selfie. It was run out of U Iowa where she went to school, Hawkeyes!


She really improved her telemarking when she was working for the NPS at Rocky Mountain National Park on trail crew and later in Estes Park's ER after she finished her RN degree. At that time there was a lift served, not much-groomed ski area in RMNP called Hidden Valley. It had a big local telemark scene especially during the week, a lot of real good telemark skiers came out of there. A group of her friends from Estes Park were among the first ever to ski the Cham to Zermatt Haute Route on Tele-gear (leather boots, straight skis!). Alas the damn NPS killed off the lifts and ruined the fun. They also had a anti-structure phase around that time and destroyed a lot of beautiful old cabins to "save" the Wilderness.

An earlier time at HV-

She lived in a small cabin in Wild Basin when she was working for the hospital- very basic cabin- outhouse, clawfoot, woodstove for hot-water, and all that. It was about a century old. Rented it from Mike Donahue who owned the Colorado Mountain School- his son Topher is a major climber, crazy level on rock.

All that mountain fun started in iowa, only in America!

[Montana St Alum]

Iowa!
I expect you've both seen the documentary, "The Alpinist".

[randoskier]

We joked about identifying someone who skied at Bridger Bowl around that time as having "Bridger Bowl Hands", where they had to keep their hands up so the powder wouldn't drag the baskets so much.

@Montana St Alum Like dat?

(When she worked for the Park she skied a lot at Bridger Bowl)

[Montana St Alum]

Oh yeah. BB hands.