Naeba Trip

We (a bunch of people from the company) went to Naeba over the weekend. Photos are available over here. It’s mid-February and we had late-April conditions. The temperature got up to about 15 degrees, and we were slushing through this heavy slurpee crap. My backpack filled up with everyone’s extra layers of fleece and gore-tex, and a couple liters of water, and chocolate, and on and on, and pretty soon I was getting in some good backcountry practice with maybe 10-12 kilos on my back . . .

It was a blast though. My fourth and fifth days on telemark gear, which is much more demanding than alpine. You have to get your weight centered over your skis. You HAVE to. You’re supposed to on modern alpine boards too, but they’re much more forgiving since the bindings hold your feet in securely, toe and heel, and you can wrench them around as you need to when you start going too far forward or backward.

So telemark is great stuff. It’s curing me of all kinds of bad habits I learned during the last 20 years on alpine gear. My balance is improving, and as it turns out this lesson is an especially important one when you’re in snow that sucks and slops at your boards, refusing to let you get down the hill unless you have the strength to punch through it and the balance to ensure that you’re sqarely over your feet when you do so.

I fell on my butt countless times. I got sunburned to hell; my face is bright red now. I took loads of pictures. I’m sore and tired and unhappy to be back in the office, and I want to go again now now NOW.

I do, however, want this spring weather to disappear. We need more snow in the hills if there’s to be a proper spring-skiing season in late March and April.

(I wrote most of the above earlier this week, and it has gotten a bit colder since then. I’m glad we didn’t see winter end in February!)

02/25/2004 | fun | Comments

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