Search results for: “san juans”

January 23, 2001
 
Mr. Kurt Miller
Warren Miller Entertainment
2540 Frontier Avenue
Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301
 
Dear Kurt:
 
With your father living in the San Juans and you being around Seattle off and on for a long time, you must have heard about The Mountaineers – those guys with the long lines of climbers going up Mt. Rainier in the early days. Have you ever heard about Meany Lodge, the Mountaineers’ ski hut at Stampede Pass?  Meany is a remarkable place in a lot of ways and if you haven’t seen it you should check it out.
 
A couple of years ago in your movie you featured a guy who ran a rope tow for his own kids. Meany has sort of that kind of feel about it – only with a lot more people and sort of a time warp aspect to it.  In the issue of Ski magazine where your dad’s column first appeared this year, there was an article about a guy skiing one of Colorado’s lost ski areas. The folks he interviewed reminisced about dads running the rope tow and kids learning to ski in a non-commercial environment.  Then he found the old runs and realized that they were pretty sweet.  Meany is real close to that.
 
Meany is about three miles in from the road.  You ride in to the lodge on a 1950s vintage snow cat (a Bombardier "muskeg ox" that has been stretched and had its tracks widened by the guys at the Lodge).  If there are too many of you some tow behind.
 
The Lodge interior looks like it was frozen in the 50s – and many of the Meany regulars were obviously skiers then. There are Tyrolian style wall paintings and lots of little kids running around. Everything looks like it has been improvised by guys who tend to over-engineer.  Everything is done by volunteers and their priority is obviously skiing, not fashion.
 
So here is the first pitch – family scenes, old guys (some in their 90s!), teenage boarders with bleached hair, everybody in ski wear with lots of duct tape, a bunch of odd contraptions including ancient snow cats and a rope tow of almost Rube Goldberg complexity – and everybody having a great time. Could come close to the snow-making scenes of those two guys with the ski jump on the farm.  Film in the summer and you’ll get footage of people brushing the slopes by hand, digging ditches, remodeling buildings, cutting firewood, overhauling snow cats, erecting towers, etc. In the winter there is a PSIA ski school affording pictures of cute kids snowplowing, going off jumps, falling down, etc.
 
On one wall of the main room in the Lodge is a rack full of tow grippers.  Kurt, you may not have grown up skiing with tow grippers, but I’ll bet your dad can tell you stories about them.  Can you think of another place in the US where they are still in use? (They are prohibited by the ANSI lift codes now, but Meany was using them when the Washington regulations were adopted and it was grandfathered in.)  The style used at Meany is what the Kiwis call "nutcrackers".  They are metal pliers that cam on the rope, but they also hang from a belt at about crotch level. The Meany tow is about 1,200 feet long with a 500 ft. elevation gain. The upper part of it is real steep. They used to run it fast, but in this age of softies they keep it down to about 19 mph (know how fast a high speed quad goes?).  Here is the second pitch – imagine people being pulled up this hill with rollers and bumps and drifted ungroomed snow on either side of the track. Imagine them getting air off the bumps and flying when they crest over the edge onto the platform at the top of the tow.  Now imagine that these folks include boarders, skiers with funny old gear and hand knitted hats, telemarkers, little kids with aggressive attitudes – all with lots of duct tape.  Now imagine the footage of the newbies!  Kurt, guess what happens when you clamp down with a tow gripper before you are up to speed?  At the beginning of the season they station a guy at the bottom of the tow with a shovel to fill in the faceplants.  The steep part with the rollers causes spectacular flailing falls with even more spectacular slides.  When someone falls at the top everyone in line behind him either bails or falls and the pile-ups of people unloading from the tow would get as many laughs as those vintage scenes of people unloading from chairlifts.  For most people skiing in America nowadays it will also seem pretty damn exotic (or at least anachronistic for those old enough to remember when rope tows were high tech).  It may not be India and skiing with bandsaw blade edges, but the skiing at Meany isn’t like anywhere else.
 
Now, here comes the clincher – the skiing itself is good and photogenic.  Because the hill doesn’t get skied during the week it usually has untracked snow on the weekends. Because it is on the east side of the crest it gets snow which is a whole lot lighter and drier than that at Snoqualmie just up the road. (Listen, there is an outfit called Cascade Powder Cats that is running a snow cat skiing operation just a little way down the ridge from Meany.)  Imagine these folks with the old gear and the funny hats (and the boarders and the little kids with helmets and attitudes) skiing open pitches of deep untracked powder.  If you learn to ski at a place like Meany where only a little of the snow gets groomed, you learn to ski really well, so these guys look smooth.  Then they drop into the trees.  Or they plunge down a really steep bank into a gully with a hot-tub sized hole full of water at the bottom.  Or they launch off a cornice or a cliff.  Or they hit a kicker.  There are something like 30 named runs from the top of that tow (most of the names are from the Al Capp cartoon strip which kind of reinforces the time warp aspect of the whole scene.)  There is enough variety to keep the crowd happy for the weekend, which also means that there is enough to give you decent shots of a lot of interesting terrain. The view from the top of the lift is pretty neat with all of the peaks in the central part of the Cascade crest visible on a clear day.  On one side of the lift the hill is exceptionally steep with widely spaced trees.  This slope gives some of the sweetest short powder shots you can imagine.  The get-back ("psychopath") is at the top of a cliff and protected with rotten climbing ropes.  The pool in the stream at the bottom of the cliff is named for Ferguson, a guy who fell in sometime in the late 50s.  Kurt, you could complement the humorous footage of the rope tow with shots of folks skiing some really good stuff.  The same folks who run the chain saws and welders in the summer are out there cutting smooth arcs in the powder during the winter. Or, send up a few of your big-name skiers or snowboarders and we’ll show them backcountry snow where it is as exciting going up as down.
 
You can pretty well imagine the scenes in the interior of the lodge after a day of skiing.  You’ve got about a hundred folks (who’ve shed the ski wear with the duct tape for polypro long johns) sitting around waiting for dinner in a sort of museum / rec room environment.  You’ve got old guys snoozing.  You’ve got a bunch of kids running around in and out of the snow.  You’ve got teenagers trying to claim a spot for themselves where nobody can see what they’re up to.  The energy level gets higher and higher as dinner approaches.  The place must look pretty much like it has for the last 70 plus years.  Then the whole crowd gets fed – a spectacle in itself.  Periodically they try to revive the tradition of folk dancing after dinner.  Kurt, it’s what ski lodges were like forty years ago!
 
The final pitch is the scene at the end of the weekend.  Three o’clock, the lessons are over, the lift ropes get hung so they won’t be buried before the next weekend, and everybody gets ready to head down.  Now, over the weekend there have been four or five cat loads of skiers coming to the lodge but everybody goes home at the same time.  Imagine 30 plus people loaded into this old snow cat. Imagine the packs and stuff piled high on top.  Imagine that forty or fifty more people have skied or snowboarded down to the spot where the trail flattens out and lined up on either side.  Image the loaded, topheavy-looking snow cat lumbering up between these two lines trailing a couple of ropes. Then imagine the footage of the snow cat towing all those skiers and snowboarders, in their funny hats and duct tape, as they whiz down a logging road throwing snowballs, playing crack-the-whip, knocking snow off the overhanging branches and generally celebrating another weekend.  Imagine the look on the face of the snowmobiler coming the other way who cuts around the snow cat only to find fifty skiers trailing behind.  Imagine the scene when the cat stops at a snow park dominated by RVs with snowmobile trailers.  Imagine skiers inching past mud puddles big enough to hide a car so that they don’t have to take off their skis.  Imagine snowmobiles whizzing everywhere, dozens of cars covered with snow, and this ancient snow cat with the packs on top whipping around in the middle of it.  Imagine those folks with the funny hats and duct tape unloading skis and boards and kids and gear in the middle of the mud and trucks and confusion.  Imagine them saying goodbye to each other and then getting in their fancy SUVs and Subarus.  The images of towing out behind the cat and the scene at the parking lot would be compelling even without the shots of the rope tow and the skiing!
 
 
Now here is the thing. If you want to capture the Meany scene you’re going to have to act now because they are talking about building themselves a chair lift!  It is true that they’ve talked about a chair lift for the last ten or twenty years, but this time they’re serious. They have a couple of schemes, but it looks like they can get most of the parts of an old double chair for free and they’re able to scare up a lot of volunteer labor.  It would be a sad thing if this uniquely Northwest ski experience vanished before you got your chance.  I don’t know what role you have in the films after having sold your company, but filming at Meany would give scenes that aren’t going to show up in any of the new-school videos and would provide a glimpse into a vanished era.  Kurt, even if this isn’t your job anymore, do your fans in Seattle a favor and pass the idea on to whoever does look at this kind of stuff.
 
 
So, anyway, let me know if I’ve sold you.  There is a Meany website with some pictures and a trail map at http://www.obatik.com/meany/.   I’d love to host some of your guys if they want to check the Lodge out some weekend, winter or summer.  I’ll even show them my favorite runs.  I’ll lend them a chainsaw.  Just let me know – and remember, if you don’t do it now you’ll be another year older when you do.
 
Yours truly,
 
 
Jerry Scott

FOUR DAYS IN THE GULF ISLANDS

JUNE 23 – 26, 2005

 

June 23rd – Thursday

 

Ferry left Tsawwassen at 10:00 AM, arrived at Galiano Island at 10:50 AM

Left Seattle about 5:30. No issues getting into Canada. Took the wrong exit and drove the Ladner Trunk Road to the causeway. Parked in the economy section. Paid for an extra day’s parking by mistake. Bought tickets, found a bike rack, poked around the terminal. Waited a couple of hours. Queued up with other bikers & fishermen by the loading ramp and watched the cars come off. Rode the ferry to Sturdies Bay on Galiano. Ramp up from ferry looked steep so Odette walked. Got a call from a potential employer while waiting for her. Surrounded by a bunch of summer camp kids. Couldn’t get a signal to call back. Rode to the Inn and dropped off panniers. Rode to the Marina at Montague Harbor for lunch. Steep hill. Rode on out to the end of the road at Porlier Pass. One great viewpoint called Lover’s leap. Odette knocked me off the bike by dismounting on the wrong side. Rode back via Porlier Pass road for a small loop. – 36 mile tour.

Stayed at Woodstone Country Inn, Dinner there at 7:00.   Best shower in at least ten years. Great dinner – lamb

 

June 24th – Friday

 

Ferry left Galiano Island at 4:40 PM, arrived at Saturna Island at 5:40 PM

Breakfast at 9:00. Left panniers at Inn and repeated the Montague – Porlier loop – hill seemed much less steep. Loop seemed really short. Spent a long time in the bookstore. Returned call and arranged interview. Rode to the Bluffs park and locked the bike to a gate. Walked the dirt road to a really spectacular viewpoint. Returned to Sturdies Bay and had ice cream. Walked to a bike shop but didn’t go in. Waited all afternoon for the ferry. Explored terminal and adjacent beach thoroughly. Rode the ferry through active passage – against the tide. – 17 mile tour.

Stayed at Saturna Lodge, Dinner there at 7:00

Rode the ferry-ramp without Odette. Waited for a wedding party to assemble and depart. Rode a short hill and then a pretty lane to the Inn. Steep descent into the parking lot. Discovered that we were sharing a bath. Showered in time for dinner. Great meal – beef.

 

June 25th – Saturday

 

Toured Saturna Island

Breakfast at 8:30. Hill up wasn’t as steep as it seemed. Hill out of Lyall Harbor was steep and long. Walked last part of it when Odette gave up pedaling. She screamed on the downhills. Rode from Winter Cove to East Point. Walked in the park and on the beach. Rode back to Winter Cove. Saw lots of deer. Repeated ride to East Point and walked on other side of the point. Stopped at Russell Reef on way back so Odette could use the restroom. Hills were much easier in that direction. – 34 mile tour.

Stayed at Saturna Lodge, Dinner there at 7:00.  Showered. Sat in garden. Great dinner – Lamb.

 

June 26th – Sunday

 

Ferry left Saturna Island at 10:05 AM, arrived at Mayne Island at 10:30 AM

Packed. Loaded the bike. Walked in garden. Breakfast at 8:30. Got to ferry terminal an hour early. Explored. Pestered ticket lady until she took our money. Saw seals. Rode ferry to Mayne. Rode ferry-ramp without Odette. Steep hills fully loaded to Miners Bay. Steep hills fully loaded to Georgina Point. Steep hills fully loaded to Bennett Bay. Steep hills fully loaded back to Village Bay ferry. Got map from real estate place and read it. Waited three-plus hours for the ferry. Explored terminal. Explored adjacent beach. Explored terminal again. Odette called parents. Talked to other bicycle tourists. Listened to iPod. – 15 mile tour.

Ferry left Mayne Island at 4:30 PM, arrived at Tsawwassen at 6:10 PM

Cheeseburger on the ferry. Rode bike (with Odette eventually) to economy park. Went through truck customs. Guy looked at me in my jersey and bike shorts with a tandem on the top and asked what I had been doing for four days in the Gulf Islands. Resisted the temptation to say that we had been golfing. Rain started at Bellingham. Got home at 9:30. unpacked, ate chips & ice cream, shaved and got to bed about midnight.
(here’s a link to the gallery)

Gulf Island Book List:

 

Enloe & Richardson – Bicycle touring the Southern and Northern Gulf Islands

Powers & Travis – Touring the Islands Bicycling in the San Juans, Gulf, and Vancouver Islands

Wilson – Exploring by Bicycle – Southwest British Columbia and Northwest Washington

Katz – The Complete Guide to Bicycling in Canada

Priest – Bicycling Vancouver Island & The Gulf Islands

Rinn – The Gulf islands Guide

KEY WORD SEARCHES.

climbing – all books about getting to the top of stuff
climb guide – "where to" guides
climb technique – "how to" books
climb gear – small number of books about hardware
climb literature – literature (mainly climbing narratives) about climbing, much of it away from the Cascades

hiking – all books about trails and puting one foot in front of the other
hike guide – "where to" guides
hike gear – small number of books about gadgets
snowshoe – books about hiking in the winter

biking – all books about bicycles
bike guide – "where-to" guides
bike tour – technique for multi-day bike trips
bike gear – hardware (mainly maintenance and repair books)

skiing – all books about glisse sports
ski tour – overnight ski trips
ski mountaineering – sumits on skis
ski technique – bend the knees, $5 please
ski gear – tuning, waxing, etc

mountain rescue – SAR
first aid – injury treatment
avalanche – snow slides

natural history – all books about the environment
plants – vegetable kingdom
animals – birds, fish, mamals, etc.

history – recorded (human) occurances
railroad – books about one of the driving forces of our regional history

geology – earth sciences
mining – extractive industries

photography – design and production of images
paddle sports – kayak and canoe

San Juans – islands in the north sound
North Cascades – pretty much north of Mt. Rainier
Mt. Rainier – the mountain you see from Seattle
South Cascades – south of Mt. Rainier
Eastern Washington – east of the crest (enchantments, chelan, teanneway, paseyten)
Olympics – the peninsula (national park, beaches, mountains)

Puget Sound – the metropolis

Mt. Hood – the mountain you see from Portand
Western Oregon – west of the cascades
Eastern Oregon – high desert
Wallowas – northeast mountains (eagle cap wilderness)

British Columbia – vancouver island to the rockies
Idaho – famous potatoes
California – left coast
Alaska – sourdoughs
Southwest – arizona, new mexico, utah

Europe – excluding the russian far east
Himalaya – all of the big mountains
Latin America – mexico, central america, south america