by DK | Mar 4, 2015 | .
On Wednesday, the 4th of March, dawn blazed brilliantly over the mountain peaks and poured some welcome warmth into the Sawtooth Valley. The temperature at the Alturas Lake ski area started out at zero but quickly rose to a balmy 5 degrees by 9 a.m. Patriotic Sawtoothians honor this day since it marks the dawn of the Idaho Territory, signed into existence by Abraham Lincoln in the early morning hours of March 4th, 1863. We might suggest whooping it up with a celebratory afternoon ski tour around magnificent North Cabin Creek Trail and on to Alturas Lake. These trails were both groomed on Tuesday and are skiing great. What better place to experience “Ee-dah-how” – “Behold! the sun coming down the mountain!”
by DK | Mar 3, 2015 | .
In the small quaint villages and outlying homesteads of the Sawtooth and Wood River Valleys, the Stanley Basin and the Salmon river canyon, preparations for the 13th annual Sawtooth Ski Festival on March 7th and 8th are now in full swing. Unique homemade items by local artisans, such as mittens, stocking caps, jewelry, and paintings and photographs of outstanding merit will be offered at the Silent Auction dinner on Saturday Night in Stanley. Certificates for hearty dinners at local inns and public houses, as well as for entertaining horse, boat and ski excursions will be up for bid. Musical entertainment from Dewey, Pickette and Howe is expected to delight the assembled crowd. At outdoor events beginning at 11 a.m. each day for the athletically inclined, a chili feed should satisfy the poker run enthusiasts at Park Creek on Saturday. And on Sunday, at the Alturas lake ski trails, hearty soup dishes ladled out by pretty girls from the village should not to be missed. Skiing conditions are expected to be good at Park Creek where grizzled groomer Thaddeus Sardonicus has been shoveling snow onto bare spots and dragging and fluffing where he can. At Alturas, Timinius the Younger groomed to the lake on Monday and said the trail looked as good as he has ever seen it in his brief brilliant career. Leftover groomer Divinius the Elder was last seen shoveling in a tree well along the creek.
by DK | Feb 28, 2015 | .
On Friday, the 27th, Timinius returned from his sojourn to the beaver state and swiftly began grooming ski trails at Alturas Lake. Taking as his mantra the official Oregon motto – “She flies with her own wings”, he jumped on the Ginzu groomer and buffed out South Loop, Over the Hill and Sheep Thrills Trails. On Saturday, the last day of February, his plan was to clean up the rest of the trail system. Such a clean up seemed particularly fitting, since February, the last month to be added to the calendar, was named after Februatio, the Roman festival of ritual purification. With Timinius taking over grooming responsibilities, our now idle Finnish grooming master, Divinius, was sitting alone beside the frozen lake. In Finnish, February is called helmikuu, meaning “month of the pearl”. Davinius marveled at this image, as he watched the snow melt on willow branches beside the lake. First it formed lens like droplets. Hanging from the ruddy willow stems, they projected tiny upside down images of the world that delighted Davinius. Then, as the temperature dropped, these multiple world views faded away as the tiny droplets froze solid, leaving behind a mystical string of icy pearls in an alchemical transformation that heartily pleased the old hermit.
by DK | Feb 26, 2015 | .
Davinius did not set out seeking to groom a perfect ski trail, he knew that was beyond his reach. Grooming with a snowmobile, compaction drag and ginzu groomer, he could not dominate the snowscape the way a piston bully boy could. When nature worked hard against him, he was often just screwed. He couldn’t chew up the frozen snow and and then spit it back out as a perfect corduroy carpet. What he was seeking was more a question of balance, a total gestalt that was more than the sum of its parts. On Wednesday, he worked on the Trail to the Lake. Sculpting the snow with four passes of the drag under a sun drenched blue sky, he felt that the scales were finally tipping back in his favor. Icy hardness was balanced out by the cushy snow carpet he had scraped up, and the chaotic tippy concave trail had taken on the shape of a flat planar surface. Of course, the modest ski trail through the woods was not technically perfect, the corduroy ridges on the skate lane were not really crisp, and the classic tracks weren’t quite “classical”. But when he added in lunch by the lake with the pretty girl from the village, where the sounds of silence were punctuated only the wing beats of a raven passing overhead and the soft moaning of freezing ice, he decided that the total experience was beyond compare and perhaps, if possible, even better than perfection.
by DK | Feb 25, 2015 | .
Restless and unsettled, Divinius woke from a troubled sleep. He sat bolt upright remembering the newest version of that recurring Sisyphian dream that plagued him. Usually he saw himself pushing a large snowball to the top of a mountain, only to have a group of determined gnomes lever it over to the edge and roll it back down. In this new dream he and his crew of naked groomer men had abandoned their ginzu grooming equipment and were pushing 100 pound potato sacks full of money and labeled with the number 13 towards the top of Over the Hill trail. But just before the summit, the burlap bags would rip, tear and split asunder, spilling their golden treasure back down the slope. “Let’s try it one more time!” Divinius found himself yelling out in encouragement to his grooming acolytes. They scrambled back to the bottom of the hill, no longer naked but suddenly clad in red fleece Patagonia leisure suits and sporting conical red hats. What a dream! Perhaps the old man was worried about the 13th annual Ski Festival fund raiser coming up in just a week and a half. More likely, our confused dreaming Davinius was just overly tired from a long day of grooming Tuesday. He had driven round and round just one loop, trying to flatten, widen and fluff the icy concave trail. That trail, winding along the creek as far as bridge junction and then back Over the Hill, did look much improved he thought. Or was that a dream too? On Wednesday, he decided, he would on continue on to the the lake in his endlessly recurring cycle of grooming.
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