Saturday, December 23, 2006

Skiing in Park City

Ski Utah – Eaglin Ski Vacation

This year for the family vacation we decided we would go out west and see if the snow in Utah is really the greatest snow on earth. We had a red-eye flight on Sunday that got us into Salt Lake City around noon. As we picked up our rental car we asked the local folks how to get the best deals in Park City and immediately found out one great piece of advice – buy your lift tickets in Salt Lake. The Park City Mountain resort tickets in downtown Utah (which was essentially deserted on Sunday) were $56 compared to the best available price in Park City of $75. I was wanting to ski for all four full days that we would have to ski so we bought tickets and some goggles and were ready to head up to Park City (about 30 miles from SLC). Hint #1: By your ski passes in SLC and save some money.

The whole area had just gotten a solid blanket of snow (about 2 feet) over the weekend – and both Catherine and Anna were eager to play in this substance they were seeing for the very first time. They were able to basically completely soak themselves and spent even more time playing in the snow after we arrived at the hotel. The girls also learned another lesson about snow – it was water and it was cold, they quickly found this out as they soaked their clothes and had to endure the frigid temperatures. After a dinner at the local Pizza Hut we retired to bed early to get the girls to their ski lessons the next morning at 9 AM (mountain time, of course it was 7 AM by our East Coast time clocks).

The next morning the sun was shining and it was a beautiful 15 degrees with a high around 24 F. Excellent skiing weather. The girls had scheduled lessons starting at 9 AM that would keep them until 3 PM, about 5 hours of skiing with a break for lunch. I decided to work with Linda who was definitely a ski bunny and did a great job of moving down the bunny slope. Our one attempt at a slightly faster slope (also green) had her zooming down the hill pretty much out of control. At least I was able to ski beside her during this one exciting run and give her words of encouragement. After that she decided the bunny slope was just fine. Meanwhile Catherine and Anna were polishing their skills and Catherine’s natural athleticism was apparent as she mastered all the “green” level skills. Anna had a harder time mastering the skills – but I also new her general fearlessness would have her doing advanced slopes by the end of the week. By about 8 PM that evening 4 exhausted Eaglins were pretty eager to hit the sack and be ready for an early day of skiing the next morning.

The next day was a lot of fun and the girls got to exercise some real independence as we simply let them go. I stayed with them some as they mastered steeper and steeper slopes. Linda meanwhile practiced her wedge turns and stopping. I did break a way to take the two high speed lifts to the top of the mountain where I was awed by the view. The girls were still very apprehensive about the high speed lifts that seemed to take skiers off into nothingness (you could not see where they went after they crested the hill). We also committed at lunch to hearing the timeshare “pitch” for the Marriott resorts (they had 2) in Park City. We already have one time-share in Las Vegas so I am not adverse to the idea of purchasing time share. It is hard to gage them as an investment – but they have been instrumental in helping us choose great destination spots and getting good accommodations. My only complaint has been the “must decide today” tactic. Any enterprise that requires you to make a decision involving multiple thousands of dollars without giving time to think it over is best avoided (of course I say this have bought one timeshare before). In the end we ended up getting $100 towards dinner that night which we had at an excellent restaurant, Chimarro (of course the bill was more like $200 – which seemed pretty normal for the good restaurants on Main Street in Park City. Still the food and service were incredible.

Wednesday was yet another day of skiing. Anna finally decided that she was going to make the trip to the top of the mountain with me for some longer ski runs – though Catherine was still a bit timid around the large lifts. Catherine finally met up around lunch time with a friend she had made at ski school. They wanted to have lunch at the top of the mountain and the other girls father was pretty nice saying it was fine with him – if I was OK, and they were off to the Summit House. Linda was still doing her bunny slope loop – but getting much better, We all had lunch while Catherine was off with her friend, but after lunch Anna was yearning for some challenging runs. We did all the Green trails we could find on this side of the mountain. I was still a bit apprehensive about letting Anna on any advanced slope. Her style of skiing was to turn the skis downhill and try to go as fast as possible. She seemed to have good control and rarely fell, and even then only when attempting some trick. Still – the grade of slope we had been on was keeping her speed down and thus keeping her out of any serious danger. She had also had some trouble making the tighter turns on the narrow slopes. By the end of the ski day we were pretty tired and we met up with Catherine at the Summit on one of her runs. Her friends father was ready to hit some more challenging slopes – Catherine was still not quite ready for the blue slopes, and was being extra cautious after taking some hard spills on the more advanced green slopes she had tried. After that we did a few more easy runs (you can get almost 4 miles of continuous skiing in a single run at Park City). We decided to retire to the hotel and get ready for the highlight of the vacation.

Wednesday evening Linda had scheduled us for a sleigh ride to the “Snowed Inn” lodge where we would have a cowboy dinner. We met at the bottom of the mountain for the short sleigh ride to the inn (visible about ¼ mile up the mountain). The ride, though short added an incredible ambience to the entire experience and our driver was great (we had our one sleigh even though there were about 50 folks going up for dinner). The Inn had a roaring real wood fire and waiters and waitresses in full cowboy gear bustling about. A cowboy was playing guitar and singing country music and we were greeted with warm mugs of cider as we were led to our table. Shortly the chef, also fully decked in cowboy gear, rang the dinner bell and told us the menu of soup, chili, filet mignon, chicken, trout, and assorted sides. The food was good, but the real pleasure was the atmosphere. With the cowboy and crowd singing Christmas tunes, the fire, the full surroundings, I simply sat back – warm and happy and took it all in. It was too soon when our sleigh had to take us back down the mountain, there is something to be said about a full belly and a warm fire. The dinner was probably the most expensive I had ever had (at about $80 a head) – but it was worth the experience for all of us and was one of the real highlights of the trip. We took the bus back to our hotel and quickly crashed for the evening. Thursday would be our last day in Park City and I was looking forward to another full day on skis.

The next morning Linda and Catherine decided they would rather shop (Park City has a lot of really cool shops on their main street) while Anna and I were going to ski. By this time Anna was ready to tackle pretty much anything I wanted to do. We made a few runs mixing green and blue slopes and pretty much decided the Home Run green level slope was the most fun when done “our way”. Our way consisted of taking the green portions of the run and at certain points “shortcutting” down unmarked blue level cuts through the trees. We would hurtle down these powdery paths and rejoin the green slope at a spot down-mountain, effectively cutting off portions of the green trail. Some of these were quite steep (aka nearly vertical at least at the start) and we had some hilarious falls into the deep powder. Anna’s bindings were quite loose and at one point one of her skis flew off making a beautiful arc through the air spearing into a snow drift backwards with a nice loud “poing!” Anna was fine on each of these – though I had one scare as I was hurtling back onto the green, a lady decided the point where I would re-enter the green trail was a good place to stop and rest. I flattened my body out (I was hurtling straight downhill) and skidded to a stop at her feet on my rear. One of the safety patrol just happened to be there and commented “nice stop” which was of course preferable to wiping out the poor girl.

Anna had wiped out on the same run, but as soon as we were on our feet we hurtled down the hill at full speed laughing about the way we both had flown through the air. We next decided to try a few more advanced slopes and for the first time we were going to be getting onto the small 2-person old-style lifts. The big difference in the old style lifts are (1) there is no safety bar, and (2) it does not slow down as it approaches you. I had learned on this type of lift – but the first time the chair hit Anna in the rear she slid forward and I found myself grabbing her and hoisting her onto the chair with one hand while I gripped the back of the lift chair with the other hand. She of course loved the lift because after you became airborne it would swing back and forth drunkenly. We did successfully learn to mount the lift – but got to have another scare as a small boy in the chair in front of us did not successfully get seated and fell about 20 feet into (thankfully) a snow bank. Of course everything came to a halt – but after it was determined the boy was OK, he was back on the lift and we were off again.

By this time Anna was pointing to some slopes that she wanted to try, one of which was Black. She had solidly made it down a few blue slopes and the black slope was boxed up on both sides so there was no chance of her dropping off the mountain so I decided to let her try it. On the approach to the black slope she somehow got up onto a ridge which required her to do a free drop of about 8 feet and also where I had to catch her to prevent her do about another 10 feet of free drop. She actually managed the drop well and stayed on her skis. I was apprehensive – but we were also committed, the only way to avoid the slope at this time was to go back up the hill. I coached her a bit, “keep your speed down and stay in control”, “go across the hill not straight down”. I might as well been talking to a tree – she saw the drop – turned her skis into it and was off. The initial drop was shallow (about a blue level) – but it was deceptive as there were deep moguls the entire way down. She read the slope fine, but was not prepared for the terrain. For about 50 yards she bounced up and down like a poor rider on a trotting horse. Her hat flew off, then one glove somehow came loose and flew into a drift. She landed on her rear and skidded the remaining 150 yards until the slope leveled out. I hurriedly headed down, scooping up both the hat and glove on the way down. As I reached Anna at the bottom worrying about how the experience would leave – I soon realized I need not worry. I was greeted by her wide smile and “That was awesome! – lets do it again!” Realizing that she was truly enjoying this we went full blast to the lift and headed right back up. The second time down was pretty much a repeat of the first run, but no less fun. At least this time she kept her hat and glove! It was getting late – so we did one last full mountain run, racing each other through the steep parts.

During the day we had incredible luck, the one time we got stuck on a lift (Silverlode) it was directly above the downhill trick race course and we got to see a race from the best vantage point possible – directly above it !) Getting a chance to spend an entire day skiing with my 8 year kid was great. It probably will not be long until they are ready to take off with their friend and leave boring old dad behind, but for now we can still race and stand on the edge of a precipice daring each other to go first. After the last run we bid the mountain farewell, called Linda and then headed back to the hotel. That night we ate at Grub Steak – another excellent restaurant.

Park City is awesome, flying into Salt Lake – you can drive there (highway the entire way) in about 30 minutes, or you can take a shuttle bus. Once there, you can get anywhere in the city in minutes, and with 3 incredible resorts within a few miles (Deer Valley, Park City Mountain Resort, and Canyonlands) it is a ski paradise. We hope to get back as soon as possible and enjoy more of the “greatest snow on earth.”

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Kelly Park FLO

Here are the notes from my flag pick-up at Kelly Park. This is to let others know what I was thinking and why I selected various route choices. I dashed my route in dark red.

S - 1: All trail and also an area I was familiar with. I ran by one as I was planning on having another helper pick it up.

1-2: The plan was to simply continue south at the trail bend and follow to the flag. A better route would have been to follow the trail past the dashed green and avoid the palmettos that left me with some pretty mice "fan" cuts as i was travelling fairly fast.

2-3: Maintaining a south bearing I simply headed to the visible border of the dark green and hopped onto the trail. The white wooded area in the middle of the green was obivous and I simply looked for a "hole" out of the southern boundary of the green and came right to the thicket and the control.

3-4: I planned to attack 4 from the dirt mounds along the trail ENE of the control, these were easy to find and the control was about 15 m E of the mapped distinct tree, but clearly visible from it.

4-5: A southerly bearing took me to the "wet" area 100 meters north of 5, it was dry, but it was also the deepest point in that depression in the (orange) open area. Due south from that led me straight into the control. I took a pretty good fall and twisted my ankle on this leg - but as my tendons are pretty much rubber bands from so many twists, it did not slow me much. CP 5 was on the north side of the control circle.

5-6: Due east with a plan to grab the trail and simply turn into it. The area north of the trail was painted green so did not match the map, so useless for attack - but the line of thickets and the vegetation boundary was visible from the trail, so this was relatively easy. Also the subtle contours were readable and had the control near the top of the low ridge.

6-7: The plan was to hit the trail and get some fast running. I hopped off the E_W trail near the ridhe top and planned to contour into the depression NE of the control, however the running was more open on the west side of the ridge. I attacked from the small depression and easily found the open (orange) and simply handrailed it to the thicket.

7-8: I used a bearing and got lucky enough to find the small hole in the green vegetation to the south. I emerged within sight of the control and even though it did not appear to be on a thicket (as described) I did not hang around long enough to look closely.

8-9: I had planned to simply pick up the first (subtle) hilltop and take the saddle across to the other one. The fennel was very thick in this section and was doing a real number to the open cuts on my legs (from section 1-2). I was not paying close attention to the hilltop attack and blew right past the hill backstopping at the trail. I located the ditches on each side, ran S along the trail to the mapped earth berms and re-attacked the control following the contours that had it in a shallow depression. Once I saw the depression the lone thicket was obvious.

9-10: I abandoned a quicker direct route as the fennel was now causing me some serious pain along my legs. My gaiters only protected my lowere legs and my thighs were pretty much a mass of blood and dirt - not a problem until you run sharp tall fennel weed along it at high speed. I bailed to the trail and wanted a fennel free route to 10. Luckily the earlier runners had trampled a path that took me relatively close to the control and I avoided the majority of pain. The control was realtively simple as there were few thickets and the shallow re-rentrant on the mpa was readable from a distance.

10-11: Ths should have been really easy. Once I hit the first trail I somehow got confused and though I was on the back trail and also that I was heading for 12. Realize I did not look at my map at all after leaving 10 (I was contouring and looking for an obvious depression). For some reason my brain skipped ahead to 12, but after 30 seconds on the trail heading north (uphill) - I slapped my head and went "duh!". I ran back - picked up 11 and then went to the more western and correct trail to go to 12.

11-12: My original plan was to use trail the entire route, but once I hit the first intersection - the woods were wide open so I bounced to the first thicket and then to the cloverleafed shaped oneand punced out to the trail. One i saw teh earth mound I attacked off the trail reasoning with a faiirly large depression behind the control - this would be pretty easy (and it was).

12-13: Plan here was to use trail as much as possible and my legs felt pretty good so I turned on some speed. After crossing the hilltop I attacked heading downhill, passed the small depression and then moved right into the control.

13-14: North to the trail and then follow trails.

14-15: Had mylegs not been shredded by palmettos and fennel I proably would have punched through the light green, but my leg muscles were realtively fresh and I simpyl went around the trails. Locating the flag was pretty easy on the deeper of the two depressions and dues south of the (visible) ranger station.

15-F: I hopped out to the road and sprinted in.

Overall - trying to tie the controls and stuff them in my backpack probably cost me some time though I kept moving at the same time. I was unable to keep track of my own time as my solar watch (which I really like) decided it was time to "recycle", which is a bad habit it has - it goes into some mode where it responds to nothing for 1-2 hours. Also it was important to get a good heading as I left a control as I was going to be concentrating on the tying the flags and not navigating for that period of time. I really enjoyed the course - it was long and relatively challenging.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Wild Turkey Burn 2006

Turkey Burn 2006
Team Travel Country Outdoors (Ron Eaglin, Greg Corbitt, Jamie Sheriff, Ken Richmond)

Wow! The Turkey has always been one of my favorite races, complex navigation, challenging terrain, strong competition – all these come together to make up an incredible experience. This year’s burn was held on the Tossohatchee State Preserve – one of the most incredible pieces of land bordering the west side of the St. Johns River. One of the factors that makes the TB such a challenging race is the Linear Rogaine format. For those of you not familiar with Rogaine and Linear Rogaine, in a Rogaine style race teams are allows to “get” checkpoints in any order with a minimum of rules. In Linear Rogaine there is a basic course made up of mandatory checkpoints – but the real race lies in getting as many of the optional or “bonus” checkpoints you can. Both of these styles have a time limit, so the challenge is in optimizing your time to gather as many as possible – while still making it to the finish within the time limit.

This year the race featured a 4 AM start – guaranteeing the teams some early darkness in the race. The real race for me though started at 3 AM when we received the maps, the time between 3 and 4 AM is a frantic effort to mark your maps, plot the unplotted checkpoints, make sure you have all the gear you need or want for the race (and have it packed and ready), make it to the starting line and then go all out. After receiving the maps we went to Greg camper (parked across the street from the start in a camping area) and worked non-stop until we heard the actual start. At that time I threw the maps in my map case and we took off running to the start. There were still a few other teams straggling in to the start, but the bulk of the pack had taken off pushing their bikes (for the first mile our bikes were disabled by zip ties). We grabbed our bikes and headed off at a trot – currently about 5 minutes behind the main pack.

We took a well trodden road heading north along the western fence line of the park – heading for the power lines where we would turn east and go to where we would receive our bike control card and get the zip ties cut off our bike. As we reached the power lines we could see at least 20 sets of bike lights due north of us, it appeared that a large number of teams had not turned correctly and were now running back. The team hesitated slightly – but I reassured them we were going correctly and soon we saw Nicci at the bike punch location who gave us our card and told us we could start riding.

After heading east and then north we found the vague trail that would take us to MB1 located just after a small bridge crossing. In the dark we passed up the control – but I sent Greg to the bridge, Ken down the trail west, and Jamie east and within a minute we had found it – with an extra minute to get the control cards (with Jamie) to the control to punch it. The trail from MB1 to MB2 was quite ride-able and we were moving well (losing the trail once for about 2 minutes) and also having to slow for teams that somehow were coming from the other direction. The continuation from MB2 to BB1 and all the navigation choices we quite easy and we moved quickly towards the Y intersection preceding BB2 very quickly. At this point we also had a long trail of bike lights behind us with at least 3 teams within ¼ mile. After taking the eastern turn we overshot the southern trail heading towards BB2 and got into a very wet section of road where Greg and I both took a good dunking as we tipped over on our bikes (solidly clipped in) when the water got too deep to maintain forward progress. It too us much too long to realize our mistake and even longer to make the correction – we lost 7-10 minutes going back and finding the correct turn. Meanwhile the huge group of bikes behind us had been sitting at the Y intersection (we could see the lights) and ended up taking the southwest heading road after they saw us returning. Also at this point Jamie’s lone bike light gave out. Luckily I had 2 spares (because of the rush at the start I simply threw everything into my pack including 2 headlamps and 2 extra bike lights). The trail to BB2 and then to MP3 was moderately ride-able, with lots of logs where we had to stop, and jump the logs. As we rode/walked we saw Team Nature Calls buswhacking in to BB2 from the road – I mentioned that it was an unconventional route – but it was working for them. As we left MP3 (it also took us about 2 minutes there to actually turn around and notice the control sitting obviously on a tree) we rode with one team with wonderful HID lights (we had nothing bright on our bikes) 0 but still had a hard time keeping the trail and ended up bushwhacking to the road – which did allow us to go after BB4. Unfortunately it also meant a long (0.6 mile) backtrack along the trail to BB3. Finding the true entrance to the white blazed trail leading to BB3 also cost us a good 5 minutes and now the time was starting to add up. We ended up dropping the bikes part way on this trail and running the remainder to BB3 and along this route we ran into Nature Calls and ran (with them biking) alongside of them the rest of the way out from BB3.

From here is was pretty good riding until crossing under 528. We spent too much time (about 5 minutes) deciding to take the frontage trail to BB5 (and then BB6) and did most of this ride (it was mostly rideable) with team Dirty Fish, who we rode with all the way to the bike drop. At the bike drop we learned that Team Flight had also gotten all the CP’s but had a solid 30 minute lead on us (I was estimating that they would only be 20 minutes up at the time – but also knew that we had made enough mistakes to have cost us well over 30 minutes on the ride (if we had done it without the mistakes and pauses). We now had light and it was still wonderfully cool out – though for some reason we were slow in this transition (almost 10 minutes). Nevertheless we were heading out on a trek with challenging navigation (my favorite). We quickly found BT8 and then used the vegetation boundary to slowly make our way to BT7 (fairly thick terrain). The ground was pretty open from BT7 to the road so we headed southeast and then took an attack point to BT6 that would allow us to identify the marsh (shown on the map) and attack it from the west. Open wood from BT6 to BT5 allowed us to essentially do a direct bearing and we nailed both BT5 and MT1. From there is was basically a run – though we did spend a little extra time on BT1 as the clearing described in the passport (northwest of clearing) did not (to me at least) match the actual location – though the physical location of the flag was exactly as it was on the map. As we jogged back to the bikes I read the passport and realized that we might not make the 11 AM cutoff at the power lines – which I had thought was the cutoff to the boat pick up.

We mounted bikes quickly and rode hard – as we rode Greg got a flat tire, but we decided on the sand and mud roads, with a cutoff looming over our heads – was not worth changing until after the paddle.

The paddle started with a long (over a mile) portage down a grassy road towards the river. This also would be a huge time cost and I was quickly realizing that barring a miracle or a southerly gale force wind – we would not make it to the cutoff by 11 AM. A few shortcuts on the river did help our time, but it was 10:27 AM when we actually put our boats in the water. We reached BP1 at 11:05 AM and the power lines at 11:20 AM and were informed that 4 teams had made the cutoff. This took some of the pressure off our team – we had only missed one CP at this point (BT4 as I forgot to take the map it was on with me on the trek). I also had not even looked at the maps for any part of the race after this point, all I knew is we had more paddling, a trek and then a bike. The diversion to short course did take some pressure off our pace and we were now traveling with multiple teams in the second half of the paddle.

This was the most enjoyable part of the race for me, we got to truly do navigation on the river as we had to find the various lakes and side streams and oxbows that would lead us to each of the bonus points. We were able to hop out of the boats at various points and jog along the edge of the streams to most of the bonus points. There was no place where the water was more then thigh deep so even when we were on the wrong side of the stream from the control (we were on BP7) it was no big deal to wade across. We finished the paddle with a small armada of boats and the finish and the incredible scenery at Jim Creek (I cannot even describe it – you simply have to see it) lifted the team spirits quite a bit. As we portaged our boats to the final boat drop we had a little scare. I saw a snake a few feet ahead of us in the grass, Jamie screamed a hollered “Rattlesnake!” My response was “That’s not a rattlesnake – it’s a water moccasin.” Nevertheless it was still a poisonous snake and it was scared and coiled to strike so we called to the boats behind us to divert around the frightened snake – which slithered off as soon as it had an opening. Amazingly Audrey Nettlow’s team of three women had dragged their boat right over the snake (probably waking it up).

We were now once again on foot – along with a lot of other teams. We took an extra couple of minutes in the transition fueling up and all the other teams were trudging along the power lines headed west as we caught up with them in a trot. Since we were low on time we headed towards BT11 (but decided to bail on BT18). We picked up BT17 purely by accident (I had not plotted it) – but it was directly along the route we were taking to MT11. We were still jogging and sloshing (it was quite wet out there) along this route. We spent about 10 minutes searching for BT13 and as I learned later we were literally on top of it – but somehow did not find it. I did not want to waste a lot of time so I called the search for BT13 short and we headed back. Our plan was to pick up BT12 on the way back – we did find it, though somehow it seemed to me (at the time) to be east of where I plotted it (of course it could have been my plotting – since I was doing it on the run). We jogged a solid pace all the way back into the TA. On the way back we saw Team Flight for the first time in the race – they were biking strong. We still had a flat tire to change, so while Greg and Jamie changed the tire – Ken and I helped change their shoes and get us ready to do the short (6 miles?) bike back to the start. We decided to simply bring it in and not fight with any more CP’s (we had plenty).

In the end missing the cutoff cost us, though Ken and Greg were 2nd place male and Jamie and I preserved a podium finish with 3rd place coed. More important though is we raced what we though was an excellent race. We did not push ourselves to the point of exhaustion as we normally do in a very tight race – but spent some time enjoying the course. My favorite parts were the challenging navigation and the incredible terrain. The entire race was extremely well-organized and flawlessly executed. The level of challenge was exactly what each team made of it. Once again Dave and the Sun-tek crew proved they can provide a race that challenges all of the teams at all levels.