For those who like slick rides, here comes the season
By KW
Josh Russo just checked in from over in Sports to tell me about his outdoors-recreation page for Saturday’s Journal.
Along with a look back at the Black Hills deer season by Bob Speirs, the page will feature a story by Russo on the upcoming downhill ski season, and what’s coming at Terry Peak and Deer Mountain.
Each hopes to get going later this month. Check out the details, and gety those plywood planks all greased up and ready to ride.
Or aren’t they made out of plywood? And greased?
OK, so I’m not a skier.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
KW, what is a person to do outside in the winter in western SD if:
1. You have the attention span of an irish setter and just can’t imagine yourself staring down a hole in the ice for hours on end.
2. You are convinced that no method for cooking a goose or a duck will render it fit for human consumption.
3. You feel that, as far as deer go, refer to item #2. (I know, I will catch heck from John W. and Jeff O. but sorry, I just don’t care for it. Elk, pheasant & turkey are an entirely different story).
4. You feel that riding around on a snowmobile is only exercise for the right thumb.
5. You feel that making someone go cross country skiing would be a form of “enhanced interrogation”.
The only other option is skiing, which with hunting is not mutually exclusive. My good hunting buddy is not only the best hunter I know, but he is also the best skier at Terry Peak. I’ve been hunting for close to 40 years and skiing for over 30. My ski area resume is up to 53 different areas in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
If you can stand my ramblings, there is something I would like to relate without sounding like I am bragging. We have been to Chamonix, France on three different occasions. There is a run there called the Vallee Blanche (white valley). You get to the run by taking a series of 2 trams out of the town of Chamonix to the top of the Aguille Du Midi (the needle of noon). From there this run is 14 miles long along the glacier back to town and goes through a staggering elevation difference of 9000 feet. It takes most of a day to get down. My limited writing skills can’t even begin to describe the intense beauty of this place. For the entire run, you are surrounded by glaciers riddled with crevasses, towering rock spires, hanging glaciers, and more snow than you ever thought possible. At lunch, you plop your skis into the snow bindings down and simply sit on them and munch your sandwich in the middle of an immense amphitheater of god’s creation. It is an experience that will be forever seared into memory.
Another of those etched memories was the very first morning of my wife’s first cow elk hunt in 2001. We had climbed a ridge in the foothills just west of Hermosa before first light. We heard some unfamiliar noises and due to my nimrod status as an elk hunter at the time, I didn’t recognize it as cow talk. We were approaching a large open bowl floundering around in the near dark when we spooked a group of elk. We stopped and sat at the edge of the trees and just then the first rays from the arc of the sun peaked over the horizon on a cloudless morning. It was as if a curtain was being raised as the intensifying orange morning glow revealed the bowl. There were elk EVERYWHERE!!!! Too far away for a shot, we simply sat there in stunned silence as the 80 or so head, seemingly indignant to our disrupting their breakfast, got in formation and filed over the ridge.
I hear all kinds of excuses on why people don’t want to try skiing. “I’ll break my leg!!!”. “I’m too old!!!!” I am over a half century old, I’m somewhat overweight, I’ve put my orthopedic surgeon’s kids through college, and have no cartilage left in either knee (high school and college sports, not skiing). I hope to be hunting and skiing until things entirely wear out.
It’s all about “taking it outside”, man!!!!!!! KW, come up to Terry Peak this winter, I’ll give you a lesson.
Oh, by the way, yesterday a friend and his son, John W, and I went down to public land around Martin. We actually saw quite a few birds, but they were really wild. We managed to come home with six. John missed……….TWICE. But he did get 3 other. It was a great day with good friends, great weather, and just being outside. Yeehaa!!!!!!
Don: Sorry, not interested in skiing. Just not my thing. But a guy can fly fish at least a few days every month out here. and find something to hunt into January, which is about when the gang at the fly shop gets serious about our regular story-telling, coffee-drinking sessions. And I’m a pretty serious basketball fan. Winter goes by pretty quickly. I am with you on deer, which is a sharp grade below elk (thanks again, Skjonsberg!), pheasant and turkey on the culinary scale. K.W.