Mystery Glimpse: Very Special Guest
Look Who Came To Visit
This is a challenging Mystery Glimpse. Here’s a page from the register of an inn. Who is the Very Special Guest? Can you name the inn this guest stayed in back in 1951? Hint: New Hampshire. Hint 2: Think of Tyrolean-themed chalets. Hint 3: It’s all because of the Baron.
Last Week
Yes, these are the Bradley Bashers, Bombers, or Packer Graders, and, yes, you had to be a fantastically brave skier to tow one of these down the slopes. The inventor was Steve Bradley of Winter Park, CO, often called the Father of Snowgrooming. He invented this gravity-run implement in 1952, and it became quite popular in the mid-50s. We remember going to a National Ski Area Association meeting in 1970 or so where these devices were demonstrated. We still remember thinking, “What happens if….?” but the thought was too scary. Thankfully, the field of snow grooming has moved on to safer equipment.
Bradley as an innovator in many ways. He experimented with solar power, re-thought cafeteria lines, and managed Winter Park’s emergence as a nationally known center for disabled sports, among many other honors. You can read more about his achievements here.
Thanks to the Colorado Snowsports Museum for providing this wonderful picture.
The whole idea was to bust up moguls and smooth out crud. Gravity was both a friend and an adversary.
Snowmaker’s Gloves For Wet Weather: The Joka Waterproof
Wear What Works In The Wet.
Joka Glove is $28, mittens also available as are other models.
I usually take most of my vacation time in the winter because I like to ski out West and in the Adirondacks. And more often than not, the trips are something to look forward to when you live in the Mid-Atlantic and have to deal with the rain and sleet events that plague our winters here in “the banana belt”. I always tell everyone if you can stay dry, skiing in the rain is not bad since the snow is soft, and the turns are, well, hero turns on hero snow. Enter the Joka Waterproof Glove.
If you go to the CHS Snowmakers web site, you will find an array of perhaps the finest waterproof gloves that you will ever purchase for a very reasonable price. Joka gloves are rubber and have an inner, removable fleece liner that can be easily removed and dried. These are true snowmaker gloves and are perfect for skiing in the rain.
I have a Pro Gore-Tex from Patagonia that keeps me completely dry, but the Achilles heel has always been wet leather gloves that get soaked and cold. When I found the Joka gloves on a recommendation from a friend, I became a believer and an evangelist. You can literally submerge these gloves up to the fleece lining in a bucket of water and never get wet. Everybody is buying them down here in the banana belt, and you should too if you venture out in weather that is not quite optimal.
The other nice thing about the gloves is that you can “squeegee” your goggles without scratching your lenses. When it really rains, I have to reach up and clear the goggles and these gloves are non -abrasive to the goggle lens. A definite plus for expensive goggles that are sensitive to handling.
My suggestion: Do yourself a favor, buy a pair. You can use them in the yard, on a mountain bike, or skiing in the rain. As my friend the Shark always says, “No such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing choices.”
70s Ski Testing: Defining How Skis Work
Step 1: Inventing The Right Metrics
[Editor Note: In this new series, former SKI editor Marc Liebman recounts how serious ski testing began as a way to provide consumers with objective information about ski performance.]
In the early seventies, ski design was in the midst of a revolution that is still going on today. It started in 1959 when Art Molnar and Fred Langendorf marketed the first ski with a fiberglass reinforced core under the Tony Sailer brand. When it came out, skis were made predominantly from wood with a P-Tex bottom and segmented edges screwed into the core. One piece steel edges were coming into vogue.
Computers and programs to model flex patterns, torsion (twisting) and the impact of different materials on ski performance were in their infancy. Ski design was (and still is) a mix of sound engineering, materials science, and experience.
Ski manufacturers touted the benefits of fiberglass versus aluminum sheets or rods or u-shaped metal versus foam or wood cores and the list went on and on. Ski Magazine’s (and Skiing’s) customer research said that their readers wanted an objective way to compare skis. Net net, we – the skier – were confused.
In 1971, Ski Magazine contracted John Perryman, an aerospace engineer to come up with a methodology that would achieve four objectives:
- Measure the dynamic and static properties of the ski;
- Analyze these properties mathematically because they don’t act in isolation and are intimately related to each other;
- Correlate bench testing with a rigorous on-snow program that requires the skis to be put through a standard set of maneuvers by the tester on a variety of snow conditions and terrain without knowing the ski’s identity; and
- Present the results in an easy to understand format that enables the skier to compare ski A with ski B.
The program was called SKIpp for Ski Performance Prediction. Each year, SKI magazine tested more than 200 skis, all roughly 200 centimeters long. I was on the initial team. Calculations were done with a slide rule and data tabulated on my Bowmar Brain, one of the first electronic calculators. We created five metrics that we believed defined ski performance:
- Foreflex dynamics – complex calculation of the force needed to bend the front portion of the ski and its resistance to rapid flexing;
- Afterflex dynamics – same as the front for the portion of the ski behind the boot;
- Effective torsion – combination of resistance to a ski’s twisting and how sidecut affects ski’s ability to turn in an arc;
- Effective Compression – measured the camber of the ski along with the force needed to flatten the ski; and
- Damping – ability of the ski’s to suppress vibration.
Based on the data gathered, we could predict how:
- Easy a ski was to turn;
- It would perform in different snow conditions; and
- How it stable it would be at high speed.
Looking back, we didn’t realize how far ahead we were in ski performance analysis. In the beginning, several manufacturers challenged our results, but in the end, they came around to our side of the table which was that the correlation between our lab analysis and on snow performance was amazingly accurate.
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