This Week In SeniorsSkiing.com (May 19)
Cycling Series Begins, Ski Video Compilation, Survey Comments, Publishing Schedule News.
Night skiing under the North Lights. See the compilation video in this week’s edition.
Credit: Good Time With Rider
This week, you can see that we are shifting focus to summer activities. We know our readers are also cyclers, hikers, kayakers, and to a lesser extent, golfers and fishermen. With that in mind, here’s the first of our cycling series for this season.
Correspondent Pat McCloskey tells us about his early season mountain bike ride in Happy Valley in Central Pennsylvania. If you’re into mountain biking, you can appreciate Pat’s challenge in keeping up with a bunch of younger spinners who climb gnarly, rugged, rock-strewn trails with vigor.
Roger Lohr, publisher of XCSkiResorts.com, reports on an adaptive bike program in Vermont that will host vets and people with disabilities all summer long in different locations. If you are in the area, you might want to check in and see if you can help out.
Trails at Rothrock require some technical skills.
Credit: Pat McCloskey
Finally, we have a compilation video depicting skiing from all ends of the spectrum, from silly and zany to serious and thrilling. It’s a tribute to the unbeatable 2016 season and worth a four-minute view.
We are compiling our list of Trail Masters, those readers who have “skied their age” this past season. We have an amazing list of over 150 names to vet and are getting it ready for publication soon.
Speaking of our survey, we want to respond to some comments that seem to have come up frequently, based on a scan of the data. This is not a thorough analysis, just a quick hit:
- Our readers want us to provide information on discounts and lobby ski resorts for additional price breaks for seniors. Roger that and will continue to do even more.
- You want to connect with other senior skiers. We hear that loud and clear. First step, go to COMMUNITY in the top menu, scroll down to Find Ski Buddies With NSCF, which is the National Ski Council Federation, an umbrella organization for ski clubs in the US, and find a club near you. Then, check out 70+ Ski Club, one of our fantastic advertisers. Also add a comment in our FORUM under the COMMUNITY menu.
- Many comments revolve around reporting on resorts. Our correspondents will be fanning out next season to add even more Resort Reviews to our collection. By the way, we welcome contributions from our readers. Let us know what you have in mind, and we’ll send our submission guidelines.
- Video submissions: You want to see them from other seniors, and so do we. Please send our clips. Keep them short, 3-4 minutes. We started a collection, have only two on the site, and we welcome more. If you post them on Youtube, it is an easy pick up for us.
- Lessons, technique, skills. You want advice for seniors on adapting to changing abilities. We will take that on board as a to-do for next season.
There’s much more, of course. We will analyze and learn from your valuable comments.
One comment did get to us in a very good way. One of you wrote, “You’re on a significantly important mission by providing an excellent quality read.” Tears in eye, man. Thanks.
Finally, our readers are still vexed with the problem of having to re-enter email addresses. 
Here is how to resolve this problem:
If you are being asked to re-enter your email to confirm your subscription to SeniorsSkiing.com, you might be a bit annoyed. We don’t blame you, but there is an explanation.
- You are accessing SeniorsSkiing.com through a device that is different from the one you originally signed up on. Subscribing to SeniorsSkiing.com puts a “cookie” on your device. If you use a different device, no cookie, so you are viewed as a non-subscriber. If you re-enter name and password, you’ll be okay with the new device.
- You have disabled cookies or cleared browser history on your device. Turn cookies back on, and you’ll not have to re-enter again, or leave it disabled and realize you have to re-enter each time. Your call.
- You are trying to access our Subscriber-Only Content. Instead of building a firewall that requires usernames and passwords, we elected a much simpler way of getting to our exclusive content: Just confirm your name and email. You will have to do that each time you want to get to that information, which, by the way, is under the Community tab at the top.
Finally, finally, we are considering changing our publishing schedule from weekly to bi-weekly for the summer months. The new schedule will start at the beginning of June.
Once again, thanks for reading SeniorsSkiing.com, tell your friends, and remember, there are more of us every day, and we aren’t going away.
Short Swings!
To Our Readers
It’s cold where I’m writing this. I drove several hours yesterday to get here. One hour of it was through flurries; at least one-half hour through blizzard. I got the stoves working, changed into warm clothes and had a few sips of single malt. Then I started reading the hundreds and hundreds of answers to our survey question about how we’re doing. Your overwhelmingly positive and supportive feedback are wonderful. When I spoke today with Mike, we agreed that your comments provide a warm embrace for what we’re doing. Your guidance is important to us. Your support is invaluable. Thank you!
My Neighbor Was Breaking in New Boots.
He’s made the fitting process a DIY project, heating the shell with a hair dryer and shaping it to a more comfortable fit. I mentioned the value of using the services of a qualified boot fitter (easy to locate at America’s Best Boot Fitters), but he had purchased his boots online and was committed to doing it himself. It reminded me of the old Strolz and Molitor double leather boots. Anyone remember them? As I recall, you’d lace them tight, stand in the bathtub until they we’re totally soaked, then spend the next few hours walking around until they dried to the shape of your feet. My first European trip was in 1965 and Austria was among the countries I visited. Somehow, I learned of a place that made bespoke ski boots. They did the fitting and on the promise of a two month delivery, I paid up front. Five months later, still waiting, I sent a letter in English, only to receive a response in German stating they didn’t read English. I found a professor of German who kindly took up my case. They took his letter seriously, and the boots arrived a few weeks later. They were the most ill-fitting things I ever owned. Nice to look at but totally, irreversibly, uncomfortable. Bathtubs and hairdryers were useless. I’ve relied on professional bootfitters ever since.
Still Skiing
A handful of North American resorts are still open, some still receiving snow.
Arapaho Basin got 9″ this week, Snowbird got 7″, Timberline Lodge, 5″, Squaw Valley, 3″, and Mt. Bachelor, 2″. Other areas still open include Donner Ski Ranch, Killington, Mammoth, Mont Saint-Sauveur, Sunshine Village, and Whistler Blackcomb. Several European resorts are still skiing, and, those in the Southern Hemisphere are just gearing up.
Bears Ears
Anasazi structure in Bears Ears. KUTV
Bears Ears is the most recent national monument. It’s a vast area in southern Utah, sacred to Native Americans; a spectacular wilderness filled with natural and archeological wonders. The White House has signaled that it intends to reverse or reduce its national monument status. Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke recently visited the area, meeting primarily with locals who support its development. That includes Utah’s governor and congressmen who value business opportunities from extraction industries more than those from tourism. I studied the arguments on both sides and conclude that it’s in the greater public interest to keep Bears Ears as a national monument. Patagonia, also in favor of preservation, produced a short video along with a pitch to weigh in on the issue. Regardless of where you may stand on this controversy, it’s worth seeing what’s there.
Best Of Skiing 2016: A Tribute To All Kinds Of Skiing Last Year
A Superb Skiing Year In Most Places Deserves A Fitting Remembrance. This One Is Over The Top.
Night skiing under the North Lights. One of the amazers in this compilation video.
Credit: Good Time With Rider
In this video, you will see some examples of skiing in 2016, including cool powder skiing, jumping off cliffs, skiing on roads, night skiing under the Northern Lights, bikini skiing, nude skiing, street skiing, jumping from buildings and bridges “skiing”, indoor skiing, skiing down Joy Street, Boston, on tops of cars, ski joring (horse skiing), rock skiing, kite skiing, tandem skiing, and lawn skiing.
As we said, it was quite a year. Thanks to Good Time With Rider for this video.
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