Apparently a body was found in the Sun Valley Creek, not far
from here, on Sunday morning. They think
the fellow had been out drinking and got lost, disoriented, and that was
that. Moral of this story: don’t drink and walk.
Clouds are rolling in today, for a storm coming tomorrow and
into the night. It sounds like it will
rain low and snow high. But the wind
will be gusty up top. How to ski that? Maybe it is time for a day off.
The clouds make for incredibly flat light, meaning you can’t
see any features in the snow, and you risk dropping unexpectedly into a rut or
running into a surprising bump. Up top,
where there are no trees, the wide expanse of white just sort of melts into the
gray sky and you wonder if you are going to ski off the edge and into an
abyss. Not really, but it isn’t quite as
much fun as it is when you can see where you are going.
Still, we find some good skiing today, including Picabo’s
Street, but only Bill and Peter ski a bit of it as it is all bumped up and
pretty rutty and just at this moment bumps are not my friend. Picabo is one of four – count ‘em FOUR – LADY
ski champions from around here. That’s
right, the old white dudes like Harriman and Hemingway may have built the place
and made it famous, but the gals are the ones who got it done on the
mountain. Starting with Gretchen Fraser,
first American to win Olympic skiing medals (gold and silver, 1948), and moving
through Christin Cooper (silver, 1984 and lots of World Cup success), Muffy
Davis (gold, 2000 Paralympics and many handcycling medals from 1998 to 2012),
and ending (for the moment) with Picabo Street (silver, 1994; gold, 1998).
This mountain is dripping with ski history, and many famous
racers of days gone by have left their names here. But the ladies have achieved the most world renown. You go, girls.
Speaking of girls and skiing, Isabel had so much fun at ski
school today that Peter asked at dinner, somewhat plaintively, if he could go
tomorrow? If you really want to, Peter,
but I don’t think you’ll fit in the snow cave.
Here’s the story. All week, Izzy
has had a wonderful instructor named Parker.
He is buddies with the ski patrollers, and every day, he has taken his
little flock up to say hello to the dogs who will be called on to help search
for survivors in an avalanche.[1]
Today Izzy was in a state of high excitement because Parker
had said that his class was going to help train the dogs. Two kids at a time – boots and helmets and
all –were stuffed into one of three types of snow caves, the opening of which
was then covered with more snow and ice (enough to hide them, but don’t worry
grandmas, they could still see light and had plenty of air). Then the dogs were brought out and had to
find the kids and dig them out. Izzy
says that she and Charlie got stuffed in the cave, and waited, and waited, and
waited. Then you hear woof woof, pant
pant pant, snuffle snuffle, and some snow starts to fall in and then there is a
dog face panting in at you! Because the
dogs are trained to grab the clothing and drag the person out of the cave, but
the ski patrollers wisely realize that sending kids home with big tears in
their parkas might not endear them to parents (but what character points!),
they toss the kids a rope-toy, which the “survivors” give to the dogs who are
very happy to get it, and then out come the kids.
Izzy even got to ride on a snowmobile behind a ski patroller
AND a DOG, to get up to the training area.
She hasn’t stopped talking about the experience for about 24 hours.
How fun is that?! I
would like to help with avi dog training.
We heard all about it at the stylish Town Square Tavern,
which has a pretty tasty Mediterranean themed-menu. More elegant gray heads, and us.
[1] We have a long discussion at dinner one night, about
the merits of dogs v. pigs v. goats for this kind of work. We note that each brings a particular skill
to the job, but dogs are likely the easiest trained so we end up with
them. Besides, it would be more fun to
get found by a dog than a pig.
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