Uplifted, week 3: Tunes

Tunes.

Good tunes.

The auditory equivalent of a foot of fresh on-hill, melodious or dissonant feeds giving your eardrums a beating through those often overlooked ear-holes to the soul, down the canal and electrified upwards into your synapses.

Or, if folk music is more your thing, down the ear canal and acoustically strummed up into your tonal bits.

We’re not picky. Even a kettle-drum will do. So long as your head is bobbing, your toes a-tapping… though that’s surprisingly hard to do in ski boots…

We’ll accept boot stomping.

Music goes hand in hand with mountains. Consider the irritatingly catchy Sound of Music tune, and, while jamming your thumbs further into the recesses of your ears than any Q-tip has ever ventured, accept that the hills truly are “alive with the sound of music.”

Come on.

Accept that the hills are alive with the sound of music, or else we’ll just keep playing it; the needle is on the record, and she’s just going to keep warbling ‘til you give in.

Do you accept it?

Are you nodding your head, or bobbing it?

Nodding.

Okay, we promise we will stop playing it. Seriously, I won’t bring it up again. Because it’ll get stuck in your head like nobody’s business, trust me.

This entry is about good tunes, so we’re putting the Julie Andrews stuff away.

Thumbs out?

Thumbs up?

Good.

For a lot of us, music is the grease that gets our gears going, pistons firing on all cylinders.

It’s as personal a decision or choice as any, musical taste as varied as ski hill terrain type, pants colour, hairstyle, or ridiculous, hood-ornament-like add-ons for your helmet.

Musical preference, like on-slope proficiency or personality-type, forms the basis for many a friendship… or feud.

You can’t make everyone happy, hence the reluctance of Red Mountain management to take my advice and install in-lift audio, all-hit radio all the time… never mind that I would get a sweet DJ gig out of it, constantly self-aggrandizing and making stupid radio chit-chat from my short-wave helmet mouthpiece.

Details.

No chair-lift jukebox for you.

But music and its influence are apparent all around us. Those that self-identify with a specific band, brand or genre of music like to proclaim their allegiances by way of memorabilia like sweet Pink Floyd headbands, or on sleeveless jean-jackets safety-pinned with classic Misfits graphics… and said sleeveless jean-jacket usually turns out to be Gore-Tex, not denim, and retails somewhere in the ball-park of three to four hundred dollars…

Now that’s punk-rock…

No matter! Whatever your musical predilection or leanings may be, they belong as much in your head as pow on the mountain; it’s a perfect fit (provided you aren’t blaring your IPod to the point of not hearing “Cougar!” screamed in warning).

Seriously, whether you get your fix when you wake up, as you prep, as you hop in your ride, or through your earbuds for the duration of the day, who hasn’t thrilled at the intensity of Iron Maiden’s Run to the Hills with skiing on their mind? (until they actually listen to the lyrics, and not even backwards…).

Who has not rocked out to Anne Murray’s spine-tingling Snow-Bird while assembling their gear?

Oh yeah. You better believe “beneath it’s snowy mantle cold-and-clean,” that the snowbird is coming to getcha!

Hard-core, man! Anne Murray powerhouse forever!

Where’s the lightning-bolt button on my keyboard..?

Do I need to press control+alt or something..?

I digress.

Music makes the bourgeoisie and the rebels come together. And crowd-surf. Or scrap one another.

Or make love.

Or for our purposes, ski. And I think we can all agree that music enriches the ski experience, no doubt about it, whether your sound-intake is done as a preamble, during your downhilling, or in the apres.

Some of our mountain’s runs, too, make reference to music and its lasting impression; Inagaddadavida (misspelt on the trail-map as “Inagadavida,” but whatever, not everyone loves Iron Butterfly) and Ruby Tuesday, for example.

These are classic rock tunes, and classic runs… and the Slayer cover of Inagaddadavida is pretty much guaranteed to make you ride faster; see, music is great for picking up your game, too, and is constantly being reinvented, reinterpreted like any line you may take down the mountain. Music, like innovation and progression gets you flowing, man. Whether you’re playing it in your head, on your MP3 player, or toting your ghetto blaster on your shoulder like it’s 1989, tunes are a sweet motivator.

And to get you stoked, this year Rafters is hosting plenty of great bands and music, cult-favourites “The Mand” gaining a following not seen since “The Flight of the Conchords.” Catch RJ Peters and Grant Waters as The Mand select Thursdays, or consult your local listings for other incoming and upcoming acts- you won’t be disappointed.

*Oh, and send me some recommendations or suggestions for some tunes you like to crank when it’s game-on (please confine it to awesome ski anthems, not like “game-on,” Barry White type stuff).

Awww yeah.

Today I was a cave man.

Not like a cave-man spelunker or a cave-man or caver exploring Red’s many tunnels, shafts, caverns and winzes (and there are a lot of the old mine-holes pock-marking the back-runs), but a cave man in the sense of a throwback, jaw set determinedly forward, back-country Cromagnon behaviours an evolutionary dead-end; frustrated by my slow progress and low rung on the evolutionary ladder, I was rapidly reduced to little more than, “Oooga-booga-grarrrr,” temper-tantrum colouring the approach to Roberts blue.

Permit me to explain.

While easily accessible from the ski area, Red Mountain’s legendary back-country has most recently been denoted as “slack-country,” back-country terrain so darn easy to run laps on that even a cave man could do it.

Yes, the story or theory goes that even a paleolithic hominid equipped with enough elbow grease and tenacity could easily loop the local slack-country hot-spots all the live long day.

Not entirely so, says I.

I appreciate suffering as much as the next person, but watching my group slowly, then more quickly, then rapidly outpace me up the skin-track was not only painful, but staggering; I’m a relatively fit guy, but the methods of ascending the peak before us were so much more advanced than my cave man brain could handle, the experience simply blew my mind, left me with the stark impression I was indeed in possession of a significantly less developed frontal lobe.

Maybe you have seen the old diagrams in school textbooks, those that haven’t disavowed the evolutionary theory, where human-kind is displayed in their progression more or less from monkey into man, the various stages showing changes from all fours to upright posture, stride, and so on.

Well, that’s how it was on the skin-track today.

At the front of our pack was the currently uncontested King of the Mountain, the Golden Telemark skier effortlessly gliding forth towards the riches Mount Roberts holds.

From the snooze-inducing access point off of Silver Sheep onwards, flocks of groomer-bound mutton unaware of what the surrounding hills offer, the telemarker held the pole position.

Behind him, the Touring Skier, heels temporarily freed of their downhill restraints, followed in the skin-steps of the supreme Telemark being.

Similar in posture, near indistinguishable in appearance, the pair led our tribe onwards, upwards to Roberts. Behind the highly evolved ski-set shuffled another humanoid, this with limpier, less elegant skis on each foot.

Yes, slightly crooked at the shoulders, near sloth-like in comparison to the skiers, this was the fabled Splitboarder, snowboard split into touring mode so as to allay the ails and pains of the ascent. While slower, heavier, and less developed in form and technique, several similarities remained; a smile still graced the splitboarder’s clean-shaven face.

Following the splitboarder, hunched, determined, Hobbit-like Snowshoers flapped their toilet-seat sized appendages up the slope, pummeled their pumiced feet and crampons into the ski-track, the last of the viable species to adapt and thrive amidst snow-covered peaks. Grimacing, stoic, they beat their way up the hill. And then came the cave man.

Without a splitboard (he’d left it at home), without poles, with nothing more than a standard snowboard lashed to his back and raw determination, the cave man boot-packed up the skin-track, massive post-holes and alligator traps left in his wake, unfriendly under-boot terrain left exposed for the next herd to ascend.

But the cave man did not care. Instead, he railed against the indignity of it all.

He imagined himself lost to the mountain, uncovered centuries later to be gawked at by arrogant, self-satisfied Telemarkers, Touring Skiers, Splitboarders, even (gasp) lowly Snowshoers and their snowmobiling brethren.

“Gee, why didn’t he just get a sled?”

The cave man, frozen, would be unable to register his displeasure, forever frozen in time, lost to the ages, a thing to be mocked.

Back on the skin-track, reality, like his boots, sank in.

No, he resolved he would not go down like that.

Employing the near superhuman strength so often equated with cave men, today’s cave man cursed, muscled and punched through to the top of Mount Roberts, and stole the others’ fire when he snaked first-tracks down Hourglass, the one modern-phrase he had perfected to date shouted out while he made his awesome descent;

“In your faaaaaaaace!”

Fortunately, I have the means and the determination to not be a cave man every day, and so do you!

Today was just an anomaly. I devolved, briefly, stole glory from the jaws of more advanced humans and taunted them all the way. But I still had my transceiver, my probe and my shovel.

I might be a cave man from time to time, but I’m not stupid.

I readily encourage anyone interested in exploring Red’s back-slack-rat-pack-country to avail themselves of proper avalanche awareness training, available, modern equipment (trinkets and good luck charms don’t count), and to slowly graduate from the merely curious to the expertly informed; ask questions, expand your knowledge, equip yourself, and explore.

The mind-blowing part comes shortly thereafter.

“Snow is Mother Nature’s spit.”

So observes the gap-toothed six year old in the grocery store line, snow not spitting but dumping down on the sidewalk and streets outside. Her parents roll their eyes, her pops prodding her with a follow-up question.

“What’s rain then?”

Without missing a beat, his daughter answers, “Mother Nature crying.”

No one argues. The pre-season deluge of stormy weather, cold November rain and early December showers, caused many a seasoned local to shed a tear or two.

But now it’s on.

Pow time.

We stare out the window, past the gossip magazines and towards the real news framed in front of us. The snow, whether best characterized as spit, salt, confetti or Jack Frost’s flaking dry-scalp, is sticking.

The kid in the shopping cart has summarily shut her dad up. Head and shoulders can do nothing but shrug and nod in anticipation for the coming powder day.

“Okay, kiddo. Snow is Mother Nature’s spit.”

We look out the biggest big-screen in town at the greatest show on Earth, snow in our hometown, inches of accumulating white stuff in our backyards. Like Pavlov’s dog, we could use a napkin.

Mother Nature may be in a spit-fight with our stoic local mountain, positively salivating over the terrain Papa Red,Uncles Granite, Robbie, Grey have to offer, but for our part, our faces are fresh and ruddy, eyes dry if not a little weary. It’s been a few big days in a row here.

Shrouded in thick grey clouds and approaching darkness, Red is wrapped in a loosely fitted Snuggie of snow and mystery, Muumuu-like snow-coat extended over the neighboring peaks. We can recall our turns from the first few weeks of the season…

The recent rolling over of the calendar is of significantly less concern than the previous weeks’ introduction of therealnew year, the new season, the annual return of Mother Nature’s frigid gob; a prequel to the end of a year, a sure sign of wintry things to come.

On the way home, snow crunches or blows away from footfalls and tire traffic, a good time to reflect on the twists and turns of the day.

Snow. With enough patience, you could pluck the dendrites off a snow-flake like you might a flower of its petals, gain some insight into Mother Nature’s frosty gift.

“She loves me, she loves me not…”

To be honest, “Spit” is not an apt descriptor for powder snow, “spit” entirely too liquid, liquefied, but unaccustomed to picking fights with little kids, I’ll let it slide this time…

Funny the things you can overlook when snow is falling.

What we get here is significantly lighter, drier, and pillowy-er than the coast, none of the Pacific sludge that passes for snow oozing its way to the Kootenays.

That snowflake might as well be a four-leaf clover, cuz man, are we ever lucky.

Hatch-marks for days already skied are multiplying now, storm systems honing in on the beacon that is Red. Inside the snow-globe, we’re eager to lay fresh tracks, scuff up our skis and New Year’s resolutions in favor of terrain-laden Red-solutions (ha ha!), new challenges, new lines and a fresh perspective on slaying some pow.

Happy New Year, friends… But more importantly, enjoy the season- Tread lightly, shred loosely, and come up with something better than “spit.”

Snow + Red = Mother Nature’s Bread and Butter.

Eat up.

-Tyler Bradley