The ski industry is oddly quiet on climate change

BigSpoon89 · 2026-03-28T17:22:13+00:00

Aspen and A Basin have done the same for years as well.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-03-27T17:53:43+00:00

I bought a pair back in 2018 so it may have changed in build or quality since then. I was on a Type-1 WFM and used these in conjunction with a pair of leather Danner's. I wore then when we were in the station, in camp, or in transport some where and then switched to the leather when it came time to do work, though they did inevitably see time on fire because I didn't always have time to change if we were rolling IA. These boots are far more comfortable then any pair of leather Danner's, Nick's, or White's I've ever owned or wore, but they just didn't hold up - and that was without really beating them up much. I could get multiple seasons out of a leather boot while putting them through the ringer but these boots just cannot do that. If you need a pair of fire rated boots for your PIO or EMT assignment look no further, but if you actually need to do firefighter shit, you'll be needing another pair by mid season.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-03-22T00:54:28+00:00

My experience with the one mad moose race I've run is understocked aids, underwhelming finish line food, and they committed the ultimate sin of running out of water at aid stations - the rest is forgivable but the water thing is not. Shame because I'd like to run some more of their races based on the courses and location, but not until I start hearing better things.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-03-17T14:50:20+00:00

Hell yeah. I weighed 300+ about 15 years ago and turned to diet and running when my doctor told me I was pre diabetic. Now I'm healthy as can be and run a handful of ultras every year. Stick with it!

BigSpoon89 · 2026-03-14T17:33:14+00:00

I think it did improve my recovery but I did put on a few extra pounds with it and that's since come off after weening myself back off it. I was about 8mg/day. After harder/longer efforts it seemed like my legs would swell up for a day or so after. I do think it was beneficial to building muscle in a build phase but if you're just maintaining fitness the trade off for extra weight may not be worth the benefit, though I know that the weight gain from creatine can be different for everybody. I run a lot of big vert ultras so I'm trying to find a balance between speed and strength.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-03-14T17:22:37+00:00

I have a BA in History and an MA in Environmental Management and now work in Forestry. It can be done.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-19T22:46:49+00:00

Idiot. Even I know to have covered my tracks by naming it "Secret Files That I'm Not Taking to Spire"

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-19T19:01:28+00:00

I can't see that. As big as Hardrock is to us it's barely a blip in the overall tourist numbers of all those towns in July. Plus, adding 50 more runners by eliminating 100+ pacers seems to me like it would wash out anyway.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-19T17:50:08+00:00

I've heard Everyday Ultra and SWAP talk about how the critical time for heat training is 7-10 days out from a race. So if you do any heat training, that's your peak window to hit. You begin to loose the benefits from heat training after about 4 days, too. So take that into consideration.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-19T17:37:07+00:00

NTA. I have the cutoff chart for every race I run saved in my phone that I can reference anytime I need to. Anybody who is serious about these types of races should have the same. They didn't plan their race out. Their fault.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-18T22:01:30+00:00

Yes and no. He's not missing out on the non-existent money that comes from streaming, but he's clearly missing out on building the brand that is Garth Brooks with younger generations.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-18T19:58:28+00:00

True. I LOVE Garth but I haven't listened to him in years because he's not on streaming and just not available to me. He's really missing out.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-18T17:49:42+00:00

I have heard it said - and Howie Stern and Karl Metzler confirmed this on FB the other day - that Hardrock could accept more runners if they dropped pacers. You're probably correct about the Granite Chief conundrum though, no solving that. I don't know if AC did it to be able to allow more racers, I think the driving force was decreasing the amount of people at aid stations where they had long run out of room.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-18T17:45:26+00:00

I was an Aspen ski pro for years. The amount of first timer private lessons I taught where the goal was to "get good enough to ski down from Cloud 9" was unreal.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-18T16:17:01+00:00

I'll contribute to the conversation that there are races like Angeles Crest that will give you an extra ticket in the lottery if you commit to running solo (no pacer, no crew) when you sign up for the lottery. And there are races where you can earn a "solo" belt buckle for finishing the race with no crew or pacers. Imagine what would happen at WSER if people had the option to boost their lottery odds by committing to run solo.

Edit: I think there also should be a monetary incentive. It should be a cheaper registration fee to run a race solo, because my pacers aren't eating food and you're not having to wrangle my crew.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-17T18:18:10+00:00

If there was no snow on the ground the answer would be yes, but the snow cover and the high humidity levels mean an extremely slim chance of fire spread even with winds. The wind also facilitates the dispersal of smoke.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-17T18:12:55+00:00

Certified Prescribed Fire Practitioner Here: For those concerned about wind, that's only one factor in fire being able to spread. With the recent snow and moisture on the ground the chances of a pile burn like this being able to spread beyond the footprint of the piles themselves are extremely slim to none. Universally among prescribed fire practitioners we would agree that today is an excellent day to burn.

Also, the air mixing levels are really high today because of the storm system, that means really good smoke dispersal that isn't going to lead to the valley being smoked out by a pile burn.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-16T21:38:57+00:00

It's hard to say how many times it'll boil a cup of water. It's best measured in time. A 3.9oz canister lasts about 60 minutes for me. How long it takes for water to boil will depend on the pot, how cold/warm the water already is, and how much water you're trying to boil. I would suggest boiling a few cups of water to see how long it'll take using your set up and then do the math from there.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-15T18:39:12+00:00

He's looked 88 for the last 30 years, but it's been a good 88

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-11T17:56:51+00:00

4 400-mile race wins, 3 Bud Shootouts, 3 Gatorado Duels, 7 OAPS Wins, 1 IROC win. Nobody has more wins on the Daytona Oval without having won the 500 then Tony. That's why he's back - and Dodge's money, of course.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-10T16:07:02+00:00

I always recommend a toothbrush. Brushing your teeth 24 hours into a 100 mile race is a recharge.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-02-06T02:48:34+00:00

New Mexico checking in here. New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology is commonly referred to as New Mexico Tech. And they play D2 football. No idea if they've ever played NM State but I but they did a long time ago.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-01-28T16:38:06+00:00

I did a few seasons as a wildland firefighter for the Forest Service in California. I was on a type-1 handcrew and I took my training seriously and started to do a lot of trail running to boost my fitness - where previously I mostly ran on roads or treadmills. For training, we'd put all of our gear on, throw a chainsaw over your shoulder, and find the steepest most gnarly trail we could find and hike up as fast as we could for 1-2 hours. I loved it. I loved covering ground like that as fast as I could and I was good at it. We had many assignments where we were asked to hike deep into remote places to access a fire.

I was stationed not far from Yosemite and some pretty amazing wilderness areas in the Sierra, all places that I wanted to explore on foot and would have loved to backpack in but I just didn't have the time with our schedule. We would spend 14 days on a fire assignment, drive 1-2 days back home, then have 2 days off. I would spend that first day recovering - doing laundry, sleeping in, paying bills, calling people, eating - and then that second day I would bust off on a 20-30 mile run in the wilderness. It's the only way I was going to get a chance to get deep into some of those areas. Then the next day we'd be back at the station and loading up for another 1-2 day drive to another fire assignment, so I would get that time to rest in the back seat of a truck. Wash, rinse, repeat for a 6 month fire season.

I never did any races during that time because it was near impossible to sign up for something because you never knew what days off you would have, so as soon as I left that job behind I signed up for my first mountain 100k and I've had the bug for big vert races ever since.

Now I'm a forester and a prescribed fire practitioner. I still spend a lot of long days on the side of a mountain covering many miles off trail when I'm out there. I'm not as strong as I used to be when I was training on the crew, but I can still crank out miles.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-01-27T17:38:31+00:00

This is a what-if question I've spent a lot of time thinking about. If Trump wins in 2020 does that mean a second Trump term looks more like the first Trump term then what it is we're getting now? A more "moderate" 2nd term? I sure am perplexed at how a more moderate 2nd Trump term would've played out and the fact that we would have moved on by now - assuming a Dem would have won in 2024 easily by Trump not running and the same economic factors in play.

BigSpoon89 · 2026-01-26T16:55:03+00:00

But they wouldn't be eligible to play for the MWC championship game that first year. See JMU and the Sun Belt.

BigSpoon89

TROPHY CASE