Most Extreme Runs? - Page 5

glad we're back on topic, as this one is interesting.

 

I don't think condiions (drewski) should be a factor, as the run should be extreme in the best of conditions, see those French guys early on, always skiing spring conditions so that it was even possible.

 

Again, historically, those French guys (Vallencamp and pals) were always skiing 50 degrees or more, and it should still be so.

 

And yes, falls should have consequences, and that puckered feeling has to be intense. DCNB: The consequences needn't be fatal, but there has to be a variety of very nasty terraine down the fall line. (If a short knarly line runs out into a mellow apron (mainline pocket), it is of no real consequence for the purpose of this discussion.)

 

There can be no options out, no way to change your mind in mid-line, no bailing, no traversing, no getting out of your predicament. Ya gotta ski the whole line cause ya got no choice.

 

Healy, if a tree can grow there, it ain't extreme.

 

More people now ski stuff like the French guys used to ski , so the whole thing has to ratchet up a knotch. If more than a given (?) number of skiers can ski it in a given season, it ain't extreme anymore, or the  concept loses its meaning.

Edited by davluri - 2/28/2009 at 10:57 pm

My 5 year old skied a double black at Nakiska, Now thats a gnarly mountain, I like how there is no snow in the trees. G, H, I gullies and "Out of bounds bowl" at Louise make you concentrate a bit and there is no way to traverse out. 

 

 

i dunno, i've seen quite a few videos of guys not sticking the landing on 100 ft+ cliff drops and they lived to tell. because they didn't die it wasn't extreme?

Ah such fun ..

I may have missed any mention of ABasin (if so, sorry) but I'd certainly include the East Wall.

Here's a pic of my bud, Creed, hiking UP the shallow runout of Willy's Wide - sorry I don't have a pic of the steep part.

Maybe this gets it - everything on the left 2/3ds of background is skiable (by some). The foreground is seriously decent blue tending to black runs. I don't pop the top of the E.Wall but I assure you the bottom 1/2 can, repeatedly, get your heart pumping. Great fun.

And while most of the `Zuma bowl is bogus, dropping in off the west side cornices is a guaranteed rush most days. Here's a view of the gentlest part:

The trees at the bottom seem somewhat compressed because you're looking almost straight down on them. This is the safe area with few rocks. And yes, that is another drop off in the middle. Maybe I'll get some pix off MAX and some of the others when my knee untwists next week :-{ 

 

 

 

you should ski magician while its closed for a real thrill.

Some of the pictures you guys posted are more extreme than I thought existed in in-bounds.

 

As far as I can tell, these runs that you guys call very extreme are not even runs per-se as far as I am concerned. They're more like steep chutes/couloirs where there are rocks everywhere and you have to follow an exact line and take air in a certain path, or else you're gonna get a trip to the hospital.

 

I wouldn't even dream of skiing the posted runs here even if I was good enough because I'd most likely break my neck or break my skis.

 

 

"...bump run..." a bump run can't qualify if the run is difficult  primarily due to the bumps making it ski tougher.

 

The run should be (extremely) difficult in any conditions

 

By definition, a bump run has been skied by many people: dis-qualifies it right there, IMO..

 

Of course it has to be a no-fall-zone or there is no fear. No fear means no imperative, no commitment to the gnar.
 

Words or ideas commonly used in a BS context lose any usefulness as a concept: ie. extreme skiing. You have a trip planned to ski extreme runs of N. America. You ask someone where to go. You need that sourse of information to adhere to a real definition, one generally accepted to mean one thing only.

 

I cannot believe that Whistler is mentioned yet 'The Coffin', 'Air Jordan' , 'Exhilaration', 'West Cirque', 'International Trees' are not mentioned. 'Couloir Extreme' on Blackcomb (I hate that name - always feel like such a wanker when I say it) is definitely on the 'do not fall on the entry or you will seriously mess yourself up' list. I am not saying that they are in the top ten in North America. But Corbets is no harder to get into than 'McKonkey's' so I do not know how that rates.

 

Not saying that I can ski them all and the one's I can ski induce 'moderate' pucker factor (in me) which is why we push ourselves after all.

 

As long as we are enjoying ourselves - pushing ourselves or not, who gives a rat's about whether something is rated 'extreme' or not by some magazine. 

 

PS Tyrone - that shot of you on top of Patrolmans is mental. 

 

 

Since no one has mentioned it yet: Class 6 @ Moonlight Basin.

actually, the most extreme run is out of bounds, has a mandatory 200 ft air, and has only been attempted once--by one of the biggest idiots alive....

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaPEBo9gvkM&feature=related

 

You are referring to cliff jumping not "extreme skiing." Yeah, dropping 100 ft. cliffs is impressive, but true extreme skiing is defined by huge, steep, technical lines with you-fall-you-die exposure.

An expert skier dropping an in-bounds cliff is not "extreme skiing."  

 

Go to Chamonix and tell a local ski mountaineer that you skied an "extreme bump run" or jumped off an "extreme cliff" under a chairlift in-bounds and you WILL BE LAUGHED AT!

Edited by DropCliffsNotBombs - 3/24/2009 at 03:24 pm

 

Some of those value meals can reflect a "commitment to the gnar," for sure.  The whole freeskiing/big mountain movement was a reaction against extreme as a term.  (Some big-mountain terrain can be extreme, of course.)  As a marketing term or as a way of classifying subjective experience (some lift rides can SEEM pretty intense to someone not used to exposure, so for them it could be considered an extreme experience) I think it works as a term.  But it's good to remember DCNB's point on the definition and why people came up with freesking/big mountain instead.

 

Follow up that taco with some jerky and cheddar.  Gnarly brah. 

 

not just laughed at, but laughed at IN FRENCH. ouch.

this run doesn't seem as extreme as some of the others in terms of steepness, but does anyone have any input on the backside of kirkwood (off in the distance to the left as you ride the slowest 2 chair lift on the backside), not sure of the run name but i've heard it called the "wave" (because of a cascading wave shadow that forms here) that once dropped in from leads into the "grave yard" with tombstones of ice?  That was one that I always wanted to drop in on, but never did because of the impending doom of ice blocks. 
P.S.  I'm not as good as most people posting here i'm sure.

Edited by guroo270 - 11/10/09 at 5:06pm

Given that I can't ski anything these boards would qualify as "extreme" (or whatever), and the fact that The Wave is one of my favorite runs at Kirkwood, I'm going to have to say it doesn't qualify. The cornice at the top can be intimidating, but once you are past that it is actually quite tame: very open and not that steep. Similar things could be said of the majority of the backside. There are much nastier runs heading back to the front side via Thunder Saddle and Lookout, and Tyrone posted some pictures earlier in the thread of some really burly stuff.


Edit: as to "tombstones of ice" I have had bad experiences back there in white out conditions. I ran smack into large, refrigerator sized chunks of dense snow that had been scattered across the bowl by the avi-guns. Never saw them until they were at my ski tips. 

 that says extreme to me.  but i know it's different.  i spent most of my time in the superpark when i used to ski there, and my friend told me about the tombstones and it sounded like something i never wanted to do, so i never even tried to check it out.  thanks for the clarification though.

 does this count as extreme? 

then what's this?

No dash.  I was at a Masters SL race a few years back at BC, and they had just winch-catted The Brink and buffed the whole course for a Nor Am race, I think.  Birds of Prey was wide open to the public, so after our race, a bunch of us went up to tour the course.  When you get off the chair that takes you to the start, the top is actually pretty flat, so they built this 3 story start ramp to get the racers going.  Somebody said "Whoa, somebody should hike up there and run the top"...which I, of course, did.  The top is no big deal, and I doubt I got much over 45, because I was on 165 SLs. 

Then you get to The Brink, and the game changes.  There's a right-footed turn to enter The Brink, followed by a left-footed turn right on top of what looks like a huge, frozen basketball.  You can't even see the bottom of the pitch, but what you can see is a bunch of steel booms holding B netting up in the trees, which is where you're going to be if you blow the left-footer. 

The bottom of The Brink is a left-footer in a slot next to the fence that looks like a gutter in a bowling alley.  At this point, the hill flattens and rolls somewhat, the turns are less offset, and I think the speeds shoot up to 75 or 80.  The right-footer below the top of the Super G (which is a really scary looking pitch) isn't a real super difficult turn...but at that point, you're going so fast that it looks like if you don't nail the line and the timing, there's no way you're going to make the next gate, which is what I think happened to Bode last year....or maybe it was down lower.  One of the scariest looking turns I've ever seen, and this is on the hardest, injected snow I've ever skied on. 

After that, the turns are pretty well laid out...but again, you're going so fast that everything has to happen right, and quickly, and you're also into the big jumps, such as but not limited to Golden Eagle.  We stopped there for a minute. Nobody said much of anything, and then one of the guys in my Masters class...who is a former fighter pilot, loves downhill, and isn't afraid of much of anything I know of, looked at me and said "I wouldn't ski this thing with your private parts." 

The last, but maybe the most impressive part, is the last big roll, I forget what it is, before the finish.  Speeds are well over 80 mph at this point, and I think one of the guys, who was there for the World Cup Race, said that they had a stop watch and were clocking guys in the air for something ridiculous like 2.8 seconds...a flight of something like 175 feet.  As a postscript, one of the guys in my class, believe it or not, actually foreran a race on this course...but that's a story for another day...

I would not consider a race course a extreme run. A extreme run takes full concentration 100% of the time every time. How many coaches have skied Birds of Prey while carrying things like gates and b-net? You will not see someone carrying a bundle of gates down some of the runs talked about above.

All true.  I was thinking about racing down it.  Is downhill racing a form of skiing the steeps?  I think it is, and I think that Birds of Prey is one of the toughest courses in the world...but your mileage may vary...

A race course or racing is not extreme. Everything is too controlled for it to qualify. Injected snow, measured and placed gates, inspection runs, safety nets... There is very little unpredictability everyone racing down has close finish times.

I'm an idiot.  Please help.  What is "injected" snow?  do they shoot it with ski wax to make it uber fast? 

I am not familiar with the exact process but it involves injecting water into the run to make the snow rock hard. It makes for a very consistent surface for the racers.

"Injected snow" refers to a snow surface preparation method for ski racing.  The snow surface is actually injected with water to keep the surface hard & fast.  Injection also helps keep the snow from "breaking up", something that can become a problem for later racers on a course.  The injection system makes the race course more consistent for all the racers.

Injection bar system at use in Kitzbuhel, Austria:


I suppose everyone has they're own definition of "extreme", but I have to  when someone says a WC race course doesn't qualify... Especially a Downhill!  Controlled environment or not it is about as extreme as it gets.  To think otherwise is ignorant, & I don't say that in a mean way, it just is.
JF

What makes a race course so extreme? Enlighten me.

Speed and gates. 

And a surface that's as slick as formica and ten times as hard.

Amen.  Hitting 80 plus is pretty extreme in that kind of arena, and although the whole thing may be controlled, Bad Things can still happen.  If you don't believe me, watch Dani Albrecht's crash last year at the Hahnenkamm, or Scotty McCartney's at the same venue...