parisbaconpesto: Oppositional defiance.

Good morning Big Sky!

My waffle light is the 3 p.m. forecast update, which has really not been kind to anyone this season. Somehow western Montana has added up a snowpack 120 percent of average, but the skiing this year has not been that good, unfortunately, and the long-range suggests it’s about to get a lot worse.

Took the wife and baby to magical, mystical Turner (and this time did not drive the car off the road and into the creek).

From the top:

He earned himself a $1 hot chocolate.

Someone else is learning to ski. Here’s Laura in good form on day four.

We also had time to ski some loops in South Flower.

After skiing, everyone drinks beer and eats pizza at the Red Dog. This was fun until we realized it was after 6 p.m. and we still had a four-hour drive ahead of us.

Back to an old favorite – Stonewall.

Made it to the summit this time to look into the great beyond (i.e., the Bob Marshall and Scapegoat).

Got a Samsung Galaxy 5 smart phone – all I’ve had before were dumb ones. It’s both mind-blowing and overwhelming. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I can’t do this with my old LG phone.

Or this:

Some new yard art courtesy of Back Alley Metals in Red Lodge.

Like those skis in the picture above? I did too until I tried to use them. They were former rentals I got for $40 from Outdoor Supply, which is down the street from us. I started using them in November and was immediately impressed with how difficult cross-country skiing had become after a few months of off-season down time. I chalked this up snow conditions, being out of shape, and Cooper’s added weight – until I finally turned them over and realized that Outdoor Supply had some me a pair of skis practically devoid of scales. I took them back to Outdoor Supply last week, and the manager told me it was my fault – I should have given them a better inspection when I bought them. I asked him if it was too much to assume a local ski shop is not going to sell garbage?

In addition to confirming that I need never waste another moment going into Outdoor Supply (there are a lot of places to buy skis in this town), this escapade allowed me to answer a question which occasionally arises among Nordic skiers – can you scale your own skis?

Turns out, yes, you can, and the results are not half-bad. I used a hand-held vibrating saw and made alternating cuts into the p-tex to produce a ribbed pattern. The result is decent grip, even on firm snow, but real scales would probably be better (and not result in ruining the ski).

(Original base at left, hand-scaled base on right. Yeah, base chips from rocks and logs are deeper than the scales on these skis.)

Another view:

(By the way, that Craftsman saw had not been used since summer and has sat in the garage through multiple below-zero days, but when I turned it on the battery was still nearly full. Nice to see some things around here still work.)

Good experiment though it may be, it’s probably a real waste of time. I went skiing with Scott this weekend, who bought the exact same skis as I did from the exact same place and found the bases to be in the exact same condition. His was, however, actually slightly different -- his sidewalls are totally blowing out, and upon closer inspection I can see mine are too! Here are his sidewalls: