High Contrast

Yin and yang in Sunday's mountain news.

Truckee's local fishwrap worked overtime on the holiday weekend to report: "Dry Conditions Posing Problems for Tahoe Region Wildlife" Bad News Bears...

The news from Stevens Pass in Washington State is about too much snow: "Avalanche Takes Three Lives Near Stevens Pass"

That's "Our Snow" falling in the Pacific Northwest courtesy of La Niña's tendency to split our cold fronts.

This year's La Niña seems to shaping up to be especially deadly for beast and man!

By Monday noon, the story was even being reported in Europe. Friend of @CorduroyPlanet, PlanetSki has the names. Perhaps because European skiers have been having high avalanche danger in their mountains too.

Even Royalty have been avalanche victims. Dutch Prince, Johan Frisco was hit by a slide Friday in Lech, Austria. He survived 15 minutes buried in the avalanche debris, and remains in critical condition in an Innsbruck hospital.

Both the Washington group and the Dutch Prince were skiing out of bounds. Both groups decided to ski outside of controlled slopes during High Avalanche Warnings. Swept away survivors on both continents wore and deployed airbags.

It's not nice to mess with Mother Nature. I opined on avalanche danger back in August 2009. Titled  "Poaching" it was the 19th CorduroyPlanet Post ever.

Maybe I Need a Day Off

I couldn't find a single coherent thought after Thursday's Ballgame and Forced March. I wrote and posted two entries about not very much anyway.

It turns out that the second blog-ette was my 250th post here. So I wasted a milestone for what...whining about my feet? Stay classy, TruckeeDave!

I know how the Tour de France racers feel this week...kinda like a poached egg when it lands on the toast. It's been wicked hot here in the Inland Valley, over 90F every day this week.

I've been doing some ladder work over at the SturgeUrge Compound all week too. And doing some chores in the Diggins.

The Delta Winds did kick in this afternoon, so there's relief blowin' in the wind.

I'm gonna cool my heels this weekend (if you don't count chores, errands, and the Farmer's Market) This weekend the Giants are playing the Dodgers in LA, the IndyCars race in Toronto, the MotoGP bikes race in Germany, and the Tour de France enters the big mountains of the Pyrénées starting Sunday. Lots of daring-do and drama, plus baseball. I feel restoration is nigh.

Properly rejuvenated, SturgeUrge and I will hunt halibut on San Francisco Bay Monday.

Poaching

Wilting
I'm getting tired of this heat. The promised cool-down didn't come...as a matter of fact, the Inland Valley is hotter than yesterday...again. How do the TV weather-folks keep muffing their 8-hour forecasts? According to my calendar, it's "Summer in the City" with the same ol'-same ol' forecast on an endless tape loop that's supposed to play from June 'till October. I couldn't write yesterday...I attributed that to the heat, and tried to recover at the end of my truncated scrawl with a quip: Poached.

Like any interesting word, "poached" has many uses and meanings. In the kitchen one can poach eggs-bam! Simple on buttered toast...or fancy, say Eggs Florentine or Eggs Benedict.

There's Poached Salmon...a personal favorite when I catch Wild Chinook Salmon, and it's snowing too hard to do the BBQ thing out on the porch. Halibut is good poached too, though I like it grilled mostly...sauteed, breaded and fried, even Picatta style with lemon juice and capers are all good.

I found a recipe once for "Poor Man's Lobster" That's halibut poached in 7-Up. I had lots of halibut in my freezer at the time, so I took the plunge. It tasted somewhat like lobster, but I deemed it a waste of perfectly good halibut flesh.

Halibut done simply, is as good as it gets. Most people overcook fish, not TruckeeDave. I've made many hundreds of pounds of sushi in my kitchens over the years...my personal home kitchens. I've never cooked for pay...I worked for a week or two in a restaurant doing clean-up overnight, before I wised up and became an apprentice carpenter. In the ensuing years, I did make the time to learn how to cook fish properly, though. Take the fish off the grill or out of the pan just before it's done...it will finish cooking on the plate.

Poaching
Here near the Coast and the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta, there's a newspaper story seemingly every week, reporting on the latest band of Sturgeon Poachers, Black Bear Poachers, Deer or Elk Poachers, and worst of all, Abalone Poachers.

It's a "Little United Nations" of poachers, apparently. Russians or Ukrainians seem to do the sturgeon crime, it's the mullet, meth, and camo set poaching the antlered game and bears from their AstroTurf equiped El Caminos, and various Asian Communities overdoing the Mollusks geometrically...usually selling to the restaurant trade.

California has tough laws on poaching to protect our fish and game resources...I guess the Judges who pass sentence on these offenders don't hunt or fish, or care to view wildlife for that matter. California doesn't have Hanging Judges anymore...I don't understand mercy when it's bestowed on those who show no mercy when they're stealing precious fish and wildlife from The People.

Poachers
Poaching on my Mountain is serious business. There are several flavors of Poachers on Ski Hills.

Snowmobiles. Two basic families here:

Other workers on the Mountain who never saw the fresh pass of corduroy that didn't need roosting with a snowmobile track. I teach the Guys to get over it, and have an annual word with Dept. heads who's employees ride sleds.

Snowmobile Enthusiasts. Local gearhead types who use our Mountain after hours to "see what she'll do" It's impossible for a snowcat with a top speed of 12 MPH to catch a +65 MPH sled...period. We hope they keep it together enough to avoid all the hard stuff...rocks, trees, lift towers, etc. I suspect that these Hot Rods all have an alcohol component...not in the tank...just sayin'...

When our lifts are turning, another poacher comes out to play. These poachers hike up the Mountain and ski the upper chairs, where they're less likely to get ticket-checked...that doesn't work anymore. Ticket checkers are worth what the resorts pay them in these days of over-$60 Lift Tickets. These guys annoy the Brass in the Base Lodge...that's bad for all concerned.

Poach 'Till You Die
This last flavor of poacher is the only one that still raises my blood pressure. Poaching a closed area. This means the poacher intentionally cuts under a closure to ski or ride in an area that's in-bounds but closed by the Ski Patrol. Patrol closes in-bounds ski runs because they can't be 100% certain that the slope in question is safe. This only happens during heavy storm periods, when avalanche loading is ongoing.

All known avalanche paths are "controlled" before our guests can ride our lifts. When the weather is coming in hard and fast, or moderately, but with high winds, Patrol will close the most problematic runs so that the lifts can still open "on time" Once all the scheduled lifts are turning, Patrollers will re-assess the closed runs..."ski cutting" them once again, to try and get any potential slides to go in a controlled manner, without endangering our guests or property.

Way back in the early 80's a couple of skiers cut a closure and triggered a slide that buried them both. I later found out that they had asked Patrol about the closed area and were told the Patrol would re-assess and get back to them. Impatience got the best of them, they poached the run, it slid, and one guy paid the ultimate price. I saw the survivor guy admit to their error in lurid detail on the 11 o'clock news, while I was getting ready to go to work that evening.I found one of the victim's skis 25ft up in a lodgepole pine the following summer.

This kind of poaching is like cooking fish in a way...but the poacher gives up the autonomy to "take the fish off the heat just before it's done" Nature decides when things are done. Poachers, you've been warned.