Big Sky Resort in Montana is aptly named. The views from the top of Lone Mountain are breathtaking. Stepping off the tram onto the top of Lone Mountain, soaking in the view, and then skiing down the mountain is an experience I’d recommend to every skier or boarder. The combination of a beautiful location in the mountains, a semi-arid climate, and a growing town within the greater Yellowstone ecosystem presents several environmental challenges. Two that immediately came to mind for me are water use and land use and development. Sure enough, I came across interesting things happening in both areas. Let’s take a look at the environment of Big Sky. Continue reading →
Front Range Ski Life is a series that highlights a group of Colorado skiers and snowboarders living along the Front Range. In non-Coloradoan terms, that means we live at the base of the Front Range Mountains in Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, or Colorado Springs. I created Front Range Ski Life during the 2008-2009 ski season. It was a lot of fun making episodes like Resort Slackcountry and Zen and the Art of Skiing. But I let it go into hibernation for the past decade. The time is right wake it up and again share the Front Range Ski Life. Continue reading →
The Chen Cup is a ski race networking event for environmental professionals at Eldora Mountain Resort in Nederland, CO. How cool is that? It combines a nordic race and a GS downhill race for teams of environmental consulting firms to compete for a chance to win the Chen Cup. It has been held annually since the mid-1980’s, but I just found out about it this year and had to compete.
It’s the perfect event for environmental professionals in Colorado. Living the environmental professional lifestyle typically involves enjoying the outdoors. In Colorado in the winter that means skiing or snowboarding. I fall into that category and have experience skiing all over the mountain, except racing. From the people I met on the mountain that day, it was much of the same. This gave recreational skiing environmental professionals a chance to compete in a pro-style race competition and oh yeah, do some networking.
As networking event, it was unique. It wasn’t as easy to meet as many people as a meeting, conference, or social event, but it was much more fun. I met a hydrogeologist, mining engineers, lab technician, and several other consultants and they were all thrilled to be there. Most people weren’t in it to win the race, just to ski some real race gates, meet other like-minded people, and have a good day on the mountain knowing you are surrounded by your professional community.
Since I was racing gates for the first time ever, I made sure my GoPro rolling to capture my runs. I didn’t win, but for a brief moment got to pretend I was Ted Ligety instead of Glen Plake. Check it out.
