Ski Utah Blog - Articles by Author Thomas Cooke
Showing 6 articles out of 6.
Locals Tip: Sundance During Sundance
Posted by Thomas Cooke on January 21, 2010
Where are you, I said. Driving back from Sundance, she said. I've never skied there before. Wow. It was sooo fun, and so laid back. This was a recent call from my friend Kate, who lives in San Francisco, but comes to Utah often for business, especially right around the time of the Outdoor Retailer show. This was her first time skiing at Sundance Resort, and she was blown away by the beauty of the mountain, the terrain, and the fact that after many years of coming to Utah on ski-related business trips, she had never been there before. I get this all the time. I know countless locals in Park City who live only a short drive away from Sundance Resort, yet have never skied there. Maybe it's because there is a bounty of skiing at Deer Valley, Park City Mountain Resort, and The Canyons, that us locals easily take for granted. Maybe it's because when you visit the Sundance Resort website to casually browse for quick info about the mountain, you have to scan the entire homepage before you find a tiny link that even mentions skiing. Maybe it gives the locals the impression that the skiing is secondary, but I can tell you that would be a false impression.
One of my local's secrets is to hit Sundance for a ski day or two during the Sundance Film Festival. For one, it always snows during the festival, so you know the conditions will be good. This last week of storms: case in point. This could mean many laps of untracked shots in Bishops Bowl on a powder day. If you get hungry and need a break, you can step out of your skis and head into the Bearclaw Cabin at the top of the mountain for a signature tin of nachos, then walk outside, step in your bindings, and pick up right where you left off, dropping back into the bowl. All the while, you are graced with amazing views on clear days that rival any resort in Utah. Sundance really shines as a place for a family ski day, especially if you have little ones. There are cool mellow trails that wind around the mountain, more than enough adventure for my 5 year old who gets excited about saying she went all the way to the top of the mountain. The skiable acres are relatively small (under 500 skiable acres) compared to other resorts, but it skis a whole lot bigger than that.
Say Cheese
Posted by Thomas Cooke on January 7, 2010
A lot of people lament the fact that smartphones and the mobile web can be taken anywhere, and they only force people to take their work with them, on say, a ski vacation to Utah. We've all seen people with their noses buried in their devices, or maybe we've been those people, reachable anytime, anywhere. You definitely have to have boundaries.
I prefer to look at the advantages these devices offer us. Photosharing is a huge one for me. Think about the days of taking a small digital camera to the mountain and snapping a few photos of you and your friends at the top of the mountain. The images are trapped until the experience is an afterthought. Maybe by midnight that day you can actually get around to downloading them, resizing them, emailing them around. I'm talking pre-smartphone/Facebook/blogging days.
Smartphones and mobile web access allow us to share our experiences in realtime if so inclined. Most phones out there have built-in cameras, and most smartphones have applications to link up to Facebook, Twitter, whatever your social web du jour is. The iPhone platform takes it one step further by offering hundreds of thousands of apps you can download. Below are a few quick reviews of iPhone "Camera" apps I have been playing around with:
Snapture is so loaded with a bunch of advanced features, you almost need a manual to learn how to use it. Good thing there is a well-organized info tab within the app that tells how to work it. Features include advanced focus options, tweaking effects like sepia, black & white, inverted, the ability to toggle between, 1x exposure or 3x burst mode (handy for trying to capture moving subjects), and my favorite feature, you can touch anywhere on the screen to snap a photo, instead of fumbling for a small shutter button. Comes in really handy when you are on a lift chair, trying to take a self-portrait, and guessing where the shutter button is while your fingers are freezing. New features in a recent release include Facebook, Twitter, and email sharing options. You also can choose whether or not to save them to the iPhone's native camera roll. If you don't save them and you close the app, no worries they are still there. Well worth the $1.99.
GorillaCam is brought to you by Joby, the company that makes those funky little flexible tripod thingies. They make one of these tripods with a special clamp to hold the iPhone. Many of the advanced camera features available from Snapture are available in GorillaCam for free, and they are in my opinion, a little more intuitive, as they are controlled in an easy to use preferences tab. Two features it has that tell me it would come in handy while using a Gorilla Tripod: the bubble level and the self-timer. The bubble level uses the device to help you get a straight shot when setting it on a tripod, and the self-timer let's you jump in the shot. You can control the delay of the self-timer. Finally, there is one feature you have to have: you can set the number of shots (say 100) and the time interval (say every 1 second) and do really cool time lapse shots. Of course, the app is free, but you'll probably want to buy one of those tripods.
My favorite camera app lately is Hipstamatic. It takes a little while to figure out the User Interface, but the idea is you can choose from a bunch of different lenses, flash types, and film types, and take digital images that replicate the look of old vintage cheapo instamatic cameras. They have a revenue model built-in, with a whole bunch of lenses, flashes and films that you can't use unless you unlock them by buying them, but the $1.99 version has enough variation that you can still have fun as is. Instamatic fun, if you take a photo of your kids skiing in a vintage style, and then as they say, "upload your awesomeness straight to Facebook." All this technology, and the end result is to make photos look like they were straight out of an old family ski trip photo album. You can really have some fun with this one. My only critique is it changes the aspect ratio of your image to square, but it's still fun.
Another Way To Enjoy Groomed Terrain
Posted by Thomas Cooke on December 30, 2009
You know it's the Christmas Holiday week in Park City when it takes an hour and a half to get a bagel and coffee at the local joint. I'm not complaining, this is what fuels the mountain town economy and keeps the lifts running for the rest of the season. As locals, we like to think of them as "our" mountains, and most of the time, we get to have our way with Utah's great snow, and maybe even take it for granted. But still, an hour and a half to get a bagel and a coffee on the way to the mountain gets me balled up. Lately I've been following some sage advice (author unknown): if you can't beat the crowds, then join them, and if you can't handle joining the crowds, then avoid them altogether. This is when I bust out the nordic skis, and spend some time burning calories at a few of Utah's excellent nordic skiing venues.
White Pine Touring, in Park City, is one of those gems. The center of operations is located on the Park City Municipal golf course, with a full-service nordic center that offers gear rentals and instruction for all nordic techniques including classic, skating, touring, and even snowshoeing. The shop is located in the back of the Hotel Park City, backing out to a well-maintained 5 kilometer loop with easy to moderate terrain. Easy because just about any skill level can make it around the loop with some effort. Moderate because the gently rolling hills can be torture if you are trying to maintain the pace of some of the elite level nordic competitors who may happen to be training that day. The folks at White Pine can also take care of tuning your gear to match the conditions, and if you are still trying to figure out how to skate on 90's era equipment, you might want to check out their retail selection of current gear. Instant gratification when you step into a modern set-up and feel your skating technique improve.
Ski Utah Gold and Silver Passes are valid at White Pine. Not many people know this. I didn't, until just this year. They are also valid for day passes at Sundance, Solitude, and Brian Head nordic centers. If you don't have one of these mythical go-anywhere-you-want-anytime-you-want magic passes, day passes at nordic resorts are pretty reasonable; $18 for a full-day at White Pine for adults, $10 after 3 PM. Add on extra if you need gear and a lesson. The variety of nordic skiing in Utah is almost as diverse as the variety of alpine terrain, which often makes the choice of where to ski difficult for me, except during the peak times in my hometown, where escaping the hustle and bustle of the holiday crowds is as simple as skating or classic skiing for a few hours at White Pine.
Check Out The Snowbird iPhone App
Posted by Thomas Cooke on December 18, 2009
This post was going to be about something else. I swear. I had it all written out, but then by a stroke of good fortune, the iPhone app my company has been working on for the past month and a half went live in the iTunes App Store. No kidding. Just now. I am supposed to give credit where credit is due: a certain member of the Ski Utah staff claims to have been the first person to download the app from iTunes. There is another first: we believe this is the first branded iPhone app released by a Utah ski resort. It's a free iPhone app loaded with features. I would love to hear what you all think of it. Get it. Test it. Try it out on the mountain. Post feedback here. Go ahead. I plan on using it at the Bird tomorrow. And I promise, I'll post my original story here sometime. This was just too good to pass up.
Powder Playlist
Posted by Thomas Cooke on December 1, 2009
Powder Playlist
I never know when I am going to have time during the season to do this, so this year, I wanted to plant the seeds early for a new iTunes playlist for the upcoming season. I am pulling together tracks to listen to on the first deep Utah powder day, and calling it GSOE®. I'm just starting to put it together now, tend the soil, cultivate it, but I need some help. Here are the first 5 tracks, in "track/artist" format:
1. Uprising, Muse
2. 10,000 Feet, Wolfmother
3. California Queen, Wolfmother (it's ok to have 2 in a row from the same band, because it's Wolfmother)
4. Ramble On, Led Zeppelin
5. Theme from The Dukes of Hazzard, Waylon Jennings (don't ask, probably will move this to the end as I add more tracks)
I need more suggestions. I need to mix it up. What are you listening to? What music gets in your playlist when you are charging hard, playing in the park, or cruising groomers? Leave a comment with 5 "must haves" from your playlist, so I can check them out. Hit it. I don't care if it's hair metal, disco, country, or Nickelback. Ok, actually, I do care, but tell me anyway.
Gear, Gadgets, and Greatest Snow On Earth® 2.0
Posted by Thomas Cooke on November 5, 2009
I've been around the Greatest Snow On Earth® for awhile. Although I'm not a Utah native, since 1993, I have called the Wasatch Mountains my home. And I've been doing this blogging and content creating thing for awhile too. 5 years as a blogger is an epoch. In addition to this new gig with Ski Utah, and running 4 other blogs, I have been a past contributor to Utah CEO Magazine's now defunct blog. I became interested in blogging from reading a book by Christoper Locke called Gonzo Marketing, circa 2002. There are a lot of books out there about the current phenomenon we call the social web, of which blogging is only a small part of the overall realm. But if you read this book now, you will feel like you were transported back a few years in a time machine, looking into the future through a crystal ball, and thinking, yeah, this Chris Locke guy got some of it right. Confusing analogy, I know, but it worked for me.
So what's my beat? What's my angle for this thing? I'm hoping to share insights on new and emerging web, mobile, and device technologies, and hopefully help readers of this blog embrace some of these trends, maybe even becoming tech savvy ski-related content creators. If you have a passion for Utah's mountains and winter resorts like I do, or let's say you take your first trip to Utah for a ski vacation and it leaves its mark on you, how lucky would we be if you shared this experience with others via the web? Maybe some of my upcoming posts will reveal old, new, or better ways to share those experiences.
So here is one tip for you if you own an iPhone: check out the Hazel Mail app in the iTunes app store. This app allows you to send a real, printed postcard, using a photo that you take with your device or have stored on your camera roll, to anyone in the world, as long as they have a deliverable postal address. It's a free app to download, and it automatically comes with 1 HazelBucks credit to send 1 postcard, so you can try it out. If you end up digging it and want to send more postcards, you'll need to load up on HazelBucks through their website. You'll need to create an account and pre-pay for some credits. Let's say you are going on a winter vacation to Utah. Maybe you are going to ski all 13 resorts, and you want to rub it in to your buddies back home. Load up on HazelBucks from your computer before you leave. Then, each day, upload the best photo via the Hazel Mail app, address it as you would a traditional postcard right from your phone, submit, and Hazel Mail takes care of the rest, printing your photo on a postcard, addressing it, and dropping it in the mail with postage. Pretty sweet way to share your experiences, and you won't have to stand in line at the Post Office.
