Top Five Fridays: June 23, 2023
Lead Image: Birk Rudd, boosting on his way to a bronze medal at the 2023 World Championships. More on that below! Image: FIS Freestyle Skiing on Facebook
#1: BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: SkiEssentials.com Has Been Named the Official Retail Partner of Snowbound Expo 2023:
A typical scene from the Snowbound Expo. Image: Snowbound Expo Website
Hello, and welcome to Top Five Fridays, the June 23, 2023 edition! It’s a big week here on Top 5 for two reasons: first, I (Matt) am in France, so that’s pretty cool. Second, and far more importantly though, is that we get to start this week off with a huge announcement: SkiEssentials.com has officially been named the official Retail Partner of Snowbound Expo, the annual season kick off event for those in the Boston area. Those who’ve been to Snowbound before already know: the Expo is a 3 day long event in which winter sports exhibitors and speakers come together to get the region fired up for winter. Traditionally, the expo hosts dozens of brands who show up and offer deals on the latest and greatest gear, while also giving customers the opportunity to speak directly with the people running the brand. This year, we’re excited to announce that we’re starting a partnership with Snowbound that takes the experience one step further.
For the first time ever, those attending Snowbound will have the opportunity to shop a special Snowbound E-commerce site that provides access to event exclusive deals before the expo happens. When you order from this site, you’re ultimately placing a preorder with us, SkiEssentials, which we’ll bring to the expo with us for you to pick up on location. In other words, what this new arrangement really allows us to do is offer a much, much bigger selection of gear than what we could possibly bring to the show, that’s available at Snowbound level discounts. This means a wider selection, and a better chance that we’ll have the exact size, color, or style you’re looking for. For both us at SkiEssentials and the team at Snowbound, this agreement enables us to bring us a step closer to our common goal: outfitting more skiers, for the best prices possible, and growing the hype for the season ahead. To learn more about this announcement, check out the writeup from the Snowbound Expo’s website.
#2: 17 Lake Tahoe Organizations Form New Multi-Interested Stewardship Group:
This week, the creation of the Lake Tahoe Stewardship Council was announced, which aligns the goals of several area organizations. Their first task? Promoting cleanliness in the region. Image: Visit Lake Tahoe on Facebook
In other ski news this week, we have yet another story coming out of the Tahoe region. From paid parking announcements, to the story unfolding at Homewood Mountain Resort, and even discussions regarding the region’s snowfall (which we’ll be revisiting again in highlight number 3), it seems like this is the summer of Tahoe. This week, a new community plan was announced in the region that has the potential to have a considerable local impact, as well as becoming an example for other ski regions to follow. The new initiative is being called the “Lake Tahoe Destination Stewardship Plan,” and was formed in collaboration with, “17 regional organizations and participation of over 3,000 residents, visitors, and businesses through surveys, interviews, and workshops.”
Ultimately, it’s this extensive collaboration that makes this plan, and the resulting Lake Tahoe Stewardship Council feel different. In most communities, mountain or otherwise, there are planning committees, and small business organizations, and tourism councils… etc. etc. In this case though, the Lake Tahoe Stewardship Council is a collective organization formed by all of them. The importance there obviously, is that now these organizations are not only able to share their interests with each other, but they can have conversations about how their interests might impact other aspects of the community, as well as brainstorm collective solutions. At present, as a result of this new alliance, the collective plans on taking small initial first steps, focusing primarily on messaging. This summer, all throughout the community, visitors will be met with signage to increase awareness regarding pollution and litter in an overall effort to keep Tahoe cleaner. Presumably this is just the start for the council, and once they’ve had a chance to get to work they’ll be able to roll out initiatives that affect a number of other areas of the community. For now, you can learn more about this story by checking out the report from the Tahoe Daily Tribune.
#3: On the Heels of a Monsterous Year, Snow Scientists Are Predicting a Far Dryer Future for California:
According to researchers at UC San Diego, California’s ski resorts might start looking a lot less like the powdery landscapes they were this year, and much more like this photo by 2100 - with snow only existing at the highest of elevations. Image: Kirkwood Mountain on Facebook
As we alluded to in that previous highlight, highlight #3 this week also touches on the Tahoe region, as well as California on the whole. Unfortunately, it’s not great news. This week, we caught a story from Outside Online that paints a picture of a bleak future for skiing in what was the snowiest state this past season. In stark contrast to the area’s record setting snowfall of 2023, climate scientists based out of UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography are predicting that warmer temperatures and heavier rainfall will eliminate snow at ski resorts between 5,000 - 10,000 feet by 2100. In other words, just about all of them.
Ironically, backing this prediction is the same weather pattern which blessed the region with record setting snow this season: atmospheric rivers. After this winter, it’s likely a concept you’re familiar with, but just in case, here’s the long and short of it: an atmospheric river is essentially a jet stream of air that carries a considerable amount of moisture with it. In this case, these atmospheric rivers form in the Pacific Ocean, and blast the mainland with heavy, localized rain or snow. This past season, the result of continuous atmospheric rivers centered on the same regions was an incredible amount of snow. Looking ahead, the researchers at UC San Diego are predicting that warmer weather will result in the snowline moving further up in elevation. Thus the conclusion that by 2100, elevations between 5,000 and 10,000 feet could see a complete reduction in their snowpack. For those of you saying, “ok, but that’s in more than 75 years, I’ll be long gone, and I don’t even have children,” well, the thing about this study is that it suggest that we’ll begin to see early signs of this transition as soon as 2050, or just 27 years out. So regardless of whether or not you care about future generations, the fact is that this problem is very much knocking on our doorstep. Like it or not, climate change is very much a reality, and one that’s imminently threatening the sport we know and love. To read more about this study, check out the report from Outside Online. To learn more about how you can get involved in the fight against climate change, visit Protect Our Winters.
#4: The FIS Sits Down For an Interview With Birk Rudd, the Best Competition Freeskier in the Game:
Birk Rudd, fresh off his first place win at last year’s Big Air Chur event. Image: Birk Rudd on Instagram
Finally, we’re rounding things out this week with a long form interview highlighting freeskiing’s Birk Rudd. Now, here on Chairlift Chat, we share a lot of ski racing news, and fit the rest of the competitive skiing scene in when we can. While we might lean into more competitive news this coming season, attempting to cover more disciplines more thoroughly, as it stands our coverage of FIS Freeskiing has been somewhat light. Because of that, you might not know the name Birk Rudd as well as you should. As it stands, Mr. Rudd is hands down the best FIS Freeskier in the world. Last season, Rudd podiumed in all nine events that he entered. He also won a gold medal in the World Championships slopestyle, a bronze in the World Championships big air, and a bronze medal at X Games. Throughout the course of his season, he accumulated the most FIS points ever for a freeski athlete, taking home the crystal globe. Last year, Rudd also took home the freeski crystal globe, as well as the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. So yeah, like we said, Rudd is hands down the best competitive freeskier in the world right now, without question.
This week, the FIS published an interview with Rudd that dives into a ton of interesting topics. In fact, there’s truthfully so many tidbits in this piece that we couldn’t share them all even if we wanted to. Take for instance Rudd’s opinion on the trajectory of skiing: he thinks we’ll be seeing up to 7 spins (a 2520) in the not so distant future. Noting that there will eventually be a limit on rotations due purely to the size of the jumps though, he also thinks we’ll start seeing more innovative rotations- like bios with pretzels. In addition to his comments regarding his mindset, goals with competing, and thoughts on the state of the sport, the other big gem we learned from this piece is that Rudd is looking to test the waters with snowboarding as well. Last season, he competed in the Norwegian snowboard nationals, earning a 6th place finish in slopestyle and 7th in big air. Encouraged by those results, Rudd is hoping to compete in more snowboarding events, even going so far as to say, “It's gonna be a test year basically, where I'm gonna try to snowboard more than I ski.” Don’t worry though, he still plans to compete just as much on skis, with the goal of maintaining or surpassing where he was at last year. All told, it’s an excellent interview, chock full of information and insights from the best competitive freeskier in the game. We highly recommend giving it a read.