My Page: Kristen Lummis

Skiing & Snowboarding

Last Fall, I had the opportunity to meet Chris Klug, an Olympic medalist, professional snowboarder and organ recipient. Inspired by his story, I am now volunteering for the Chris Klug Foundation during the month of April, Donate Life Month.

While I am donating my time during a monthlong student challenge at a local college, I am also signed up to be an organ donor. Did you know that a single organ and tissue donor can save and enhance the lives of more than 100 people? While none of us really wants to think about coming to a tragic end, how much less tragic is that end if you can save or improve someone’s life? Currently more than 110,000 Americans are waiting for organs. There is clearly a need. 

Year-Round Use

Believe it or not, it’s time to start thinking about summer, especially when we’re talking about sleepover camp on ski hills. Woodward at Copper is a relatively new, year-round addition to the winter sports offerings at Copper Mountain, Colorado.

Opened in 2009, the centerpiece of Woodward at Copper is the Barn, a 19,400-square-foot indoor terrain park and training facility. Woodward at Copper provides training in freestyle (park and pipe) skiing and snowboarding for athletes of all levels, from beginner to pro. But the fun isn’t all indoors. Even in late July, there is enough snow in the on-mountain terrain park for campers to get out every morning and hit the jumps and the rails.

And while you may be wondering if it’s just a bit too early to care about summer camp, experienced moms will tell you that now is the time to sign up.

Below , a camper perspective on why Woodward at Copper is the coolest summer camp on Earth:

Skiing & Snowboarding

Almost 60 years after the last chair went up the mountain at Pioneer, my husband and I weren’t sure what to expect when we drove up Cement Creek on a cloudy Saturday afternoon in February. We read about Pioneer in a handy book, “Powder Ghost Towns: Epic Backcountry Runs In Colorado’s Lost Ski Resorts” (Peter Bronski, Wilderness Press), and picked it as our first foray into the backcountry.

I bought “Powder Ghost Towns” a couple of years ago, with the expressed purpose of getting us off the resorts. Alpine skiers with many years of experience, we started telemarking just a few years ago, mostly hiking up resort runs and skiing down. Neither of us is exceptionally competent, but we are game.

I thought that our first backcountry destination would be the old Stoner Ski Area, a little hill between Rico and Dolores, Colorado, that closed in 1983. Stoner is were my dad learned to ski - on opening day in 1948. Stoner was operated by the Sky-Hi Ski Club and when my dad was a mere pre-teen, he joined their board of directors. If there is anyplace in Colorado that I have wanted to ski for nostalgic and sentimental reasons, it is Stoner.

Skiing & Snowboarding

New West’s Snow Blog recently ran a post about a skiing/snowboarding tragedy at Wyoming’s Hogadon Ski Area. On Dec. 24, a young male snowboarder plowed into a mom and daughter who were stopped on a run. He was killed, as was the 5-year-old daughter. The mom was injured.

Aside from describing the facts of the incident, the article attracted a number of interesting comments. Almost every comment contained a similar theme: When you are skiing or riding, you are not alone. You have to pay attention to your surroundings and others on the slopes. Slow down and ski defensively. A matter of personal safety? Definitely. A matter of good manners? That, too.

Etiquette is commonly defined as a “code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to conventional norms within a society, class or group” (Wikipedia). When we participate in skiing and riding at a resort, or even in the backcountry, we are participating as part of a common group in an common activity.

My guess is that most everyone already knows the Skier Responsibility Code, or at least thinks they do, but a refresher is always good. So here goes: 

Ski Resort News

While working on this technology, Leitner Lifts recognized the process could be reversed and used to create direct-drive wind turbines. In essence, the direct drive allows the generator to turn at the same speed as the turbine blades, eliminating more than one-half of the rotating components in the mechanism and, possibly, one-half of the potential headaches.

Leitwind has primarily focused its wind-turbine installations in Europe and India and is just beginning in North America from Colorado. Highly efficient, but of a relatively small-scale, the Leitwind turbines range in power from 1.5 megawatts to 3.0 megawatts, enough to offset the energy consumption of between 400 and 800 homes. These are not the type of turbines that would populate a big wind farm. Rather, the Leitwind turbines are appropriate for use by individual companies and communities looking to supplement their local power supply with green energy. And, of course, they are appropriate for ski areas.

Resort News

The “What’s new” question so far this ski season has produced some pretty varied answers around Rocky Mountain ski resorts. They’ve included the new heated bubble chair ("like riding inside a giant pair of ski goggles") at the Canyons in Utah, new ziplines at Montana’s Big Sky and EpicMix, Vail’s mobile app which allows skiers to record every vertical foot they’ve skied at a Vail Resort and then brag about it on Facebook.

“So what’s new at Alta this season?” I asked Connie Marshall, the resort’s director of marketing and public relations over lunch in December.

I asked this question knowing the skiing experience is pretty much limited to the skiing experience and celebrated in its simplicity at Alta. I was pretty sure the answer I got would not pertain to a 24/7 entertainment venue, an off-season draw, or a non-skiing diversion. So I was curious. What does a resort brag about when the main focus is the mountain?

“Nothing sexy,” Connie responded. “We’ve planted more trees and extended our snowmaking capability, reseeding the area with a special blend of native grass and flower seeds. While we could use a standard non-native ski area seed blend to revegetate, we don’t want to introduce plants to places they shouldn’t be.” This, I thought, was interesting: A ski resort so concerned with what actually lives under the snow that they’ve put time and money into planting the right seeds. 

Skiing & Snowboarding

Before throwing away your used Aspen/Snowmass lift ticket, take a closer look: It’s art. For six seasons, the Aspen Skiing Company and the Aspen Art Museum have collaborated to bring art to unexpected places, including the radio-frequency-enabled plastic tucked into the pocket of your ski coat.

The initiative began in 2005 when Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson joined the Aspen Art Museum as director and chief curator. New to Aspen, she was watching the visiting skiers who flood the town each winter and was struck by the idea that their lift tickets were actually small canvasses. And, aside from a bar code and an expiration date, largely blank canvases.

From that simple idea, the partnership has expanded from visually interesting lift tickets to transitory on-mountain art.

Through Feb. 21, skiers and riders at Snowmass can hear singing as they cross the Trestle Bridge between the Big Burn and Sheer Bliss lifts. A tonal, a cappella melody, almost ethereal, greets them and then disappears. Except for a low-profile sign at the east end of the bridge explaining the installation by Susan Philipsz, there is no forewarning, no promotion. Skiers are left wondering if what they just heard was even real, or just the sounds of the mountain. 

Skiing and Snowboarding

The last time I hiked Aspen’s Highland Bowl, it was a horrifying experience. The skiing was sublime. The hike, well, let’s just put it this way: I waited four years to do it again. There is something about being a mom following a beloved son up a snowy knife-edge of a trail in the wind that just didn’t sit well with me. My son, 7 at the time, was a trouper. He was, and still is, a good hiker and a great skier. But when we coupled the wind with a number of impatient skiers—notably a loud woman in a gold one-piece ski suit who kept urging him to go faster or get out of the way, well, I am just not quite that brave a ski mom. We started skiing down before reaching the summit.

So here we were on a Saturday, a family of four (mom, dad and two sons, ages 14 and 11) at Aspen Highlands for the first time in two seasons. We had set our sights for the morning on Highland Bowl, a broad, expansive canvas of snow that crowns the mountain at 12,392 feet. Luckily for us, we also had Sheila, an Aspen Highlands instructor, to keep us moving.

Skiing With Kids

For older children, especially teens, Kate Belknap-Bruchak, the snow sport director at Powderhorn Resort near Grand Junction, Colo., suggests you put these kids in group lessons designed for their age. “It is really important that these kids get to hang out and ride with their peers. That is their motivator. Even though parents may want to focus on skill advancement alone, these kids will progress much more rapidly if they are skiing with friends and motivated by competition with these friends.”

If you are traveling to a resort and want to put your kids in lessons, your options may be a bit more limited. Try group lessons first. Good instructors can handle even larger groups successfully. What is important is that they parents and kids not get hung up on the chronological age of the child, but rather let the group be divided by ability. If this means that a timid 12-year-old ends up in a group with some 8- or 9-year-olds, that’s OK. What is important is that the ability levels and the speed of the students match up, according to Breckheimer. “Good instructors will divide the classes up appropriately so that the students not only learn from the instructors, but also from each other.”

skiing with kids

My friend Jim Grossman is a ski racer. His father was a ski racer. His son is a ski racer and his daughter may or may not be a ski racer (too early to tell). Clearly, ski racing is in the Grossman blood.

When he was a senior in High School, Jim made the U.S. Ski Team and then almost immediately blew out a knee, changing his life’s trajectory. Now a ski instructor at Sun Valley, Jim won the Masters National Super G in 2010 and teaches racing clinics. He summed up his family’s relationship with the sport for me: “Ski racing is what we do. It is the natural byproduct of growing up in a phenomenal ski town. Our life is focused around skiing. Being in a skiing and ski racing environment is our normal.”

Jim’s son Buey started skiing before he could walk and started with the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation developmental team when he was 7. As a young racer, he enjoys running gates, but according to his father, the only goal at this age is having fun. Living in the mountains, ski racing is an available outlet for competition, and Jim believes it is a positive outlet so long as the focus is internal (i.e., “I am trying to ski faster than I did before, or better than I did before"), rather than external ("I am trying to beat that other kid").