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 12/05/2004: Time for desperate measures! Sure, the long range winter forecast that is being reported by all regional and national meteorologists looks GREAT! Okay, so we're going to get a LOT of snow and cold. However, I want my snow and cold now! One look at the forecast from 12/05 through 12/13 will make you get really down in the dumps! With the forecast that we have during that period you can expect that we won't see anymore ski resort openings through AT LEAST the 13th. Those that ARE open won't be adding anything to their base depths...and well you get the picture and it isn't pretty. We want to do something about it! However, before we dive into our proposal let me say that this time of year (what we'll call the pre-Christmas season) isn't really important to the success of a season. While the resorts would love to see snow and cold, the success of a ski season is really determined DURING and AFTER the holidays...and throughout January, February and March. This pre-Christmas period is generally icing on the cake and used to prepare the slopes with snowmaking efforts that will get as much or all of their trails running. So there's NO panicking going on anywhere. WINTER WILL COME! Now that we've headed off the potential negative emails...let's have some fun! So here's the gameplan for today. As close as we can tell SkiNC.com and SkiSoutheast.com have pulled about 20,000 visitors a day for each of the last few days and we want to recruit as many of you as possible to HELP us get some weather in here to get MORE snow on the slopes and MORE terrain open. How? Read on! In the past we've had successful pro-snow campaigns with Joe Harmon's "Think Snow and it will come." (Joe, where are you dude?) Last time I heard from Joe was last week and he emailed me some photos of himself in front of a helicopter...and another of the Las Vegas strip. Joe, you need to get focused man...we need you! Sans Joe...we thought we'd appeal to Mother Nature in any way possible...to get some consistent cold and snow in here. We're going to approach this the way that any good battle strategist would. Here's the three pronged strategy. Find a battalion to join and HELP! Battalion A: PRAY! Look, we know God is busy but He also HAS to have a sense of humor or He wouldn't put up with half the stuff we get away with! Also I'd wager that He loves snow too...heck He made it. (For all THREE of you people that are offended that I allude to God and not seventy other entities...go find another ski site, we only recognize ONE GOD around here.) So if you joined this battalion...pray for consistent cold and sufficient snows. Don't go overboard! We REALLY don't want (25) Blizzard of '93 type snowfalls...and I don't care to experience 150+ days of sub zero weather! We could use some highs in the 30s and lows in the teens all season, with say 150" of natural snow to boot. So pray for it...and believe it...and it will be one nice season! Battalion B: Think Snow and It WILL come!  There's
a LOT to be said for "PMA" - Positive Mental Attitude. There are too
many people going around thinking, "Oh, woe is me." We've already seen a
bunch of your emails claiming that it's never going to snow in the
mountains...not ever again :-(One particularly depressed young lady emailed us (evidently right after watching Fahrenheit 911 and The Day After Tomorrow back to back) claiming that there is some conspiracy that was no doubt started by President Bush wherein all of the snow would be migrating too far north and that the High Country wouldn't see one flake of snow this season. She then corrected herself by saying that we'd see JUST enough flakes to frustrate us. So those of us that call ourselves "positive thinkers" MUST UNITE! We're still looking for Joe Harmon to lead this battalion, but if we can't recruit him...ONE OF YOU has to take the lead. We're looking for a few thousand good, positive thinkers who will get the PMA rolling and perhaps that will influence Battalion A and Mother Nature will wake up and get some cold and snow in here pronto. ...and then there's... Battalion C: Contract Some Indian Snow Dancers A few years ago during a particularly slow start we contracted and had a little impromptu snow dance performed. I can't say positively that it had an effect on the weather, but it was cool to watch! Then again there WAS that "freak" snow storm that dumped three feet of snow in my yard...and JUST my yard...but I'm not certain that counts. Anyway, we figured we needed a third battalion to accurately call this a three pronged approach so we placed an advertisement in an unnamed American Indian newspaper in an attempt to see if we could recruit someone with "connections" to dance us up some snow. We're pretty sure that these applicants saw right through us and were just taking us for a ride (and a couple of bucks). We could tell that because of the sly smirks on their faces when we asked, "Hey, could any of you guys dance us up some snow?" There WAS that one guy who pulled out a baggy with some white powder in it, but we couldn't discern if he was trying to push some illegal substance on us or if that was magical snow dust. We weren't taking any chances! NEXT! |
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next applicant promised that he could whip up some snow. We asked him
how much and he said $1000. We meant "how much snow" so we figured we
might better look further. Plus several of us were concerned that
this dude might steal all our girlfriends as this guy wasn't your
Village People kind of Indian if you catch my drift.NEXT PLEASE! We were getting a little worried after not getting anymore applicants for a while. Then Chief Bubba called and said he could do the trick. This guy really sounded like our man. He promised that he could trigger some snowy events and his price was right within our budget. Seems he just wanted to have some fun and he thought a trip over here, a comfy motel room and a few six packs of Colorado Mountain Dew (Coors for you that are uninformed) would pay the price. He shared that he couldn't accept money for performing this ritual because it would offend the spirits! Hey that was okey dokey with us!  Anyway
he showed up and right away we had our doubts. The scowl on this guy's
face would have made him the perfect mate for Fahrenheit 911
girl that we alluded to earlier! We kind of figured that any face that sad couldn't do the trick. NEXT! We were just about to give up the idea of dancing up a snow storm when one of our staff jumped to his feet. We figured that he just had to hit the restroom in a hurry because we had drank up quite a bit of the Coors. We had a lot sitting around now that Chief Bubba had stomped off into the sunset. Our staffer quickly shouted, "I've got it!" We were all waiting for his idea when it finally came. "Hey..." he slurred and continued, "Ma boy once dressed up like an Indian over thar at Teetsie Weetsie Railway and ah bet we could pay him $5 to do the deed for us!" At this point we just wanted to humor him because we were worried that the REST of redneck Joe would pour out of him if we rejected his idea, so we agreed to give it a shot. Redneck Joe called his wife, who became irate for some reason. The fact that this was "portant biznuss" didn't seem to take hold with her at 3am. Some people! Anyway, she slammed the phone down and presumably went back to sleep. We were ready to give up and call it a night. But not Redneck Joe.  "A
kidnappin's in order boys!" he exclaimed.He left in a hurry and returned about an hour later. We begrudgingly woke to his banging on the door and walked out to his car, where we found Redneck Joe's adorable son, Redneck Junior asleep on the back seat. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. We convinced Joe to take his child home and called it a night and gave up on the Indian Snow Dance thing. The only other "third prong" that we could think of was to get all of our readers to purchase snowguns and if we ALL fired them at the same time...maybe THAT would give us enough snow in the air to "prime the pump" so to speak. Then we figured that it might ALSO cause an electrical brown out over the entire east coast and people tend to want their electricity more than they do snow. So we scratched that idea. If any of you have an idea that might work let us know. In the meantime, join Battalion A or B and let's see if we can't get some weather in here. As of this writing we're going to have some iffy weather from now through December 13th. So it's time to get on board and let's see if we can't influence some better, more arctic-like temps and snow to enter the region around mid-month. Disclaimer: No Indians or rednecks were harmed in the writing of this story! < GO BACK |
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