And it might have something to do with the Lone Star state’s lack of a reputation for skiing – good or otherwise. 

Dan Good milks some turns down Texas Meadows, northern Bridgers.

But that big bit of desolation bordering Mexico aside, Texas is always a pretty sure bet for good turns. Especially during a year that more than halfway through can still be described as boney. What snow there is takes a little longer to reach.

By now, everyone has probably figured that I’m trying to describe something much closer to home. But don’t worry if you didn’t know this particular knoll’s name. I didn’t either.

Texas isn’t one of the more prominent peaks of the BridgerMountains, but anyone who has ventured out to Bradley’s Meadow has probably eyed its chutes, glades and leas. The mainTexas meadow is virtually a mirror image of Bradley’s, further north.

While the similarity certainly helps, that’s not really what makes it so good. That has more to do with the sense of adventure and the unexpected – most of which I won’t ruin by going into detail.

So here are the highlights.Texas is just far enough away to feel like real wilderness. The scenery is amazing, or as people often prefer, awe-inspiring – from Ross Peak to an unobstructed view of the entire expanse of the Crazies. The slopes are on the steeper side of not very avalanche prone.

Crazy Mountains

And, did I mention that no one seems to go there often?

Anyway, so the other day we made the skinned sojourn following the end of the last storm. I don’t know what we risked but it must have been great, judging by the reward we found – deep, bouncy, carving powder.

After signing our first slope, floating and weaving through the occasional brown stalk of sturdy grass, I found myself giddy and laughing as though I was out for the first time.

It was one of those reminders of why we do what we do, what makes riding sticks and boards so addicting. There is always something new to master and something different to experience.

I’ve skied around here for nigh on 20 years – I’d never been to Texas, and really I’d be hard pressed to say I’ve ever ripped the same line twice.

Erin Good carves up Texas Meadow.

Or, as my friend Erin said, “Every powder day is different.”

And they’re all good.

-SF

Starting with three from the January issue of the Chronicle’s Carve magazine.

Seneca Boards - CRVp.04

Backcountry ski guide – CRVp.14

Mt. Ellis classic line – CRVp.15

And, after a bit of confusion, here’s another ski story, which found its way into the page of Outside Bozeman.

Skiing trees

-SF 

Catching an edge and becoming a lawn dart are not likely to ever become a thing of the past on skis. But, the pain of slamming face first into whatever rock, ice, hard pack or even powder might be underneath might be.

That is at least if the technology being developed on the World Cup circuit eventually trickles down to us mortals on the everyday slopes. Although, I’ve got to admit, seems too good to be true.

-SF

AIR BAGS PRESENTED AS SOLUTION TO SKIING RACING SAFETY

By ERIC WILLEMSEN/The Associated Press

KITZBUEHEL Austria (AP) — A high-tech air bag meant to improve safety in ski racing was presented by the International Ski Federation and the manufacturer on Thursday Jan. 19, two years before its planned introduction at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

The D-air system inflates air bags under the race suit in case of a crash, helping to protect the skier’s back, chest, shoulders and collar bones.

“Crashes may always happen, but this could help racers walk away from it without serious injuries,” FIS race director Guenter Hujara said.

A year ago, the ski federation teamed up with the Italian company Dainese, which has already developed a similar protection system for motor racing.

Several World Cup skiers, including former overall champion Aksel Lund Svindal,Norway’s Kjetil Jansrud andItaly’s Werner Heel, have been assisting in the development of the system. They’ve been wearing a special back protector containing a computer chip that collects various data about speed and movement of the body during racing.

“It’s just a normal back protector,” Svindal said. “We have been using them every downhill this year except inAmerica. Now they have a lot of data they can start working with.”

According to Alessandro Bellati, the Dainese engineer who is coordinating the project, the data is needed to determine the exact moment that the air bags should inflate in case of a crash.

“They will open within 40 milliseconds and reach maximum pressure within 100 milliseconds,” Bellati said. “But we still need a lot of data to tune the system. We are still in the first phase.”

Svindal wore the initial prototype of the air bag equipment during a practice session and said he was hardly affected by it.

“It’s comfortable to ski with,” the Norwegian said. “You don’t really feel it. Even the small gas tanks, they have hidden them well in the back protector. They might still have to work a bit on the shape so it will fit even better.”

The FIS is aiming to integrate the system with other safety measures. The air bags won’t protect legs or knees — the most harmed parts of a skier’s body in a crash because of the attached skis.

“We are interested in how to get the most out of this system,” Hujara said. “If you can define the exact moment that a racer loses control over himself or his material, you could use that also to find a system that immediately releases his skis before he lands in the safety nets.”

It’s not that they can’t stop, though few of them have probably ever tried, but that the passion’s influence extends far beyond the time they spend on the slopes. With an especially high concentration in the area here, it shouldn’t be too surprising that a few enterprising individuals would set up shop and try to help others suffering.

SENECA BOARDS

Eric Newman isn’t yet a household name.

But he might be soon.

As Seneca Boards – the Gallatin Valley’s newest ski manufacturer – wraps up its first year of production, owner Newman, 26, is one of the people shaping the scene from behind the curtain.

Seneca Boards owner Eric Newman glues an edge to the base of a new ski.

Drawing extensively from Newman’s general exuberance for skiing, as well as his experience growing up racing, competing on the freeskiing tour and from his non-profit venture Bonfire Films, Seneca Boards touts a handmade approach to custom and semi-custom skis and snowboards. And longboards, in the summer.

“Most people think, ‘Oh, I want to start a ski company. I’ll go find some place that builds skis and I’ll just have them do it.’ But it’s like, what’s the fun in that? If you’re going to start a ski company, you might as well build them yourself,” Newman said.

The hands-on approach isn’t exactly taking the easy way out, but that’s not really Newman’s style.

“When you really get intimately involved with someone and know exactly what they want and their weight and their height and their skiing style, and you ski with them for a couple of days, you know their weaknesses and their strengths and you can build something that plays on their strengths and downplays their weaknesses, and has these graphics that are uniquely theirs and tell a story, that’s awesome,” he said.

That personal touch is a common thread winding through Newman’s work. Especially through Bonfire films, which produced video footage for resorts to use as needed often only for the cost of the lift tickets, Newman developed an appreciation for the various personalities integral to the various aspects of the ski industry.

“Really the best thing was probably to learn about the people involved in the sport, the people at the heart of the sport, that drive everything, even if people don’t really recognize that,” Newman said. “I feel that there’s a core group of people at the center of any – whether it be rock climbing, fly fishing or skiing – any lifestyle sport.

Eric Newman prepares to sand a pair of wood cores at Seneca Boards shop in Belgrade.

“There’s people on Wall Street that might call themselves ski bums, but they work 350 days a year and ski 10. Are they really a ski bum? But they work every day with the dream of their trip toSwitzerland, or whatever it is they’re doing, they’re typically inspired by those people at the center, the people who don’t make any money and they’re just ski bums – the people that live it and it runs their life. I thought that was really neat, and hopefully I can find a way to tie that in to building skis.”

To snag a pair of custom boards, get started at senecaboards.com. For those with slightly more tame appetites, Seneca is working on a series tailored to the local mountains that will hopefully join the racks at local shops soon.

“We’ve made every mistake you can make and people have been really understanding,” Newman said. “That’s why the community is so important.”

MONTANA SKI COMPANY

Montana’s other custom option is Whitefish’s Montana Ski Company.

Designed in Whitefish and pressed in Spokane,Wash., by Sneva MFG, the Montana Ski Company is currently working on growing and consolidating operations under one roof.

Built on “quality wood from Montana and the region (and) a history of great skiing,” MSC has found particular success lately with their rockered/early rise offering, the Skookoleel. It typically appeals to skiers looking for a lightweight, stiffer powder ski, according to Zak Anderson, who owns MSC with Chad Wold.

“I want to bring together the people who are passionate about skiing and create new business and jobs in my community,”Anderson said.

THE BOZEMAN AND BIG SKY BACKCOUNTRY SKI GUIDE

Ever examined the mountains surrounding the GallatinValleyand figured there had to be more to the area’s ski scene than a few far-flung resorts?

You wouldn’t be the only one.

But with the recent publication of The Bozeman And Big Sky Backcountry Ski Guide by Ben Werner, many stashes are much easier to find.

By Ben Werner

“I was a life-long resort skier, but had gotten restless standing around in lift lines and wanted to explore new uncrowded places instead,” Werner said. “About three years ago I realized how little information there was about backcountry skiing in our area, and so I started to map out possible ski slopes and then visit these areas to investigate their potential.

“At first this was just a fun project for myself to do on weekends, but eventually I realized that the greater community would benefit as well.”

The guide details 25 lines and covers five of the nearest ranges to Bozeman, including the Bridgers, Gallatins, Madisons,  Absarokas and Beartooths.

“The routes included largely cover the main popular places to go skiing in the area, but I did include a handful of “new” locations in the book as well, to add some variety,” Werner said. “Certainly, some secrets are best left for those who are willing to venture into the wilderness, explore new terrain and find their own special spot.”

-SF

Here are a few images from AP’s skiing coverage from around the world – proof that it still snows, somewhere.

Austria's Andreas Kofler soars during a training jump at the third station of the Four Hills ski jumping tournament in Innsbruck, Austria. (AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson)

Poland's Adam Malysz starts from the hill during the competition jump at the second station of the four hills ski jumping tournament in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, southern Germany. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Skiers compete in the freestyle spring during the cross country World Cup in Duesseldorf, Germany, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. The World Cup is held on artificial snow in the heart of the western German city of Duesseldorf, close to the river Rhine. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Skiers compete in the freestyle spring during the cross country World Cup in Duesseldorf, Germany, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. The World Cup is held on artificial snow in the heart of the western German city of Duesseldorf, close to the river Rhine. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Andrew Weibrecht, of the United States, is airborne during a training session for the first European downhill race of the World Cup season in Val Gardena, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011. (AP Photo/Alessandro Trovati)

Michael Schmid of Switzerland, right, Andreas Matt of Austria, 2nd right, Christopher Del Bosco of Canada, left and Audun Groenvold of Norway, 2nd left compete in the men's skicross final at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2010. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

First placed United States' Lindsey Vonn speeds down the course during an alpine ski, women's giant slalom in Soelden, Austria, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011. (AP Photo/Alessandro Trovati)

Winner Markus Malin of Finland, in action during the LG Snowboard FIS World Cup Halfpipe final in Ruka, Kuusamo, Finland, Saturday, Dec.17, 2011. (AP Photo / LEHTIKUVA, Vesa Moilanen)

Sweden's Carl Johann Bergmann skis to take the first place in the men's 10 km sprint biathlon World Cup competition, on Friday, Dec. 9, 2011, in Hochfilzen, Austria. (AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson)

Father Bruno was getting on in years, but still spry and sprightly though relatively quiet for an Italian. He was also a painter and a teacher, keeping a small studio with an apartment on the floor above near the river Arno snaking through the center of Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance.

Like most residents of the old city, he rides a bike nearly everywhere.

For a city with a serious riding habit, in all my wandering of its maze-like, ancient streets, I never saw a bike shop. More to the point perhaps, I didn’t see a cycle that looked like it hadn’t survived the last time the Arno jumped its banks, or about 1966.

Still, I met more than a few people who talked about their “new” bike.

Then, one day I’m stuffing my feet into my climbing shoes at the gym, and a friend shows up with a pair of rather formidable bolt cutters. I wouldn’t describe him as the thieving type, which immediately begged a question.

“What are those for?”

“I promised my girlfriend a new bike for her birthday.”

Someone nearby laughs and makes a snipping motion with their fingers.

That answer did almost nothing to clear my confusion. Although I just figured my limited understanding of the Italian language was keeping me from connecting the dots.

Back at Hotel Ottaviani a couple days later, sitting down for breakfast in the common room overlooking a little piazza across from the Santa Maria Novella cathedral, Bruno comes in a little more fired-up than usual.

“They stole my bike last night.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know, but someone liked it. They cut the lock.”

I expected to catch some emotion in his voice, but I was thinking more along the lines of anger, not annoyance. Even his telling of finding the clipped lock turned kind of humorous, since he had been thinking he just couldn’t remember where he parked after maybe, or maybe not, having a couple of drinks the previous eve.

And, he took getting another one for granted, like something easy.

“I guess I’ll have to pick out a new one on my way back from the school tonight.”

I finished my meal, he finished a coffee, and I got to thinking that maybe he would let me tag along for the shopping – though no one had yet called it that.

I chased him down the stairs to the street. He had his backpack slung over his usual right shoulder, but the long handles sticking out of the bag were a bit different.

“Can I go with you to get a bike?”

“Sure. Do you need one too?”

“Yes, but I don’t have the money right now to buy one. I just want to look.”

A knowing, humored smile danced around his lips, as though I had just repeated some sort of inside joke, completely clueless. With a sweeping gesture that finished on the handle of the bolt cutter he drew from over his shoulder like a knight might have drawn a sword, he hinted at his plan.

“Meet me at San Marco. I was going to start looking there. But I’m not sure where I will find what I like.”

I certainly didn’t have the heart to ask if he, a man of the cloth, was really going to steal a “new” bike. The only words I could think of were the start of a pithy old adage: When inRome…

-SF

Then I read about Aspen’s offer.

Whether for charity or not, that is an expensive pass.

Aspen offers $25K ‘ultimate ski pass’ for charity

By The Associated Press

ASPEN, Colo.— Want first crack at the runs in Aspen?

The Aspen Skiing Co. is offering an “Ultimate Ski Pass” that will let you have unlimited first tracks before chairlifts open to the public — for $25,000.

The exclusive passes also allow holders to meet members of the U.S. Women’s Ski Team when they race in Aspenon Thanksgiving weekend. The pass also buys them breakfast with Aspen native Bill Marolt, president of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association.

When Ultimate Ski Pass holders are ready to ski, they can bring up to three friends. They can take a private tour of the four ski areas of Aspen-Snowmass with a member of Skico’s management team and ride on a snowcat on a grooming mission. They also can take a “behind-the-scenes tour” with the ski patrol.

The pass is transferable and valid at Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands, Snowmass and Buttermilk.

It’s the third year the ski resort has sold the high-cost ski passes. Aspen Skiing Co. says it is offering 18 of the passes this season and has sold one, The Aspen Times reported.

“We’ve typically sold two or three (of the passes per season) so we don’t have an expectation that we will sell them all,” said Matt Hamilton, Skico director of sustainability.

The Ultimate Ski Pass has perks for more than just the few who can afford it. The passes raise money for public schools in the Roaring Fork Valley and support events tied to World Cup ski racing in Aspen.

The Ultimate Pass morphed out of the Foundation Mountain Pass, which raised funds for the Aspen Community Fund and a foundation connected to the owners. In that program, a pass good for four seasons was sold for $135,000.

Kerouac's lookout on top of Desolation Peak in the North Cascades.

Reading through the words of John Clellon Holmes reminded me of a conversation from an English class in college.

Someone had asked, what makes literature?

The answer, more or less: whatever withstands the rigors of time, and appeals to people across generations.

So, even though some of the phrasing naturally dates the work, this seems like it could have been written well after 1952.

-SF

This Is The Beat Generation

By John Clellon Holmes  (The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 16, 1952)

Several months ago, a national magazine ran a story under the heading ‘Youth’ and the subhead ‘Mother Is Bugged At Me.’ It concerned an eighteen-year-old California girl who had been picked up for smoking marijuana and wanted to talk about it. While a reporter took down her ideas in the uptempo language of ‘tea,’ someone snapped a picture. In view of her contention that she was part of a whole new culture where one out of every five people you meet is a user, it was an arresting photograph. In the pale, attentive face, with its soft eyes and intelligent mouth, there was no hint of corruption. It was a face which could only be deemed criminal through an enormous effort of reighteousness. Its only complaint seemed to be: ‘Why don’t people leave us alone?’ It was the face of a beat generation.

That clean young face has been making the newspapers steadily since the war. Standing before a judge in aBronxcourthouse, being arraigned for stealing a car, it looked up into the camera with curious laughter and no guilt. The same face, with a more serious bent, stared from the pages of Life magazine, representing a graduating class of ex-GI’s, and said that as it believed small business to be dead, it intended to become a comfortable cog in the largest corporation it could find. A little younger, a little more bewildered, it was this same face that the photographers caught inIllinoiswhen the first non-virgin club was uncovered. The young copywriter, leaning down the bar onThird Avenue, quietly drinking himself into relaxation, and the energetic hotrod driver ofLos Angeles, who plays Russian Roulette with a jalopy, are separated only by a continent and a few years. They are the extremes. In between them fall the secretaries wondering whether to sleep with their boyfriends now or wait; the mechanic berring up with the guys and driving off toDetroiton a whim; the models studiously name-dropping at a cocktail party. But the face is the same. Bright, level, realistic, challenging.

Looking up at Desolation Peak from the shore of Ross Lake.

Any attempt to label an entire generation is unrewarding, and yet the generation which went through the last war, or at least could get a drink easily once it was over, seems to possess a uniform, general quality which demands an adjective … The origins of the word ‘beat’ are obscure, but the meaning is only too clear to most Americans. More than mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately, of soul; a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself. A man is beat whenever he goes for broke and wagers the sum of his resources on a single number; and the young generation has done that continually from early youth.

Its members have an instinctive individuality, needing no bohemianism or imposed eccentricity to express it. Brought up during the collective bad circumstances of a dreary depression, weaned during the collective uprooting of a global war, they distrust collectivity. But they have never been able to keep the world out of their dreams. The fancies of their childhood inhabited the half-light ofMunich, the Nazi-Soviet pact, and the eventual blackout. Their adolescence was spent in a topsy-turvy world of war bonds, swing shifts, and troop movements. They grew to independent mind on beachheads, in gin mills and USO’s, in past-midnight arrivals and pre-dawn departures. Their brothers, husbands, fathers or boy friends turned up dead one day at the other end of a telegram. At the four trembling corners of the world, or in the home town invaded by factories or lonely servicemen, they had intimate experience with the nadir and the zenith of human conduct, and little time for much that came between. The peace they inherited was only as secure as the next headline. It was a cold peace. Their own lust for freedon, and the ability to live at a pace that kills (to which the war had adjusted them), led to black markets, bebop, narcotics, sexual promiscuity, hucksterism, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The beatness set in later.

"Snowy" Jack Mountain seen from the trail up Desolation Peak.

It is a postwar generation, and, in a world which seems to mark its cycles by its wars, it is already being compared to that other postwar generation, which dubbed itself ‘lost’. The Roaring Twenties, and the generation that made them roar, are going through a sentimental revival, and the comparison is valuable. The Lost Generation was discovered in a roadster, laughing hysterically because nothing meant anything anymore. It migrated toEurope, unsure whether it was looking for the ‘orgiastic future’ or escaping from the ‘puritanical past.’ Its symbols were the flapper, the flask of bootleg whiskey, and an attitude of desparate frivolity best expressed by the line: ‘Tennis, anyone?’ It was caught up in the romance of disillusionment, until even that became an illusion. Every act in its drama of lostness was a tragic or ironic third act, and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land was more than the dead-end statement of a perceptive poet. The pervading atmosphere of that poem was an almost objectless sense of loss, through which the reader felt immediately that the cohesion of things had disappeared. It was, for an entire generation, an image which expressed, with dreadful accuracy, its own spiritual condition.

But the wild boys of today are not lost. Their flushed, often scoffing, always intent faces elude the word, and it would sound phony to them. For this generation lacks that eloquent air of bereavement which made so many of the exploits of the Lost Generation symbolic actions. Furthermore, the repeatedinventory of shattered ideals, and the laments about the mud in moral currents, which so obsessed the Lost Generation, do not concern young people today. They take these things frighteningly for granted. They were brought up in these ruins and no longer notice them. They drink to ‘come down’ or to ‘get high,’ not to illustrate anything. Their excursions into drugs or promiscuity come out of curiousity, not disillusionment.

Only the most bitter among them would call their reality a nightmare and protest that they have indeed lost something, the future. For ever since they were old enough to imagine one, that has been in jeapordy anyway. The absence of personal and social values is to them, not a revelation shaking the ground beneath them, but a problem demanding a day-to-day solution. How to live seems to them much more crucial than why. And it is precisely at this point that the copywriter and the hotrod driver meet and their identical beatness becomes significant, for, unlike the Lost Generation, which was occupied with the loss of faith, the Beat Generation is becoming more and more occupied with the need for it. As such, it is a disturbing illustration of Voltaire’s reliable old joke: ‘If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.’ Not content to bemoan his absence, they are busily and haphazardly inventing totems for him on all sides.

Sharing a backcountry campsite with a local.

For the giggling nihilist, eating up the highway at ninety miles an hour and steering with his feet, is no Harry Crosby, the poet of the Lost Generation who planned to fly his plane into the sun one day because he could no longer accept the modern world. On the contrary, the hotrod driver invites death only to outwit it. He is affirming the life within him in the only way he knows how, at the extreme. The eager-faced girl, picked up on a dope charge, is not one of those ‘women and girls carried screaming with drink or drugs from public places,’ of whom Fitzgerald wrote. Instead, with persuasive seriousness, she describes the sense of community she has found in marijuana, which society never gave her. The copywriter, just as drunk by midnight as his Lost Generation counterpart, probably reads God and Man at Yale during his Sunday afternoon hangover. The difference is this almost exaggerated will to believe in something, if only in themselves. It is a will to believe, even in the face of an inability to do so in conventional terms. And that is bound to lead to excesses in one direction or another.

The shock that older people feel at the sight of this Beat Generation is, at its deepest level, not so much repugnance at the facts, as it is distress at the attitudes which move it. Though worried by this distress, they most often argue or legislate in terms of the facts rather than the attitudes. The newspaper reader, studying the eyes of young dope addicts, can only find an outlet for his horror and bewilderment in demands that passers be given the electric chair. Sociologists, with a more academic concern, are just as troubled by the legions of young men whose topmost ambition seems to be to find a secure birth in a monolithic corporation. Contemporary historians express mild surprise at the lack of organized movements, political, religous, or otherwise, among the young. The articles they write remind us that being one’s own boss and being a natural joiner are two of our most cherished national traits. Everywhere people with tidy moralities shake their heads and wonder what is happening to the younger generation.

Perhaps they have not noticed that, behind the excess on the one hand, and the conformity on the other, lies that wait-and-see detachment that results from having to fall back for support more on one’s capacity for human endurance than on one’s philosophy of life. Not that the Beat Generation is immune to ideas; they fascinate it. Its wars, both past and future, were and will be wars of ideas. It knows, however, that in the final, private moment of conflict a man is really fighting another man, and not an idea. And that the same goes for love. So it is a generation with a greater facility for entertaining ideas than for believing in them. But it is also the first generation in several centuries for which the act of faith has been an obsessive problem, quite aside from the reasons for having a particular faith or not having it. It exhibits on every side, and in a bewildering number of facets, a perfect craving to believe.

Though it is certainly a generation of extremes, including both the hipster and the radical young Republican in its ranks, it renders unto Caesar (i.e, society) what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. For the wildest hipster, making a mystique of bop, drugs and the night life, there is no desire to shatter the ‘square’ society in which he lives, only to elude it. To get on a soapbox or write a manifesto would seem to him absurd. Looking at the normal world, where most everything is a ‘drag’ for him, he nevertheless says: ‘Well, that’s theForest of Ardenafter all. And even it jumps if you look at it right.’ Equally, the young Republican, though often seeming to hold up Babbitt as his culture hero, is neither vulgar nor materialistic, as Babbitt was. He conforms because he believes it is socially practical, not necessarily virtuous. Both positions, however, are the result of more or less the same conviction — namely that the valueless abyss of modern life is unbearable.

Ross Lake, which is actually a reservoir.

For beneath the excess and the conformity, there is something other than detachment. There are the stirrings of a quest. What the hipster is looking for in his ‘coolness’ (withdrawal) or ‘flipness’ (ecstasy) is, after all, a feeling on somewhereness, not just another diversion. The young Republican feels that there is a point beyond which change becomes chaos, and what he wants is not simply privelege or wealth, but a stable position from which to operate. Both have had enough of homelessness, valuelessness, faithlessnes.

The variety and the extremity of their solutions are only a final indication that for today’s young people there is not as yet a single external pivot around which they can, as a generation, group their observations and their aspirations. There is no single philosophy, no single party, no single attitude. The failure of most orthodox moral and social concepts to reflect fully the life they have known is probably the reason for this, but because of it each person becomes a walking, self-contained unit, compelled to meet, or at least endure, the problem of being young in a seemingly helpless world in his own way.

More than anything else, this is what is responsible for this generation’s reluctance to name itself, its reluctance to discuss itself as a group, sometimes its reluctance to be itself. For invented gods invariably disappoint those who worship them. Only the need for them goes on, and it is this need, exhausting one object after another, which projects the Beat Generation forward into the future and will one day deprive it of its beatness.

Dostoyevski wrote in the early 1880′s that ‘Young Russia is talking of nothing but the eternal questions now.’ With appropriate changes, something very like this is beginning to happen inAmerica, in an American way; a re-evaluation of which the exploits and attitudes of this generation are only symptoms. No single comparison of one generation against another can accurately measure effects, but it seems obvious that a lost generation, occupied with disillusionment and trying to keep busy among the broken stones, is poetically moving, but not very dangerous. But a beat generation, driven by a desparate craving for belief and as yet unable to accept the moderations which are offered it, is quite another matter. Thirty years later, after all, the generation of which Dostoyevski wrote was meeting in cellars and making bombs.

This generation may make no bombs; it will probably be asked to drop some, and have some dropped on it, however, and this fact is never far from its mind. It is one of the pressures which created it and will play a large part in what will happen to it. There are those who believe that in generations such as this there is always the constant possibility of a great new moral idea, conceived in desparation, coming to life. Others note the self-indulgence, the waste, the apparent social irresponsibility, and disagree.

But its ability to keep its eyes open, and yet avoid cynicism; its ever-increasing conviction that the problem of modern life is essentially a spiritual problem; and that capacity for sudden wisdom which people who live hard and go far possess, are assets and bear watching. And, anyway, the clear, challenging faces are worth it.

Welcome to LaGuardia Airport.

Welcome to NYC, the city that really seems able to be everything to everyone. 

Spices, wood-fired pizza and exotic chocolate were a few of the food items sold at this outdoor market across from Madison Square Park in New York City.

A drink at the Mulberry Street Bar in NYC.

Washington Square Park in NYC.

Looking up at the superstructure of the Brooklyn Bridge.

A night out in New York City's Chinatown.

I went back east to go climbing.

The view from the top of the first pitch of Wisecrack (5.6) at the Gunks, outside of New Paltz, N.Y.

And to see some of those much heralded autumn colors.

Everyone I know from there talks about them. The fiery reds and oranges and bright yellows even made “shrapnel-bursts” in the writing of Englishman Ian Fleming.

I couldn’t imagine a better vantage either than hanging from one of the cliffs of the Shawangunks – another thing I’ve heard a lot about.

Just outside of New Paltz, New York (90 miles from The City), the Gunks is kind of the cradle of rock climbing in the east, something like Yosemite. With an equally colorful history, climbing in the Gunks still draws an international crowd with easy access and plentiful moderate routes.

Dick Williams’ guide to the Trapps – the definitive book on the largest segment of exposed vertical stone – lists 495 numbered climbs. With first ascents dating back to the late 1930s, the area has developed a bit of historical mystique. The main trail is an old carriage road which is part of a network weaving between the cliffs and preserve property – there is a $17 fee to climb without a membership – connecting the nearby state park with Mohonk.

Some say the Mountain House bears a surprising resemblance to the set of the Shining – with good reason.

Lyra Leigh-Nedbor pulls the final moves on the first pitch of Wisecrack (5.6) at the Gunks.

More climbing specific, Fritz Weissner and Hans Kraus really got things started, and since then the likes of Layton Kor and Lynn Hill have passed through the Vulgarians territory. Local lore still describes Yvon Chouinard’s first visit in 1961,Yosemite reputation in tow. Evidently his introduction to the area included watching Jim McCarthy take a 50-foot whipper after inexplicably losing his grip and getting knocked off his belay before tying into the anchor. Keeping cool, McCarthy’s response: “Welcome to the Gunks.”

So after glancing over that story while paging through the guide and taking the stairs up to the carriage path from the parking lot, it was a little harder to pick a climb to start. The tall, leafy trees didn’t make anything easier to scope or find.

Still paging through, a more local-looking pair stopped to help.

“What are you looking for?”

Starting with where we were, the men made a couple suggestions and offered a bit of a warning.

“For some of the things up to like 5.9, it’s kind of older ratings, you might want to add two. The 5.10s and up are pretty good.”

I think I must have sounded too confident about the 5.7 we had just been talking about. A little voice in my head couldn’t keep from scoffing just a bit; I think everywhere says that about some climb nearby.

Though I didn’t think of it immediately, the other time I had been to the Gunks, Gill’s Egg (V4), a boulder problem just up the carriage road, had unabashedly kept me from getting through more than the initial couple moves. And there is a 5.7  in Joshua Tree that is rumored to have the highest mortality rate.

Sean Forbes places a piece on the first pitch of Middle Earth (5.5) at the Gunks.

More for location than grade, we took aim to find Middle Earth – a three-pitch 5.5 with an overhang on the final section that merits two stars and a PG gear rating. Naturally that one was occupied, but the belayer recommended Wisecrack, about 30 feet to the left.

Wisecrack is 5.6 G. Perfect warm-up. Right?

“The crux is a lot of fun.”

 The rock is quartz conglomerate, which is akin to big-pebbled concrete and smoother sidewalk-like cement depending on the various layers. Where I come from cracks generally seem to run vertically. There the vertical bits just connect the horizontal notches chunked into the cliff like haphazard rungs on a ladder.

Although the start to Wisecrack looked pretty familiar, a left-facing corner capped with a short, simple roof. It was narrow enough I could just reach around, but there was only one slot for three fingers. All the little crimp-like ledges were tempting, but the move was mostly a matter of high-stepping, pulling through and eventually sinking three fingers of the other hand in the only other hole higher up the wide, shallow dish.

The toes were thin, though relatively comfortable. Initially. 

There really were no more notches, grooves or real cracks, which was problematic only because it would be an otherwise ideal spot to fit some protection. It was a problem I spent enough time pondering that Elvis caught up with me, and in a moment I was standing with one foot on the other trying keep from being wiggled off the wall.

The little scoffing voice I’d heard earlier quickly changed its tune: “Welcome to the Gunks.”

Lyra Leigh-Nedbor approaches the first belay station on Middle Earth.

While I finished firing through to the ledge with the tree, the man who had been belaying shouted from his following climb with all the confidence of someone who already knew the answer:

“Does 5.5 climbing get any better than this?”

With a recommendation such as that, we couldn’t keep from sampling.

The dying light of the day dappled the leaves covering the rolling hills down toward the Hudson Rivermiles away. Everything glowed either green or gold, or flickered orange and red like so many candle flames in a breeze. The forest quieted down after the afternoon sun fell behind the cliffs, though the vultures kept circling silently.

Middle Earth climbs like a boulder problem, with the various holds just within reach of each long move. Genuine hand jams give way to ledges which lead to a series of pods and into a final narrow fissure before the anchor tree’s roots disappear into the stone.

Like those describing the east’s reputations before, the man had a point.

Trees shroud most of the lower sections of the Trapps cliffs at the Shawangunks in New York.

I can’t think of a better 5.5, or better colors to swirl around the background.

-SF