By:  BetterThanYou

Squaw Valley is still chuggin’ along…choo…choooo.  We’ve got two runs, as you already know:  Red Dog & Squaw Creek.  I no longer feel confident that anyone at Squaw can afford to be ambiguous about these two zones.  It’s getting late in the season, these two chairs are all we’ve got, so we’ve got to pick sides, and stick to them.  We’re gonna need something to fired up about out there.

Pick your poison:  When you’re on the opposing chair, it’s key to explain to your random chairmate that you’re just using “this disgusting chair” to get to that “good chair over there”.  

So, what’s it gonna be, huh?  

SQUAW CREEK or RED DOG?

So far this season, I’ve been skiing Red Dog only.  More prestige, more hardcore, more local, more people can see you skiing down, ya know, the cool guy chair.  I’d, for whatever reason, avoided the Squaw Creek chair completely…until yesterday.

Squaw Creek made Red Dog look like an ugly fat kid.  You can actually ski on Squaw Creek.

Red Dog is a low angle suffer-fest:  a mellow straightaway to a left turn to a right turn to a left turn and then a HUGE long flat cat track than switches back to another HUGE long cat track before finally allowing you to make about 10 turns on a nice, decently steep slope before hitting the brakes and getting on the chair…which loads on the wrong side now (like run-on sentences?).

Squaw Creek lets you actually make turns:  granted, it’s not steep and no one pitch is as burly nor gnaradical as that last little pitch that you get to ski after enduring the torturous flat cat track agonization (new word) of Red Dog, but you can ski the whole darn run.  You can get into a rhythm, flow, dodge people, dodge snowguns, go fast, speed check, make some big sweeping turn, spray people with snow, pop off a knoll or two…you can even hoot if you need to and no one will judge you (yes they will).

Anyway, that’s my two cents.  Let’s here from you Squaw punks.  What’s it gonna be?

SQUAW CREEK or RED DOG?

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