96
NOVEMBER 2012
•
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
Feet
The two lumps of ice
a ached to the ends of
a skier’s legs; a word
o en used in conjunc-
tion with the phrase
“
are killing me.”
Forget what the
how-tos tell you.
The first thing you
need to know before
hi ing the slopes is
this: Snow is cold;
the closest body part to
the snow is the foot; ergo
brrr
.
Which is why we love
the
Therm-ic Footwarmer
SmartPack Remote rc1200
with Heat-Ready Insoles
(
$430).
The ba ery-powered insoles have
three heat se ings, adjustable by
remote control. Why didn’t evolu-
tion think of that?
Goggles
Specialized eyewear whose benefits
are twofold: They look cool and
they help prevent you from hurtling
headlong into stuff.
If you’re keen to inject
a li le science fiction into
your day on the mountain,
then
Zeal Optics’ Z3 GPS Live
Goggles
(
$649) are the way to
go. They look like something
you might wear while fend-
ing off an alien invasion,
and their smart, polar-/
photo-everything lens would
certainly come in handy if
said aliens happened to be
wielding powerful inter-
galactic glare guns. But the
real
ooh
factor here lies in
the in-goggle display screen,
which provides
Minority
Report
–
like graphics that
detail stuff like altitude,
temperature, speed, jump
analytics, run count and
geographic location—all of
which can be stored on your
computer for subsequent
bragging sessions. Oh, and the
lens is fog-resistant, which is
also kind of important.
Double
Black
Diamond
Describes trails reserved for those
whose après-ski is exclusively
devoted to interminable boasting.
(
Note: Novices who inadvertently
end up on a DBD should sob
extravagantly until help arrives.)
Ego Snow
Snowwhose consistency is so
ideal, whether by artifice or a
confluence of natural conditions,
that even juddering rookies get
to turn like a pro.
Rising to about 7,500 feet,
Kronplatz
is the Alpine
equivalent of Tom Cruise: not
the tallest fellow on the block,
but extremely well turned
out. Few ski areas on earth are
subjected to such meticulous,
obsessive grooming as this
picturesque resort in Italy’s
Dolomites. The nightly efforts
of Kronplatz’s “slope
heroes”—the folks
who do
the
grooming—are especially
heroic to those for whom
turning and stopping are
issues. “Making turns on good
snow is be er than on bumpy
or broken snow,” deadpans
Kronplatz spokesman
Artur Costabiei. “It helps
to prevent injuries
and accidents.”
Hear, hear.
There’s something gratuitous about the “double” in
“
double black diamond,” a term that calls to mind
stacked adjectives like “super-mega-huge.” Why
not just go with “black-diamond-times-infinity”? At
Colorado’s Telluride Ski Resort, this isn’t so far off
the mark. The Mak-M-Stairs-Plunge (steep, bumpy,
unimaginably fast) is tough on the way down,
while Palmyra Peak, with its 50-degree pitch, is
just as hard on the way up (requiring a hike of
more than an hour from the lift to reach the top).
F
