It cooled off Wednesday and Thursday April 5-6, so we had to ski hardpack groomers at Mt. Bachelor with no one wanting to go near anything ungroomed. Adam's last day Friday brought a return of Tuesday's weather and the great spring conditions which we had enjoyed at Mt. Bailey Snowcat. As Adam had to fly home, he was on a mission that day, and we were successful in setting a new vertical foot record of 43,900 in one day.
Friday April 7 delivered ideal spring conditions. It froze hard overnight but was a clear and warm day. There was perfect corn on east and south exposures from 10AM - noon and on west exposures after 2PM.
NASJA annual meetings back then had an abundant selection of demo skis. In the morning I tested the Dynastar Powertrac, first skiing firm then softening groomers. Then we rode Summit to ski east facing Cow's Face and the Cirque Bowl, which had some winter snow in the steep shots through the Pinnacles transitioning to spring snow in the runouts.
Most of my notes from Friday April 7 are about the then new Salomon Pilot System. We were the first members of the public to demo the Pilot. The binding was mounted laterally via 2 pins on the side of the ski rather than through a plate on top. They were noticeably lighter weight underfoot, and thus very quick edge to edge. Their video promo was aimed at high end skiers, but to us they were most attractive to those who love carving the groomed. There was some tendency as with the first shaped skis to overturn due to the lower required effort. Adam was playing around on the flats and oversteered them into a tree! We can verify that the binding release system worked fine.
The Pilot ski itself appeared to be somewhere in between a carving ski and an all mountain ski. It was not as good a crudbuster as my then daily driver Volant Power Ti's, nor did it have the edgehold of the Dynastar Speed 63 Carve, which I demoed for Thursday's hard snow. On irregular hard snow, the vibration directly through the plate of a conventional binding into the bottom of your foot was completely absent with the Pilot, even though the skis may be chattering. The off piste chattering gave us the impression that the demo Pilots were not designed for the most aggressive skiers. I was on the Pilot 10 while Adam, who was then 15 years old and under 100 pounds, was on the Pilot 8. Salomon wanted our feedback, and others must have had similar impressions, because we heard later than the Pilot 10 was stiffened some before going on public sale the next season.
We had the Pilots for the ideal afternoon corn window on the Outback and Northwest chairs. Skier traffic on Friday was minimal so those runs remained butter smooth. Eventually we rode Summit to ski off the backside, encountering more perfect corn on the southwest aspect.
We skied to Skyliner just after 4PM and begged our way onto the lift to set the vertical foot record of 43,900, of which 22,500 was on the Pilots. Mt. Bachelor's potential for huge vertical is obvious on a day like this, as it could have been much more. We got on the mountain half an hour after opening, switched out skis twice and also had a 45-minute NASJA group lunch.
Saturday and Sunday were similar to Friday, except at a mellower pace. The frontside groomers got chewed up more with weekend traffic, but the backside corn was still awesome. I skied 145,000 vertical feet in the 5 days of the 2000 NASJA annual meeting at Bachelor, some of which only included 4 or 5 hours of skiing.
