101 Places Not to See Before You Die - Catherine Price [22]
If you are still insistent on spending New Year’s Eve in Times Square (perhaps you are also the sort of person who enjoys spending long periods of time in MRI tubes), then do yourself a favor and get a hotel room with a view of the festivities. It’ll be expensive, and you’ll have to book far in advance, but when you’re standing in your toasty room, champagne glass in hand, looking down at the crowds with a private toilet just steps away, there’ll be no question it was worth it.
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Chapter 29
The Double Black Diamond Run at Powderhouse Hill
Just kidding. There is no black diamond run at Powderhouse Hill, a miniature ski resort in South Berwick, Maine. With a vertical drop of just 175 feet (that’s 2,100 inches), its three trails range in difficulty from easy to really, really easy, and the hill is so small that it doesn’t even have a lift—instead, an eight-hundred-foot tow rope drags skiers and snowboarders, most of whom are too short to go on amusement park rides, up a grade so gentle that at first glance, it’s hard to tell whether they’re moving up or down. Occasionally neighborhood teenagers build small ski jumps, but anyone looking for Maine’s version of Taos had better keep searching.
If you’re not a thrill-seeker, however, Powderhouse Hill is charming. Run entirely by volunteers, lift tickets go for $5, and $25 earns you a lifetime membership. The small chalet at the bottom of the hill is heated by a wood stove and sells small snacks to offset the cost of running the ski area. The best part: the original engine for the tow rope came courtesy of a jerry-rigged 1938 Ford truck that the founders of the ski slope parked on the top of the hill and modified so that its rear wheel could pull the rope. These days its engine has been replaced by a newer, thirty-seven-horsepower version, but the truck still sits at the top of the hill, chugging away.
Chapter 28
The Double Black Diamond Run at Corbet’s Couloir
Powderhouse Hill might not be great for thrill-seekers, but conversely, Corbet’s Couloir in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is a must-miss spot for anyone who would prefer not to meet their doom on skis.
Ranked fourth on Skiing Magazine’s 2006 list of “Top 50 Things ALL Skiers Must Do Before They Die,” the couloir sits at the top of Jackson Hole’s Rendezvous Mountain, which has the greatest continuous rise of any ski slope in the United States. If you scoot yourself up to the edge of the couloir, you’ll see a narrow chute lined with jagged rocks, but be careful. The first person to ski Corbet’s was a ski patroller who accidentally fell into it after the cornice he was standing on collapsed.
Skiers who push themselves off the edge deliberately have a ten- to thirty-foot leap of faith (i.e., free fall) onto a fifty-five-degree slope, at which point they have to immediately hit a very hard right turn, lest they “smash into a face of Precambrian rock,” as one Corbet survivor described it. The chute eventually flattens to a mere forty-five-degree angle, but few people even make it to that point; watch videos of Corbet attempts and you’ll acquire a newfound appreciation for the many different ways in which one can wipe out on skis.
These videos also give a vivid example of how easily humans—especially those who are young and male—can be convinced to do stupid things. My favorite begins with a group of college-aged guys standing at the top of the cliff asking one another if he is going to ski it. “Fuck that,” says one. “I kind of want to vomit,” says another. Then someone hurls himself off the edge. His buddies, now convinced that not jumping off the cliff will mean they have no testicles, follow. The next scene