Well, not really, but here's an observation of mine that I made while riding at Smuggler's Notch in Vermont this past weekend where the fixed grip double is legendarily long & slow.
I headed out to Smuggs after there was a call out for pictures of their lift access backcountry (I don't think I'm giving away the secret since it's one of the heavily written about "pow" stashes on the East) with a few friends (www.mikerogge.com) to meet up with a guide to show us some of Smuggs interior glades, some well known, others not.
Arriving a little late because we had to hunt down a member of our group wandering around Church Street with a hangover in Burlington, we parked in the Sterling parking lot and decided to catch a few runs before breaking out the camera and snapping some photos. Leaving the gear at the lift house, we snagged the Sterling lift to the top of the peak. We were a group of three so one of us had to ride as a single which sent Pat and I up together to discuss who had the bigger hangover from a night on the town in Burlington and Rogge saddled up with a stranger, which with by the end of the lift ride, Rogge had invited to join us for the day after hearing how the person had moved up from Cape Cod to ski recently. Now I'm willing to bet that had we rode a detachable quad, I doubt we would have got Prescott's (the aforementioned stranger) backstory and found out that he was a pretty cool guy*.
I'm wondering how many other people have had a story like this, where you actually have a conversation on the lift as a result of a slower, more archaic method of getting up hill, rather than tuning out to a hip hop playlist?
*Prescott also wasn't the greatest skier but still hung with us and provided some of the best/lucky falls I've ever seen. I wrote about it here.
