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Hanging 10

Staff Reports

Right on Tom.Save 10!As my wife and I creaked up 10 this April, our kids off in ski school, and all of our co-travelers busy “social skiing” elsewhere in the”quads” territories, we pondered its magnificent slowness. The crawl through the forest was just what we needed. Plugging into some tunes, observing technique (or lack thereof) on Highline, and just relaxing and watching the snow pile up on our legs. We realized then that it was one of the pristine moments of our trip. It reminded us of a simpler time … it felt like an escape from the rat race. That’s what skiing used to be about. Interesting that now that feeling predominates on only one small sliver of the mountain. It was so damn slow that we just had to do it again, and again!That chair is probably one of the last items on the mountain (or in the valley, for that matter) that reminds me of my early days of skiing Vail, back in the late 70’s. Who knows, if VA puts a quad there, it may not be long before they clear the trees separating Roget’s from Highline and string the whole thing up with yellow and orange webbing. Let’s hope it never comes to that.SAVE 10!Gregg RadellMiami Fla./VailShort and sweetTo the editor:Don’t change Chair 10. It’s fine the way it is.Charles AndersonLong-time subscriberWitherby Lake,MissouriTom,I have been skiing the Chair 10 terrain since the season it first opened. Our ski-crazy group of friends even named ourselves the Highline Gang. That was 1974. The name, the group, and the avidness still exist today. Chair 10 is our “warm and safe” place; not just relative to Vail, but for our social lives.Fun, fun days. Those are the big powder days, coming down Highline. Under the lift is the best line. The rapport between skier and the lift riders, just whispering distance above, is inspiring. There is a different attitude over there at 10. People laugh and banter up and down the chair.Chair 10 is the essence of the skiing experience. It is just so retro, and retro is good. The rest of Vail is a homogenous Disneyland. It has strayed from the “real” skiing experience. “Real” is going slow enough on the ski lift that the mountainside can be appreciated. Squirrels are seen. Trees can be studied. We don’t care if it takes a little longer to get up top. And we don’t waste an extra ten minutes waiting in a lift line.I have feared this news you bring for many years. So Chair 10 and its good times may go the way of other institutions that were deemed inefficient and non-contributing to what we “need.” But what do we need on Vail Mountain? We have plenty of Disneyland. We have plenty of speedy chairlifts. We need some quiet spots. We need some area for like-minded riders to hang. We need some tradition. We need experiences like Chair 10!Don LawDenver


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