Dave Murray Camp Reports

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How should I judge this season? Is it the amount of snow we got or the amount of bacon we consumed? Is it the number of days we skied or just the number of powder days? Is it the number of days we worked or the number of days we got off? I'm not exactly sure how to do it, but I'm sure that numbers and amounts don't factor into my equation. That is for the PR dudes and the bean counters.

OK, the bacon was good and we ate a lot of it, but my measuring tape consists of experiences, vibes, people, the mountains, the weather and my tired legs.

How about the experiences? I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed teaching every camp (except for the last one when biking took me away prematurely) and skiing with Mr.. Tan and with Roy every camp. It was like skiing with a couple of buddies three days a week. Oh yeah, we always let a few more people hang with us every week because we are nice. We hit up some cool spots and definitely challenged ourselves. In the end I used Mr.. Tan as my tail gunner and the decision maker when I ran out of ideas. By April he could read me like an open book and knew where I was going even before I knew.

Vibes. The one that sticks out is when the mountain shut down due to high winds and we decided to hit the Goat Path to VD Chutes. The goat path was full of fresh snow, no tracks and small sluffs of snow were coming on top of us from above. The mountain was getting blasted by 100 k winds, yet here we were in a pocket of completely still air with soft snow covering our tracks. We were completely alone and there was this feeling of peace. No stress, no noise, just a sense of relief. It took team work to get through the Goat Path and we almost lost Charlie over the cliff. We had to pass equipment, link up hands and help each other to make it. Most of these people do not get out of their comfort zone, but here they had to dig deep. And they did! At the top, we were breathing harder, but I noticed that everyone's chin was a bit higher. Good vibes! Of course, then we had to ski down - but that is another story.

The people. This is a two tier category - we have Eli and the coaches, and we have the campers. Lets go with Eli first. Eli made my season. Because of her presence I was able to coach every camp. Eli is so organized, on top of it and cracks the whip when needed - s**t gets done. With me at the helm, s**t gets stirred, but mostly not done. I'm better off coaching.

How about the coaches. This is the most peculiar collection of humanity on this earth - well, at least in this valley. We have been together for years, yet we don't fight, we share and we love each other - well, at least like each other. Some of it has to do with the fact that we refuse to grow up. Most of the time we act no better than a bunch of adolescent kids. Even the most mature of us, Leslie, sometimes slides down the path of moral degradation. It may seem that we are totally off the wall, but deep down we care about the Camps and take our jobs very seriously. Anyway, I'd get up in the morning and look forward to hanging out with the coaches and this winter we hung out a lot. I could not have been happier.

And now the Campers. What can I say about people that come back year after year and some week after week. I guess I should say "Thank You" for keeping us employed although I'm sure that this is not the average camper's motivation for taking the Camp. There has to be more to it and to be honest I can't put my finger on it. I know that people want to become better skiers and have fun learning, but somehow I think that there are underlying reasons. I could name a few characters and I did name Mr.. Tan and Roy, but there are too many.

The one I have to single out is Steve, the author of the "Survival Guide" (http://www.fcentre.plus.com/murraycamp/) and of his perspective on the the season, which closely follows this narration. I'm fairly certain that Steve's motivation is not becoming a better skier and he is a reflection of a lot of people that frequent this Camp. Perhaps we closer resemble some kind of a cult rather than a division of a respectable business, that being the Whistler/Blackcomb Ski And Snowboard School. Maybe The Professor could dig deeper into this matter and come up with an answer, although it would probably be a complicated formula which would not make any sense to 99.9% of us mere mortals.

My take is that we are a cult dealing with the transportation of bodies over frozen water (well, sometimes not so frozen here in Whistler) and that these bodies derive certain amounts of pleasure from this activity and the supernatural interaction with their master (read coach). Simple as that. And this season a lot of pleasure was derived.

The Mountains. We are blessed to live at the base of two magnificent mountains providing us with incredible ski terrain. This year Whistler and Blackcomb looked like two giant ice cream cones - there was so much snow. But it is about more than just snow and terrain. Its about the journey over the snow and terrain. Lot of the times this year we would billy goat through trees and over sketchy terrain to get to a stash or a magical spot. It would not be a stash or a magical spot if it was easy to get to. These are the places and experiences that people will remember for a long time after their holiday is over. Maybe that is why people come back to Whistler year after year. I know that I have my favorite places where I feel like I am part of the mountain rather than just being on the mountain.

The Weather. Thank god for my DNA gear! I personally love the stormy weather because my stashes and magical places are even more special during storms. This year we got a lot of variable weather and conditions. Some days felt like Heli-Skiing and some days felt like we were in the eye of the hurricane. But when its windy, snow is being deposited in the stashes. Then we had days of sunshine and rock-hard snow when we got to slash around on GS race skis at hundred miles an hour - well maybe 50 miles an hour. Weather is what it is and I welcome it all - even if I don't always like it (the rain). One day I'm getting a wind burn and another day I'm getting a sun burn. Its all good.

My tired legs. At the end of the season my legs felt like overcooked spaghetti and I was generally just a shell of my former self. There were two instances that really amplified how I felt at the end of the year - one time I fell asleep going up the Big Red (I had the bar down) and the other time I was maching it down West Bowl when I folded like cheap suit and almost blew up. That was in the last camp I coached and I knew that I was out of gas. Thank god the season ended for me three days later. All of this is good - I skied a lot and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Thanks to everyone for a great season - campers, Eli, coaches, vollies and the snow gods.

Have a great summer - see you next year.

Tom

Now have a read of Steve's take on how the season went:

Well, another season of Murray Camps over. This is the time when the few surviving Campers limp back home to lick their wounds and try to blot out the horrors of the winter. This is also the time when they make that special resolution never, ever put themselves through this program of torture and abuse again. Sadly, over the summer months, the extensive alcohol therapy slowly starts to rot their minds, the memories start to fade and, before they know it, they find themselves back in Camp where the whole ghastly experience unfolds again.

In the case of the coaches, the end of the last Murray Camp is an equally traumatic experience when they are forced to contemplate a life without Campers to torture. In many cases this results in some highly disturbing summertime activities. Consider Traynor who spends the summer months living out a delusional fantasy where he believes himself to be an "irrigation consultant" working for the Whistler Bike Park. In the event that the Men In White Coats fail to apprehend him in time, you may well find that next season the front face of Whistler Mountain is somewhere inside The Longhorn.

Equally disturbing is The Mad Professor who chooses to deny the very existence of summertime, deciding instead to spend months buried in coaching manuals and leaning against kitchen walls trying to perfect the ultimate edge angle in time for the new season. For other coaches, the wintertime torture habit in fact proves just too hard to break and they are instead forced to find a new outlet for their sadistic tendencies. For Kim (with help from husband Ken), this consists of small children lured into one of her "bouncy castles". For Tom, this is merely a matter of swapping the death and mayhem of Murray Camp for the death and mayhem of the Bike Park (death and mayhem are a way of life for Tom). Then, of course, there's Kindree...

After the final Murray Camp is over, Tom's final duty is to load Dr Death's casket back onto its driverless carriage and send the four black horses once more racing back to Oregon. There the Evil One will again be committed to the dark, loamy earth from where his restless spirit can while away the summer months murdering gophers until the weakening of the sun tells him that it is time once again to head back north for another season of Murray Camps. There, along with the other coaches, he will be waiting for you Dear Camper - same time, same place, same program, same torture...