~Morgan Hua~

The NSC season is almost over.  We had a bad snow year.  Trip #1 went with only 20 passengers including the tour leaders.  Trip #2 had only 2 sign ups and so the trip was cancelled — too bad because that weekend had fresh snowfall.  The Mammoth trip also went with 20 passengers  — also snow dumped right before this trip.  The week trip to Sun Valley went with 33 people and we got great snow at Sun Valley.

NSC is a non-profit organization and we price our trips based on a full bus.  Both Bus Trip #1 and the Mammoth trip were less than half full and the club lost about $1500 on Trip #1 and $3000 on the Mammoth Trip.  The Sun Valley trip didn’t lose money.

The NSC board doesn’t know why so few people signed up for our bus trips this year, but we are hoping it is the lack of snowfall and it is not a continuing trend.  We have only 73 members this year and if we use our rule of thumb, 20% of the membership goes on the bus trips, 20% * 73 = 15 passengers.  So, it may not be the snow conditions, but a lack of membership.

NSC cannot continue to lose $4500 on bus trips and survive.

Next year’s board would have to figure out what to do.

But this year’s board has several ideas which we will discuss.  Such as:
1.  Reduce or make our membership free in order to get more members, so more people would go on bus trips.
2.  Eliminate bus trips and only have the weeklong trip.
3.  Designate specific Bay Area Ski Bus (BASB) trips as NSC trips.  Even volunteer to be the tour leader for those trips.  This way, NSC does not have the burden of losing money if the bus is not full; the burden falls on BASB.  BASB has offered a discount to NSC in previous years, we may take advantage of that if we do this.  But if we do get a discount, then the NSC membership cannot be free.
4.  Try to have 2 bus trips again next year and see if we get a better result.  One argument is that with fewer bus trips, we can try to fill the two trips and not lose money.  A counter-argument is that people only go on bus trips that fit their schedule, so having only 2 bus trips decreases the chance that someone will sign up for a trip, so in effect we would have even less people going on bus trips.  We tried this, this year, but we’re not sure if the result we got was due to the lack of snowfall.
5.  Create an online survey with a list of weekend dates.  If we get enough sign ups for a specific weekend, we can green light that weekend as a bus trip.  The main issues with this is that the bus company wants to know our schedule months in advance, so people will have to tell us which weekend they want to ski on months in advance too.  I know a number of people want to see the weather conditions first before signing up, so this might not work.
6.  If not enough people sign up for a bus, we can carpool.  Karen tried to get a carpool for the people who signed up for Trip #2.  We were able to get some people interested in going, but we had a lack of drivers and couldn’t carpool everyone up to Tahoe.

I would like to hear from the members this year.  If you have suggestions or comments, please send me an email at president@niseiskiclub.org

The NSC year is over at the end of May.  Right now, the board is operating with a skeleton crew.  When the board was larger, other board members volunteered to organize hikes, kayaking events, bike events, bowling events, Nikkei Matsuri, etc.  But with such a small board, we could only focus on running the ski trips.  So, we are also looking for volunteers for the board or even volunteers to just organize a summer event — you don’t have to be on the board to do so. If you are interested, please contact me at president@niseiskiclub.org.

One of this year’s Newbies,
Rick S. Dumlao

As a brand new member of the Nisei Club this year, I signed up for the Sun Valley trip as well as the trip to Mammoth Mountain.  I managed to avoid writing about the Sun Valley trip, but I feel I owe at least a few words now that I’ve been on two trips with the club.  I can’t say enough about the positive and friendly people of Nisei Ski Club.

I had a great time in Sun Valley with good snow that managed to dumped in the area just before our arrival.  There were club members arriving from as far away as New Mexico and Hawaii.  The mountain tour we had as a group was beneficial especially for a big resort.  There was something on the mountain for everyone as the club has a variety of ages and skills.  I’m impressed with the skill and positive attitude of the more mature members.  Because of my personal interest in flying, I was Read the rest of this entry »

~ Monsieur Armand Gutierrez ~

Curtis Otaguro and Armand Gutierrez, intrepid ski warriors from the Nisei Ski Club, made their assault on the fabled ski slopes of Chamonix. For six days straight these warriors explored all that Chamonix had to offer, including the daunting Vallée Blanche, which has its start from the Aiguille du Midi. This is their story.

Skiing Adventures

This trip started with a long, grueling flight from SFO to Zurich to Geneva, and then a bus ride to Chamonix.  Did I say grueling? Let’s see, we had to endure free wine, beer, headsets, blankets, pillows, and decent food on our first leg to Zurich. Let’s see if United, American, or any other domestic airline top that.

First stop was Brevant-Flegere. This is actually two resorts next to each other and accessible by a small cable car. Why Brevant-Flegere? That was where the first bus we caught was going. Chamonix has a free public bus system that takes you to all the ski resorts, and our bus stop was right across the street from our hotel (Hotel Alpina). Brevant is accessed via a gondola, which provides access to a variety of runs serviced by ski lifts. We soon discovered that Brevant was not a very big area and we found our way to a small cable car that led us to Flegere. Flegere was bigger, with more lifts, and a variety of Read the rest of this entry »