Mike Doyle-Carving

In February I arrive at Mike’s winter home in Aspen. We're heading over to Buttermilk's Tiehack chair. The guys working the chair know Mike and let us slip in just before the chair officially opens. Mike has been in Aspen for close to two months and has carved or powder boarded every day, his legs and lungs are acclimated to the altitude. We’ll start out on a series of none stops down to the bottom of the Summit Express chair. The first run is nice and easy as we mark our territory on virgin corduroy. Mike’s turns are graceful and rhythmical, easy to follow until we approach elements of the terrain where I can see in his body language that he’s anticipating one of the hard carves he makes on powerful waves. His speed increases, his body compresses, and his weight shifts forward. He drives and accelerates into the turn as the spray of his rooster tail starts to generate a large snow arch mimicking the same effect left by water when performing a hard surf carve. He's generated some g-force through the arch of his turn and I lose the image of his body momentarily behind his snow tail. When he completes the turn he looks back at me and smiles like a child asking if I had seen that. There is a playfulness to his riding while he slices through his turns and transitions, always moving always flowing yet you can sense that he’s always anticipating the next big power turn. We’ll leave our marks on the front side runs at Tiehack, then consider going over to explore Aspen Highlands in the afternoon...