Great hockey pics of pond hockey championships

The New York Times has a very short feature on the recent Pond Hockey National Championships held in Wisconsin. Click here to see a truly awesome pic of the event. The above photo is from Flickr and was taken by Kent Landerholm.

Here's an idea for the smart marketing people in California mountain towns: find a lake near a road and hold a state-oriented event. A lot of the guys on my beer league team -- including me -- have never had a chance to play outdoors and would be willing to travel many miles and spend many dollars to do so.

I'm talking to you, Mammoth Lakes. I'm pretty sure that Twin Lakes along Lake Mary Road freezes in the winter. I know I've seen pics of people playing hockey there. If not there, hold a tournament at your financially beleaguered outdoor rink in town -- the scenery is still pretty great and I bet you can get enough teams to pay a decent enough entry free to cover your nut.

--S.H.

Permanent winter

To change the topic from hockey for a second, check out these pics from the ongoing storms at Mammoth Lakes -- more than 130 inches in the past five days. Should be a good season, eh?

My sore groin not impacting camera work

 

Still at Mammoth -- headed back to Pasadena tonight and hoping the ol' groin is up for some ice skating.

As for the above, pic, that's Arrowhead Lake near Mammoth. It's a great short hike, although yesterday was freezing out and weather was trying to decide to rain or snow or both.

To get there, drive to Lake Mary, then drive to the end of the Coldwater Campground and park in the day use/overnight lot. Take the Duck Pass trail for about a mile uphill, then look for the turnoff on the left for Arrowhead. The fishing there is great in the autumn, particularly near the inlet, where dozens of brook trout gather.

I'm going to try to post more hiking info from time to time, for outdoor-minded hockey enthusiasts.

--S.H.

Playing with my camera, not my stick

While my hockey team was winning a big game yesterday, I was toying with my Nikon D5000 in the Mammoth area. Yes, these have nothing to do with beer league hockey, but hey -- it's my blog...

Lembert Dome in foreground at Yosemite's Tuolumne Meadows.

Horse in Owens Valley just outside Bishop.

Northern part of Yosemite National Park, as seen from trail to Sunrise Lakes/Clouds Rest.

My dog Teddy, whose vet bills make the money I spend on hockey look trivial.

Bear!

No hockey this weekend for me. Instead, some Eastern Sierra leaf peeping and fly fishing. And nursing my stupid sore groin. At least I got to see a bear right off the bat -- this little dude was cruising the garbage cans in the parking lot across from the Village in Mammoth Lakes.

Of course, my good camera was back in the condo...

Put the Winter Classic in the Yosemite Valley, so says me

Not that anyone asked me -- they never do -- but I'm weary of reading about how the Winter Classic is going to be in the Pittsburgh Steeler's stadium this coming New Year's Day and how it's going to be in various other baseball and football stadiums in the future.

Yawn.

As I wrote last year, if the NHL had some cajones, they'd put the game in a mountain or ski town in some kind of temporary stadium built of bleachers. I still think a Kings-Ducks game in Mammoth Lakes would be a monster hit here in California, but I also think the world is ripe with other opportunities.

So please allow me to throw one longshot out there: a Winter Classic in Yosemite Valley.

Yes, that Yosemite Valley. The one that's a national park.

If Ken Burns or John Muir's ghost is reading this and just died (or re-died) of a heart attack, I suggest chilling out. It's only a blog post.

Yes, the above photo makes the Yosemite Valley look pristine, but it's not. In fact, it's often a big traffic filled mess.

The far end of the Valley, for example, boasts a couple of parking lots worthy of a Walmart, an upper crust hotel that charges more than $400 per night, a second hotel for the Little People like you and me, as well as a tourist village, several campgrounds to serve the monster RV crowd and a couple of large tent-cabin villages that bring to mind the phrase "sub-Saharan refugee camp."

So -- if you are an environmentalist (and I am) don't go screaming at me for proposing a hockey game in a sacred place, given that Yosemite also has a permanent ski resort in the high country and a regular ice rink in the Yosemite Valley during the winter. 

In fact, a game in Yosemite could be greenwashed with a few simple steps, such as arranging bus transportation on the day of the game for the majority of fans. And it's not like a game requires a monster temporary stadium -- the smaller, the better. A lottery can be held for a lucky few fans and the rest of us get to ogle something spectacular via television.

And why would the park consider doing this? A nice big injection of cash into the park's coffers. The maintenance backlog at our national parks has been well-chronicled in the press for years. 

Yes, the chance of this happening hovers around zero. But my put-a-game-in-a-ski-town idea is a good one and it's not like it has to be an NHL game. College or minor league hockey would do just nicely as a way to give the public a taste of hockey in a grand setting. A lottery can also be held to allow some lucky youth teams and beer league teams a chance to play in Yosemite/mountain town -- giving the sport a great publicity boost that could increase participation.

Putting aside Yosemite, there are some other outstanding candidates for an outdoor game. Aspen, Vail, Breckenridge, Steamboat, Whitefish (Mont.), Lake Louise and Tahoe all come to mind. South Lake Tahoe, in particular, is basically a shithole of a town in a lovely setting -- and a game of ourdoor hockey is hardly going to make it any uglier.

--Steve Hymon

Winter Classic should come to the Sierra or the Rockies

With the most recent Winter Classic, held in Fenway Park in Boston, being widely judged a success, a lot of attention is now turning where to hold future outdoor NHL games. A fun article on the Fox website proposes, among other ideas, a game between the Ducks and Kings at the L.A. Coliseum.

And I came across a Tweet proposing a game on the frozen ice of the national mall in Washington D.C. Can't you just imagine an errant slapshot clanging off the head of the Abe Lincoln statue?

Well, here's my brilliant idea: Instead of putting the game in another massive stadium in the Eastern U.S., move it to a truly scenic setting. And there are few more spectacular places than the Sierra Nevada or the Rocky Mountains.

The NHL could, for example, build a temporary rink with bleachers in the giant parking lot at Squaw Valley, scene of the 1960 Winter games -- where, by the way, the U.S. team beat the Soviet Union in the first version of the Miracle on Ice. Blyth Arena, where that game was held, was torn down in the early 1980s after the roof collapsed due to heavy snowfall (above is the view of the 1960 Olympic facilities, as seen from Squaw's slopes).

A game at Squaw could pit the perpertual contender San Jose Sharks versus pretty much anyone and be a treat to watch.