Hmmm… Creating memories for guests AND staff? Rider driven company? To be sure, corporate mission statements tend to be about as inspired or inspiring as yesterday’s laundry, and altogether too “shoot for the stars and be the best” formulaic to serve as viable battle cries. But something about creating “memories for guests and staff” and “a rider driven company” resonated with what I’ve been attempting to develop and nurture at e-Margaux.com for the last year and a half. I keep trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to articulate the  e-Margaux.com concept in practical, clear language, but so far the goal has eluded me.

Suffice to say that the implications of prologue-ing my Whistler ski trip with four days at Stratton were no longer limited to discovering the snowboarding scene and warming up my technique for British Columbian glaciers. My week and a half spring skiing doubleheader would serve as professional development! Nothing less. It would move me one step closer to identifying, and perhaps eventually articulating, something intrinsic to The Margaux Project. Indeed, the implications of ski bumming around Stratton in the days prior to the US Open began to assume near epiphanic proportions… (Welcome to my world!)

My brother and I arrived on Sunday afternoon in time to get moved into Long Trail House (our relatively new – built 1999-2000 – and comfortable condominium), meet up with Chris (our Burton friend) and the rest of the gang, and head off to Mulligans for dinner. (Family dining, menu runs to salads, soups, burgers and steaks; located in the ski village; telephone: (802) 297-9293)

“Paris is over,” our waitress informed us when we asked about the evening’s specials. Turns out we had missed the weekly theme special, though it remained unclear what that would have been if we had arrived earlier. Our meal was substantial if not memorable, and the good microbrewed beer was the ideal carbo-load for a day on the slopes.

After dinner we received our mountain passes and a general overview of what our responsibilities would include over the next several days (setting up the advertising banners along the halfpipe in the morning, removing the advertising banners in the evening, and helping mount several larger advertising installments at competition staring gates). After a nightcap, Chris informed us that reveille would be early, and we all turned in for what would be our last full night of sleep.

We awoke the following morning to the thrill of half a foot of new snow. After breakfast we headed off to the Stratton Mountain Sunbowl, the region of the resort where all of the US Open events would be concentrated, and received our assignments. The four of us (Chris, another Burton colleague, my brother and I) were equipped with communication radios and oversized drills to make holes in the packed snow for inserting the banner poles, and were ridden up the mountain on the back of snowmobiles. We dismounted at the halfpipe where the banners were stored, and before long we were drilling and mountain rows of flashy advertisements along both sides of the halfpipe.

What’s a halfpipe? For the uninitiated, the halfpipe is one of the most important trick venues in freestyle snowboarding. Think of a channel shaped like the lower half of an enormous tube and carved out of hard packed snow. The walls of the tube are of equal height and consistent distance from one another (roughly 15-18 yards apart and 6 yards high) enabling snowboarders to maximize a pendulum motion as they ride back and forth while proceeding toward the bottom of the hill. Running well over one hundred yards in length, this tube permits snowboarders to ride downhill, ramping and performing tricks off of the opposing sides.

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