Kudos to Kirk Deeter for his recent piece in Trout Talk taking on the numbers game in fly fishing – read it here.
We’ve long (really long) been of the opinion that number counters on the river are much akin to vertical feet loggers in the downhill ski world – for the most part, they’re all flaming asshats who totally miss the point of their respective outdoor experiences.
We earned that opinion the hard way in fact; back in the day (the late 80’s) I did my residency in Salt Lake City back when it was relatively undiscovered by West coast invaders and you could still ski Alta for $8 during the week, and Snowbird passes didn’t require indenturing your first born for a decade or two.
Our first few years there my lovely wife and I skied 60+ days a season despite both working full time and more, and fell in off and on again with some vertical feet dingbats that had us counting laps as well. On an uncrowded day at Snowbird during the week, with decent snow, you could pretty easily ski 60,000 vertical (or more) hustling Tram runs – this was back before the updated Peruvian lift that makes 80,000+ a reality if you’re in stellar shape and tend toward self flagellation.
We learned fairly quickly that counting laps on the hills simply wasn’t very fun, nor is hanging with the lap counters; we’ve developed even greater disdain for fish counters over the years – that’s not what it’s about.
