Photo from Sunday. Can you tell I’m already dreaming and scheming for next weekend?
Category: vermont
“Let the mountain come to you.”
I am sore, aching, and exhausted from two days on the mountain.
Friday’s storm dropped 11 inches on Stowe, filling in the rutted glades. It’s not enough (is it ever enough?), but the mountain feels whole again – complete under a fresh coat of white. Saturday was spent flowing through trees, and pounding through row after row of soft moguls. Sunday was for cruising with my coworkers, leaning into the turns, and taking the scenic way down. These were my best two days of riding so far… and not just because of the freshies.
I haven’t ridden my best this year. I spend a lot of time frustrated, struggling with lines and recovering from poor decisions. Earlier this year, I even grazed a tree hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I want to blame my boots, the longer length of my new skis… anything to explain why I’m struggling. Rookie mistakes.
Saturday, I ended up upside down in a tree well. As I squirmed, one of the guys called out “Relax, don’t struggle.” Which… I didn’t do. I was too embarrassed and angry with myself for bailing out. Instead, I grunted and fumed. Between the two of us, I was right side up in no time, but rattled… The feeling was not improved by the next obstacle – a thin, steep chute narrower than my skis are long. Cover was thin… and the wall of solid ice on one side of the run-out was hardly reassuring.
The only way down was to take on turn and go for it, skis pointed straight. Which… I didn’t do. I was too scared to take the line, and ended up sliding part of the way and fumbling the rest, redeeming myself with a single solid drop into a pillow of soft powder.
Looking up from the bottom of the chute, I watched the next rider come down, moving with the fall line much more gracefully. Standing there, I thought about a story that Bob Berwyn shared with me about the woman who taught him to telemark. Something the woman said stuck out to me when I first read it, and just then it came back to me like a tap on the shoulder.
“Let the mountain come to you. And trust your skis.”
After the group shared high fives in celebration of our survival, we turned to the fall line. I exhaled, the worst over, and found myself finally relaxing into my turns. Too tired to battle my skis, I let them follow the fall line through the white.
Today, I ducked in to the woods to lap up what was left of the soft, riding easily. All the while, I reminded myself, “Relax, don’t struggle. Let the mountain come to you.”
Guilty as charged
I feel guilty.
This weekend was busy – I wrote, read, spent time with relatives, ran around my beautiful city with my handsome friends.
Sunday, I alternated between reading, watching LOST, doing laundry, and just snoozing in the sunbeam thrown across my couch.
This was all very pleasant. But… no matter what I do, I just can’t shake the feeling… that I should have been skiing.
To make matters worse, I woke up Monday morning to every ski area in a two hour radius celebrating their new-fallen snow. 7″ at Stowe. 6″ – 10″ at Smuggler’s Notch.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m glad the snow’s back. We need it. But I wish I was in it, up to my boot tops in fluffy white…
How will I make it to Thursday night race league? By taking deep breaths. By wobbling my way through yoga poses in my bedroom. By walking to the shores of Lake Champlain at lunchtime.
In short, I can’t way to be in the mountains again.
Don’t like the weather? Wait five minutes.
It’s an old Vermont adage, and let-me-tell-you-what it’s a true one. Especially now, in these days of global weirding, riding the weather is like getting on a roller coaster blindfolded: hold on. It’s going to be a wild ride.
56ºF one day, 32º and snowing the next with blowing winds whipping Lake Champlain to an ocean-like frenzy.
While the second January Thaw has come and gone (hopefully for good), we’re still waiting for the snow to replenish itself. We skiers and riders are hungry, salivating for turns. Me, the slackcountryista, especially. I’ll ski anything, but what I really want is trees.
As we wait, I count my blessings – snowmaking, snowmakers, groomers, ski movies, snow flurries that lay a dusting of snow on welcome mats, and reinforcements that Vermont’s riders are of the most dedicated in the country.
With thirteen mostly-blissful days on skis already this season, I shouldn’t complain… But please, Ullr. Bring us snow!
My To Ski List grows longer every day…
Now that I’m out on my own in the mogul field of adulthood (exciting, repetitious, hard on the knees), I’m not able to travel very far in search of new mountains and aventures. Don’t get me wrong – I’m having a blast exploring my Vermont backyard and being a real local for the first time in my life… But I can’t help but dream of mountain ranges a little off the beaten path.
For years, my dream To Ski List included just three locations:
- The Atlas Mountains
- Antarctica
- The Chugach Mountains
But this past week, due entirely to the Banff Mountain Film Festival and Backcountry Magazine, I added two more destinations.
Think I’m crazy? Don’t pass judgement until you watch the videos.
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What mountain range are you dreaming about? Can I come, too?
Confessions of a Wannabe Racer
I joined the race league for all the right reasons, I swear. It’s an excuse to hit the slopes on a Thursday night, when otherwise I’d be home staring out the window feeling cooped up. It’s a way for me, usually so reserved, to meet like-minded people – each one a potential ski buddy. And, the league is definitely not serious, which is good because the last time I raced was in middle school. A little non-competitive exercise in the local beer league. Sounds perfect, right?
Beer league has created a monster.
My drive to the mountain is spent in eager anticipation, fingers drumming the steering wheel as I navigate the commuter traffic coming out of Burlington. I talk to my mother on speaker phone, catching her up on my day and my strategies for the night’s races. A few hours later, my drive home is spent reliving the gates, mentally scrutinizing each turn.
(If I initiate my turns a fraction of a second too late, causing a slide and scramble, I have dump speed to make the next gate. The trick is to initiate early and stay hugged in tight to the gate. But, the killer is the last gate, where the course flattens even as it flows into the finish line. I lose acceleration every time, a symptom of being too small on skis that ride too soft. I’m losing power like water through a sieve and it’s driving me crazy.)
I log my times in my phone that night before I join my teammates in the bar. Friday morning, when the official email hits my inbox, I drop everything to calculate my rank against the field. After only two nights of racing, I can tell that it doesn’t matter what time I post. All I will want is to go faster, faster, and faster still.
Now, every Thursday my bright yellow boots will stand guard in the corner of my office, keeping me company. They are a constant, welcome reminder that there’s a pair of skis in a car in the parking lot waiting… just waiting… to slide up to the starting gate.
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Sadly, it’s currently -8º in Bolton. They closed early last night, so there’s a good change they’ll close again tonight. I might have to wait another week to get my speed fix… How will I survive?
The utmost importance of the moment
Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace.
Beauty is a sunset over Lake Champlain, a barista that knows your order by heart, six inches of powder in the trees, and parallel lines of fresh corduroy on the trails. Beauty is the smell of snow that greets you first thing in the morning as you step outside balancing breakfast and car keys and briefcase.
I can’t wait to get back into the mountains.
Quote by Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Poets, & Philosophers
Because I Said So: A Jay Peak Ski Area Review
This is the first of what will be a series of ski area reviews. Since I live and ride in Vermont, I’ll start close to home.
I really don’t understand why so few of my fellow Burlington residents head north to Jay Peak. Apparently “it’s too far away.”
Too far away? Seriously? An hour and a half is never too far for good schuss. Besides: 50% of Jay’s skiers and riders come from Canada. It takes two hours to drive from Montreal to Jay – so stop your complaining, eat your Big Mac, and get off the couch, America.
I will happily swear up and down this state that Jay Peak is the closest an east coaster will get to western skiing without buying a plane ticket. The vertical’s impressive (over 2,000 vertical feet), as is the natural playground that is the snowfield summit. But what will really give you western déjà vu is in the trees. Jay’s glades are wide open and ever green with plenty of room to roam. Hit it on a powder day and you’re cruising through face shots so easy you (might) feel guilty.
Jay’s terrain is challenging with steep pitches and a little high altitude rock-hopping coming off the tram. Timbuktu is one of the most satisfying marked glades in the east, with plenty of features to find if you’re looking to get air. (I distinctly remember my eldest brother teaching me huck there. And by teaching, I mean he pointed at a rock and said “ski off that as fast as you can.” Surprisingly, I survived.)
If you’re lucky, you’ll even get to experience the Jay Cloud first hand. There’s a peculiar microclimate that exists solely around the summit of the mountain. It could be sunny and warm everywhere else in a four hour radius, but dumping on Jay. Granted, this phenomenon isn’t unique to Jay. Mountains like to hold to passing precipitation. But it’s really fun to talk about.
On the downside, Jay Peak is cold. Like, really cold. As in – no matter what you’re wearing it’s not enough cold. But, to quote their wonderfully witty marketing campaign, nobody grew up soft on rugged terrain. Builds character.
Pretty perfect sounding, eh?
The funny thing about Jay is that as much as I love it, it’s really… just another mountain. The trails are great, the glades are great, the unmarked glades are great. (While I’ve been skiing this mountain my entire life, I don’t claim local knowledge. I’ve never had the “backstage tour” as it where, so I can’t speak to what I haven’t found entirely by accident.) But there’s something almost… boring about all this perfection.
Two years ago, I hit Jay during the late-season blizzard of my dreams. My ski buddy and I hit powder run after powder run, braving the cold and wind for some of the best turns we got all season. And yet… I was a little relieved to get back into the claustrophobically tight trees of Mt. Mansfield. The glades are so roomy compared to the Peak’s southern neighbors that you’re rarely stuck without anywhere to go but down a tiny, squirrelly chute. You don’t have to drop the feature in Kitz Woods. There are plenty of ways around.
I can count the times on one hand that I stood uphill from a Jay feature and gone “oh shit.” Where’s the challenge in that? It’s not really skiing if I haven’t said Oh Shit five times in as many runs.
To sum up: Jay Peak is a must-hit that is a little like that one guy (or girl) you dated who was so unbearably awesome you couldn’t believe they knew your name, let alone kissed you on a regular basis. You ended up breaking up with him (or her) for that other guy (or girl) with the weird twitch and questionable hygiene habits because, man, they really made you feel special, you know?
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What do you think? Was this review helpful, or am I really lying through my teeth? Keep me honest and let me know in the comments.
Collecting Mountain Memories
It was Dad’s idea to start our pin collections (one for each of us). The rules, while simple, are strict – one mountain skied, one pin. Since we made a conscious effort to ski far and wide, exploring the mountains of the world, we’ve amassed a pretty impressive collection.
This is (almost) what 24 years of skiing looks like.
Dad’s collection was set into framed rectangles of felt and hung in the basement between the posters for Zermatt and French wine from 1998 (Beaujelais Nouveau est arrivé!). My collection lived in a ziplock bag in my sock drawer. When my parents moved from Massachusetts to Illinois in 2008, Dad’s pins were packed away in boxes and left in the new basement, unopened. Mine remained in my sock drawer, only this time the sock drawer was in Illinois and blatantly lacking socks.
Mom mailed me the ziplock bag last week. When they arrived, I dumped the bag on the floor and spread them out – weeding through. A few didn’t belong – one boyscout pin stolen from an elder brother, two from ski areas in British Columbia I’ve never skied. I set those aside. The rest, I laid across my bedroom floor in a rough approximation of the world. Just above my left knee was Chile, as far right as I could reach, France and Austria.
I watched with smug satisfaction as Utah blossomed out, blending with Colorado – same with Vermont and New Hampshire. I paused with special fondness over the visits I remembered most strongly and puzzled over areas I didn’t remember at all.
My memory’s not very good, you see, and that’s why this pile of pins is so precious. It is less a collection of things picked up to be displayed for aesthetic pleasure, and more a series of ticks on a timeline. Here is Wachusett, where I almost broke my collarbone showing off to a boy in seventh grade. Here is Portillo, where I met the US men’s and women’s downhill and super G teams. Here is Crystal, where a double amputee and his two friends led Drew, Dad, and I through hip deep powder (he was more impressive than the men’s and women’s ski teams combined).
Then I realized I was missing one. Then more than one. I was horrified to find that I’d let six years go by without realizing I was skiing “pin days” (the first day riding a new mountain).
Worse, Bolton Valley, which I’ve skied since I was knee-high. Smuggler’s Notch, which I was devoted to for two winters. And now Stowe. All gone.
Today, in the midst of the January Thaw, I drove to Smuggler’s Notch just to buy a 4 dollar pin from the ski shop. I made my roommate promise to get me a Bolton pin the next time he’s there (I’m only there for night skiing, when the shops are closed). Stowe I’ll pick up next weekend.
But Sunday River? Sugarloaf? My college haunts. Missing – and me without any idea of when I’ll make it back to those mountains.
And then there are the obvious gaps in the set, the mountains that glare out at me demanding to be ridden. Magic Mountain. Mad River Glen, namely. How can I be a Vermonter and a skier without a pilgrimage to MRG?
Finally, the sudden realization that it’s up to me now to meet these mountains. Next month, I’ll be riding a pin day at Saddleback with two of my best friends. It’s sad to think that this will be my first (known, realized, conscious) pin day without my dad with me, too. Suddenly, entirely without my realizing it, I’ve grown up.
Just more ticks on the timeline.
Telling Notes
The index page on my Notes app is pretty indicative of my interests at the moment.
Sidecountry Living 