Anonymous Turns

I ski a lot. In common parlance, "I make a lot of turns." I ski more than eight months of the year, virtually all of it on the clock, doing my job. I'm not complaining, mind you, but sometimes those of us who focus so much time and energy on other people's skiing or on the technical aspects of the sport need to recharge our love it. It becomes harder to see the forest for the trees and to appreciate why we're here if we don't remind ourselves. The best way to do this is by simply skiing for the heck of it, without a uniform or a name tag, for fun, for a little release, or for no reason at all other than because we can. It's a reminder just how great skiing can be.

Given the nature of my role at Treble Cone, it's very hard for me to escape for a 'free ski' at TC, to say nothing of skiing elsewhere. Treble Cone is an awesome place to spend my time – literally inspiring awe – but it is also where I work so it's hard for me to disappear for even a couple of runs. I am obviously confident in my skiing skills, but there also is significant pressure for me to perform at the highest level when anyone is watching, and at TC (whether real or imagined) someone is always watching. So, what's a ski pro to do? How can I find and isolate what brings me back to the hill every day? How can I find a moment of un-self-conscious joy, making turns in great snow? Two words: road trip.

I've just returned from Ohau, one of several smaller "ski fields" to the north of Wanaka about an hour-and-a-half away, sitting on the peaks above Lake Ohau. A good friend from home and I spent the night at the very cool Lake Ohau Lodge (see "Gemutlichkeit"), and skied yesterday in the most uncrowded place one can imagine, making fresh tracks in deep snow on every run despite it being several days since the prior storm. The terrain was steep and gnarly, the snow was dry, there was no pressure whatsoever, and my buddy and I were smiling like idiots all day because it was just that good. It was like a skiing transfusion, shaking out the cobwebs, leaving all the pollutants of work, stress, and life behind for a little while to share in the joys so unique to our sport. It's been a long time since I had a great road trip purely for the sake of a road trip, it was absolutely what I needed, and it more than served its purpose. The catch phrase at Ohau, found on innumerable bumper stickers here in New Zealand, is "Ohau I love to ski". How true it is, and thank you Ohau for the reminder.

Frozen Nomenclature

It's a well-worn urban legend that Eskimos have a gazillion words for snow in their language. It is just urban legend. Firstly, 'Eskimo' is not actually an ethnic group or tribal nation. It is a vaguely pejorative term commonly used by Anglo-Europeans who lumped the many tribal and ethnic groups of the Arctic regions and northern reaches of North America into one group. Secondly, even when we refer to the indigenous peoples of the Arctic region using their proper names (Aleut, Inuit, Inupiat and Yupik, among others), their languages differ from place to place. The nature of the nomenclature for snow in Greenland, for example, differs widely from that in Alaska (they are several thousand miles apart, for crying out loud). So, the myth about terms for snow would be the equivalent of saying: "them there Euro-type folk have a zillion words for cheese", said with your best Texas drawl.

As with all subjects linguistic, things here in New Zealand are slightly different. In the case of snow vocabulary, it is not the typical Kiwi juxtaposition of vowels (the number 6 sounding quite a bit racier down here) but the paltry number of descriptive terms for snow that is entertaining. To be precise, Kiwis have exactly two words for snow: "snow" and "powder". I wish I were kidding. Snow that falls straight down in huge flakes, resting in ever-growing piles of light, dry, fantasy-like goodness in the sense of the legendary snows of Hokkaido where people clear their windshields in the morning easier than blowing out birthday candles is referred to, unsurprisingly, as "powder". The wettest, heaviest, most saturated, ski-pole-holes-that-turn-blue, gorilla snot thick, ACL destroying muck is also known as "powder". Everything in between also is called "powder".

Of interest also is that any day on which any person can ski and ride somewhere on Treble Cone in any snow which has fallen within the previous 48 hours is called a "powder day". This leads to my favorite one-liners about 'edge deep powder' and 'sidewall deep powder'. Again, please bear in mind that I'm not kidding. After our recent storm which was a mix of what elsewhere is called 'rain' and 'snow', local enthusiasts were lining up when the lifts opened in order to make fresh tracks in the 'powder'. It is true that at higher elevations and in the Saddle Basin, Treble Cone did get quite a bit of new snow. Calling it powder was a stretch. Nonetheless, our devoted guests were hooping and hollering all day about the freshies as though they were first off the tram at Snowbird, making turns in the best snow the Wasatch Range of Utah has to offer.

It's been a tough season so far in terms of snow cover here at Treble Cone. The mountain is holding up well considering, and there are another two storms in the forecast for the next several days, so we'll make out OK. There is enough snow in the Saddle Basin for all of us to continue enjoying our legendary terrain a great deal. Still, we're all anxious for a big dump, giving us some of those epic days that we all talk about years later. When conditions are OK at TC, I love to ski here. When conditions are epic at TC, it's one of those rare places to ski that eclipses even our imagination (like the day pictured above in 2008 – yours truly skiing in deep, dry, heavenly snow, pure joy). Until that happens this season (fingers crossed), we'll have to enjoy the "powder" as only the Kiwis mean it.