Making Snow

In more conventional neighborhoods than the one in which I live, in more conventional careers, towns, lives, having high pressure air and water cannons blasting away in the dark of night with a sound audible for a great distance would be a bad thing. My home here in Vermont is on the flank of Okemo, at an elevation just slightly above the main base area of the resort and above town, and tonight I can hear the snow guns and the compressors firing away. No, it’s not an annoyance, not even close. It’s music to my ears, and the same is true for the many people depending on our resort for their livelihood, both directly and indirectly in the many businesses in town.

Okemo has been open for the winter season since Thanksgiving Day, one week ago. Our originally scheduled opening day was on the prior weekend and it’s only due to the vigilance and dedicated hard work of our mountain operations team that we were able to open when we did and that we have been able to stay open. We’ve had a bit of rain in the last few days and temperatures here have been unseasonably warm (though in the modern world perhaps we need to consider what we mean by ‘unseasonably’, in the sense of needing to define the ‘new normal’), so the challenges for our snowmakers have not gotten lighter. Until tonight. The clouds moved out, the sun set, the temperatures dropped, the call went out, and our guys have been making a meal of it up there on the mountain.

Fire away, team! Give ‘em hell! Make as much noise as you want, fire up those compressors, and beat Mother Nature at her own game! Wile E. Coyote may have a good idea, but thankfully we’re not that desperate here at Okemo and we have a team of experts who really know how to make it happen.

Thanksgiving

While dozing off on the couch at some point nearing half-time of the Green Bay Packers / Detroit Lions football game today, I received a holiday wishes phone call from a close friend in the UK. She asked what I was doing and, when I told her, she expressed alarm that I was lounging on the couch in front of a televised football game instead of feasting. Silly Brit, how can she not have known that dozing off on the couch during a Packers / Lions game while the turkey roasts in the oven is simply one of many essential components of a successful Thanksgiving holiday?!

Okemo opened for the 2011-12 season today, finally. Given the nature of working in the snow sports industry, this means that over the next five months it'll be near impossible for me to travel to visit friends and family. As a consequence, Thanksgiving is not merely one of the few times during the year when my family gathers under one roof, but it is really the last time that I'll be able to set aside the ski boots and the thermals, and spend my time with people who genuinely don't care one bit about the technical considerations of edge angles, hip angulation, femoral rotation, and dorsiflexion. It'll be the longest stretch during which I do not have to consider my attire in terms of number and nature of layers. For these things, I am very thankful.

On a more somber note, in the midst of getting ready for the season and working to keep busy, there have been a few events in our community of Ludlow, Vermont and at Okemo Mountain Resort that have affected us deeply. Not the least of these was the tragic death this week of our friend and colleague John Donahue. "JD" was a mere 42 years old and leaves behind a wife and baby daughter. On this Thanksgiving, while so many of us are feasting and enjoying time with family and friends, my thoughts go out to JD's family. Some community efforts to help support his family are in the works now, and I'll post information about them here when more information becomes available. In the meantime, on this of all days, I am thankful for having gotten to know JD over the years and to have benefitted from his wonderful spirit. I, and many more of us who knew him better, will miss him. Rest in peace, John Donahue.

As for my family and loved ones, my friends, colleagues and clients, acquaintances, and mere passersby, I am thankful for the energy and enthusiasm you inspire in me to continue to pursue skiing, ski teaching, and ski coaching as a craft, as a passion, and as a profession. Now, having said that, let's all go skiing and riding!

On The Mend & Open for Business

Before departing Vermont for another winter at Treble Cone in Wanaka, New Zealand in June, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about the effects of the massive earthquakes that devastated Christchurch the prior February and in the months following. In a small country like New Zealand, the often cited ‘six degrees of separation’ shrinks considerably, and even those Kiwis and Kiwi residents with no immediate personal connection to Christchurch have been deeply impacted. It’s hard to overstate the extent and far reaching effects of the quake - the aftermath will be felt by generations of Kiwis to come. Each of my friends in Christchurch have their spirits up despite some incredible losses and, though they still suffer some difficulties in their every-day lives, most are rebuilding, literally and figuratively, spirits intact. In August, the shoe was put squarely on the other foot.

Watching the news of Hurricane Irene as it happened, as the floods tore apart so many homes, lives, communities, here in Vermont was particularly difficult given how far away I was at the time. So, just as I did in June on my way to NZ, I spent a significant amount of time contacting friends and colleagues and thinking about the after-effects of the horrific damage to my home state. Since arriving home to Vermont nearly three weeks ago, it’s been a remarkable experience to travel on our many windy valley-bottom roads to survey the damage. There were several notable and very tragic deaths in my immediate area, many homes completely lost and businesses ruined, and recovery from those aspects of the storm will, as in the case of Christchurch, take a very long time. Despite those aspects of the destruction, the damage to our roads was and remains perhaps the most visible devastation. Thankfully, if there can be a silver lining to such a tragedy, this is where we can find it.

After Hurricane Katrina utterly destroyed New Orleans in 2005, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) became an icon of government inefficiency and political patronage, so they had some ground to make up with the people here. Thankfully, everyone in town seems to have some story to tell, some urban myth to spread about FEMA and the National Guard marshalling resources quickly, authoritatively, and getting to work. In addition to the feds and together with our state and local governments, countless private construction companies of all sizes did not wait to be asked, did not wait for some knight to ride into town on a white horse, and went right to work. The result has been a truly remarkable turnaround, and the speed with which the state’s many obliterated roads and bridges have been rebuilt defies any reasonable expectation.  My friends who were here are much better-versed in the quantitative perspective – metric tons of aggregate, thousands of dump trucks and earth movers, miles of asphalt, and millions upon millions of dollars. The sheer volume of work already completed in the merely seven weeks since the storm simply boggles the mind. Columbus Day Weekend in October at the height of the fall foliage season represents an enormous piece of Vermont’s tourist economy each year, and this year Vermont businesses had the busiest such weekend ever!  It’s absolutely incredible. The numerous comments from FEMA officials about the immediacy, enormity and effectiveness of Vermonters’ community spirit have made all of us exceptionally proud.

In the end, however, it’s not all strawberries and cream here. There remains a daunting amount of work yet to be completed, the bill for all of this will hang over us for decades, and for some families and communities rebuilding will continue to involve far more than heavy equipment and gravel as they put lives back together and move on. Scars will linger in the psyche of Irene’s victims more painfully than they will linger in our landscape.

As we head into another winter season here in Ludlow and at Okemo, we look forward to hosting our many guests, acting as ambassadors for Vermont and for Vermonters. I hope that despite the snowfall which we all await anxiously right now, our guests will be able to see and appreciate what is meant by the shiny new guardrails and bridges, the ribbons of fresh black pavement, and the enormous mounds of earth and gravel still in the work zones. I’m confident that our guests will be reminded when they come to vacation here that it’s not merely the skiing and riding that makes our state so special. It is the spirit of skiing in Vermont that makes it so special, so unique and so worthwhile for so many generations of Americans to bring their families here to ski and ride. This year more than ever that spirit flows from our people.

Now, speaking of snowfall …

The photos here are from a recent trip up the road to Woodstock and Quechee, Vermont. The Woodstock Middle Bridge survived intact but note the right side of the Quechee Covered Bridge in the photo – many more historic bridges were destroyed. I’ve posted these links before, but here are some local charitable organizations that are continuing to provide vital assistance to Vermonters: Black River Good Neighbor Services (www.brgn.org) is a local charity in Ludlow; The American Red Cross of Vermont & The New Hampshire Valley (http://www.redcrossvtnhuv.org) is very active in the area; and Independent Vermont Clothing is giving all proceeds from the sale of this cool t-shirt to Red Cross efforts in Vermont  (http://independentvermontclothing.bigcartel.com/).

How many states were in the Union?

Revere Bell in Woodstock

Reentry

I’m home. Well, sort of home. I’m in Arizona, storing up some hot weather and sunshine after yet another awesome winter season at Treble Cone in Wanaka, New Zealand. Late October in Ludlow, Vermont isn’t exactly the spot for soaking up sunshine in an effort to forestall seasonal affective disorder, so the desert southwest is just the ticket. My ski season at Okemo will start soon enough as it is.

While I’m overseas, I often take on a funny role with my Kiwi and Aussie friends. In many ways I become sort of the Alastair Cook of the moment, the ‘great explainer’ of all things American to them. Foreign policy, cuisine, language, the size of our cars, ‘reality television’ as an oxymoron, Donald Trump’s hair style, or how it’s possible that someone like Michelle Bachman can be taken seriously as a Presidential candidate. You name it, if it’s American and it’s different, I’m asked about it and nothing is off limits.

The concept that always seems to creep into these conversations is how different we are from place to place in America. No, I am not familiar enough with Texas state politics to explain Rick Perry’s qualifications. Yes, I do live very close to New Hampshire and I’m grateful that in Vermont our concept of the role of government is different enough that we have better pavement than NH despite higher taxes. No, I’m not from Vermont despite having lived there for a decade and having spent much time there in my youth. I’m from New York, as in Upstate New York, and that doesn’t mean that it’s odd for me to have a different accent than the boys from Bensonhurst. We’ve had two Winter Olympic Games in Upstate New York, for Heaven’s sake! My friends from New Zealand and Australia all know that the United States of America is a very big place with a lot of people in it, but often they haven’t had the opportunity to consider all of the wider implications of what that means. Apparently it’s my role to tell them. My favorite little nugget to use as an explainer is the use of the plural to describe the US before the Civil War and the singular after it; as in “the United States of America are the largest economy …” versus “the USA is the largest economy …”

Still, despite stopping over in a place that joined the union in 1912, is 2500 miles from where I live in Vermont and is quite a bit different in most respects, Arizona definitely is on the way home, both literally and metaphorically.  Just as when I return to NZ and re-adjust to the details of everyday life, there are things here that I note upon arrival and which I otherwise would take for granted. I have not had to search high and low for brewed coffee instead of espresso; I may have been flying during the Rugby World Cup semifinals but I did get to watch part of the NY Giants win on Sunday; I have not had to order my food at the counter before sitting down in a restaurant and I have had to tip; I get to read the NYTimes print edition every morning; I can order a bagel without fear of being branded an oddity; and I don’t have to repeat my NZ driving mantra whenever I turn a corner – ‘left, left, left’. Parking lots and ketchup are referred to by their ‘proper’ names, and nobody, not a single solitary soul, discusses cricket for any reason.

It’s great to be home, even if it’s still so far away. Oh, and one more thing: Go you All Blacks!

Clouds Lift, Cue The Sun!

Sunday, October 2nd was the last day of the 2011 season at Treble Cone, and the early morning circumstances didn’t bode well. At 5:00AM on Sunday, the rain poured down so hard here in Wanaka and up at TC that I thought we should convert our normal pond-skim, DJ and costume festivities into an ark-building and sub-pump fixing party. Driving around town at 7:00AM on the staff shuttle loop, the skies above us were clearing but looking north towards Mount Aspiring and TC, things still looked pretty gloomy. Up at TC, by 8:00 there were increasing patches of blue poking through the clouds and by 9:00 the wind had died and the sun was shining – the problem was that nobody was there. For a little bit, it seemed that our ever-faithful, incredibly devoted Cone Heads had all decided to go to the movies instead of braving the elements. At 9:30, the last big cloud literally moved through the base area (see my video below taken from the lesson meeting area) and behind it was only an absolutely glorious spring day. As though on cue, as that last cloud moved up and out the people began to arrive in fine form, all dressed up in their finest retro gear and funny costumes and in terrific spirits. Great spring conditions, warm sunshine, drinks and tunes on the sun deck, and the usual wonderful camaraderie that accompanies any great day with TC and the locals who provide so much of our resort's energy.

I’m not sure whether I can explain how a season feels when it began with so little snow that we delayed our opening for two weeks, then so much snow that we delayed our opening for another six days opening with the best conditions ever seen, only one other significant storm in mid-season, an astonishing number of sun-filled days, and enough business that our snow sports school was at maximum capacity for six weeks straight? I’m still too close to it to have any significant thoughts on the subject. Somewhere in between strolling slowly through town in flip-flops, hiking in the mountains around Wanaka, the occasional road trips and rounds of golf, and enjoying the remainder of the rugby world cup, perhaps I’ll have something to consider on the whole thing. For now, I’m content to breathe in the fragrant spring air, catch up with friends, get some rest, and remember how much I love spending time here in Wanaka and New Zealand. After all, my next winter is just six weeks away!

The Lies We Tell

Of the over 220 days each year in which I wear ski boots, all but a handful are spent in uniform. At home in Vermont and here in Wanaka, I have a wide array of responsibilities at the resorts where I work, and any real down time when I get to simply be a skier is a precious commodity. Despite the well-deserved reputations and the number of guests accommodated by the resorts where I work, all are actually pretty small places when it comes right down to it. The total number of staff at Treble Cone in particular is miniscule compared to our position in the industry, and combine that with the number of our day-to-day guests who are season pass holders who spend a lot of time there and who know all of us, and it feels smaller still. It’s incredibly hard for me to go for ski, quietly, on my own or with friends without feeling the spotlight on me or the need to be on my game for the kind of guest service which is so key to our success as a resort. I love it, all of it, but it does get tiresome. So what can I do? How can I set aside the pressures and the attention? I leave, that’s how. I take a road trip to ski elsewhere. I go to Ohau!

Ohau is a small ski field about a two hour drive from Wanaka and Treble Cone. The place has one chair lift that goes right up the middle of the big, main bowl of the mountain, and a long, expansive ridge with some awesome terrain that requires a bit of hiking from the top of the lift. And it’s quiet there. Very quiet. And nobody knows me. And they don’t care what I do or where I do it. And then there’s the Ohau Lodge. It’s at the bottom of the road leading to the ski field and is one of the great ski lodges –the rooms are utilitarian but clean, the common spaces are comfortable and casual, and the food in absolutely terrific. Spending a couple of days between the lodge and the mountain really can lull even the most grizzled old pro into a state of lucid, contemplative relaxation that is a tremendous gift during a busy ski season. A couple of weeks ago, for the second year in a row, I did just that.

It’s a rarity for me to work a 5-day week at Treble Cone, so when I was gone for the two days of my trip my absence was notable. When I returned to work, many of my friends and colleagues inquired after the conditions at Ohau, knowing how much I had been looking forward to skiing there. The honest answer was that the conditions were awful. The majority of the snow was frozen chop having the consistency of coral reef, the snowpack was quite thin leaving many of Ohau’s legendary steeps without much cover, and despite a cloudless first day it never became warm enough for the snow to soften except in a few aspects off of the hikeable ridge above the bowl. Yep, pretty awful. And that didn’t matter whatsoever.

My friends and I didn’t go to Ohau to ski in hero powder up to our guts. We didn’t go there to get our fifteen minutes of fame with youtube videos of our skiing on sick terrain. We didn’t go there for any reason other than to enjoy making some fun turns in an unhurried atmosphere with precisely no pressure to perform in any way, for any reason. We went to relax, to take in the view, to spend some time outside without it being work, to enjoy each others’ company, and to find the skiers that live somewhere buried deep beneath the veneer necessary to function effectively as ski pros. It worked, flawlessly.

Ohau sells these great t-shirts that say “Ohau I Love to Ski”, and it’s true. For me, the atmosphere of the place encourages the simplicity of merely enjoying skiing for skiing’s sake. The thing about it, however, is that in an atmosphere like that, skiing becomes a vehicle for something else, something deeper and more important. During my time at Ohau, skiing with that ease, that lack of pressure, that lack of attention, pure and simple sliding on snow and enjoying the thrill of it, the skiing became a vehicle for escape from the mundane, from the daily grind. It permitted us to take stock of where we are, what direction we’re headed and how we’re going to get there. That’s the real reason I go there, and saying that I’ve gone to Ohau for the skiing is such a simplification that it’s just a convenient lie. I go to Ohau to be a skier, to enjoy life the way a mere skier does, with friends who appreciate all that being a skier means, and to remember why it’s so good that we’ll happily dedicate our lives to the craft of it.

Skiing the Summit Slopes at Ohau

The summit of Mount Cook / Aoraki viewed over Lake Ohau

Far, Far From Home

 

I’m in the middle of my fifth winter season here in Wanaka and at Treble Cone. Over the course of those seasons, that time spent here in New Zealand, I’ve become very attached to the place and its people and have been made to feel very at home here. But, at the end of the day, Wanaka and New Zealand are not home for me; the State of Vermont is.

I’m often the first person from Vermont that people here in Wanaka have met, so I thought some statistics about our beautiful little corner of the world might provide context. The Green Mountain State, as it is known, is among the smallest of the fifty states. According to the 2010 census, we have a population of 608,827 (larger than only Wyoming), and more than a third of those people reside in our largest city, Burlington. Our state capital is Montpelier, which with a population of 7,705 people is the least-populated state capital in the country. Vermont has a land area of 9,629 square miles, and our land is overwhelmingly mountainous with so many lakes and rivers in our narrow valleys that 3.8% of our land is covered by of water despite being landlocked. Because of its lack of development, the entire state of Vermont has been designated one of America's most “endangered historic places” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Vermont can justly be considered the cradle of American snow sports. The first ski tow in America was located on Gilbert’s Hill outside of Woodstock, site of the Suicide Six ski area where I spent so many winter days as a young child. Vermont is also the home state of Jake Burton Carpenter and the Burton Snowboard Company, and he created snowboarding on the hills outside his home in Londonderry. Vermont is the home of numerous current and former members of the U.S. Ski Team and their coaches, and our several ski academies and universities provide the proving ground for many more snow sports athletes.

On August 27th and 28th, 2011, in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, every one of our many rivers and our many lakes flooded. Badly. Very badly. The torrent of water rushing down our mountainsides and into our valleys packed a destructive force never before seen in the Northeastern United States. In a rural and very poor place, the flooding this past week has been so severe that on the morning of the August 30th, several days after the storm ended, the Air National Guard was still airlifting food into 13 towns totally cut off from the outside world. Hundreds of bridges and roads have collapsed or washed out entirely and countless people remain stranded, unaccounted for and in danger. The water is now receding and the full extent of the damage is coming to light - it is very, very severe.

As I write, it is the evening of September 1st at home and crews from the State of Vermont, my home town of Ludlow and Central Vermont Public Service (the state power utility) are already hard at work. The Red Cross, National Guard and every local service organization have been working around the clock – a friend on the Ludlow Ambulance job just completed a 36-hour shift! Every article available on the web, every comment made by members of our community makes note of our ‘hearty Yankee stock’ and the resourcefulness and indomitable spirit of our people. These comments may represent a combination of truth and hope, but there definitely is much truth in them.

Our season here at Treble Cone concludes in early October, a few weeks from now. I’ll stick around here in Wanaka, enjoying the down time and the sunshine for a bit before heading home, and I’ll enjoy every minute of it. Still, in the back of my mind, in my heart and in my stomach, I’m feeling the distance between myself and the state, the community I call home. Every last mile of it. And it feels far, far away.

Even with all of the reasons to keep our chins up and our spirits intact, there are organizations we can help provide assistance to Vermont’s people. Black River Good Neighbor Services (www.brgn.org) is a local charity in Ludlow that provides food and household goods to local families in need. The American Red Cross of Vermont & The New Hampshire Valley (http://www.redcrossvtnhuv.org) is very active in the area. One cool item is a t-shirt created by Independent Vermont Clothing to benefit flood relief, with all proceeds going to the Red Cross efforts in Vermont  (http://independentvermontclothing.bigcartel.com/). I’m certain that there are many more organizations and opportunities that I’m missing here.

The photos here are of the mountains outside Killington, Vermont, which has been devastated, and the covered bridge at Quechee, Vermont which has been almost completely destroyed.

Simple Joys

This past Sunday morning, a friend and colleague made a keen observation that was simple, interesting and important. Despite having opened with two meters of new snow on the ground several weeks ago, Treble Cone hasn’t had any additional snow since. That is until this past Sunday. A decent size storm rolled in Sunday afternoon that is continuing to batter our resort with very cold air (by New Zealand standards), a lot of wind, and a lot of snow. Deep, dry snow. The snow started falling around mid-day so that by the time of our afternoon group lineup for the Snow Sports School, there was already several inches of fresh powder on the ground. With few guests around to take lessons, a snowball fight broke out among the instructors at lineup. It got serious, with the requisite chest thumping, trash talking, and trickery. Our young Kiwi snowboard instructor with serious cricket credentials proved no match for a youth spent playing dodgeball, baseball and softball on the playgrounds of America. It was a blast, everyone participated, and it was the kind of spontaneous, joyous play one usually associates with children.

My friend’s observation of this was that our staff played like children released from school for a snow day despite the fact that they are all experienced, highly trained snow sports professionals who play on snow for a living. Not one of us was grizzled enough, jaded enough, or grumpy enough to not find the arrival of snow an occasion worthy of unpretentious, unscripted, and uninhibited play. What makes our staff such great professionals is that they (and so many others in our resort) are able to transmit the joy found in fresh snow (and even in old snow) to our guests. It’s one of the most important things we do as instructors.

By the time Treble Cone opened Monday morning we had more than 20 centimeters in the base area. In an extremely rare set of circumstances, there were several centimeters on the ground along the lakeside in Wanaka and a lot of ice on the roads, making travel very difficult. This meant that the lift line, when our base-area six-seater opened this morning, was filled with instructors in uniform and only a few intrepid civilians. We were giggling, whooping and hollering, and generally having a ball, reveling in the joys of a great powder day. And then we went to work, which really just meant sharing all that joy with our guests. It’s a great job, and at Treble Cone it’s done by a remarkable collection of passionate and gifted professionals.

A Standing Start

As I write, we’re approaching the end of the busiest two weeks of the season here at Treble Cone – the New Zealand July school holidays. We’ll have to wait and see what the numbers bear out but, anecdotally, it’s seems like a very successful start of the season for our resort. One month ago, this  seemed to be a remote possibility at best, and that’s worth an explanation.

Treble Cone was due to open for the season on June 23rd. With unseasonably warm and sunny weather for weeks beforehand, our opening was delayed two weeks due to lack of snow (in truth, the complete absence of snow). All but essential staff at the resort were laid off for the two weeks (“stood down”, in polite Kiwi parlance) and we were able to complete almost none of the prep work and training necessary to open to the public with all systems go. Thankfully, those two weeks were gloriously sunny and warm and I lulled myself into a routine of long walks and day hikes around town, daily trips to the gym, and a ritualized gaze across Lake Wanaka to see if our snowmakers had made progress.

Towards the end of two weeks of keeping ourselves busy in this most beautiful of places, it started to snow. A lot. For Six days. All day every day. Between about the 5th of July, Treble Cone received 2 meters of snow. That’s six and a half feet in six days, for the metric impaired. The snow fell so hard and fast, and at such low elevations, that the avalanche danger made our access road unsafe to travel if it had been passable at all. At one point, several key staff were actually flown into the resort by helicopter to get some work done! On several days, the rostered staff drove to the bottom of the mountain at our normal early hour and waited for clearance from our Ski Patrol doing avalanche work on the slopes above the road only to be turned around and sent home because of the danger. In a normally exceptionally snowy year, the snow line hovers just below the elevation of the base lodge at TC – a week after the storm ended, the snow line was still almost all the way down to the valley floor. 2 meters in six days, for crying out loud. After two weeks of looking nervously at a brown mountain we had so much snow that we couldn’t open the damn resort!

When we finally opened on Thursday, July 14th with only half the terrain available because of the avalanche danger, we got hit with a tidal wave of people. Our new sales software and lift pass system were still works in progress, the staff hadn’t been completely trained, the kitchen staff had to pull all-nighters to get the food prepped, and then every season pass holder, every dedicated powder hound, and every testosterone junkie in the Pacific Rim converged on Treble Cone all at once. It was nuts, and the skiing and riding was absolutely sick! Sweet as. Ridiculous. Genuinely epic. And the two week school holidays began that Saturday.

Honestly, the fact that we’ve been able to get the place up to speed, make our guests happy and generally operate the resort at the standard of excellence we expect around here in a credit to our amazingly dedicated staff. It borders on the miraculous, to be perfectly honest, and we’re all walking around gob-smacked by the turnaround.

The bags under our eyes and the sniffling by large number of our staff tells the story of how much work it took to make this happen and how trying the past month has been on all of us, myself included. To put a fine point on it, we’re all pooped. As I write, I’m enjoying my first day off in several weeks while yet another storm is roaring its way in to batter Treble Cone this afternoon and tonight. Things should ease up at work as we move through into August and business reduces from a rolling boil to a light simmer, and I’ll get to pick my head up and spend more time reminding myself why I love skiing at TC and with its people so much. In the meantime, I think I’ll take a nap. And dream of tomorrow’s powder.

While We're Waiting

We're still waiting for the weather to turn here in Wanaka, waiting for our season to start at Treble Cone. On the upside, though these first few weeks of our season normally bring cold, gray, rainy weather here in town (with an inversion bringing sunshine to TC), the last two weeks since our originally scheduled opening have been glorious, sunny and warm. If we're going to be stuck here in town, wandering around, working hard to stay busy, at least it's been terrific. The truth is that, despite the anxiety of waiting for the weather to turn into proper winter, it's great to be reminded that there are many reasons I love coming to Wanaka for the Southern Winter, with skiing at Treble Cone only one of them.

Yesterday, I made an impromptu drive to Glendhu Bay with some friends just to look at the view. We sat, skipped rocks into the lake, considered the season yet to come, and generally contemplated the astonishing beauty around us. It was like a mini-vacation, and for a few moments we forgot about the waiting game and were able to enjoy the company and our surroundings in the simplest way possible. The question remains: in the Southern Hemisphere, should I be doing my snow dance backwards?

Nostradamus

The Buchanan Range from Treble Cone on June 21, 2011

The volcanic ash in the lower atmosphere over New Zealand will act like cloud seeding and result in an exceptionally snowy winter here.  The large-scale earthquakes in the Pacific Rim have caused a two degree shift in the earth’s axis affecting weather patterns in a way that will dramatically increase our snowfall. Every year in which Western Canada has had a banner ski season, the South Island resorts have oddly similar storm and snowpack patterns. Nostradamus predicted that 2011 will bring a record amount of snow storms to the Southern Lakes region, leaving Treble Cone’s famously devoted Coneheads grinning from ear to ear (not that will see their smiles through the snow-snorkels necessary in the chin-deep powder). I feel in my gut that it’ll be a great year at Treble Cone. We’re just due. I can smell it.

There’s an old joke at home in Vermont that the two most optimistic types of people in the world are alcoholics and ski instructors. That may or may not be true, but those of us who have been living and working in the mountains for a long time know one thing for certain: it is going to snow, we are going to ski and ride at Treble Cone, and it’s going to be great. In seasons like this one that begin dry and unseasonably warm, when our colleagues and our guests become agitated about the lack of snow, we spend lots of time reassuring them: we’ve been through this before, and it is going to snow.

While working hard to get our resort ship-shape for the season, we’ve all been looking anxiously at the forecast as our brown mountain looms over Lake Wanaka. After much agonizing and consternation, our opening has been delayed pending a change in the weather that brings snowmaking temperatures, a good sized storm, or both. Some among us are putting their faith in explanations that verify our confidence about the upcoming banner year – some explanations have an apparent scientific basis and some are a bit, err, further out the spectrum. I prefer to rely on the tried and true snow dance, described in detail by me in this space before: pajamas, helmet, goggles, ski or snowboard boots, living room, ski/ride movie. For the desperate, strapping on skis or board and doing 180’s on the bed is particularly satisfying. I’m not sure that my snow dance actually affects the weather, but it is pretty funny, it’s a good distraction, and it helps keep us focused and positive as we look to the horizon for some sign, some good news. It will snow on Treble Cone’s legendary terrain, it’ll snow a lot, and I for one will be there and will be ready to enjoy every minute, each and every flake. I just know it. In my gut. And Nostradamus said so. And there’s that whole volcano cloud-seeding thing. And Canada had a great year. And we’re due …

A Young Country

New Zealand is a young country. The British may scoff at what constitutes “old” in New England, but the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth long before the Brits established their first settlements here in New Zealand. In geologic terms, New England is positively ancient compared to these islands in the South Pacific. One look at the jagged peaks of the South Island and the lava flows on the North Island confirms that in many ways this place continues to be a work in progress.  It is the earthquakes, however, that bring the youth of these islands into the rarefied light of day – recently with disastrous results.

During the NZ winter of 2009, I experienced my first earthquake. My house rattled a bit and there were whitecaps in my landlord’s outdoor pool but it was pretty innocuous all things considered. In 2010, Wanaka experienced the tremors from a large quake centered in rural Canterbury. That one literally bounced me out of bed, caused rock slides that closed the road to Treble Cone for the day, and deeply affected the lives of many of Canterbury’s farming families in what already had been a tough year for them. Luckily the 2010 quake struck Christchurch at a time when the downtown area was quiet. And then there's 2011.

It’s hard to articulate the effects of the large earthquake that struck downtown Christchurch this past February. Though the huge Japanese earthquake and astonishingly horrific tsunami that followed this past spring may have trumped the attention garnered by the Christchurch quake, the effects of the earthquake on Kiwi communities are still spreading and evolving. My recollection is that the death toll was around 180 in Christchurch. Obviously, the scale of the events in Japan was far greater, but in this small country, 180 deaths represents an enormous number of Kiwis. Many remain homeless, may more have had their ability to do their jobs compromised by massive destruction to the infrastructure, and the economy is struggling to revive. The downtown area of Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island, is effectively a non-entity.

Another earthquake struck Christchurch on Tuesday morning while I was traveling to New Zealand from my home in Vermont. Thankfully, it appears that there have been few deaths. The greater issue, however, is the emotional aftershocks felt by a population already reeling. I can only imagine what it’s been like for the city’s residents. The analogies are easy to craft – writers freely use “bedrock” to mean something that is unshakable, understanding the deeply felt emotions occurring when the earth literally moves beneath ones feet. After a NZ summer of aftershocks and now another quake, ‘shaken’ must not be close to describing the emotions of the city’s and the region’s residents.

I arrived here in Wanaka on Wednesday afternoon very excited to be back in this wonderfully beautiful place. Many of the people with whom I will spend my time over the coming days and months are not from New Zealand, have no family here, and will doubtless be able to consider the effects of these earthquakes with a certain detachment, enjoying the short-sighted luxury of thinking that they have not been affected personally. I consider myself very lucky that in the few years I’ve been coming to Wanaka to work at Treble Cone I’ve become close friends with many local residents who are not a part of the itinerant circus of young resort employees and nomadic snow-junkies. They have provided me with a sense being welcome and of belonging in a way that leaves me grateful for a greater attachment to the place than I might not otherwise have. I look forward to catching up with my Kiwi friends in the coming days, to hearing their voices and seeing the look in their eyes as they tell me about how the world in Wanaka and on the South Island is surviving, even flourishing in these trying times. While I am obviously grateful to not have felt these most recent quakes in a literal sense, I am anxious to reconnect in a way that allows me to feel them figuratively.

New Zealand is a young country. That youth affects the character of its people and is a major reason for the beauty of its landscape. In 2011, I can only hope that their youthful exuberance and the beauty that surrounds them will allow my friends and hosts here to survive the effects of the youthful nature of the ground on which they walk. I am confident that it will and that we will enjoy yet another powder-filled winter season at Treble Cone.

I should note that though the events in Christchurch have a tremendous effect on the people here in Wanaka, the city is a six hour drive away. At Treble Cone, our expectation is that the earthquakes and the conditions on the ground there will not impact on our operations. My hope is that people from across Australasia and the world will not be dissuaded from coming to the South Island, sharing all that Wanaka and Treble Cone have to offer.

The Storm's Wake

A massive, fast-moving and incredibly destructive storm whipped through Western New England this afternoon. Just my luck: I drove through the whole thing, making my way south from Vermont to my family's home in the northwest corner of Connecticut before heading to New Zealand next week. I've seen my share of tempests in my time in the mountains, but I don't recall ever having seen rain fall that hard or lightening strike so often, so close together, and so destructive (I'm not sure we really call them rain "drops" when they're the size of tablespoons). We won't know the full toll of it all until morning, but in driving through the Berkshires I saw a few enormous and ancient oak trees ripped from the ground roots and all and several near misses of tree trunks and houses. By 6:00PM it was all over, the skies cleared and gave way to some beautiful mists rising from the hillsides.

Friends and colleagues in Vermont often assume that all of Connecticut consists of the coastal suburbs of New York City that are so far from here, literally and figuratively, and they often express surprise and cynicism when I explain how rural and how mountainous it is here in our corner of the world. Our mountains may not be big, I tell them, but they do behave big. That was certainly the case today!

Hypothalmus Abuse

At the moment, I’m sitting outside my home nestled in the middle of some very green mountainside woods here in Vermont. The sky visible through the treetops is deep blue and free of clouds, and the light breeze moving through the old hardwood trees sounds vaguely like gentle waves lapping at the seashore. The temperature is a near perfect 72 degrees Fahrenheit (approximately 21C), though it feels a bit cooler in the shade, and the loudest sounds apart from the wind are the excited calls of a wide variety of birds, all but hidden from view. Just to keep me honest, I can occasionally hear a lawnmower in the distance and someone does drive down the close-by dirt road from time to time, but like the occasional passing cloud these disturbances only serve to emphasize the gorgeous nature of the day.

I’m not some dime-store philosopher doing my Thoreau imitation in my own personal Walden, I’m not about to wax reverentially about the need to protect our precious environment (though I could), and I certainly am not about to break into song like a member of the Von Trapp family (though they did migrate to Vermont - “The hills are alive with the sound of music …”). What I am doing is making mental lists. Sitting in my favorite old beach chair being warmed by the summer sun, I am busy considering some very pressing and time sensitive issues: the benefits of thermal underwear, how many boxer shorts I need to live comfortably, whether I should have backup goggles, whether I should risk fitting chains in the mud while wearing my new down jacket, and the weight saving benefits of certain articles of clothing. Yes, I’m preparing to pack. For another powder-filled winter. On the other side of the world. In Wanaka, New Zealand and at Treble Cone.

I may be behaving like a lizard sitting on a rock in the sun, but I’m excited to leave it all behind in less than a week, drive to the big city, get on a huge plane, spend a lot of time catching up on the movies I’ve missed, use the Air New Zealand staff to restart my ability to understand Kiwis, all the while throwing my hypothalamus for a loop for a few days of serious jetlag. Long black, flat white, tomato sauce, fush and chups, and eggs on burgers. Ok, got it.

Yes, a week from now I’ll get slightly confused trying to cross the street, I’ll settle into my new home for the season, I’ll get up to speed on the rugby World Cup schedule, and I’ll be very excited to catch up with everyone and get our resort ready for another great season in the Southern Alps. In the meantime, I’ll bank as much summer in my subconscious batteries as I can so that in the dark days of yet another winter, I can remain upbeat, focused, and energetic, especially once I get over the jet lag. Ski season, here I come!

Colorful Progress

With the wonderfully and newly warm weather and abundant sunshine of the past couple of weeks, Mother Nature is now taking full advantage of spring here in New England with all due haste. I hope you all can head outside and enjoy it, and by that I mean experience all of the sights, sounds, smells and sensations of Spring. With one month left before I head south to New Zealand for another winter, my principal focus at the moment is making the most of all of the opportunities presented in this season.

The Full Spectrum

Ask tourists, locals, and anyone in the local chamber of commerce, and they’ll tell you that Autumn is the best time to visit Vermont, skiing and riding aside. Vermont, and New England generally, are justly famous for the astonishingly bright fall foliage, from electric red maples to bright yellow birches and everything in between. Despite the focus on fall, the remainder of the year is equally colorful in contrast to other places on the planet. In June, the entire landscape has a yellowish green tint to it, consistent with the pollen that seems to blanket everything. Summer varies from bright green to beige, depending on the heat. Just before the explosion of color in fall, Septembers here are a deep, dark almost luminescent green as though we can see the colors ready to burst forth. In November things turn grey and bleak once again, with only the drab browns of the tree trunks visible from a distance, soon to be covered by a clean blanket of white in our long winter.

What’s interesting about the range of color in the woods of Vermont is that ‘peak foliage’ lasts only a week or two. In the other fifty weeks of the year, the equally remarkable colors are just slow to change and we really have to pay attention to see it evolve. This April, for example, was been incredibly rainy and unseasonably cold so the mountains and valley floors have been dull, brown and dark. With the winter having been so snowy, the little bits of green, the signs of the forests coming back to life have been slow to show themselves and have only been creeping up on us a little bit at a time. Here in the first week of May, the snowbanks that have clung on under the eaves of my house have finally disappeared and the trees are finally showing some flashes of life at the tips of their fingers.

I am grateful to have plenty of down time at this time of year so I can observe and make note of the changes that make their way into my view every day – at first a trickle and soon in a rush. I’ll be headed back to New Zealand in a little over a month for another powder-filled winter in the arid landscape of the Southern Alps, but there’s plenty of time to enjoy the color spectrum in the meantime.

Melatonin Overload

If March winds bring April showers, and April showers bring May flowers, what do April snows bring?

Ski resort guests are frequently very curious about the life led by those of us devoted to our sport. Asking what we do in our off-season is commonplace and when I respond by explaining that I head to New Zealand for the Southern Winter, their curiosity often sky rockets. Even those people who find great joy in playing outdoors in the snowy months find the idea of year-round winter bewildering. I have some stock explanations intended to put off their concern for my well-being – how the New Zealand winter is far milder than ours in New England, how I use the time in between to relax and rejuvenate, how I get to enjoy Spring twice each year, and others. Those explanations are legitimate, but they require one key element at this time of year to maintain their veracity. For those explanations to be legit, for my endless winter to not render me incapacitated by Seasonal Affective Disorder, I require abundant sunshine and warm weather in the spring so I can play outside without ski boots on my feet. That means now. Right now. Yesterday actually. And it’s becoming a problem.

The snow, and with it the winter, continues in Vermont. The remainder of New England is also either snowy or is wet and gray. Willa Cather would find current conditions here worthy of yet another gloomy storyline. Raymond Chandler would seriously consider moving his characters to the Northeast because it’s so gloomy. I can just hear Phillip Marlowe explaining how the bright, spring fashions in the windows of the expensive boutiques of Boston’s Back Bay mock him as he sloshes through the cold, wet streets of the old, gray city.

Wow, that got dark in a hurry. Sorry about that, things are just not that bad. Really. It’s early yet, and I remain optimistic that I’ll enjoy plenty of sunshine and warm weather for my time in between ski seasons. In the meantime, I’m hiding out in the Berkshires to cycle on my favorite roads and watch as the natural world unfurls its limbs, ready to embrace spring. I mean seriously, if I get desperate I can always take a cue from the Finns and buy a UV lamp from the hardware store.

P.S. One day after posting this piece, the sun has come out, the countryside has warmed up and dried out, and I'm feeling much better, thank you very much. I'll spend an extended amount of time on my road bike today and I'll enjoy every minute. Still, I may have to buy a UV lamp just in case ...

Pulling the Plug

That's it, I've had it! My skis have a thick coat of hibernation wax on them and are in the boiler room, my boots are in the closet, and my locker is empty. None of my ski jackets or pants have pencils, Dermatone, trail maps, class lists, supervisory paperwork, goggle cloths or ski straps in their pockets and all my various nametags have been put away. The problem with all of this, of course, is that Okemo is still open, there is lots of snow on the mountain (not to mention in my yard). And it's cold outside.

The result is that my flip flops are looking longingly out the window, wondering when they will see the light of day. Don't even mention to me how forlorn my road bike looks - there are few sadder creatures than an underutilized road bike and there's only so much joy to be gained by putting my bike on a trainer in the living room while watching bike racing on television. I'm so ready for a real spring that I'm prepared to engage in shameless anthropomorphism with respect to my bicycle and my flip flops. It's possible that I'm suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder so why shouldn't my flip-flops and bicycle suffer with me?

The truth is that it was an incredibly snowy winter (and has been a snowy spring) here in Vermont, and as a bonus it wasn't particularly cold. We had none of our normal week-long sub-zero spells, nor did we have any major thaws during the season. Add that the last several weeks have been more like a slightly warmer version of mid-season, with firm conditions and the occasional layer of corn snow on top of the snow pack and without the shin-deep slush we are accustomed to at this time of year, and it's really been fantastic. Regardless, I'm still done. I'm perfectly healthy, I've had a great season and I feel great, I skied with a wonderful group of new and returning guests, I provided a lot of great training for some terrific instructors, and I have had a ball. And it's over. The fat lady is singing and she's crooning about my lonely bicycle.

So, for the next month and a half I'll be enjoying my time, catching up with friends and family, doing odds and ends of wrap up from this season and prep for the next, and hopefully cycling a lot. As soon as it warms up. Anyone seen a forecast?

Life Skills and Lego

I am not an engineer or a mechanic, I have never claimed to have been an engineer or a mechanic, and I have never played either on TV. I did, however, spend an inordinate amount of time playing with Lego building blocks as a kid. More scientifically minded educators may be able to provide interesting analyses of what that sort of play does for the fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, creativity, and ability to speak foreign languages in children, and I'll leave that discussion to the experts. Having said that, I do believe that my childhood fixation with Lego did provide me with one essential skill and one odd character trait: I can do stuff with my hands and I don't like to read directions.

How on earth, you may ask, is this relevant to the life of a ski professional? What benefit can these Lego-borne characteristics provide to someone in the snowsports business? After a month of writer's block, how can this possibly be the subject that prompted me to write? It's simple, really. I don't have a lot of money, my car is a rapidly aging Subaru, and this afternoon I needed to fix it on my own with only the contents of my closets and my home-owner style toolbox. Now that was a fun challenge!

The short version of the situation with my vehicle is that the collar that connects the exhaust pipe to the muffler was completely rusted and falling apart. I found this out this morning when I started my car, put it in drive and when, after rolling a few feet, I heard the telltale clang and rumble of a big chunk of metal hitting the ground and dragging underneath me along the driveway. I got a ride to and from work from a friend – I wouldn't even think about passing up a full day of work this late in the season when they are so few and far between – and arrived back home this evening with plenty of Spring daylight hours left for me to jerry rig a quick fix so I can get my car to the shop in the morning.


The All-Purpose Wire Hanger



The Sistine Chapel of Fixes

After a little contemplation and strategy (insert analysis of the benefits of a liberal arts education here), I fixed my car with an old wire hanger and some needle-nosed pliers. That's it. The exhaust pipe is now fully connected to the muffler. I even checked my work by driving up and down the driveway! I'm not a skinny little guy so wedging myself under the car on a mud and gravel driveway was a bit of a project, and doing so in a way that allowed me to use my hands took it to a whole other level. Yes, I am very proud of myself. No, I didn't draw any blood (which would have improved my street cred). Yes, I got very dirty. No, it's not clear whether the fix will hold up for the entire mile-and-a-half drive to the auto shop tomorrow morning, much of which is over very badly pot-holed roads. Yes, I do have an extra piece of wire hanger just in case. Yes, I shamelessly took pictures of my handiwork to post on my blog, and I will brag to my parents about it.

My car isn't really in that rough a shape, but with another good winter season or two I should be able to get a new one. Or I'll just pay a professional to properly fix it for me before these sorts of things happen. I'll maintain a ready supply of wire hangers, duct tape, tongue depressors, and super glue around the house just in case.

P.S. I am very please to be able to report that on the afternoon following The Big Fix, I successfully drove my car without incident, sparks on the road, or clanging parts all the way from Ludlow, VT to Claremont, NH. The drive included my very severely pot-holed road here at home, smooth Vermont state roads roads, and several typically ice-heaved New Hampshire roads with rough pavement.

Enough Already

I can't help myself. I'm still in Crested Butte, Colorado, enjoying a few days free skiing with friends after a busy holiday week of work. What this means is that I'm not in uniform, not on the clock, not on a schedule, not concerned about technical precision (OK, maybe a little but concerned about it), and not constantly looking over my shoulder while skiing. It's terrific, it's a welcome change, and it's a great way to recharge my batteries. Why, you may ask, is this relevant to anyone who happens upon my blog? What insight can this possibly offer with respect to skiing, my work as a ski professional, or my life in the mountains? None. It's not relevant at all. What is relevant, however, is that my time skiing for myself alone allows me to really appreciate what I do and the places where I do it, and where I am at the moment is spectacularly beautiful. So, unable to resist, here are some more photos from the Colorado Rockies.