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.