Confetti

It’s snowing in Vermont. It’s snowing very hard. It has been since the early hours this morning and is supposed to continue snowing for another couple of days. When it’s all said and done, Sugarbush is supposed to end up with over two feet of new snow. This would be terrific even during the heart of the season, and for a mid-week storm towards the end of March it’s absolutely fantastic. To put it in perspective, and to gain some perspective on our season generally, by this time in 2012 resorts throughout the Eastern USA were barely hanging on to a very limited trail count, many had already started to close, and all were winding down the worst season for snow in decades. And now, this year, it continues to snow.

I’ve been focusing so much time and energy on my work this season that there’s been little left for anything else. Working on my own skiing and on my continuing goals for my own skiing, free skiing for the pure love of it, my life outside of work and off the hill, and certainly my writing have all taken a back seat if not fallen off the wagon altogether. Thankfully, the results of my efforts and those of my staff at Sugarbush have paid off and by mid-April we’ll have had a great season as a resort and as a Ski & Ride School. Just as we are about to begin properly taking stock of it all and begin turning our attention to next year, the whirlwind of the past four weeks in particular has provided me with some truly inspirational moments that will to inform and energize me.

These last four weeks have included an amazing succession of events. Our resort had a very busy Presidents Week followed immediately by a very busy Vermont schools vacation week. A few days later I made, a short trip to Montana (if there can be such a thing as a 'short trip to Montana') where I participated in a truly remarkable conference alongside a small number of some of the leading lights the North American snowsports teaching business. Shortly after returning home from the rarified air of the Rockies, I had a rigorous and stressful couple of days with the Eastern Division of PSIA in the Catskill Mountains of New York. In between all of this, I was able to watch my instructors at Sugarbush step up their game and continue to provide exceptional lesson experiences for record numbers of guests in some pretty harsh conditions, all in a way that makes me proud to be a ski instructor. It’s been awesome (in the sense of being filled with awe as much as in the ‘Like, dude, that’s totally awesome’ sense). It’s been exhausting. And it’s been genuinely inspiring in ways big and small.

I am trying to be careful to not stop pushing myself and those around me to achieve and to excel. Along those lines, it’s important to me personally that I not commit the cardinal sin of complacency as a manager, though I have been allowing myself to feel a little bit more confident lately that I’m steering our school in the right direction. I have many big and thorny issues that continue to challenge me as I write, and many of the changes that I began and issues I uncovered when I started in September are ongoing and by no means resolved. Still, tomorrow will be my second consecutive day off in what will be my first five-day work week of the season, and I’ll make some turns in deep, dry, soft snow, out of uniform and out of my office as this storm continues.

I do enjoy skiing in storms as much or more than I enjoy skiing after they’ve gone. Tomorrow, with a significant amount of humility and a smile on my face, I think I’ll permit myself to make my freeskiing in the fresh powder a small celebration, with the falling snow feeling just a little bit like confetti being thrown to mark the coming end of my first successful season at the helm. But I’ll do so just long enough to make note of it before putting my foot back on the gas and looking out to the horizon.