It Looks A Lot Like Winter

Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at Okemo

A few days ago, as I drove from my house in the hills above town to do some errands, I had a slightly odd and extended moment of reflection. The snow plows were out and about clearing people’s driveways and the roads after a big storm. The roads all through town were lined with bright white snow banks. Wind was whipping around the newly fallen flakes and they were dancing around in front of my headlights. The air smelled in that very clean, odorless way that only happens on a cold snowy night. And then, on top of it all, that not-unpleasant but slightly stinging sensation of the flakes striking my face as I walked to from the car to my final destination made me grin like a school kid. What I realized, what made me so happy, was that it simply felt like winter.

‘What the heck?’, I thought. Really, I’ve had 20 winters in the last 10 years and one would think I’d be used to all of this. The problem is that I am, I’m very used to it, I love it, and I’ve missed it. A lot. The “winter” of 2015-16 was winter in name only, and we never really experienced all of the sensations of the season in the way that brings me joy. Yes, we skied and rode a bit. Yes, we did have a few cold days (anyone remember last Presidents’ Weekend!). But we never had a blanket of snow; never experienced that easy enjoyment of the season and it’s ever-so-slight inconveniences that slow us down and allow us to take the time to appreciate all of its beauty. And a proper winter in Vermont is especially beautiful.

Thus far, in just a few short weeks, Vermont has had more natural snowfall than we had during all of last winter. We’ve had sustained cold temperatures since the resorts opened in mid-November and it’s been ideal for our industry’s state-of-the-art snowmaking. The quality of the skiing and riding is as good as it’s ever been this early in the season, it’s still getting better daily, and there’s another storm in the forecast.

The 2015-16 season was the type that can run people out of the snowsports business altogether, it was a brutal test of our mettle and our commitment, and we’re all badly scarred by it. The true extent of the difficulty we all faced last winter is best expressed by just how much joy we all shared this past Monday. It was a real powder day, with enough dry, light snow falling on the mountains throughout the state that even the most jaded old industry pros were out there just being present, in the moment, forgetting last year’s woes and having a ball. The consensus among my friends and colleagues on Monday was that we are all still absolutely in love with skiing and riding. Oh man, do we still love it. All the more so given how badly we needed a reminder of just how good it can be.

This season began with the eyes of the entire ski racing world focused on our little corner of the world for the first time in a generation, and with our people’s passion for the mountains on display for all to see. The success of the FIS World Cup races at Killington reaffirmed our motto “Winter in its original state”, and after last winter’s difficulties that reaffirmation was as much for ourselves as anyone.

What we do in the mountains of Vermont in winter, who we do it with, and the way in which we do it is an expression of who we are. So far this winter, being able to express ourselves in that way without reservation has been remarkably therapeutic and deeply appreciated by all of us. Soon, during the December holidays, we all hope to provide as many guests as we can with the same reminder we’ve been enjoying. And if that means more turns in abundant natural snow for me, I’ll be all the better for it!

Taking the Weight Off My Shoulder ... Season

Body in off-season, feet on snow. Last week.

Normal people refer to the season in between summer and winter as “fall”, with “spring” on the other end of the year. Here in Vermont, we also refer to them as “stick season” and “mud season” respectively, which are accurate descriptions of the hillsides up here. Those of us who ski and snowboard year-round and never have summer simply refer to them, inclusively, as “shoulder season”.

Like all seasons, we can wax poetic about shoulder season being a time of renewal, a representation of the cycle of life and our place in the world, and the rhythm of the natural world. Over the last several years, my view of shoulder season has been a bit more pedestrian, and necessarily so. It’s been a time of intense administrative effort. A time to get the very big and very complex business of snow sports teaching either up and running or wound down and planned for the following year. Fall in particular is about getting the entire organization up to speed from a standing start, involving a ton of disparate moving pieces, none of them simple and most of them people. Not this year. This year, I’m squarely back in metaphor-land, shoulder season as a gradual transition of place, work, rest and activity, climate, culture, cuisine, time zone. This year also, the transition involves turning my attention to a wonderful combination of new and old details and activities, each of them familiar but all put together in new and different ways for a fresh start in the new season.

Having decided mid-way through my “summer winter” in New Zealand to leave behind management for the time being, my timetable and the way I experience the seasons is now quite different. It is far less rushed, the transition is far longer, and it is far less busy. I continued to work at Cardrona through the end of the NZ season and then remained in Wanaka for a couple of weeks to do, uhh, stuff. After a wonderful spring of skiing in the brilliant Kiwi sunshine and getting to experience the joys of an easy wind-down to an extraordinarily busy season, I’m pretty confident that I did in fact do some stuff down there. I can’t exactly put my finger on all of the stuff, but it definitely included some fun dinner parties, some nice walks in the hills, and a couple of road trips with good friends. I’m pretty sure. Oh, I may have occasionally drank beer in the sunshine on the deck of our house, and if that happened I’m pretty sure that we would have taken the time to watch the sun drop below the mountains in the distance. It would have been important. Regardless of how acute my recollection may or may not be, all of the stuff I may have done (or not done) definitely was healthy for my mind, body and spirit.

In one respect, this shoulder season is a toughy. Spring in Wanaka is stunning (oh man, it’s shocking down there) and I arrived home to Vermont post-foliage, post- warm weather, and pre-ski season. Still, it’s great to be home, in my own house, drinking brewed coffee, with easy access to decent sandwiches and excellent burritos, driving on the right side of the road, and sleeping in my own bed. More importantly, as I look ahead to winter, I’ll stay here at home, in my own home, in Ludlow.

After four successful and rewarding seasons as Director at Sugarbush, I’ll remain in Ludlow, work for the Okemo Ski & Ride School (not far from my front door), and generally give myself a break to enjoy the simple life of working as an instructor and coach. That happiness thing, it’s pesky, but I think I’m on to it. The longer, easier shoulder season seems, forgive me, to have taken the weight off my shoulders.

The only folks unhappy about my choice to remain home are the field mice. They apparently had their run of the house this summer winter, but in winter winter it is my domain and they’d better watch out.

Mishegoss in The Mountains

The view up the hill behind my house in Ludlow, Vermont

It’s mishegoss, I’m telling you. Snow sports teaching, as an industry, is crazy. We face a litany of issues for our long-term viability: climate change, the hyper-competitive market for discretionary vacation dollars, the behemoth Rocky Mountain corporation gobbling up resorts and having a disproportionate effect on all of us (wasn’t the asking price for Whistler about 10 zillion simoleans?) … I can go on. It seems that every time I attend an event for us management-types or get into a discussion through PSIA about the health of the profession, it turns into a hand-wringing, doomsday exercise. Let’s face it, on a microeconomic level, ski teaching is a brutal way to make a living. We remain devoted through it all because instructors generally are a passionate bunch, our guests really do love it and, seriously, we didn’t get into this to become wealthy.

Still, there is a lot of good news out there, I’m truly optimistic we’ll be OK, and the proof for me lies in some surprising places. Why the rosy mindset, particularly during stick season? Well, because I’m in the middle of some serious administrative drudgery right now, and it’s gotten me excited for my upcoming season dedicated to our craft. Yes, that’s some serious mishegoss, but please let me explain.

The managers of the Okemo Ski & Ride School have taken pity on me by sliding me some work to get me through stick season. Wanting to be useful, I identified what I thought would be the best thing for me to do to make their lives easier and it’s the worst eye exam of a paperwork task that snow sports schools have to endure each fall. Yes, folks, it’s inputting instructor schedules into the computer scheduling and sales system. With software upgrades and web access, this is a lot easier than it used to be, but it’s still grunt work nonetheless. Each individual instructor submits their work days for the entire season; each has to be reviewed to make sure the needs of the school and their guests are likely to be met; and each has to be input manually so the sales staff and supervisors can do their jobs.

Vermont’s major resorts - Okemo, Sugarbush, Stratton, Mount Snow, Killington and Stowe - all have over three hundred instructors in their schools, the vast majority of whom work part-time for the season. Full-time schedules are easy: they pick the same day off each week, and they otherwise work every day and don’t get days off during the busy periods. Part-time staff schedules are another story altogether. Part-time instructor schedules can look a bit like they were placed on a tree during deer hunting season and shot through with buckshot. There’s no criticism there - these part-time folks have other conventional careers, kids in school and all kinds of family obligations or are in college themselves, have long drives to the resort and, seriously, normal lives that make it tough to sacrifice their weekends and holidays for six months a year in order to do wedge turns in our frigid Green Mountain winters. And seriously, just imagine a college kid who sacrifices all of the vacation time to work outside in the cold while making less money than they could at Starbucks and you get the idea. This is precisely why putting the part-time staff schedules into the system can be genuinely inspirational. Yep, it’s time to look up “mishegoss” in your Yiddish dictionary.

Here’s the point, finally. Schedule after schedule of part-time instructors are actually pretty simple. They include virtually every weekend all winter with one or two set aside for the “real world”, a PSIA update or some freeski time, and then a few mid-week days during the busy December holidays or Presidents Week. Boom, done. Some of these people have drives to Vermont as long as three or four hours every time they want to put their skis or boards on their feet, and yet they’ll be there at lineup and in the morning training clinics rearing to go, enthusiastic, and spreading the joy to our guests without flinching. It’s downright amazing, and that’s without even considering that they do all of it without any profit motive, which I’m sure would leave my undergraduate economics professors speechless.

Sure, these folks are getting older. Yes, I’d love to see many of them become a bit more open to continuing their evolution as skiers, riders and teachers. Of course, I wish that a greater number of them were equally dedicated young folks, filled with a passion for teaching snow sports and to their own ongoing, continuing professional development. More importantly, I do very much wish it were easier to keep the many amazing young folks we do have working in the industry – we need to hang onto them with two hands and give them every opportunity we can to succeed (a/k/a serve the Kool-Aid but not let it result in professional sugar crashes). Still, what these part-time instructors do and their thankless dedication to it cannot be underestimated and shouldn’t be left unappreciated. Ever.

Every Friday night this winter, the highways of the northeastern United States will be filled with an enormous number of dedicated instructors (and coaches, park staffs, lifties, patrollers, etc.) on their way to their second jobs in the mountains that they really love. I used to joke that if you want to see the best collection of race coaches I knew, sit in a booth at the Friendly’s restaurant in Greenfield, Massachusetts all night on a Friday night in winter, and they’ll be wandering in for a mid-trip hot meal on their way north. We are all working very hard to solve the vexing issues in our industry, but our hard-working part-time pros are the beating heart of it and they’re keeping it all together. It shows in their paperwork, plain and simple. And I may need another cup of coffee before doing the next batch of schedules.

A Rolling Stone Gathers No … Stitches?

The view from along the Cardrona Road today, September 14.

One of my graduate school professors had a game he liked to play, just for fun. If you presented him with a pithy aphorism, he’d respond with another one that had precisely the opposite meaning as the first. Try it: good fences make good neighbors; a rolling stone gathers no moss; a stitch in time saves nine; and, my current favorite, for every complex question there’s a simple answer that’s wrong. While I’m in New Zealand, I become acutely aware of the volume of folksy American expressions in my everyday speech, and I’ve been thinking about Professor Paul’s game a bit to entertain myself.

Today, as I enjoy a rare second consecutive day out of ski boots, enjoying the sunshine in town, the two somewhat competing maxims that come to mind are “the devil is in the details” and “Heaven shows itself one detail at a time”. In the dark days of the early part of the New Zealand winter, each detail seems to confirm winter’s wintery-ness. Wake up in a cold house, eat breakfast in a down coat, leave the house in the dark of night and return long after sunset, always clothed in layers like an onion. “Turn on the bed”, for crying out loud, meaning give the electric blanket a bit of time to warm the sheets before getting in and hunkering down for the night. In spring, it’s quite the opposite, and with each passing day more details emerge to help us appreciate having moved on from the depth of winter. First, we can actually see our colleagues as we wait for the early morning staff transport. Then, we observe the street lights turn off as we stand waiting. Then, the sun is above the horizon when we arrive at work. We don sunglasses when we arrive at the resort, and then need them first at the bottom of the access road and eventually in town on the way there. Now, after returning to town at the end of the day, it’s actually not the end of the day – the sun remains up for a while, warming us as we enjoy the stunning spring views across Lake Wanaka from town. In September, the great statistic is that we add something in the neighborhood of six additional minutes of sunlight every day here in Wanaka, and we certainly can tell. As they say here in New Zealand, that’s awesome with an “o”.

All of this is particularly meaningful for me this year. Over the past several Southern Winters seasons, I’ve had to leave Wanaka in early September to head home and begin working in Vermont. Not this year. This year, I get to experience the slow wind-down from a very busy ski season and make the most of a proper Kiwi spring. I’ve moved on from my Director position at Sugarbush and aim to make the most of the decision, beginning with getting my flip-flops some badly needed outside time. Notably, the best thing about walking around in flip-flops is that to do so safely requires moving slowly, which is part of the point.

It’s been a banner season for me teaching skiing at Cardrona Alpine Resort, and I’ll continue working through early October and then remain here in Wanaka for a couple of weeks. Some travel, some hiking, and lots of time contemplating my next move (a/k/a my continuing tour of the cafes of Wanaka) is all in the cards. After all, how can I adequately pay attention to the many glimpses of Heaven that show themselves every day here, one at a time, if I’m in a rush to leave. You’ll just have to speak a bit louder because the birds in my neighborhood are creating quite a racket this morning. They must be the early birds ...

Ode on a Beach Chair

This year, for the first time since becoming Director of the Sugarbush Ski & Ride School, I had some real time off between the end of my season in Vermont and my departure for my “summer” in New Zealand. My time involved a range of things in a number of places, but it was principally dedicated to two inanimate objects that have important roles in my life. Both embody a certain philosophy and an approach to my personal time; both harbor lots of memories going back a long time; and both comfort my mind, body and spirit. One, my bicycle, involves exertion, suffering and euphoria, constant movement, and speed. The other is the opposite, by design. It’s my beloved old beach chair.

My beach chair is nothing special at first glance. It’s a clunky old-style chair that sits close to the ground with an aluminum tube frame, wood arm rests, an adjustable back, and an odd and really pretty ugly sliced fruit design on the fabric seat and back. It doesn’t have a handle or a shoulder strap, it has no snazzy bag it slips into, it has no brand, and it doesn’t advertise anything. My chair doesn’t have a name (I’m not prone to anthropomorphist tendencies). It is simply “my beach chair”. And it is mine. All mine.

The story of the acquisition of my beach chair is a part of its allure for me, but just a part. I bought it while strolling to take a ferry to an island in the middle of Long Island Sound to spend a very hot 4^th of July. It was in the middle of a very busy and incredibly stressful period in my former working life (that is, my life prior to seeing the light and becoming a ski professional). That day and my chair were part of a bigger point to make about where my priorities were (and weren’t) at the time. I headed out in morning with notes for the work project that was still in process, a fully charged cell phone, the New York Times, a good sandwich from the local deli, flip flops, hat, sunblock and the like. I walked directly to the neighborhood hardware store, bought the chair and sat in it for the entire day. That was almost twenty years ago and the chair has been a part of my life ever since.

The thing that makes a great beach chair so wonderful is what it’s not. It is a beach chair, not a lawn chair, a deck chair or a piece of outdoor furniture. It’s not particularly mobile, so it’s not the sort of thing one can bring anywhere requiring a lot of walking. It’s low-slung style and casual posture makes it unworthy as a dining chair for meals with friends on the patio in summer. It’s a bit tough to get in and out of so it’s not ideal for watching sporting events. It is however, perfect for short strolls to village greens to watch 4^th of July fireworks, listening to outdoor concerts, outings to not-very-distant beaches, reading the entire newspaper in the local park, and generally listening to the wind in the trees and watching the world go by. It’s also exceptional for that particularly indispensable warm-weather activity: the impromptu nap while “reading”.

After a long season of constantly running around, looking after the best interests of our guests, my staff, and lots of other folks in weather and under circumstances that can be challenging in a good winter, my chair looms in my imagination. Don’t make too many plans and make them all stress free; commit to doing things that are open-ended by design; eat when hungry, sleep when tired; spend time with people of your own choosing; rotate every so often to face the sun; spend hours contemplating your next move – not your next professional move, social move, or intellectual one. Water or ice tea, or maybe that ice cold Miller High Life hiding in the back of the fridge. It’s a big decision, so don’t rush it. Above all, be present, be aware of your surroundings but at one with them, and be yourself. My beach chair promotes all of this and, in particular, this mode of thinking.

We've had a good few weeks, my beach chair and I, and I’m grateful for it. Unfortunately, my beach chair cannot come where I am going and it wouldn’t be very useful there anyway. I’m on my way to New Zealand for my next winter, but I’ll look forward to reconnecting with my beach chair when I come home and to finding the peace of mind it promotes. In the interim, my tenth Kiwi winter starts next week and it won’t exactly be a hardship!

Some Time in the ICU

Breckenridge, Colroado last week

I love being a ski instructor. As a Director, it's an essential component of my work to create for my staff an environment that facilitates their own love of being instructors. Often, that means being the cheerleader-in-chief and this was never more true than during the 2015-16 season, now in its waning days. This season was a serious test of the depths of my enthusiasm reservoir. It’s hard to explain in succinct fashion just how tough it was – little natural snow and any snowfall followed immediately by buckets of rain; digit-numbing cold followed immediately by unseasonably warm weather; beige granular passing for beginner teaching surfaces; mud-crusted rental boots; frozen pond ice that only was skiable by means of divine intervention; and a notable drop in business levels making it tough for our staff to get enough work. And that was just in December and January! My running joke during the December to January holidays was that it was like the plagues upon Egypt and that I was just waiting for the locusts to show up. My job, first and foremost, was to keep the instructors of the Sugarbush Ski & Ride School engaged, focused, enthusiastic, happy and busy. I’m confident that it worked, I’m incredibly proud of our entire staff from top to bottom, but it took an awful lot of effort and it really did wear me out. How on earth does a ski school director recover from all of that? It’s simple: I've just returned from the S.P.I.C.U – the Ski Professional Intensive Care Unit, also known as the PSIA National Academy at Breckenridge!

In the little corner of the universe inhabited by ski and snowboard instructors, PSIA National Academy is a very big deal. It’s basically an intensive training week involving on-hill clinics all day every day, indoor presentations, and plenty of fun, all conducted by a collection of coaches that is simply the best in the business. The coaches come from around the country and the world and include current and former members of the National Teams of the Professional Ski Instructors of America and the American Association of Snowboard Instructors, some international coaches who share our American guest-centered view of teaching, some members of the coaching staff of the U.S. Ski Team, some close friends I hadn’t seen in a long while, and some genuine living legends who’ve had a major impact on the sport (for pros and recreational skiers alike). The participants and the coaches also included some of my favorite people on the planet and several who have had a direct impact on my own career and on my deep-seeded passion for what I do. It helped that Breckenridge really put its best foot forward, that the conditions were terrific and then it snowed two feet. We had plenty of sunshine as only Colorado can deliver it, they served beer, and we were based in a hotel famous for its free chocolate chip cookies. Any questions?

In a season that was a true test of my ability to inspire instructors, being in Breckenridge was a vital reverse of course where I was on the receiving end. Yes, it was professional development. Yes, I trained hard and skied hard, focusing on learning and improving in a way that will allow me to continue my growth as an instructor and as a Director. Yes, it’ll provide ample fodder for me to work with our trainers at Sugarbush to bring our staff of pros to the next level of teaching and skiing. And yes, it saved me. The Academy was like a transfusion that cleared my system and nourished my mind, body and spirit. Can you tell how much I loved it?!

Sugarbush is holding on here. We’ll remain open through this weekend and reopen for the first weekend in May – our normal operating schedule, remarkable in a season that definitely has not been normal. In a season that has been among the worst in the long history of skiing in Vermont, there have been some definitely highlights and there is ample cause for optimism – for our sports, for our profession, and certainly for the Sugarbush Ski & Ride School. Having returned from the S.P.I.C.U., I am in a position to see those highlights with clarity and to look forward to next winter. I’m also reinvigorated enough to be very excited for my next season in this endless winter, and t's coming right up in a little over a month on the other side of the globe. in Wanaka, New Zealand. I can’t wait!