Moving Through Transition (and other ski metaphors)

A little slice of autumn after arriving home from NZ recently.

It’s the first week in November and, amazingly, there are already a few resorts in the Eastern USA open for skiing and riding. We can, as we all say, “make some turns”. Not one turn, but lots of them. Arc ‘em and spark ‘em. Turn ‘till you burn. Tip and rip. For instructors, coaches and athletes, the theme, the moment, the phase of ski technique where we spend the bulk of our time is how we transition from one of those turns to the next; always the next one. It’s that transition between turns where we find out how good we really are. Not surprisingly, there are broader lessons to be learned from our focus on transition, on moving into the future, and they don’t necessarily have anything to do with skiing.

Okemo has changed a lot, evolving in order to become and then remain at the top of our industry. Still, no changes have effected the core of who we are as a resort in the same way as what we are undergoing right now. After several decades at the helm, putting Okemo on the map and making it the leader it is today, Diane and Tim Mueller recently concluded the sale of their resorts (Okemo here in Vermont, Sunapee in New Hampshire, and Crested Butte in Colorado) to Vail. Yes, that Vail.

When the official announcement about Vail’s acquisition came out last spring, the overwhelming response from the folks here in our little town of Ludlow – business owners, merchants, realtors, tradesmen, ski pros, and our many guests – was that this is a great thing for all of us. I agree completely and without hesitation, for a million reasons. Some good people have lost their jobs, and I do smirk a bit thinking about Vail’s corporate managers scratching their heads as they have to adjust their thinking in order to do business in our tiny little Vermont town. Still, there can be no question that this is terrific for our resort, for those of us who work here, and for those of us who play here.

Right now the open question for us, all of us, is how will the transition go? Yes, I know that I’m an instructor geek, but this transition is much like our skiing and we can ask the same questions. Did we get the details right as we finished the old phase so that we’re balanced and moving forward assertively into this new one from a position of strength? Have we set ourselves up so that we can we move where we want to go as a resort, as a team, without going somewhere else first? Are we feeling confident and is our awareness of what to do clear? In skiing, reticence, lack of confidence, fear of what comes next, or a lack of awareness of what it should feel like to move well through transition are some of the classic issues we focus on with our guests. Like our guests’ skiing, we’re going there anyway, it’s all happening, so let’s move in a way that allows us to be confident and find success.

In my own skiing, the piece of the puzzle that I’m working on improving (and have been for a while) is how my ankle and foot are set up within my inside boot as I finish one turn so that I enter each next turn with a strong platform on that same ski now as the new outside ski. It’s transition, plain and simple. Doing this well sets me up to be balanced along the length of my ski, moving unhurried and with selective control, ready for whatever comes next. Thankfully, I work with an exceptional boot fitter, I have an amazing coach to keep me honest, and I get a million reps to practice, so I’m making progress. As for Okemo, things get complex in a hurry and it may be tougher to keep fundamentals in focus while seemingly every detail of how we conduct business will be different.

Thankfully, these Vail people know what they are doing. They’ve been down this road a bunch of times before, I’m sure there’s nothing they haven’t seen in the acquisition process, and they sure as heck know how to run a successful resort. If our managers can focus on how to get from one turn to the next and keep their eyes on where we’re going, they too will be able to move forward with confidence and lead those of us on the staff into our new direction. It’s an exciting time to be here at Okemo, and it’s going to be an Epic season here in Ludlow … and there’s snow in the forecast!

The Song of the Gondolier

Ahh, the romance of a gondola! Gently cruising down the waterways of Venice, sliding past old world art-filled villas, sipping a glass of pinot gris in the sunshine while a gondolier quietly sings Puccini in the background. Simply wonderful … Unless, of course, you prefer skiing or snowboarding.

It makes me giggle a bit to compare the romance of the original gondolas to our still shiny, new Chondola at Cardrona Alpine Resort - I don’t necessarily think of Swiss or Austrian mechanical engineers as purveyors of romance. Still, as an instructor, I’d like to wax romantic about that wonderful piece of Austro-Swiss engineering made for us by our friends at the Doppelmayr / Garaventa group that we call MacDougal’s. I know it’s an odd thought, but work with me here: there are things about our beloved Chondola and what it allows us to do that make this instructor’s heart swoon, and it's one of the many reasons Cardrona is such a wonderful place to become a skier or a snowboarder.

Cardrona’s chondola replaced an old, fixed-grip, four-person chair lift that was pretty typical of its vintage. It served us well but didn’t really suit our ambitions as a resort. Most of the advantages of the new lift, now almost done with its second winter of use, are obvious: speed, capacity, reliability, comfort, convenience, bling (it’s pretty shiny!). The details that make this piece of engineering so stirring for me, however, are a little less obvious to the untrained eye, and there are a lot of them.

Take the upholstery of the chairs, for example. Yes, the upholstery. The six seats on each chair alternate red and black. Conveniently, those are our Cardrona colors, but it’s far more than that.  When we’re with new skiers loading a chairlift for the first time there are an awful lot of details to the process that can make them nervous, not the least of which are starting at the gate and then stopping on the red line precisely when and where is needed, and then aiming for the correct spot on the chair with five other people. Scary, uncomfortable, and a little too personal at times. Now, it’s a simple ‘eyeball your spot’, or ‘you’re in that red seat on the end’. It’s a small but substantial difference that has pretty far-reaching effects on everyone’s confidence and comfort-level. Color-coded seats rock.

Next example, just to make us all feel better, is the safety bar. Every other chairlift safety bar I’ve seen that has a foot rest attached to it rests against the front of the chair with a metal bar on the outside of each rider’s knees. These work well for adults, but wriggly little kids who are excited to be skiing and who have trouble sitting still on the chair can make us pretty nervous. Leaving no detail to chance, the fine engineers of our shiny new Chondola created a solution: the safety bars on MacDougal’s rest against the chair in between each rider’s knees and lock in place. That means that even the kid with worst shpilkes (a/k/a “ants in their pants”) can wriggle all he wants and still remain safely in their seat. Phew!

And then, last in my hit list but first in my heart, are the gondola cabins themselves. Oh gondola cabins, how I do love thee; let me count the ways! The speed of MacDougal’s and it’s ease of loading means that we can stay with our guests practicing on our wonderful beginner slope with its tunnel-covered lift for far longer, generating far more confidence than before and then still have plenty of time to make the move to the top of the mountain when they’re truly ready to ski or ride on Skyline. More importantly, we can make that first trip down the mountain without having had to go through that harrowing first chairlift ride up it, and that’s been a real game-changer for our guests who are new to the sport. Loooove the cabins!

There is, however, one more thing about the gondola cabins on MacDougal’s that most people don’t consider; something hiding in plain sight. Like all things romantic it’s about inspiration, plain and simple. When we’re working with first-time skiers and riders, they usually are not ready to ski or ride from the top of the mountain during their first two-hour lesson. Often, making sure that they’re happy to do so, I like to take these guests on a ride to the top in a gondola cabin, leaving our skis at the bottom. We get off at the top, walk the few steps up to the ridgeline to see the stunning view of the Southern Alps and Lake Wakatipu, take some photos, and then enjoy the leisurely trip back down in a cabin. The view from up there is genuinely inspirational and is frequently shockingly gorgeous. Still, that’s not the best part.

The best part of the sightseeing ride up is that when our guests are on our bespoke beginner hill they are surrounded by other beginners and their instructors and usually are so focused on what they’re doing that they don’t really get to see much else. Taking that ride up the gondola often is the first time they gain a real sense of perspective on where they are and, more importantly, what skiing and snowboarding can be like. Athletes in the park, in the pipe, and racing down All Nations are all in immediate view, as are so many experienced skiers and riders of all levels just having fun on all sorts of terrain. Our first time guests really get to see skiing and riding outside the beginner bubble. With a little simple explanation from their instructor, they can attach what they’ve been learning to what they see happening all over the resort. And that’s when the romance hits. “Wow, I would love to be able to do that! I would love to ski or ride there!”. Suddenly, their learning has a clearer purpose and direction, as though they can step out and see the horizon and put it all in perspective. That shining moment of inspiration is worth its weight in gold, for us as instructors and for our guests. For me, it renews my passion for snow sports every time, it reminds me why I love being a ski teacher, and I fall in love with our MacDougal’s Chondola all over again. A little pinot gris and Puccini would still be nice, but then that’s why Cardrona put a café up at the top station! Glass of bubbly with a view anyone?

Kafka Was Not a Ski Bum

A little blue sky as one of this week's storms clears at the top of Cardrona.

Now that we’ve completed the very busy few weeks of the Australian and New Zealand school holidays, I’m finally able to slow down enough to take stock of the past year, and it certainly was an interesting one. At home in the USA, I had four or five different jobs (depending on how you count) across several mountain ranges and in several different uniforms in the 2017-18 season. In my two short stints away from home and in Aspen, I had to learn my way around four different mountain resorts that were totally new to me and had to adapt to a very different working environment. It meant a lot of long days, long trips, suitcase-living, cold, wet, unfamiliar territory, all while focusing 100% on honing my craft as an instructor and coach while providing the best guest experiences I possibly can, to say nothing of working on my skiing. And now I’m in New Zealand where I have on uniform, one workplace, and one home … Phew, I made it.

My life here so far away, living in Wanaka, New Zealand and working at Cardrona Alpine Resort is terrific but I do wonder from time to time about having been brought here, having traveled all this way just to work. It’s another dimension to a question that my time in Aspen brought to mind and that stayed front-and-center for me this winter in Vermont. The question is a classic Kafka’esque dilemma, and it’s not a particularly rosy one – not at first.

The overly-simplified description of the Kafka dilemma I have in mind involves considering, for example, a ride at the zoo: is it intended to give the people a view of the animals or to give the animals a view of the people. Kafka wrote about this sort of scenario as genuine dilemmas in the sense that there is not a concrete answer, only the discussion from which we learn. Yes, although you are welcome to see this as just another piece of hyper-complicated gobble-de-gook from me, I do have a point to make about skiing, ski towns, and our relationships with our guests.

This Kafka concept first came to mind during a morning bus ride from where I was staying in Snowmass Village to work at Aspen Highlands – a commute of about 30 minutes. My daily bus route was along the one highway on the valley floor that enters Aspen from ‘down valley’. It should be no surprise that Aspen’s an incredibly expensive place, so down valley towns like Basalt and Carbondale are far more affordable places for the working folks that provide all of the labor for the busy resort and all of its supporting businesses, and everyone travels this same road. As the resort began to get busy and crowded for the December holidays, one particularly Aspen-y aspect of the commute was the airport, right along-side the highway, which began to stack up with triple parked private jets, more than I’d ever seen in one place and at one time. Sitting on the bus, ogling the countless jets on one side while on the other was the slow-moving traffic of old Hondas, hard-working pickups, and late model minivans filled with the resort workers was what brought Kafka to mind. Are we all commuting in to serve the jet people or have we brought them here to provide us with work and an income?

The dilemma unnerved me a bit, and I arrived at the Aspen Highlands locker room early in a contemplative state. My morning locker room routine often includes tuning my skis, something that always relaxes me and clears my head, and a positive minded conclusion started to take shape in my mind as I chatted with Aspen’s Director who also was in there tuning his skis - he’s a gifted staff trainer that I’ve known for a while and he’s always supremely level-headed. He asked how everything was going for me there and I told him the truth: that it was a wonderful experience for me but that I’d had my uncomfortable Kafka thought that morning. As expected, he helped me put a fine point on the positive and sincere conclusion.

The answer to the dilemma was that it wasn’t ‘us and them’, nobody was there to serve or be served. The right mindset, the one that makes the incredibly wide financial gap between the wealthy visitors and the hard-working day laborers, is one of welcoming all comers to a shared mountain experience. We make them feel welcome – the ski towns where I ply my craft are sought-after by the wealthy for the same reasons I’ve made them my home(s), and whether I’m on the hill with my guests in a lesson or out and about in town, making them feel welcome makes me appreciate where I am and what I do all the more. The experiences I have working and spending time with our guests is at least as valuable to me as the experiences I help provide for them,. The guest and the staff experiences in great ski towns like Ludlow, Vermont, Wanaka, New Zealand and Aspen Colorado run parallel 100% of the time and, thankfully, it feels egalitarian in truth and in spirit for all of us.

We’re all in this together in our mountain communities, we depend upon each other for our safety and for the quality of our experience. Kafka was wrong in this way: it’s not that one is there to look at or to serve the other; it’s that we’re drinking from the same spring, basking in the same sunshine, and sharing with each other all that our mountains offer us.