Russ's Endless Winter

Talk About The Weather

2012-01-19T11:15:00.001-05:00

One of the funnier differences between my winters here in Vermont and my winters in Wanaka, New Zealand lies in how people look at the weather. In both places (and in the snowsports business generally), talking about the weather is not merely 'talking about the weather'. We really talk about it. It's a subject as important to us as it is to farmers trying to assess the prospects for this year's crops. Its importance goes beyond our prospects for business and good conditions. We're out in the weather, all day, every day.

In Wanaka, weather forecasts boil down to whether or not we're going to have a storm, what direction it will be coming from, and what kind of precipitation it will bring. Sitting as it does at the edge of a massive mountain range in the middle of an island in the Pacific, weather forecasting down there can take on a level of detailed speculation that can be somewhat daunting to those of us used to simpler weather patterns. Honestly, I don't have a long enough attention span to focus on all of the parameters for how the storms may or may not swirl around in the Southern Ocean and the Tasman Sea, whether they come from a direction that means it'll snow or rain, and whether they'll hit Queenstown, Wanaka, Christchurch or just pass us by. Everyone in New Zealand seems to have their favorite underground weather forecasting service, some revolutionary academic meteorologist with a website or some lunar faze forecasting service on which they depend. To me, the level of detail Kiwis like in their forecasts can leave me feeling as though I've been staring too long at a Seurat painting, unable any longer to see the picture beyond the dots. Let's just say that isobars don't really factor into our forecasts here in Vermont.

Here in Vermont, our forecasts are vastly simpler and our weather is far more complex than in New Zealand. Our weather either comes across the country up high or down low, and storms either pass right through or hit the coast and swirl back around. In New Zealand, weather forecasting doesn't really affect our days except for whether we need to dress for precip or break out the fat skis but here in Vermont, with temperature swings that can be dizzying, it affects every aspect of our daily lives. How we dress, what and how we eat, how early we need to get up in the morning to scrape the two inches of ice off of our cars, how well our cars function and how much gas we use in them, how we plan our days on the hill, what we teach to whom and how much. There are times when we'll have long discussions in the locker room at Okemo about how we're going to dress for the day – are we 'going to the weapons', mittens versus gloves, and so forth. Announcing to your friends that you're trying out a new layering system that includes a combination of merino and Capilene can be the source of a heated discussion of the benefits of pit-zips in down coats, Dermatone on the face, and whether second breakfast should be a muffin or if we should go big with a breakfast sandwich. Ski instructors can get serious applause for somehow being able to put on their uniform coat over a sleeping-bag-sized down jacket and still be able to move their arms!

This past weekend was a holiday weekend here in the USA celebrating the birthday (and the life and enormous contributions) of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As always seems to be the case on MLK weekend, we definitely had some weather with which to contend. Last Wednesday night and all day on Thursday, we received something in the range of ten inches of new snow. On Friday morning, as another front hit us, we had freezing rain that felt like musket fire pouring down on us from a hot air balloon as we skied, but it turned to snow quickly as the front passed and we received another couple of inches of pretty dry powder. Saturday was clearly among the best days of skiing of the year, with temps in the 20's and the snow very dry and light. Sunday morning, I awoke to temps that were near ten degrees below zero Fahrenheit, with the same again on Monday morning. On neither day did the temps climb out of the single digits above zero and wind chills remained in double digits below. Then on Tuesday, it started out cold and then warmed up enough to fog us in and drop some rain on us while skiing. I feel like I've been living in a Gore-Tex test lab! Ho hum, just a typical several days here in the Green Mountains.

For those folks who have never experienced the joys of trying to start a car with a frozen engine block, I've included the video clip above. For those of you who think you've experienced cold weather, I have news for you: until you've had to pour isopropyl alcohol in your car's gas tank or you've had electrical cables hanging out of your car's grill, until you've had to cover your face while walking outside in part to prevent frostbite and in part to allow the air you breathe to warm up enough to not choke you, until you've stood in your house trying to decide which two pairs of long-Johns to wear at the same time just to go to the grocery store, and until you've had in excess of four cups of hot chocolate in one day while teaching skiing just to stay warm, you probably haven't experienced real cold.

Ok, seriously, this past weekend wasn't that cold. It was pretty cold, we did have to dress carefully and cover our skin, and we did take a lot of breaks inside with our students, but we all kept some layering system in reserve just in case. After all, once we go to the nuclear option, there's simply no going back.

Now, about that next snow storm …

A Skiing Fountain Pen

2012-01-09T23:00:00.004-05:00

Cold smoke powder, Okemo style!

There’s an old joke among Jews that upon becoming a Bar Mitzvah, a young man announced “Today, I become a fountain pen.” There’s a lot of historical context to the joke that’s not particularly relevant to the modern, gentile world (legal adulthood and the right to sign for oneself), but its deep-seated meaning still cracks up those of us in the tribe. And not just when we’re skiing in the Catskills.

In a funny way (not funny ‘ha-ha’, more funny ‘hmmm’), I had the distinct pleasure of being involved in a series of events over the holiday week that culminated in a young man becoming a fountain pen, in the skiing sense. I taught a three hour private lesson one afternoon to a ten-year-old from New Jersey who was getting on skis for the first time – let’s just call him Chris. Before we even got started, Chris assured me that he wasn’t going to be very good and that I shouldn’t expect too much from him that day. Naturally, as an instructor, I viewed this as a challenge and told him as much. Needless to say, despite some struggles and crashes of the normal variety, Chris finished up his first ever three hours on skis by lapping our long beginner’s Magic Carpet lift and making some pretty nice wedge turns down the adjacent hill. In speaking with his somewhat overwhelmed parents afterwards, I made clear that my expectations were for him to move to the chairlift quickly the next time he skied, despite his significant fear of heights. From there, things just snowballed. On afternoon two, we moved from the carpet lift to chairlift (lots of giggling and knee slapping there when his fear quickly turned to thrill), we made a bunch of runs on the lower part of our mountain, cleaned up his balance and rounded out his turns, and generally had a grand old time. On afternoon three, with our poor snow cover so far this season limiting our terrain options, we stayed on the lower mountain and discovered how much our bodies appreciate it when our skis are parallel. Then came day four, the big one, all day together, for bragging rights and all the marbles (an expression I had to explain – I guess there is no Wii marbles game). We practiced on easy terrain, took a deep breath, hopped on the summit quad, took in the distant views, and skied like champs from the top of the mountain on trails of ever-increasing difficulty.

This progression is nothing unusual or ground-breaking, I know, but there’s more. When we met on the morning of day four, Chris’s parents informed me that they’d given him enough money for the day to take me out for a nice lunch – also not terribly unusual. After several long runs, lunch loomed large in young Chris’s mind. Someone, something (definitely not me), had whispered the words “Kobe burger” in his ear and it stuck. Off we went. We entered Epic, the restaurant in our Solitude Day Lodge, and when we announced ourselves at the hostess stand, Chris and I conferred and agreed that given that he was buying and that he’d just spent the morning knocking ‘em dead on the big mountain, he should order only from the adults’ menu – no mac and cheese or chicken fingers for this little dude. In a very cute moment, he did apologize to me for ordering a kid size Pepsi, hoping it was OK.

We sat there for a while, chatting away like two buddies just catching up over a burger. Then he asked the waiter for the check, and it brought down the house. It could have been anywhere and we could have been anyone, and the normalcy of the two of us sitting there, ordering fancy-pants burgers off the adult menu in the middle of a ski day that involved such wonderful accomplishments as though it happened every day was just so cool, such a gift to both of us, that we spent a good chunk of the afternoon grinning like idiots.

It’s a running line of mine that we’re not making the world safe for democracy by teaching skiing and snowboarding; but sometimes, quietly, I do think we’re making the world safe for democracy by teaching skiing and snowboarding. In this case, though I don’t want to overstate the importance of our time together, I am confident that the experience of learning to ski, of getting on the lift, of succeeding in skiing from the summit, of ordering a great lunch and paying for it, like a man and not like some kid, was important to Chris for a million reasons that have nothing to do with skiing. It certainly wasn’t the first time I’ve taught a great kid how to ski and it won’t be the last. As the expression goes, this isn’t my first rodeo. At all times, skiing is a wonderful experience, and at the best of times skiing is merely a delivery mechanism for a wide range of other things, other experiences and opportunities. In this particular case with all of its circumstances, it was pretty darn cool to be there when my student became a fountain pen, a skiing fountain pen. With a big juicy Kobe burger to prove it.

A Snow-Deprived Stupor

2012-01-03T19:46:00.000-05:00

New Year's Day sunrise, 2012

It's been an interesting season so far. A late start, some pretty dicey conditions, oddly warm weather and serious challenges for all of us in the ski business. Thanks to some good luck, a healthy dose of help from my friends and clients, and some perseverance, I managed to have had an exceptionally busy and fruitful holiday period from which I am pretty exhausted. I'll free ski a bit this week, catch up on some work, teach a little, run some staff clinics, and generally get my head together and recover. When all that happens, I'm hoping that my writer's cramp disappears and that I'll find some interesting and pithy way of sharing some of what I've been thinking about over the past month. Until then, I'm experimenting with a new way of cooking pasta sauce that demands my attention and an early bed time that is looming.

Best wishes to everyone for a healthy, happy, and exceptionally snowy 2012.

Making Snow

2011-12-01T06:19:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-24T22:04:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-13T15:43:00.008-05:00

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

2011-10-18T13:12:00.001-05:00

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!

2011-10-03T17:42:00.003-05:00

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

2011-09-19T04:29:00.001-05:00

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

2011-09-01T17:14:00.004-05:00

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

2011-08-16T03:41:00.001-05:00

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

2011-07-28T19:15:00.002-05:00

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

2011-07-03T20:23:00.002-05:00

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

2011-06-21T20:55:00.000-05:00

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

2011-06-16T20:08:00.003-05:00

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

2011-06-09T20:04:00.001-05:00

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

2011-06-07T17:44:00.001-05:00

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

2011-05-15T14:25:00.003-05:00

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

2011-05-06T13:28:00.001-05:00

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

2011-04-23T16:06:00.001-05:00

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

2011-04-15T08:48:00.000-05:00

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

2011-03-30T16:55:00.001-05:00

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

2011-03-01T00:19:00.002-05:00

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.

Paradise

2011-02-25T23:00:00.001-05:00

The "backside" of the mountain here in Crested Butte is called the Paradise Bowl. The name "Paradise" belies a confidence, even an arrogance about the place despite there being quite a number of other, proper bowls which are further afield than Paradise and which have more demanding terrain. The fact is, however, that when conditions are just so and the snow falls deep and impossibly light, this very uncrowded place really reaches into that realm of otherworldly fantastic. Paradise. Today was such a day. It snowed all last night and all day today, and it's still dumping snow on us now. Tomorrow, the skiing likely will be even better, which frankly is hard to imagine. Paradise it is for these few days, and in our collective memory it always will be.

Taking the Show on the Road

2011-02-23T20:30:00.001-05:00

It's currently Presidents Week, typically the busiest week of the season for the snow sports business. Most schools in the nation are on holiday for the week celebrating the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and a lot of people take that time to ski and ride with their families. Okemo is a busy place under normal circumstances and during Presidents Week it can be a bit nutty. Those of us who work there gear up for this week as though it were the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Olympics, and the World Cup all rolled into one. It may be nuts, but when we are prepared for it, we do our jobs well and our guests are in a great state of mind, it's a whole lot of fun.

Okemo and Vermont generally have had some very difficult weather conditions to contend with this week, so it's definitely been a test of everyone's mettle. Thankfully, our snowmaking and grooming continue to amaze everyone, guests and staff alike, and the resort has fared pretty well considering. At least that's what people have been telling me. I'm not there.

I'm in Colorado, working for a spell at Okemo's "little sister" resort, Crested Butte. Together with a couple of colleagues, I'm working with some guests that I normally ski with this week at Okemo. It was time for an adventure, and we're very glad to have had the opportunity to provide one for them here in the Rockies.

Crested Butte is quite a different place from Okemo in many, many ways. The mountain is big, steep, snowy, far from any metropolitan area, a true destination resort, and definitely culturally a part of the American West. But one thing has become crystal clear: after several years of ownership by the family that also owns Okemo and operates Sunapee, the guest service here has taken on a remarkably familiar tone and a thoroughness that we refer to as "the Okemo Difference". Our resorts do not hire guest service consultants, we do not subscribe to some pre-engineered method of training our people, we do not hard-sell our guests, we do not have a script that we follow, and we do not have a scientific prescription. What we do have is an ability to create an environment where guests and staff alike enjoy being in our resorts, where we genuinely are happy to share our places with those that travel to experience them, and where we are comfortable enough in our roles and our places that we can greet people and take care of them with informality, sincerity and attention to detail. It helps that we hire carefully and staff our resorts with some wonderful, hard-working and dedicated folks, and that's certainly been our impression here at Crested Butte.

It's wonderful to experience these similarities while on the road. Given my role here, I really am an "internal guest", as the expression goes. Everyone here on the 'normal' staff at Crested Butte has gone out of their way to make my colleagues and me feel at home and welcome. It's awesome to see and experience this consistency of tone from one place to another, and it certainly is making our stay here, and our guests experience here, a great one. It helps that we've had lots of fresh, dry, powder snow followed by deep, blue, cloudless skies and that the terrain here is absolutely fantastic. I'll be here for another week, and I intend to savor every last bit of it before heading back to the familiar confines in Vermont. It's just great to take our show on the road and see that it really is the best in the business.

Soul Survival

2011-02-09T17:45:00.005-05:00

Every so often, skiers, ski writers and all manner of self-appointed nay-sayers complain about the loss of the soul of skiing. Here at Okemo they point to the snowmaking, the groomed trails, the slopeside condos, the wide runs and the many amenities as somehow an indication that skiing as a sport has lost its way. Obviously, they're wrong. We see a million examples every day that skiing's soul is alive and well. Particularly perturbed by this phenomenon last year, I wrote a piece for this blog about it called, aptly enough, "Shouting at the Wind". (http://russendlesswinter.blogspot.com/2010/02/shouting-at-wind.html). More importantly and on a positive note, in today's New York Times sports section, there is an article about my favorite little slice of skiing's soul alive and in action.

My hometown in the very Northwestern corner of Connecticut is the tiny village of Salisbury, and it hosts the Eastern Ski Jumping Championships every year. Salisbury has hosted ski jumps since the 1930's, and the organization that runs the jumps (the Salisbury Winter Sports Association, "SWASA") also organizes a number of other great activities for the local folk. It's as grass roots and as unpretentious a group as you'll find in any sport, and it's pure distilled skiing soul. This year, after a remarkable fundraising effort to rebuild and modernize the Salisbury Ski Jumps at Satre Hill that had the support of the entire community, Salisbury is hosting the 2011 Ski Jumping and Nordic Combined Junior Olympics. It a tremendous complement for the dedicated volunteers at SWASA, a wonderful addition to the annual Jump Fest festivities, and it'll rekindle faith in the soul of skiing for even the most grizzled winter sports misanthropes.

It's an easy prescription: go to Salisbury, Connecticut for the weekend of February 11-13th; enjoy time outside in a convivial atmosphere watching elite athletes compete in an environment free of crass commercialism; warm yourself near the fire with a glass of something at one of the local inns or restaurants; attend the Snow Ball and let your hair down a bit; and the result will be joy, optimism, ruddy cheeks, and the satisfaction of time well spent in the company of good people. Isn't that the point?!

The New York Times article about the Salisbury ski jumps can be found here –
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/sports/skiing/09skijump.html?src=me&ref=sports

The SWASA website is the go-to source for information about the 2011 JO's, the rebuilding of the Satre Hill jumps, and ski jumping generally -http://www.jumpfest.org/

All Work and No Play

2011-02-02T21:42:00.002-05:00

Today, February 2nd, was a powder day. Plain and simple. A sick, rad, sweet, rippin', epic, choking on it, take a sick day, play hooky, grin until your face hurts kind of powder day. Thankfully, just in case we didn't make the most of it because we were working too hard in the Okemo Ski + Ride School (note the radio harness on my chest in the photo), it's still snowing as I write and we'll have another powder day tomorrow. I try to stay away from shameless self-promotion here on my blog and to focus instead on interesting thoughts and experiences relating to my life and work in skiing. But, there are times in my life and work when the skiing and riding is so great that it reaches metaphysical status and we just need to rip some turns in the pow. And then we gloat by sharing photographic evidence.

Thanks go to my friend and colleague Chris Saylor for taking the time to take some photos. Believe me, when the skiing is this good, stopping to take photos is a big sacrifice!

Your faithful blogger inspecting the product on Ledges at Okemo.

A Teacher’s Pantry

2011-01-31T21:24:00.008-05:00

I love to cook. I'm more of an enthusiastic cook than a good one, but I do love it. Ok, truth be told, I do really enjoy cooking but what I love to do is eat! Come to think of it, I'm pretty hungry right now. Hmm. Oh, sorry, I digress. I do have something to say about cooking and ski teaching here, so bear with me.

A good friend of mine who is a ski instructor here at Okemo is also a very gifted chef. He and his wife run a restaurant not far from Ludlow, Vermont that is an oasis of great food in an area that isn't exactly known for being the center of alpine gastronomy. Every Wednesday, my friends close their restaurant and hold cooking classes in its kitchen. The mis en place is moved out of the way, eight or so stools are set up on one side of the large prep area, and place settings and cutting boards are set in front of each place. After telling me last week how excited he was for Bistro Night and that there was still a seat available, I took up my friend's invitation and attended for the first time.

Before the cooking began, my friend passed to each of the guests a handout. On its pages were lists of ingredients for each dish to be prepared and one long list of items everyone should have in their pantry if they intend to prepare restaurant quality meals. The guests, myself included, all perused the pages and were surprised to find no instructions for the dishes, no recipes per se. Rather, the document contained only ingredients listed with approximate measurements and the pantry list. To the disappointment of a couple of the guests, the chef explained that he didn't like to follow recipes to the letter and that if we wanted to be able to prepare great meals, truly gourmet meals, we'd have to free ourselves from slavish recipe following as well. With the right ingredients found in a well-stocked pantry, an understanding of how each affected the 'flavor profile' of a dish, and some knowledge of how each is best cooked, great dishes are crafted with a little trial and error, constantly testing and modifying, and sometimes simply making it up as you go. My friend took great pains to tell us that cooking is not science and that if he had wanted to prepare dishes scientifically, he'd have been a baker.

It was a pleasure to watch him work. The chef walked us through the creation of some traditional bistro dishes and some less traditional ones, explaining as he went, providing some helpful tips about the cooking process, the ingredients he likes to use, and other details. All the while he tasted, adjusted, seasoned, told stories, fed us a little at a time to keep us from getting hungry or impatient, and in the end convinced us that great food is achievable by ordinary chefs. It dawned on me, in my duck breast and onion soup induced reverie, that what we were experiencing had all the same ingredients of a great ski lesson. Seriously.

The day that followed the bistro cooking class, after awakening to find that I was still in Vermont and not in the Haute Savoie, I conducted some training clinics for children's instructors at Stratton, something I do from time to time. The clinics were intended to help these mostly young instructors become better at creating activities in their lessons that would be technically valid, that would help develop the skiing skills of the children in their lessons, and that would be fun and engaging (that fun thing is pretty big). The title I created for the clinic was "Skills Focused Kids Activities". Informally, some people refer to these sorts of clinics as "bag of tricks" training. I really dislike the idea of "bag of tricks", and much prefer my own subtitle for this clinic. I refer to this clinic informally as "how to make stuff up", only I don't always use the word "stuff".

My point here is simple, if not verbose. In many ways, becoming a gifted children's instructor is far more difficult, far more nuanced, and requires far more attention than becoming a good adult instructor. With kids one has to understand the movements of skiing and be able to explain them in laymen's terms, one has to be able to identify and focus on one aspect of skiing in particular that will assist all of the students in a group. One must keep the class moving, keep it interesting, engaging, and fun. Yes, all this is true of adult lessons as well, but in the case of kids, instructors have to do all of this in a language and with an energy appropriate for their charges. It's a lot of work and it's a challenge, but it's a ton of fun.

So, like the class in my friend's kitchen, having a properly stocked pantry with fresh ingredients and a few interesting tricks up one's sleeve (Yuzu juice? Really?) is the start of a great lesson, but it's only the start. The process of creating a ski or snowboard lesson is far more craft than science, and the instructor's interaction with the students and awareness of their needs, their feelings, their movements, and their comprehension is the most important guide to how to put the final dish together.

For dessert, we're all going to learn how to ski in deep powder. It'll be the icing on the cake.

My friends John and Leslie own and operate Leslie's Tavern in Rockingham, Vermont. Their website is http://www.lesliestavern.com/, and information about their cooking classes, retail shop and other tidbits is available there. John cooks and Leslie bakes and runs the front of the house. If you go, make sure you arrive hungry.

Kids Rule!

2011-01-13T20:32:00.042-05:00

One of the things I enjoy most about working for the Okemo Ski + Ride School is that we do not have separate children's and adult's instructors. We do have instructors who work specifically in our 4-7 year-old program, a necessity given the nature of that program, but those instructors also are expected to be able to teach all ages and to assist with older kids and adults as needed. What this means is that at Okemo there are no instructors who do not teach children.

This idea may seem ridiculously simple, but it is a rarity in the snowsports business. In many schools, teaching kids is still considered a lesser assignment - instructors are "sent down" to teach kids. Here at Okemo, we recognize that kids rule! Undergrads, retirees, lawyers, bankers, doctors, teachers, law enforcement officers, engineers, and full-time ski and snowboard pros all teach kids and adults. The resulting staff is one that is exceptionally at ease goofing around while teaching in a technically valid way. This really means that we are all outside playing with children and adults, playing hard, and loving it. It's an incredible source of joy, for us, for the kids and the adults we teach, and for the rest of their families. It makes for an incredibly rich work environment.

We're also an incredibly busy school, meaning that all of us spend lots of time with a great many kids, and a great variety of them. I'd stop short of saying that our guests look like a model United Nations in terms of diversity, unfortunately, but they do represent a wide array of families and, well, people. Though I am not a parent and certainly am no expert on parenting, it does provide me with terrific insight into the differences from child to child, and family to family. Some children are comfortable looking a strange adult (read: me) in the eye and having a conversation. Some children are shy at first but are still able to share in the fun and the learning in a meaningful way. Some kids are articulate, observant, analytical, curious, and intelligent. And some kids are genuinely funny, very funny. Messy and fastidious, focused and scatter-brained, distracted and aware, goofy and nervous; kids are just like adults, only far cooler and with far less baggage.

There certainly are occasions when we meet children that are difficult to handle or even unkind. Our reaction is almost universally one of trying harder to reach through to them, viewing it as a challenge and not an inconvenience. As instructors, we're by nature a hopeful bunch and we operate on the premise that with just the right tone, just the right set of experiences, and the right guidance from the world around them, those kids will grow into good people too.

And then there are the shining moments. Every so often, frequently when we need it most, we spend our time with kids who are such great people, such a joy, that they give us hope. Literally. With all that is wrong in the world and all of the difficulties of everyday life, spending the day skiing or riding with great kids really can help us feel better and more secure about the future of our world. It's wonderful, and those kids – and the families that nurture them – are a blessing for all of us in the truest sense. They rekindle our enthusiasm, remind us to not take ourselves too seriously, show us how cool the simplest things are and that we shouldn't take anything for granted. They make it easy for us to face challenges and to shrug off discomfort, difficulty, and disappointment. Oddly, aren't these the lessons we aspire to teach the children in our lives?

This weekend is a holiday weekend here in the USA, with all schools nationwide closed on Monday to celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Families will come here in droves for a little quality outdoor time and lessons will play an important role for many of them, adults and kids alike. I'm lucky to know the children I'll be skiing with already, and I care about them and their family a great deal. If you knew these kids and so many others with whom I am fortunate to spend my time skiing, you'd find hope for the future too.

The photo is of Uncle Russ and my peeps. Nothing comes between us and our ice cream!

New Day, New Year

2010-12-31T22:53:00.000-05:00

In the thick of a very busy holiday season here at Okemo Mountain Resort in Vermont, I was treated to an exceptional sunrise this morning on my way to work. Luckily enough, I had my camera with me and was able to capture the image of the sun working its way through the cloud cover of the Connecticut River Valley. This stretch of time has been particularly busy for me and for Okemo, busy in a good way but in a way that does require a lot of energy. So, as has been the case for many years now, I'll be heading off to bed early instead of participating in more conventional New Years Eve festivities. A good dinner with friends and a good night's sleep is all I need, and I'll awake in 2011 looking forward to all that the new year has to offer.

Best wishes to all of my friends, family, colleagues, and guests for a healthy and happy 2011. May your year be filled with powder dreams realized and plenty of time spent playing outdoors in the mountains.

What’s a Cubit?

2010-12-13T18:11:00.004-05:00

Let me be unambiguous: conditions at Okemo continue to be quite good, but the weather has been absolutely awful for the last two days. After a great several days of cold weather perfect for making outstanding quality snow last week, we've watched as much of our operations' team hard work has washed down our mountain and out into Vermont's rivers in a torrent. There were white caps in the Black River today, for crying out loud. Thankfully, Old Man Winter returned from his trip to Minneapolis this afternoon, bringing with him some natural snow and more cold weather.

Skiing in the rain is one of the hazards of being an instructor for a living. When even the most die-hard devotees take one look outside and opt instead for playing Parcheesi by the roaring fire, we're out there making it happen for whoever was so unaware of the forecast or who was so unfamiliar with skiing generally that they elect to take lessons in a downpour. The burden falls on the instructors to remain upbeat, to stay focused on the bright side, or simply to fake enthusiasm for the benefit of the guests while dreaming of a dry change of clothes. The truth is that once we're out in it, the snow can be a lot of fun when it's raining so while we may be reluctant to get out there, we enjoy it in the end. It's much like swimming in a cold murky lake – dip a toe in the water, hesitate, count to three five or six times before jumping in, and you later realize that it was far better than you imagined.

Having said all of this, when it rains like it has in the past 48 hours, I always am reminded of Bill Cosby's classic monologue about Noah and the ark. As a kid, my whole family would sit around and listen to the LP recording of it and never tired of asking in a booming, holier-than-thou voice "Noah, how long can you tread water?" Here's a link to a youtube recording of the whole thing. I'm not sure if it's a legal recording or not, I'm not sure who took the time to upload it, and it's just audio and no video, but it's worth a listen. It reminds me how amazingly funny Cosby was and still is, and it always makes me laugh on a rainy day like this one. Enjoy.

Flipping the Switch

2010-11-27T15:47:00.003-05:00

It's winter, as of this week and just in the nick of time. Our traditional pre-Thanksgiving opening here at Okemo on the third weekend of November was delayed this year due to what we still call "unseasonably warm" weather. At some point, I suppose, we'll have to relent and declare this the normal state of affairs in the 21st century climate of New England. In any event, two weeks ago I road biked comfortably in shorts and a short sleeve jersey, and last weekend we had our annual 'train-the-trainers' meeting for the Okemo Ski + Ride School indoors because of the lack of snow. The resort opened this past Tuesday with one trail and 'sporting' conditions, but cold temperatures hit hard and our snowmaking team has been working around the clock. This weekend many families have descended upon Okemo to ski and ride off their Thanksgiving feasts on several trails. All were rewarded with what was originally supposed to be a squall that stuck around all afternoon and has been dropping snow on us in some real quantity. It's as though when we turned on the compressors to get ready for snowmaking last weekend, we flipped the switch and turned on winter itself. Add to that the number of people bringing life and energy to our base lodge and the shops in town, and it really does feel like the season has started. We anticipate adding more terrain daily to our trail count and settling in for the long haul of a great season, and everyone, myself included, is excited for the winter to be under way. Finally.

Not-So-New School

2010-11-20T21:46:00.006-05:00

New school, old school, blue school, red school;
Telemark, alpine, snowboard, bar stool.

I do realize that 'bar stool' makes no sense here. I may not be much of a poet, but I've been frustrated lately and 'bar stool' is the best I can do. At least it rhymes with 'school'. In any event, at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, what's frustrating me is the near-sighted sense of history among young skiers.

There can be no doubt that Shane McConkey was an inspiring athlete who pushed the boundaries of our sport and that his death was a terrible loss. He did not, however, start a revolution. Perhaps it's a matter of pre-digital age exploits not finding as much of an audience with young people, making it difficult for them to have a broader perspective. It may bring grins to my friends' faces when I pull out VHS copies of Greg Stump movies, but when young folks at Treble Cone who aspire to fame and fortune in big mountain skiing tell me that they've never heard of Scott Schmidt, it makes my skin crawl. He was in Powder Magazine center folds, for crying out loud! Last winter, one of our young American instructors at Okemo who has been a life-long skier admitted to having never heard of Bill Johnson or (deep breath here) Franz Klammer! That one nearly gave me a heart attack with visions of being greeted by Sondre Norheim at the pearly gates. Wow, pass me the schnapps, some aquavit, slivovitz, or zirbengeist; pass me something!

At the end of the day, I take solace in the simple fact that most of us are still out there skiing for the same reason people have for generations - in the half-pipe, the woods, the race course, the park, the groomers, the bunny hill, and in the backcountry. Even at its most utilitarian, skiing always has brought joy and inspired passion in people. Simple folk, new school pioneers, downhill legends, and numerous other people far more accomplished, far more articulate, and far more influential in the world than I am all have written passionately about skiing for centuries. My favorite among these forefathers is Fridtjof Nansen.

Nansen was a scholar, athlete, explorer, writer, diplomat, humanitarian, one of the fathers of modern Norway, a Nobel Laureate, and in his spare time he was the first man to cross Greenland. Skiers are most familiar with his line that "It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport." His seminal book First Crossing of Greenland (Pá Ski over Grønland), recounting Nansen's 1888 crossing of Greenland, is an absolute classic. This treasure trove of skiing wisdom resonates even now, and Nansen's words help to inspire me as I await the start of another season:

Of all the sports of Norway, 'skilobning' is the most national and characteristic, and I cannot think that I go too far when I claim for it, as practised in our country, a position in the very first rank of the sports of the world. I know no form of sport which so evenly develops the muscles, which renders the body so strong and elastic, which teaches so well the qualities of dexterity and resource, which in an equal degree calls for decision and resolution, and which gives the same vigour and exhilaration to mind and body alike. Where can one find a healthier and purer delight than when on a brilliant winter day one binds one's 'ski' to one's feet and takes one's way out into the forest? Can there be anything more beautiful than the northern winter landscape, when the snow lies foot-deep, spread as a soft white mantle over field and wood and hill? Where will one find more freedom and excitement than when one glides swiftly down the hillside through the trees, one's cheek brushed by the sharp cold air and frosted pine branches, and one's eye, brain, and muscles alert and prepared to meet every unknown obstacle and danger which the next instant may throw in one's path? Civilisation is, as it were, washed clean from the mind and left far behind with the city atmosphere and city life; one's whole being is, so to say, wrapped in one's 'ski' and the surrounding nature. There is something in the whole which develops soul and not body alone. Nansen, Fridtjof, First Crossing of Greenland (Pá Ski over Grønland), 1890.

Sounds perfect. I can't wait.

Daydreaming

2010-11-08T17:42:00.001-05:00

I'm in Vermont, but at times my mind and my heart are far away from here – far in a geographical sense, far in a visceral sense, and far in terms of time. In shoulder season, sandwiched between my Southern Hemisphere winters in Wanaka, New Zealand and my Northern Hemisphere winters in Vermont, I do manage to keep reasonably busy. I have plenty of work to do to get ready for the upcoming season at Okemo, plenty of people to catch up with after several months overseas, and generally enough to occupy my time. Still, there are moments, whole days sometimes, when I'm not exactly present. When the weather comes in – as it has a great deal this fall – and I stay indoors to exercise instead of outdoors where I prefer, I drift to those faraway places and times, places real and imaginary, where my ski dreams have been or will be fulfilled. Yes, there are moments when those dreams may shift to a tropical beach with warm iridescent blue waters, but it's the skiing in my dreams that really transports me.

I've been very fortunate in my adult life to have spent time skiing in some extraordinary places in some truly astonishingly dry, incredibly deep powder snow. I remember those days and the people I shared them with in exceptional detail. Zermatt with Matt and Jason, many Vail days with a big posse, Taos with Steve, Utah solo, the Cariboos with Peter, White Face with the team, a couple of otherworldly days with Terry at Mad River, and one particular day at Treble Cone with Tyler that included a run in the Motatapu Chutes with Tim that was absolutely ridiculous. There are more, many more memories, and many more yet to come.

Today has been a dark, windy, classic Vermont November day complete with temperatures hovering around the freezing mark, snow at higher elevations and rain in town. I've been far less productive than I'd like in the sense of ticking things off my to-do list. But, in terms of dreaming deep powder dreams and contemplating the universe of snowy possibilities, I've accomplished a great deal from my seat on the couch. Thankfully, when I fall into this far-away powder daze, I now have youtube to feed the monster. If you're feeling a bit down, a bit like the concrete jungle, the Eastern dank, or the treadmill of life is getting to you, give yourself a moment and consider what's out there yet to experience through your skis or boards and the people who share your passion for them. Then, watch this video from Team Thirteen called "Deep Powder Skiing at Bridger Bowl: Part 1". It's been around a while, it may actually make you cry, and it definitely renders me less present than I felt before watching it; but, I do hope you'll agree that it's worth it.

We have just a couple of weeks to go before the ski season begins and I hope that we'll be reminded that real life can at times really come close to our dreams, especially the powdery ones.

Man in the State of Nature

2010-10-23T15:44:00.002-05:00

Deep in the recesses of my mind, buried somewhere in between college memories of fraternity basements, cocktail parties, far away ski races, and introductory lectures on Buddhism, lies some rudimentary understanding of the competing theories of man in the state of nature. The great philosophers of the Enlightenment, Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, even Machiavelli and Calhoun, all began with some premise of what mankind's natural social state would be if left undisturbed. (Undisturbed by what, I do not know. Aliens maybe? That information is lost in my brain somewhere in the shadows cast by too many macroeconomics lectures.). In general, the question the Enlightenment thinkers sought to answer is whether man is by nature a rugged individualist, hunting and gathering for his own welfare and that of his offspring; a hierarchical social being, falling into a rigid structure of division of labor; or a truly social being, doing work for the benefit of all members of an interdependent community. Bear with me here, believe it or not I do have a point to make about the ski business.

The ski business is at its core a people business. Parking attendants, equipment rental staff, ticket sellers and checkers, lifties, baristas, patrollers, everyone contributes to the nature and quality of each guest's experience by the way in which we behave and present ourselves, the way in which we interact with each guest. At Treble Cone, each and every season pass holder, every local, and all of the staff have intense feelings of loyalty and even ownership of the place. At TC we approach guest service with the mindset of being stewards of the mountain itself, with the obligation to care for it, to welcome others, and to share it with them as though it is our own. At Okemo, the nature of the feelings underlying our guest service may differ slightly but the central importance and emphasis on guest service, and the energy and enthusiasm we put into it, is the best in the business. If welcoming Treble Cone devotees is like throwing an open-fire lamb roast in a remote spot open to Zealots only, Okemo is more akin to welcoming good folks and their families to our nice neighborhood for a home-style BBQ. In each case, the end result is the same. In each place, it's about group effort, group commitment, and collective experience. Good service from all corners of a resort provided to guests of every sort is what makes the experience of skiing and riding at the two resorts where I work so valued by our guests, and it is what distinguishes both places from our competition. Yes, the terrain at TC is incomparable. Yes, the grooming, snowmaking and lift systems at Okemo are the best in the business. Yes, those elements are what may bring first-time guests our way. But it's the experiences our guests have while there that really differentiates us in both cases, our service makes them feel differently about their time with us than they would elsewhere. It's as though the resorts articulate their concept of man in the state of nature (how people behave, what they want / need, how they experience their environment) and establishes its ethos of guest service accordingly, making sure the entire staff drinks the Kool-Aid, so to speak.

Management consulting-type platitudes and far-fetched academic analogies aside, developing and maintaining a consistent ethos of service is the essential ingredient of having any successful guest-centered approach to a business. It also makes for a very intense social environment for those of us working in it (that's social as in interactive, not social as in a non-stop Happy Hour). Ski and snowboard instructors, as an aside, have a role unique in that our time with each guest tends to be far longer, far more personal and detailed, and far more interactive with each guest we encounter. An instructor's business is not merely about guest service, it's about guest relationships – our relationships with our guests, with their families, with their love of skiing and riding, and with their enjoyment of being active outdoors in the mountains. It's great but it is very, very intense. Thankfully, now that my Southern Winter season is over and I have a little over a month before the next season begins, I get a good, long break in the action.

If, as in the case of most social theories that generalize human behavior, the reality of man's natural social state is a hybrid of those Enlightenment theories, in this shoulder season I definitely move from being in a state focused on other people to one that clearly is more focused on my needs. It's about me for a change. Actually, it's more about those people for whom I care a great deal in ways beyond mere enjoyment, conscientious teaching and a professional sense of responsibility. Do not misunderstand me: I greatly enjoy working in a guest service business; I derive enormous satisfaction from getting to know my students and other guests and from working to enhance their experience, forging relationships unlike anything else in the resort business. It's just that it's really nice to turn the switch off, to interact with people (or not) on a purely personal level. Novel enough, I even get to be the recipient of guest service from time to time. I eat, sleep, bike, socialize, collect my thoughts, heal my body, rest my mind and remember why I'm here in the first place.

Long before Okemo's November opening, I'll have had enough 'me time' and I'll be ready again to find the joys of working so hard for everyone else's ski experiences. My down-time, my shifting to ruggedly individual hunter gatherer / cyclist / sloth for a while will, I hope, better enable me to devote myself fully to the rest of society when it appears in Ludlow, Vermont en masse for the holiday season. Besides, six weeks without skiing is enough. Bring on the next season!

The Passion Litmus Test

2010-10-17T22:58:00.001-05:00

Devoted skiers and riders will make turns on anything resembling snow if need be, and the 2010 season in Wanaka proved it. A remarkable amount of snow fell on the peaks surrounding town before the local resorts opened for the season. Then nothing. For over a month. A long, dry month. Devotees made turns on some terrain in July that could charitably have been described as "sketchy". Early August brought some respite, but a constant freeze and thaw cycle made off-piste terrain a bit like the surface of the moon at times, and the cover on all of our terrain barely serviceable at others. Conditions presented real technical challenges to even the best of us, and they required what I'd describe as a particularly sporting mindset to make the most of a tough situation and enjoy it. In reality, the 2010 season was a test, a litmus test, lying in wait for all of us in order to measure just how much we love it. In the middle of September, the test commenced in earnest.

For those who were there and need a reminder and for those of you who missed it, several large storms battered the Southern Alps in rapid succession for more than two weeks in the middle of September. For the first week of the cycle, my home field Treble Cone received snow on all but a couple of days, with only rare breaks of sunshine and decent visibility. The total snow accumulation will be disputed and exaggerated for many years to come, but suffice it to say that we were positively transported, receiving more snow in that period than in the entire rest of the season combined. Snow fell straight down in buckets, dropping in large, dry flakes from the top to the bottom of our mountain in a way we're more accustomed to seeing in Utah, Alberta or Hokkaido.

One preliminary question gnawed at all of us working at Treble Cone: Where were all the people? At times, our mountain seemed like one giant secret stash, with the few lucky souls who came to ski and ride with us unwilling to spread the news, determined to keep the remarkable conditions to themselves. The real, deeper question, and the essential component of our litmus test was this: Who among us, despite the late date, despite the malaise of a sub-par season, and despite our readiness for warmer weather and a change of activity, could muster the enthusiasm appropriate for a once-in-a-decade storm cycle that blessed us with snow that was as consistently as dry, light and deep as we may ever see at Treble Cone? Had our passion been so strained, our energy so sapped by the 2010 season that we wouldn't be able to giggle, hoop and holler, show off our orthodonture, and exhaust our bodies while refueling our spirits in the way only great powder days can? Did we have enough enthusiasm left to percolate through the malaise and burst through the surface, showing in our faces and our spirits?

For those of us who work in our ski boots full-time, there are good days and bad. On the bad days, we set courses, pull sleds, fix lifts, groom trails, make snow, and ski in slow wedge turns in the pouring rain on ice, in slush, and on thin cover. On the good days, we'll make fresh tracks to ensure guest safety, free ski with hard charging athletes, and help people realize their powder dreams with better skiing. And then there are the great days, the memorable days, the days that feed our souls and renew our spirits. On those days, there is a little bit of work, there are a few people around, and there is more than enough deep, fresh snow for all of us. Those days rekindle our love of the sport all over again as we ski for ourselves and for the pure joy of it. At the end of the long 2010 season at Treble Cone, we were rewarded with several great days, epic days. Those of us still around to enjoy them, those of us who still were able to draw on a reserve of enthusiasm, passion and energy for our sport were blessed with memories that will stay with us for years to come. We passed the test, and the next time we're out all day in the rain, in the cold, and in the wind, we'll stay warmer and drier having done so. And we may even smile remembering how great it was as we look off to the horizon in anticipation.

In the Bag

2010-10-11T19:16:00.020-05:00

Sunset over Fox Glacier township

There It Goes. Another winter is in the bag. Done. Gone. Finito. Caput. Treble Cone closed for the season on October 3^rd after a flurry of a finish. My tenure there has not been that long, but I can only assume that this September was one of the best ever on record. It was awesome on any scale, with a stretch of two weeks of constant snowstorms where the powder was shockingly good. And then sun came out for a few days, and then it ended.

On Monday the 4^th of October, I played my annual, ritual round of golf with my good friend and kids program counterpart Nick. We had a perfect day for it – sunshine, warm but not hot, light breeze – and we managed to not discuss work or even skiing for the whole round (remarkable considering that we're both ski instructors). It was the perfect way to close things. And then I went to the beach, sort of.

Following closing day at Treble Cone and the aforementioned golfing ritual, I heeded the advice of Horace Greeley and headed west. Haast Beach, which sits on the rugged West Coast facing the Tasman Sea, is a beautiful three hour drive from Wanaka. Once near the headwaters of Lake Wanaka in Makarora, the ecology changes quickly and dramatically. While in and around the town of Wanaka, including where Treble Cone is located, the khaki-colored tussock dominates the hillsides and the tree line is very close to the lake level, by the time one arrives at Makarora everything has started to turn green. Travel up over the Haast Pass on the way to the coast, and the green becomes iridescent in spring, with water flowing everywhere and native trees working their way up the slopes of the mountains still clinging to their snowy caps. It's stunning.

After Haast, I turned north towards Fox Glacier, home of one of very few glaciers in the world that is actually still growing. My point is not to regale with stories of what I've been up to, but to convey the sense of release we all have after a long season finishes. It's a wonderful thing to be able to simply pack up a car, head in a general direction, and find and learn things about a new and different countryside with the time to appreciate it.

For now, I'm in "shoulder season", a brief respite from my Endless Winter. My next ski season is just over a month away at home in Vermont, and I'll be ready. Until then, it's all about flip flops for me.

The Fox Glacier

Haast River near Pleasant Flats

View of Mount Tasman (left) and Mount Cook over Lake Matheson

Gillespie Beach, where the Fox River enters the Tasman Sea

The Ongoing Storm

2010-09-23T23:23:00.001-05:00

More than a week. With nine days to go in the 2010 season at Treble Cone, a season which has not exactly been a blockbuster for snow, we're in the middle of a storm cycle that has been ongoing for more than a week. It's essentially been snowing every other day for nine days, the temperatures have remained good and cold so that the snow has been very dry and very powdery, and it has gotten deep, very deep. The Saddle Basin remains closed due to avalanche danger and high winds, but with only a few die-hards still charging hard on our expert terrain, there are still plenty of fresh tracks for everyone. We're pinching ourselves down here, and the storm isn't over yet. I had hoped to post some better 'glory in the deep pow' photos, but my priority has been squarely placed on getting in my own turns and not stopping to take snaps. I have some thoughts to share once the storm clears, the season ends, and the sun comes out, but until then these photos that I took last Monday will have to suffice. In the meantime, as my friend Michelle said on Treble Cone's snow report this week, it's time to exercise the powder clause in your contracts. Get a good night's sleep, get to the hill early and make a meal of it. The skiing and riding at TC remains outstanding by anyone's measure and there's precious little time to waste.

Post Script: Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On

2010-09-08T17:14:00.002-05:00

Strong aftershocks from last week's major earthquake in Canterbury continue to shake the people in Christchurch - shaking them physically and psychologically, rattling everyone's state of mind. It is literally unsettling for them and for all of the people here in Wanaka with friends and family there (Christchurch is a six hour drive from here). New Zealand is a small community so the well-worn concept of six degrees of separation is more like three here, and the situation in Christchurch has affected everyone in this country.

In yet another, slightly more entertaining occurrence, Treble Cone's neighbor resort Cardrona remains closed, as it has for a few days. It's not due to high winds or avalanche danger, rather it is due to their septic system. I wish I were joking here. I'm unsure of the details, but basically until Cardrona is able to fix their septic, none of the water is drinkable, they can't cook or clean anything and, when they do fix it, they'll have to completely sanitize the whole place. While TC is a vastly larger resort in terms of acreage, Cardrona serves a much larger crowd than we do, employing a much larger staff to do so. Cardrona is also a much easier mountain to ski and ride, so the many Cardrona guests arriving at Treble Cone over the last few days has been of a different nature than our usual - many more lower intermediate and beginning skiers and riders have been taking lessons, many more people are consulting our trail maps, and many more people are finding out just how crowded and impersonal their normal snow sports haunt can be (relative to ours, of course).

All kidding aside, having such a major part of the industry unable to conduct business with a month yet to go in the season is not good for any of us. Several days of exceptionally good business at this late time of the season may be great for Treble Cone - great for the bottom line and a great opportunity to show how good we can be to a whole wider range of people - but I truthfully wouldn't wish this kind of problem on anyone. So, I do hope that Cardies is able to clean up their act, literally and figuratively.

The photo is of the Treble Cone summit slopes as the overnight cloud-cover passed through mid- morning today.

Natural Forces

2010-09-05T03:59:00.002-05:00

One of the fundamental truths people find while living and working in big mountains is that we are not in charge. However you might characterize or contemplate those forces in the universe greater than mankind, the fact that we are not in charge is a welcome and humbling reminder for each of us. The last few days here on the South Island have brought this idea into the rarified light of day.

As has been widely reported in the international press over the last few days, an earthquake struck the South Island in the early hours of Saturday morning. Registering at 7.4 on the Richter Scale, it struck in the countryside just west of Christchurch, the largest city here. Damage was substantial but, thankfully, none were killed. Here in Wanaka, I was bounced up and down on my bed as though my neighbors put their mega-bass speakers right up against my wall. Seriously, I literally was bouncing on the bed.

The Saturday that followed the quake was among the best ski days of the season at Treble Cone. It was cloudless, the air remained cold and windless, and we'd had quite a bit of snow in the days before. Though we had prepared ourselves for an onslaught of people taking advantage of the perfect weather and awesome conditions, there was plenty of elbow room to enjoy our mountain. In one of the more delightful ironies of the season, I ripped around our legendary off-piste terrain leading a training clinic for our instructors on the (non-seismic) natural forces that affect us when we ski. I ended the day sitting outside on the porch of a pub in town with a cold beer, contemplating life while watching the sun set behind the mountains that surround Lake Wanaka. That was yesterday. Today the natural forces at work have been quite a bit different.

This morning, Sunday, when I awoke for work the wind was howling and the house was shaking from a massive storm. Treble Cone is essentially a well-appointed remote mountain outpost, so in strong winds our lifts often go on hold or simply shut for the day (See "Shutting it Down"). This morning, interestingly enough, our operations team couldn't even get to TC to assess the safety of operating the lifts. A huge rock slide at Glendhu Bay rendered the road impassable, so neither the staff nor our guests would have been able to even get to the bottom of our access road. The photos of the TC team standing around in the middle of the road ogling the VW-sized boulders are entertaining but for the fact that it meant we couldn't do our jobs. In retrospect, with the wind and rain that followed, there's a strong likelihood that the resort would have had to remain closed anyway. Regardless, the fact is that it was the landslide that caused us to pull the plug. We're way beyond merely using our awareness of natural forces to improve our understanding of ski technique here.

So, earthquakes, landslides, gales, rain, snow, and likely floods, throw in frogs, locusts, darkness, blood, slaying of the first born and it sounds like we are developing the plot for a biblical epic staring Charlton Heston. The problem is that it's the wrong time of year for recounting the plagues upon Egypt – that's the Jewish Passover holiday in the Northern Spring. At this time of year Judaism celebrates the anniversary of the creation of the world. Normally we don't really need literal reminders of the power behind creation or the fact that, in a sense, here in New Zealand the world is still being created, but we've just gotten a few of them. I just hope we can move along to some better spring weather and enjoy the last month of skiing without further scenes from the Five Books of Moses playing out in front of us. Wait a minute, is that a pillar of salt in front of me?

Anonymous Turns

2010-08-12T00:40:00.005-05:00

I ski a lot. In common parlance, "I make a lot of turns." I ski more than eight months of the year, virtually all of it on the clock, doing my job. I'm not complaining, mind you, but sometimes those of us who focus so much time and energy on other people's skiing or on the technical aspects of the sport need to recharge our love it. It becomes harder to see the forest for the trees and to appreciate why we're here if we don't remind ourselves. The best way to do this is by simply skiing for the heck of it, without a uniform or a name tag, for fun, for a little release, or for no reason at all other than because we can. It's a reminder just how great skiing can be.

Given the nature of my role at Treble Cone, it's very hard for me to escape for a 'free ski' at TC, to say nothing of skiing elsewhere. Treble Cone is an awesome place to spend my time – literally inspiring awe – but it is also where I work so it's hard for me to disappear for even a couple of runs. I am obviously confident in my skiing skills, but there also is significant pressure for me to perform at the highest level when anyone is watching, and at TC (whether real or imagined) someone is always watching. So, what's a ski pro to do? How can I find and isolate what brings me back to the hill every day? How can I find a moment of un-self-conscious joy, making turns in great snow? Two words: road trip.

I've just returned from Ohau, one of several smaller "ski fields" to the north of Wanaka about an hour-and-a-half away, sitting on the peaks above Lake Ohau. A good friend from home and I spent the night at the very cool Lake Ohau Lodge (see "Gemutlichkeit"), and skied yesterday in the most uncrowded place one can imagine, making fresh tracks in deep snow on every run despite it being several days since the prior storm. The terrain was steep and gnarly, the snow was dry, there was no pressure whatsoever, and my buddy and I were smiling like idiots all day because it was just that good. It was like a skiing transfusion, shaking out the cobwebs, leaving all the pollutants of work, stress, and life behind for a little while to share in the joys so unique to our sport. It's been a long time since I had a great road trip purely for the sake of a road trip, it was absolutely what I needed, and it more than served its purpose. The catch phrase at Ohau, found on innumerable bumper stickers here in New Zealand, is "Ohau I love to ski". How true it is, and thank you Ohau for the reminder.

Frozen Nomenclature

2010-08-04T18:37:00.003-05:00

It's a well-worn urban legend that Eskimos have a gazillion words for snow in their language. It is just urban legend. Firstly, 'Eskimo' is not actually an ethnic group or tribal nation. It is a vaguely pejorative term commonly used by Anglo-Europeans who lumped the many tribal and ethnic groups of the Arctic regions and northern reaches of North America into one group. Secondly, even when we refer to the indigenous peoples of the Arctic region using their proper names (Aleut, Inuit, Inupiat and Yupik, among others), their languages differ from place to place. The nature of the nomenclature for snow in Greenland, for example, differs widely from that in Alaska (they are several thousand miles apart, for crying out loud). So, the myth about terms for snow would be the equivalent of saying: "them there Euro-type folk have a zillion words for cheese", said with your best Texas drawl.

As with all subjects linguistic, things here in New Zealand are slightly different. In the case of snow vocabulary, it is not the typical Kiwi juxtaposition of vowels (the number 6 sounding quite a bit racier down here) but the paltry number of descriptive terms for snow that is entertaining. To be precise, Kiwis have exactly two words for snow: "snow" and "powder". I wish I were kidding. Snow that falls straight down in huge flakes, resting in ever-growing piles of light, dry, fantasy-like goodness in the sense of the legendary snows of Hokkaido where people clear their windshields in the morning easier than blowing out birthday candles is referred to, unsurprisingly, as "powder". The wettest, heaviest, most saturated, ski-pole-holes-that-turn-blue, gorilla snot thick, ACL destroying muck is also known as "powder". Everything in between also is called "powder".

Of interest also is that any day on which any person can ski and ride somewhere on Treble Cone in any snow which has fallen within the previous 48 hours is called a "powder day". This leads to my favorite one-liners about 'edge deep powder' and 'sidewall deep powder'. Again, please bear in mind that I'm not kidding. After our recent storm which was a mix of what elsewhere is called 'rain' and 'snow', local enthusiasts were lining up when the lifts opened in order to make fresh tracks in the 'powder'. It is true that at higher elevations and in the Saddle Basin, Treble Cone did get quite a bit of new snow. Calling it powder was a stretch. Nonetheless, our devoted guests were hooping and hollering all day about the freshies as though they were first off the tram at Snowbird, making turns in the best snow the Wasatch Range of Utah has to offer.

It's been a tough season so far in terms of snow cover here at Treble Cone. The mountain is holding up well considering, and there are another two storms in the forecast for the next several days, so we'll make out OK. There is enough snow in the Saddle Basin for all of us to continue enjoying our legendary terrain a great deal. Still, we're all anxious for a big dump, giving us some of those epic days that we all talk about years later. When conditions are OK at TC, I love to ski here. When conditions are epic at TC, it's one of those rare places to ski that eclipses even our imagination (like the day pictured above in 2008 – yours truly skiing in deep, dry, heavenly snow, pure joy). Until that happens this season (fingers crossed), we'll have to enjoy the "powder" as only the Kiwis mean it.

Shutting it Down

2010-07-31T04:42:00.002-05:00

At the moment, the stars are clearly visible in the sky overhead despite an evening of on-and-off rain here in town. Looking towards Treble Cone from my house, on the other hand, the view is quite a bit different. There is a massive storm coming, as you can see from the weather chart above, and it is due to hit us by midnight and to be at full strength by the early morning hours. It’s unclear at what elevation the precipitation will fall as snow, but the likely scenario is that as the front passes over TC, the snow line will continue to drop and that by the end of it we’ll get the big dump of the white fluff we’ve been craving. It could be serious, it could be deep, and it most certainly will be welcome.

Among the phenomena here in New Zealand that are totally foreign to visitors from North America is that during very severe storms the ski resorts can actually shut down. It’s due in part to the fact that the resorts are all perched high in alpine terrain above the tree line, and that they are susceptible to both very strong winds which make lifts unsafe and to avalanche danger. This is certainly true of Treble Cone. Add to that the fact that the road leading up to the resort is a bit nutty – the resort “base” is actually more than halfway up the mountain – and one easily can understand why closed days happen.

The real problem with the possibility of the mountain closing is that it exposes some very funny superstitiousness among the staff and our loyal local following. If for some reason the storm is not big enough to close the resort, several people will be blamed for jinxing us – either they were actively predicting a closed day, vocally hoping for a closed day, preparing our business for a closed day, or generally prognosticating as though a closed day was a fait accompli. Don’t misunderstand what is going on here: it is not that the resort staff does not want to work tomorrow, it is simply that we’d gladly sacrifice a day of work if it means getting to ski in some serious powder the day following.

Those of us who do not want to appear superstitious tend to lean heavily on the oddly detailed weather forecasting models here, but I think we nod to superstition anyway. So, my alarm clock is set for the morning, I made plans for the workday tomorrow, and I am not going to burn the midnight oil in anticipation of being able to sleep late. But, my fingers are crossed, in spirit if not reality, and I may take credit for the quality of my snow dance if we do in fact get hammered. In the meantime, I’ll obsess about the forecasts a bit and try to sleep through the eager anticipation of the powder day to come.

Fire in the Sky

2010-07-24T04:12:00.009-05:00

Today was a very busy day at Treble Cone. Normally, the last two weeks of July are exceptionally slow - they are probably the least busy weeks of the winter season here on the South Island of New Zealand. Wisely, our resort scheduled several large and notable events during this time, so starting early this morning there was a great buzz about the place. Young alpine racers and their families were arriving by the van-load for a big 'inter-field' race, with the kids resplendent in their high-tech resort ski team uniforms and the number and variety of foreign language accents on the coaches remarkable for this tucked-away corner of the world. In addition, the Summit Saddle Freeride Challenge was a big draw for big mountain skiers and 'wannabe' big mountain skiers from far and wide. The event was a qualifier for the NZ Open North Face Big Mountain Championships, a major stop on the international big mountain skiing circuit, so the fat ski, stickered-helmet, go-big-or-go-home ski subculture was in full flower. It was terrific to have so wide a variety of people out and about, and it lent TC a festival atmosphere.

The best thing about the day, however, was that despite all of the people, all of the energy surrounding the competitions, the biggest buzz of the day and the thing that drew the most attention from the widest variety of people was the sunrise. Each day in the first half of the season I get to see the sunrise while at Treble Cone. It's nearly always beautiful, it's frequently shockingly beautiful, and occasionally it'll stop even the most jaded mountain dweller in their tracks, mouth agape and cameras in action. This was such a morning. Race coaches from all over the world, new school freeriders, spoiled bratty kids on holiday, hardscrabble local folk, itinerant ski and snowboard pros, barristas, patrollers and lifites all seemed to take a moment and just watch Mother Nature's pyrotechnic introduction to the day. It's hard to convey what it's like to work in this environment each and every day for a season. Even the best photos can't quite give the feeling of the time and place, but they may give you some inkling of just how gorgeous it can be. So I hope you enjoy these photos and, if you don't mind, I hope they help you daydream a bit about life in the mountains.

Well Insulated

2010-07-19T01:30:00.003-05:00

"Hold on a minute," I said to a friend from home on the phone recently, "I'm going to move into a room with heat." I then walked from my bedroom and into the great room of the house I'm renting with friends here in Wanaka, New Zealand for the Southern Winter, closing the door to the great room behind me. I then giggled a bit, having to explain that yes, there is only one room in our relatively new house that's heated and that it's a rarity that we're able to rent a new house with double-glazed windows, a heat retaining tile roof, insulation, and a "heat pump" in the great room – a heat pump being a wall-mounted electricity-powered forced-air heater.

In my first season here in Wanaka, back in 2007, I shared a house that was not insulated, was built of cinder block, had single pane windows that were less air tight than my backpacking tent, had a fireplace with no flew that was very effective at sucking all the heat out of the house and sending it up the chimney, and that was the coldest building in which I've ever spent time. It would have been a good place to train for life inside a remote mountain artillery battery in wartime. My running joke was that I'd brought thermal long underwear for skiing but only wore it when I went to sleep at night. It was a classic Kiwi "batch" – a bungalow-like summer vacation home typical of Wanaka before the boom in winter sports resorts here began a few decades ago. The best thing I can say about that old house was that it would have been terrific near a beach in a tropical climate.

In defense of the Kiwis, Wanaka was for most of its history a summer resort town, so there was no need to build homes that could comfortably house people in the cold winter of the Southern Alps. In addition, New Zealand is after all a remote island very far south, far from just about everything and with the costs of construction goods that one would expect from its location. And the Kiwis are justly proud of their hard-scrabble, independent-minded, self-sufficiency - it's part of what I enjoy about their company and their nation. Still, it doesn't quite fully explain why it is that despite exorbitantly expensive electricity and a tough climate, Kiwis insist on building inefficient homes that are uncomfortable to inhabit. For crying out loud, I had dinner at a friend's quite modern home last night and pulled some olive oil out of her pantry that was frozen! I mean seriously, her kitchen was so cold that her olive oil froze on the shelf, and that was in a nice house. I wish I were making this up.

So what's an itinerant ski pro to do? How do we keep warm on those cold winter nights with the wind howling as the storms come in off the cold ocean? How can we find a respite from the long days outdoors? Well, truthfully, there are two options. The first is to spend lots of time in the pubs, which generally have roaring fireplaces and all kinds of drinks for sale that can act as vasodilators, warming our hearts and our bodies, steeling our nerves for a night in the igloo. The second is what is referred to here as an 'electric blanket'. An electric blanket here in NZ is not actually a blanket, rather it's a bed pad that goes underneath one's sheets and has an electric coil running through it. Mine has three settings on it – I refer to them as lukewarm, cozy, and pan roast. I typically turn it on the medium setting a few minutes before climbing into bed for the night. Occasionally, I fall asleep fast enough that I don't turn it off until I wake up in the middle of the night severely dehydrated, sweaty, and short only some garlic and rosemary to complete the recipe. Pan seared flannel wrapped roasted Russ. Throw in a goggle tan and an oddly pale mid-section, and I'd scare any creature who happened upon me as I splash cold water on my face at 3:00AM. It's not pretty. But, alas, I do love my electric blanket.

Perhaps next year I'll go into the import / export business and bring into New Zealand a container ship filled with fiberglass insulation, Tyvek, and weather stripping. Then again, maybe I'll just chalk all this up to one of the many curiosities of my time on this side of the globe that I enjoy so much. Now please excuse me while I change into my thermal sleeping attire and do a little snow dance before hitting the sack. There is a storm coming but we need snow pretty badly, and I'm not averse to a little superstitious snow dancing, particularly if it warms up my extremities.

Photographic Evidence

2010-07-01T18:33:00.004-05:00

It's been exceptionally busy here in Wanaka and at Treble Cone, training new staff, spiffing up the place and then working out the kinks during our first two weeks of business. With the two busiest weeks of the season beginning this coming weekend, the whole resort will be rockin' and we're all eager and ready for it. When it's all over and we catch our breath, I'll provide a little more context. For now, here's some photographic evidence for those of you who still don't believe how sweet it is down here in the Southern Alps.

Jet Lag

2010-06-11T20:01:00.008-05:00

To-do list: (1) update business levels and instructor sign-out spread sheets, (2) complete master staff contact list for current season, (3) complete notes on new training clinic idea, (4) label photos from spring travels, (4) organize photos for calendar project, (5) create new iTunes playlist for gym, (6) review iTunes library to make sure all composers' names are inserted consistently, (7) write new piece for blog about what to do while lying in bed wide awake from 4:00AM.

As I write, I've been awake for five and a half hours and it is now 9:30AM here in Wanaka. The truth is that I jinxed myself yesterday after completing my long journey to New Zealand. I was catching up with some good friends in a café yesterday afternoon and, despite knowing better, I caved in and had a big bowl of coffee. I even made a joke to the waitress about needing a cup big enough to swan dive into it, and man-o-man did she deliver. Moron! The caffeine wore off by early evening, I was catatonic by 7:30PM, fought like a champ, and then gave up and was snoring like a chain saw by 9:00. I am now paying the price. It'd be one thing if it were summer here and the days were long and sunny, but it's still pitch black outside, to say nothing of the damp weather. And my house is cold. And I have no internet or cable TV yet to make the time pass. So, despite having gotten plenty of sleep during my 26 hours of flying, it's just me, my now completed ministerial work items, my unlabeled photos, and my first post from the 2010 New Zealand season.

On my flight from Auckland to Christchurch, I sat next to a young Canadian woman arriving for her first Southern Winter. She was giddy, nervous, excited and 'totally stoked', and our conversation really brought home the extraordinary experience of doing what we do. We talked about the essentials of adjusting to life in New Zealand: Kiwis' weird names for standard coffee drinks, their strange issues relating to vowel pronunciation, and what they mean when they answer a question "yih, yih, yih, nah, nah". All the while, I watched the look on her face as she snuck glances across the aisle to the sun rising over the snowy peaks of the Southern Alps as the reality of just how beautiful it is here literally and figuratively dawned on her. Observing that sort of energy from someone experiencing the start of her first endless winter was the perfect way to get me in mode for my arrival. This is my fourth season in Wanaka and my fifth Southern Winter overall. What this means is that over the next few days I'll begin my 15^th winter of the past decade. The truth confirmed for me by my flying companion is that I remain nonetheless very excited to be back. Now I just need a little daylight and a full day staying awake without any caffeine, and I'll be ready to enjoy my season to the fullest.

Speaking of being excited, the amount of snow that has fallen on the Southern Alps has been extraordinary so far, and Treble Cone doesn't even open until the end of the month. Flying over the mountains in Canterbury yesterday en route to Wanaka, the snow line was down to nearly the shores of Lake Pukaki, Lake Tikapo and Lake Ohau, and the contrast of the white mountains and iridescent aquamarine lakes in the light of the sunrise was just another in a long string of mental images I won't soon forget. The photos above and below are of Treble Cone as seen from my house this morning, with the groomed runs and base lodge visible in the midst of an astonishing amount of pre-season snow. The reports from our operations team have become ever more giddy, and rightly so. There's a lot to do in the next couple of weeks to get ready and, as long as it keeps snowing, generating enthusiasm from the resort staff, from our guests and from ourselves will be the easiest thing we do all season.

Green Means Go

2010-06-07T13:28:00.012-05:00

Though I live and work in Vermont in the Northern Winter and in Wanaka, New Zealand in the Southern Winter, my home is in a very small town in the remote Northwest corner of Connecticut.

Often during the winter in VT, people will ask where I'm from and, upon hearing that I'm from Connecticut, they will conjure images of the wealthy, crowded suburbs of New York City that line the Connecticut shoreline abutting the Long Island Sound. People are amazed when I explain that there are mountains in Connecticut, that there is no highway where I live, no chain stores, strip malls or even traffic lights. While a large number of wealthy New Yorkers do have second homes in the area, there are enough working farms to keep all of us honest, and we're far enough away and hard enough to get to that our town remains relatively unspoiled. What amazes people the most is when I tell them that it's greener here than even Vermont, that when the leaves are finally full in Spring it's so green here it almost hurts the eyes.

"The Berkshires?", you may ask, "Really?" It is precisely this 'off-the-radar' aspect of being here that brings me such peace of mind. It provides a distinct lack of pretension and an ease to our existence, along with the confidence that we can continue doing what we do, at our pace, with our people, without pressure.

Right now, in early June, the ancient oaks that so dominate our woodlands are finally in their deepest green sartorial splendor. On long rides through the winding country roads that ring the river valleys and ribbon the hillsides, my bike fitness is now at the point where I can enjoy the place without the aches and pains of early season. One more month and I'll really be able to pour it on ... except I don't have another month. At precisely the moment when things are at their most spectacular here, once again I will be departing for another winter on the other side of the planet. I've said it before and I'll say it now: it's not that I don't like summer, it's that I willingly sacrifice it to explore my passion for and pursue my career in alpine skiing.

Panglossian rants aside, at least the parting mental images I have of my home here will be of the countryside at it's peak of green as I love it best. For me, once again, green means go. I'll continue to report in from winter in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, and I'm sure it'll be yet another terrific season there. I will occasionally, however, day dream of greener, warmer pastures, and think of home.

Feeding Frenzy

2010-05-11T14:57:00.013-05:00

Disclaimer: this post has nothing whatsoever to do with my usual subjects of skiing, ski teaching, life in the mountains, or sociological considerations for outdoor play time for children. It does, however, have to do with time spent outdoors observing nature unaffected by man and how fundamentally cool it can be. I spent some time on a boat on the salt water Kiawah River in South Carolina this morning. It's not exactly the middle of an enormous national park, but there is a remarkable abundance of wildlife and unspoiled natural landscape here, including a great deal of wetlands and waterways. The short excursion this morning was intended to observe a variety of native Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins known locally as River Dolphins, and the animals did not disappoint. The video below is of a practice unique to the local dolphin population referred to as "strand feeding", where multiple dolphins corral a school of fish by swimming around them on multiple sides, stranding them on the banks of the river and then chowing down like it's a buffet line at one of the local golf resorts. It's really pretty amazing to see, and I'm pretty lucky to have gotten it on film. Enjoy.

The Cost of a Volcano

2010-04-22T07:53:00.021-05:00

"I'm so jealous." "I think it's wonderful that you can do what you love for a living." "I think it's wonderful that you love what you do for a living." "You have the best life." "I wish I could figure out a way to make my passion my career." "You really seem to have it all figured out." And then, "How do you make it all work?"

It may sound ridiculous, but when people I meet hear what I do for a living, they often impose on me their fantasy for a no-more-gazing-out-the-office-window, active, outdoor, comfortable clothing-attired lifestyle. In their imagination, my life is wholly populated by smiling children and their enlightened parents, large well-trained dogs, an easy pace, local produce and, apparently, a pile of Krugerrands sitting at home to count after a long day in the mountains. Depending on who the people spouting the fantasy may be, there may be a Prius in the driveway, a low-impact green modern home with an organic herb garden, and a trout stream running through the back 40 for leisurely days of fly fishing in the warmer months. I wish I were joking about this. Though I understand and appreciate this line of thinking, it's clear that none of these people have ever depended on the income from teaching skiing for a living and none of them have ever lived full-time in a hard-working Vermont town that pre-existed the ski industry. I love what I do and where I do it, but my now well-rehearsed cautionary response is to 'be careful what you wish for, you might just get it'.

As I have for the last few years, following the end of the ski season here in Vermont I've just spent some time in London visiting my sister and her family and catching up with some friends who live in the UK. It's a terrific way to decompress from the season. This time, my week-long trip turned into 11 days with the stoppage of air traffic due to the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. Thankfully, I have no particular responsibility to anyone other than myself at this time of year, so it was not a problem for me to extend my stay a bit. It's not that the extra few days was stress-free, but it's not as though I had a pile of meetings and paperwork to come home to after the trip. The stories of people stranded and spending thousands on cabs from one end of Europe to the other, waiting in long lines in hopes of getting a train seat, and pulling their hair out with the logistical challenges of running international business without the ability to fly were certainly interesting and entertaining. I, however, got a kick out of merely shrugging my shoulders when asked whether it was a bad thing for me to be stuck. I mean seriously, there really was no hurry, and some of the people I encountered were a bit putt off by someone who clearly had no reason to be stressed. I enjoyed it, frankly. I am a man of leisure in between seasons and, pile of Krugerrands or not, that's just fine by me.

It's not as though my extended stay was without costs to me. I do tend to make my way through my sister's cupboards and refrigerator with precision, speed and strength and London is an expensive place to spend time, especially when compared to Ludlow, Vermont. But these things and the agita that results are hard to quantify. So, the simplest version of my balance sheet for the trip looks like this: on the asset side was four more days of hanging out with friends and chasing and being chased by my niece and nephew and their posse of neighbors on scooters like an episode of The Little Rascals Goes to London. On the debit side was the cost of parking my car at JFK. $260.10. The eruption of Eyjafjallajokull cost me $260.10. It was a small price to pay and I didn't even have to learn to pronounce the name of the damn volcano.

The photos above and below are from a number that I took of the Thames Barrier, the Albert Memorial in London's Kensington Gardens, and some views in The Cotswolds respectively.

Onomatopoeia

2010-04-06T12:43:00.006-05:00

Tick tock; drip drop; gurgle gurgle; whoosh; flip flop; ahhhhhh. Yes, the sounds of a season winding down are all too familiar, ending with the sounds of my favorite shoes and a big sigh. It's been a winter of big highs and some pretty blue lows but considering the state of the economy, the environment and the world in which we live, it was a good season. Once again, the great joy I find in teaching skiing helps me navigate through stormier and less rewarding waters, and the enthusiasm and energy of the guests with whom I am lucky enough to spend my time continues to be infectious even now.

The last several days were oddly and otherworldly hot and sunny here in Vermont. I arrived at the locker room for work on Saturday morning at the usual time wearing flip flops, shorts and short sleeves. I went through my normal morning routine of signing in, getting my skis ready for the day, and pulling my boots off of the drying rack. I then sat in my usual spot with my boots on the floor next to my feet. I looked at my feet in flip flops, looked at my boots, looked at my feet, looked again at the boots, picked up the boots, replaced them on their spot on the wall, and then went straight to the supervisors' room to say that I had absolutely no intention of changing my footwear that day. Off I went into the summery blue yonder, successfully enjoying the rest of it without so much as a shiver. The following day was the last official one for the Okemo Ski + Ride School – we'll do the occasional lesson this week before the resort closes its doors for the season on Sunday, but for all intents and purposes we're done. There is still snow on the trails, there are still a few lingering people sliding out there (very few), but the looks on the faces of the employees tell the whole story. This week and through the weekend, all of our guests are still welcome and will receive the same consideration and standard of service for which we are justly famous, but we'll all be ready for a little off-season come Sunday.

The relevant sounds for me in the coming weeks, after a little travel to catch up with friends and family, will be those of a newly cleaned drivetrain and spiffy new tires on my road bike, and the groans coming from my not-quite-saddle-ready body. I'm looking forward to it, groans and all.

A Proud Countryside

2010-03-23T22:05:00.013-05:00

My recent trip to the Adirondacks brought with it a nice break from home and a small preview of the warmer season that is just around the corner. The trip also reminded me of a few of my favorite things about Upstate New York - big mountains that are literally on an Olympic scale, some of our nation's most scenic inland waterways, and a remarkable history visible around every corner. Pictured above is Whiteface Mountain, site of the alpine events from the 1936 and 1980 Winter Olympics. Pictured below is Fort Ticonderoga, a site of major strategic importance during the French and Indian War (the North American portion of the Seven Years War), the American Revolution, and the War of 1812. Last is the view looking south from the town of Whitehall, New York, claimant to the title of birthplace of the U.S. Navy.

Seeking Inspiration

2010-03-13T22:14:00.003-05:00

Frequently over the years as my own skiing and as skiing generally have evolved, I've been very fortunate to have close at hand a number of skiers and coaches who are inspiring – inspiring as skiers, inspiring as teachers and coaches, and inspiring as people. My good fortune in this regard has spoiled me. At those times when I am left to consider skiing without such ski luminaries present, like a lot of former racers and coaches I look to the athletes at the pinnacle of our sport. The problem with this is that normally it's very difficult to follow the athletes of the World Cup and the U.S. Ski Team with any kind of detail or currency, to say nothing of a technical skiing view. The internet has made this vastly easier, as I no longer have to comb the back pages of the sports section or read obscure industry journals (my issues of The American Ski Coach from the early 1990's occasionally provides nostalgic entertainment). Still, it's not the same as seeing the pacesetters of our sport first-hand.

I spend a great deal of time teaching young people who are at the beginning of their ski racing careers or are considering entering race programs. I try to tell them about the young Americans on the U.S. Ski Team and how they train, who they are, and where they're from to put things in perspective. 'We're all just mountain people,' I'll say, 'and we use the same skills and work on the same things that they do.' I worry that ski racing suffers from an image as a far away, obscure pastime for anonymous Americans and for foreigners with names difficult to pronounce. So, despite my impulses to resist telling students personal stories about my childhood heroes and some of the celebrity ski athletes I've met and known, I can't help myself sometimes. And then there are the Olympics.

As much as I am far removed from the Olympics in every way possible, I cannot express how wonderful it was this winter to be able to tell kids about the great ski racers, about the things they are able to do, about how hard they train, and about what great and cool people they are at a time when the same kids can turn on the television and watch our heroes on network TV. Several of my students were able to track the progress of the U.S. Ski Team athletes as the Olympics neared, getting to know their quirks, weaknesses and strengths in the same way they might know the starting lineup of the Yankees or the Red Sox. It's so cool to know 9-year-olds who not only can pronounce Aksel Lund Svindal's name correctly, but know why they think he was favored to win a medal and in which events. The telltale sign of a kid who has spent a lot of time skiing with me is a sense of disgust at the way the conventional press treats Bode Miller. Don't they know anything about ski racing? And then there is Lindsey.

Coaches and teachers in all fields and all sports suffer from a lack of role models who can inspire children in a real and substantive way with the strength of their character as much as with their skills and successes. Lindsey Vonn is just that rare an athlete, and in the context of a coach looking to generate a love of skiing and ski racing and an appreciation of the type of person we all want our children to become, she is rarer still. Unqualified best at her sport? Check. Strong in body and mind? Check. Smart and articulate? Check. Approachable to and appreciative of her fans? Check. Able to overcome adversity? Check. Driven? Double check. Strong work ethic? Are you kidding? Self-taught and fluent in German, owner of a herd of cattle in France, originally from a tiny ski hill in Minnesota, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? Checkimus maximus. Every time a child in America spends 5 minutes thinking about being like Lindsey Vonn instead of the latest Lindsey Lohan gossip or Britney Spears video is a triumph for all of us, ski racer or not, and every child inspired to race on skis by Lindsey Vonn is a bonus for our sport. It's just a pity we have to wait another four years to watch her in prime time again, but at least she may have touched some young people enough for them to keep watching long after the flame is out in Vancouver.

On a personal note (as though the foregoing isn't personal), I've been lacking inspiration recently. It's been a while since I've really had any transcendent and inspirational experiences relevant to my own skiing. I usually describe this in terms of training, which for me has been sorely lacking in recent years as my responsibility for the training of other instructors has grown. I crave instruction for myself, a sense of the big picture and what is possible to achieve on skis, a fresh perspective, a look at the future, something, anything not the product of my own mind, my own analysis of what I see and my best guess at where our sport is going. So, this coming week, I am going to Whiteface, the Olympic mountain in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, to try to find some. The technical description of what I am doing is that I am trying out for the Eastern Team of PSIA. In the weird little world of ski instruction this is a big deal. The Eastern Division of the Professional Ski Instructors Association of America is selecting from among its members a group to train and send to try out for the PSIA National Demonstration Team in 2012. The demo team is really the national team of ski instructors, truly rarified air.

I am attending the Eastern Team tryout because the participants will be comprised of the best of the best in the East – great skiers and teachers skiing hard on one of the most difficult mountains in the East. It is unusual for me to attend a competition like this with no expectation of success - honestly, I'd consider finishing in the middle of the pack a big success. What I am hoping to accomplish is to gain some perspective and, more importantly, to find some inspiration to fuel the fire of my own skiing and teaching. As much as I am a fan of Lindsey Vonn (and Bode, and Ted, and Julia, Aksel, Maria, Carlo …), I need something more than a matinee idol of a ski racer, something a bit more tangible and closer to home, and more than just a tib-bit here and there, to really find my inspiration.

Besides, a few days out of Ludlow, Vermont with less than a month left in the ski season can only be a good thing. All transmitted good vibes will be welcome.

Further Musings

2010-02-24T17:58:00.005-05:00

I have several thoughts in process which I have yet to share here - musings on Presidents' Week, the Olympics, and exclamations about the three plus feet of fresh snow that has fallen on our mountain over the past 36 hours. Today at Okemo we could have been excused for feeling as though we had been transported somewhere else, somewhere snowier - Utah, Hokkaido, Gullmarg. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but I have seldom laughed out loud that much while skiing.

Until I put pen to paper and crystallize my thinking, I'll share these two photos from last week. The sun is now rising as I leave from my house to head to work in the morning, and as it crests the hills it sheds light on a nearby pond in a way that is really stunning. There's nothing like a quiet morning on a snowy mountainside to put things in perspective. Enjoy.

Shouting at the Wind

2010-02-02T22:46:00.003-05:00

Every so often, some self-appointed preservationist shouts from the pages of glossy advertisement-laden magazines about the loss of the soul of skiing. The tone is familiar to all of us who live in ski towns and work in the industry: our focus on the needs of our guests, on attracting new ones, on making a profit in the business of operating ski resorts, and on running our businesses like businesses and not like cute little clubs that may or may not be viable, has killed skiing as we knew it in simpler, kinder and gentler times. Recently, several particularly jaded commentators have speculated out loud from articles and op-ed pieces in magazines – usually sandwiched in between ads for Range Rover and for exclusive real estate investment opportunities – about whether the current economic recession has resulted in the return of skiing to the 'real skiers'. Apparently, according to these people, one cannot be affluent and be a real skier. In fact, I'm a bit uncertain about what the criteria are for being a 'real skier'. Does the fact that I have a graduate degree or the fact that I've never lived out of my car for a winter disqualify me? Unclear.

In many respects, anyone who feels that somehow our industry has lost its soul, that it has left behind the values that imbued its beginnings or has sold out to the all-mighty dollar clearly is living off of a trust fund, is a socialist who thinks that all of us should be supported by the government, or is totally out of touch with reality. The expression 'biting the hand that feeds you' seems apropos. Most important of all, those self-appointed preservationists themselves have lost sight of the most important thing about life in the mountains and in the ski industry: it is an essential tenet of what we do and why we do it that we strive to share our mountains with all who wish to join us.

It is true that there always will be tension between locals and tourists, between natives and transplants, and between those who prefer to keep our resorts intimate and rustic and those who wish to develop on a large scale. These tensions are natural and are at times difficult to manage, but they serve the important purpose of keeping all of our eyes on the values underlying our devotions. I am very fortunate to live and work in Ludlow, Vermont and at Okemo Mountain Resort. All of us here agree that our location in a real, pre-existing and hard-working town is one of our resort's greatest strengths. Ludlow is not a pre-fab, pre-planned, developer's concept of a village and I assume that our guests like it that way. People coming to Vermont for a vacation (in whatever season) want to come to Vermont, not some faux version of Vermont. We welcome them to our town and work to make our town and our resort attractive to them while making sure to not lose our authenticity. Keeping it real, in this sense, is sometimes easier said than done and there definitely are resort towns all over America that have lost much of that authenticity, if they ever had any at all. Somehow, though, even those towns that did not pre-exist their ski business still have a real life to them, avoiding Gertude Stein's admonition about there being no there there.

As for the soul of skiing itself, I for one believe it is alive and well and easily found everywhere one looks. We just have to pay attention and see the forest for the trees. For example, this past weekend it was cold here in Vermont, very cold. I mean it was seriously cover-every-last-bit-of-skin frigid. But the sun was out, the skiing was terrific, and the people came out in droves. Our mountain was crowded for a non-holiday weekend and, though I'm not sure what the head count was or how many hot chocolates the resort sold, there were certainly a lot of people out there enjoying the day. If that many people – young and old, local and tourist, green circle and double diamond, party and parsimony – are willing to schlep up to the ski hill, strap on some boards and slide around all day in sub-zero temperatures (Fahrenheit), there's something going on and it's not the death of skiing as we know and love it. It may be some sort of dementia, it may not be the most practical use of our time, it may mean there are some geese missing their feathers, but it's a good thing nonetheless.

In the current economic climate, several major resorts have been sold and many more are not doing well. Notably, Intrawest, the operator of several of the largest ski resorts in North America, has just filed for bankruptcy. We've all trimmed our budgets, hired smaller staffs, and set modest goals for the winter. It's a tough industry in which to survive even in the best of circumstances – whether as the owners of a resort, the managers of it, or certainly as a ski instructor. As in the case of our guests when the weather turned cold, when the climate turns difficult we see the real enthusiasm of our colleagues and friends as we rededicate ourselves to the choice we've made to be here doing what we do.

Ultimately, some people simply prefer to shout at the wind. They are welcome to do so, even if it is from the pages of glossy ski magazines. I think it must be hard to shout like that with one's face covered to protect against frostbite when the temperatures drop. Then again, maybe the 'protectors of our soul' just choose to bring their soapbox indoors on those days for a non-fat extra hot foam latte to commiserate with their friends about the cold and the tourists while I and mine are outside expressing our love for a life in the mountains with all who will join us. I'll see you out there!

Arising from the Valley

2010-01-16T18:47:00.005-05:00

Here in the U.S. it is the holiday weekend commemorating the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is also one of the busiest weekends of the season in the ski industry. Consider also that Okemo is the busiest (by skier visits) ski resort in the Eastern U.S., and you may begin to understand what our mountain and our village of Ludlow are like at times like these. It's absolute madness here, and we're grateful for it.

The vast majority of our guests at Okemo travel from the Northeast corridor, especially from Connecticut, the northern suburbs of New York, and from the metro-Boston area. They tend to drive to Vermont on Interstate 91 which generally follows the Connecticut River along the border of Vermont and New Hampshire. I took the photos here this morning from the road where I live, looking Eastward towards the river in the direction from which so many of our guests have arrived.

Having so many people here who have traveled from many of the same towns lends the resort a bit of a festival atmosphere. Each day during a period like this one, the staff, having geared up for this important stretch, shares in this spirit, opening our doors in the figurative sense to all our visitors. And, once the sun goes down, we retreat again to our homes to remember why we do it and to recharge our batteries for the next day.

Not So Quiet

2010-01-03T17:02:00.006-05:00

The nearly two week holiday stretch is now over, and during that time Vermont and the Green Mountains really bared their teeth for us and for our guests. Last weekend started with a downpour which quickly froze over. We then got several inches of snow, followed by incredibly high winds and brutally cold temperatures for a few days. Then by mid-week we received more snow, flashes of blue in the sky, more wind and, again, more snow. It's snowed all night Friday night, all day Saturday, and it's supposed to keep up through the end of the day on Monday. Today, Sunday January 3rd, the wind picked up to a severe level, sending our guests running back south from Vermont like a racing yacht with its spinnaker flying. For that matter, the wind and cold (with wind chills well below zero Fahrenheit) left just about everything flying about, including a lot of debris and nearly including the chairs on our lifts which made for some pretty harrowing rides up the mountain. In typical fashion, our instructors and other resort staff maintained good humor about it and found solace in some great tree skiing and some hearty and very good-natured kids in our classes. This coming Tuesday, with the holiday vacationers all back in school and at their desks, the skiing and riding is going to be terrific and we'll all consider it a reward for a job well-done during this very busy stretch.

Speaking of the sounds of the weather, during the severely cold days last week a number of us remarked on the noise made by the snow under our feet as we walked as a good indicator of just how cold it was. There's a distinctive squeak to sub-zero (Fahrenheit) snow, and after the heavy winds subsided, it was a welcome reminder of the quietude and subtle joys that winter brings here in the mountains once the crowds have gone. Listening to the sound of the snow and thinking of the breathing room we'll have in our post-holiday stupor also reminded me of one of my favorite Robert Frost poems, entitled Good Hours. I definitely won't be strolling about the neighborhood this evening, but the vivid picture Frost provided will become a welcome reality once the present storm passes:

I had for my winter evening walk--
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.

And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.

I had such company outward bound.
I went till there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.

Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering village street
Like profanation, by your leave,
At ten o'clock of a winter eve.

By way of a more audible example of what we've been facing here, I recorded the video below in front of my house late this afternoon. It includes audio that sounds like something straight out of the special affects department with the wind howling and the trees groaning their disapproval.

I hope 2010 brings good health and happiness to all of my friends and family, and the time to appreciate the quiet joys of life.

Newbies

2009-12-24T18:12:00.006-05:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the most important lessons we teach as ski and snowboard instructors are first-timer lessons. We have one chance to make someone's first experience on skis or on a snowboard a positive, engaging, fun experience and if we fail, if we have a bad day, we lose an opportunity to share our sports with more people. There is an internal industry corollary to the beginner's lesson, and it's how I spent one of my days last week.

During both of my annual ski seasons – here in Vermont and in New Zealand in "summer" – I spend a lot of my time on the clock training instructors. In the nuanced little corner of the world that is ski and snowboard instruction, ongoing instructor training is an essential component. In many ways, staff training is our best quality control method: we use it to make sure that our instructors are technically proficient, that they understand our particular view of the role played by guest service and a guest-centered teaching method, and that they continue to evolve as skiers and riders as well as teachers. Those of us who instruct for a living crave instruction ourselves, and so our training also forms an important part of how we think and feel about our jobs in ways that are hard to quantify. It is in this sense that the best and most devoted students make the best teachers. I enjoy training instructors a great deal – being a "clinician" in our lexicon – and it's one of the things I do that really enables me to continue my own development as a thinker about ski technique, ski teaching, guest service, and how people learn, move and function generally. Sometimes, however, staff training can become something far more basic and far more rewarding.

Recently, I've provided some training for instructors at a neighboring resort here in Vermont and I've been fortunate enough to spend a good chunk of it working with young and relatively new ski instructors. Last week, in fact, I spent a day with a young woman who was working as a ski instructor for the very first time. We covered the basics of ski technique, how we think about it in terms of skills, how we articulate it to adult and child guests, and how we consider what to teach and when. As part of our training day, I arranged for the "newbie" and the other young instructors to receive their uniforms and do some routine paperwork, immediately followed by a couple of free runs to shake out the cobwebs from the ski school jackets and to end the day with some vital fun.

On our first lift ride in the new jackets, a gondola, we chatted about everyone's nerves about being a new ski teacher and about the anxieties associated with caring for children in a mountain environment. I then realized that our "newbie" was fidgeting quite a bit and seemed a bit uncomfortable in her new jacket. I wondered out loud if we had decided on the wrong size and then it dawned on me: this was her first-ever ski instructor uniform and it made her a bit self-conscious and a bit more keenly aware of the new path on which she had set herself. It made me warm all over to look her straight in the face, confirm that it was her first uniform, and officially welcome her to a profession from which so many people I admire and care for derive such lasting satisfaction and enjoyment. Simply awesome! After a couple of runs where I like to think she was standing a bit taller and skiing a bit more deliberately, we walked into the staff room where a number of more senior instructors were milling about at the end of another day as ski and snowboard pros. As we entered, a number of them oooed and ahhhed at the young staff in their smart new jackets and I announced to everyone in the room that our "newbie" was in an instructor uniform for the very first time. Everyone cheered, congratulated, slapped on the back, and genuinely extended their heartfelt welcome to our newbie – old grisly mountain men, young dudes and babes, snowboarders, skiers, retirees, Americans, Europeans, kids and adult staff, instructors and supervisors alike shared in the moment to help her realize how much they all appreciated her joining them. It was really very cool. Our newbie may have been slightly embarrassed and self-conscious at first, but I'm confident that she understood why we all thought it was so cool. It was a wonderful moment, and was one I suspect is repeated in locker rooms all across the alpine world every year.

While I was kidding slightly as I told our newbie that I wished her a successful life as an instructor, filled with poverty and happiness, I was only partly kidding. It's a hard life, teaching skiing - long days out in the elements, little money even under the best circumstances, and peers who fail to understand why we've decided to spend our time as "bums" and not respecting that we're really professionals devoted to a craft. In the faces of the staff present on that day last week and on newbie's was a shared understanding of the inherent good in what we do, the simple joy of it, and the immense (if not monetary) rewards that we receive from it. As long as we all carry a little slice of what it's like to experience the joys of teaching skiing and riding to someone for the first time, we're bound never to become jaded and to continue our progress as skiers and riders, and as teachers. I wouldn't trade it and I was thrilled to be a part of a new beginning on that path. As we head into 2010, it's a wonderful reminder of what's really important here in the mountains.

Shaken From Slumber

2009-12-05T17:31:00.003-05:00

Someone knocked on my door early this morning. Still in a slight daze, I opened the door just a crack at first to see who it was and not let in the cold. The person on the other side saw the crack, smiled with a broad grin and then pushed his way into my home with force, giving me just enough time to jump out of the way and get ready for the onslaught. No, it wasn't my neighbors looking for free ski advice or some extra flour for their breakfast pancakes. No, it wasn't my parents, driving up to see whether I'd had some overnight epiphany about getting a "real" job with some actual financial security and a good health care plan. It wasn't my friends clad in lycra wondering if I was ready to go cycling, and it wasn't the neighborhood black bear looking for some honey. Hey Booboo. Nope, it was winter, and he's got some pretty good spring in his step for an old man.

Okemo opened for the season today, three weeks later than originally planned and with what could charitably be called "sporting" conditions. We did have some die-hard ski and ride devotees who bought lift tickets today, took the bus up to the bottom of the summit lift and made turns on the top third of the mountain before downloading the same lift back to the base. I'm certain that they had fun and I'm certainly glad we were open, but I'll wait another couple of days for conditions to improve, thank you very much. I mean seriously, I do not work for the Okemo marketing department and though I prefer to remain positive and optimistic I have no obligation to do so. Which brings me to Old Man Winter's barging into my house.

While enjoying a nice lunch with my friends from the still dormant Okemo Ski + Ride School in the Sitting Bull, our base lodge bar and restaurant, it started snowing. Hard. Very hard. And it's been snowing like that all afternoon. And it's supposed to keep up all evening. Normally, one of the things I enjoy about snowstorms is the quiet that results when fresh snow blankets the world around me. In this case, however, the constant sound of our snowmaking guns hammering out their fluffy white product is far preferable. The combination of the two things going on at once – the snow storm and the snow making – has provided a much needed lift to my spirits and those of my friends, neighbors and colleagues. When we talk about the weather in a town like Ludlow, we're not just 'talking about the weather' in the Pygmalion sense. For the first time in a long time, those conversations have some real excitement in them. I expect that by mid-week conditions will be pretty good and by next weekend we should be off to the races.

The funny part is that the storm sort of caught all of us by surprise. It's not that we hadn't been watching the forecasts with great interest and with an odd level of detail. It's just that we (which is to say I) had all been lulled into a sort of malaise of waiting, watching, kvetching, worrying and idling about with less purpose than we'd prefer. So we cracked the door open a bit this morning to see whether winter was in fact here, and he barged right in like a college roommate carrying a six-pack or a six-year-old on Christmas morning. Phew. We may have been shocked for a moment, but we sure are grateful.

Hopefully, Old Man Winter found a comfortable seat on the couch, likes his surroundings, and will stick around for a while. I'll even let him have the remote if he stays.

This Is Not a Drill

2009-11-28T12:09:00.005-05:00

Last night, at the end of the infamous "Black Friday" after Thanksgiving, here in Vermont the temperature dropped, the wind picked up, and a small storm blew in with force. There's nothing unusual about this except that the storm brought with it the first real snow of the season. More significantly, it also brought the best sustained snowmaking temperatures yet. Right on the heels of their Thanksgiving feast, Okemo's snowmaking team made a meal of it, rendering the upper mountain trails unrecognizable from the days and weeks preceding. I took this photo from downtown Ludlow at mid-day today, and it's certainly a relief to look up at our mountain and to see real progress towards winter. The forecast for the next ten days looks great for snowmaking, so our long wait for skiing and riding should be nearly over. So, break out the boards and pack your gear, I expect to get the green light to start sliding and we'd better be ready.

Godot

2009-11-22T12:49:00.004-05:00

What is the meaning of life? What is the nature of death? Is there a divine being? Is there life on other planets? Did Shoeless Joe Jackson actually participate in throwing the 1919 World Series? Considering these fundamental questions is the luxury of people with spare time. Watching the world go by, studying the clouds, contemplating the nature of the universe and life without snow … Wait a minute. Contemplating life without snow is not an existential question. Not this year. And we certainly have the time to consider it.

There is no snow in Central Vermont. The weather continues to be warm and sunny – lovely, really – and Okemo has officially delayed our opening until conditions change. In our collective memories, there have been very few starts to a ski season as green and grassy as this one. We have one of the best snowmaking crews on the planet and can rely on them to keep us on track even in the worst case scenarios, except this one. Those of us who have been doing this for a while, who have depended on New England winters for our livelihood and our recreation, know that it will snow. It is going to get cold in Vermont, the weather is going to turn nasty, we will ski and ride, and I promise not to complain when the temperatures drop below zero.

In the meantime, those of us who teach skiing and riding here in the Eastern U.S. do have plenty time. I've got a couple of small projects going, I'm catching up on some reading, enjoying the sunshine while I can, and actually benefitting from the ability to consider ski technique and ski teaching in the big picture. Oops, I just looked at my watch and I need to run. I'm meeting Vladimir and Estragon for some more existential musings – Godot was apparently seen wandering the streets of Ludlow. I wonder if Samuel Becket skied …

Down in the Village

2009-11-09T11:45:00.005-05:00

I've been living in Ludlow, Vermont to work at Okemo for several years now, and having returned from my southern winter in New Zealand and settled in for another season, I'm keenly aware of just how small a town it is. Like any small town, Ludlow has its characters and its idiosyncrasies, but the times when the smallness wears on me a bit are well-balanced by the times when the smallness and its familiarity give me comfort. It is, after all, one of the great strengths of our resort that it is located smack-dab in the middle of a real town, filled with skiers and non-skiers alike, and that all of the development on the hill has not totally overwhelmed the feel of the place or the ability of hard-working Vermont families to live and raise their children here.

Since arriving back in town I've reconnected with a lot of people – friends and colleagues both. I haven't really been engaged in a formal 'doing the rounds', but together with a bit of catching up on the local gossip there is also an important element of catching up on what's happening in the business of Ludlow and at Okemo. All this faffing about, as the Brits would say, is relevant to my job and does have an impact on my role here. Simply put, my support from the resort staff, the ski shops and the other businesses in town, and my relationships with all of these people enables me to do my job better and to keep the work I do with our guests in context.

We're very fortunate in Ludlow to have a few full-service ski shops that are exceptional and I rely a great deal on the people that run them. In my mind, the singular element that makes our shops so good is that they all work hard to put each customer on the right gear for that person, not simply what the shops need to push out the door or what's hot. Whether it's Randy at Northern Ski Works, Shon at The Boot Pro, or Torin at Totem Pole, or the many returning members of their able staffs, they are all legitimate experts with many years in the business and I never hesitate to send any of my guests to them. Boot fitting is a serious craft, ski selection is like pairing wine with a meal, and tuning is an art, and there's an awful lot of bad information and folklore out there and in the popular press about equipment, so the role these guys and their staffs play is indispensable in making the Okemo guest's experience a quality one. No, I do not work for the Chamber of Commerce and I am not on the payroll of any shop. Yes, I depend on them for my own equipment needs. Yes, I work closely with Randy and his staff at Northern but not just because they are my local Nordica dealer – I depend on them for my own needs and those of my guests. The only thing I get out of sending my guests to any of these shops is the confidence that my guests will receive the same high level of personal service that I provide in my role as their instructor. Besides, I genuinely like all of the people who run and work at the shops, I enjoy stopping in to see how things are going, and the good-natured ribbing between the shops' team members on our locals' race day is always a focal point of the season for those of us who participate. With the exception of race day (officially called Innkeepers, affectionately known as "World Cup Tuesday"), my relationship with the shops makes me feel very strongly that we're all part of the same team, engaged in a truly collective effort on and off the hill.

The small town affect is by no means limited to the ski shops. The coffee house knows how I like my java, the postmaster remembers my box number and whether I need to have my mail held or forwarded while overseas, the realtors keep their eyes open for my guests, and the bartenders know what beer I drink - particularly useful when the watering holes are packed on holiday weekends.

Now that the leaves have all dropped and the snow falls with more frequency our mountain, there's a certain energy in town, a mix of last minute preparations and nervous curiosity over what the season will bring for us here. Okemo opens on November 21^st, the traditional opening on the weekend before Thanksgiving, and at the end of the day we all take comfort that each of us here in Ludlow enters the winter season together, sink or swim. If I'm going to be in the same boat with the population of a small town, there are few crews I'd prefer to set sail with in the ski industry than the one we have here in Ludlow. It will snow, and the sooner the better, for all of us.

Rounding the Corner

2009-11-06T10:25:00.003-05:00

It's coming, nearly here, all lights are green, all systems go and I'm definitely ready. After a few weeks of spinning my wheels - literally on the bike and figuratively - the next ski season starts here in Vermont in a couple of weeks and it couldn't arrive soon enough. Fall here is glorious in October, but with all the leaves now off the trees, the weather turning colder and nastier, and everyone at Okemo and in the shops in town working hard to get prepped for the crowds we hope will join us, we're all getting anxious to get started. It will snow, we will ski and ride, and I'll be grateful to continue my endless winter!

The Other Side of the Coin

2009-10-17T11:49:00.012-05:00

Since arriving back in the US from New Zealand, I've been a guest at a resort in the desert southwest. Why is this relevant to a blog about skiing, teaching skiing, and the many aspects of a life and career devoted to both? It's relevant because here I am the guest for a change. At Treble Cone and Okemo, and in the snow sports schools at both resorts, guest service is a major focus of everything we do - how we approach our jobs, how we dress, how we spend our time, etc. Once in a while, it's helpful to see how other people do it, and it helps to actually be the guest. There is an extent to which I feel like a carpenter entering a house built by someone else, taking a critical view of every service, every conversation, every system, but it's only a small extent. The reality of my stay here is the not-particularly-novel realization that good guest service works, it makes for a more relaxing, more enjoyable stay, and definitely makes me want to come back. While here it's been snowing in Vermont (and all over the northeast), ski areas have started up their snow guns, and the serious preparation for another winter season has begun. So I'll take a few more leisurely strolls in flip-flops and then it's back to the action, but it's been nice to see and experience the other side of the coin for a change.

Parting Ways, Parting Shot

2009-10-12T02:05:00.007-05:00

I took the photo above on Saturday morning from Glendhu Bay, looking north across Lake Wanaka towards Mount Aspiring - 24 hours before leaving Wanaka at the conclusion of another winter season. I've seen the view hundreds of times and it still stops me in my tracks. I hope to see it hundreds more, but the photo will have to suffice in the interim.

I'm back in the US now, enjoying some down time before yet another winter season. I'm excited for it and for teaching skiing full-time at Okemo once again, but I'll enjoy my time in flip flops and warm weather while I have it. It'll snow soon enough and I'll be ready.

On the Valley Floor

2009-10-05T19:19:00.006-05:00

Yesterday, Monday, after looking forward to it for several months, my friend and colleague Nick and I played a round of golf at the Wanaka Golf Club (Nick is pictured above showing the benefits of a youth spent in Scotland). In the middle of the day. In shorts. In the sunshine. With no responsibility for anyone or anything, for a few hours anyway. Sunday was the final day of the Treble Cone season and Monday on the first tee my off-season began in earnest. My tee shot traveled long and straight and landed smack, dab in the middle of the fairway – I can’t say that this boded well for my round but it was pretty cool from a metaphorical perspective.

The winter at Treble Cone is short and intense, lasting from the end of June until early October. With so many of the staff coming from overseas, there is a great deal of front-loaded work to do so we hit the ground running as soon as we get off our respective planes at the airport. We don’t really slow down until it’s all over, and then we start planning for next year. Thankfully, this season all of our hard work paid off in many ways big and small – for me, for Nick who runs our children’s programming, and for our director Klaus. We worked hard to effectuate a cultural shift in our snow sports school, generate more business for our staff and enhance the quality of our guest service while at the same time looking after the continuing technical development of our instructors. We succeeded at all of these things while generating a really good feeling among our staff. In the end, we solidified our place as the premier snow sports school in New Zealand, a tall order for a school with less than fifty instructors, something about which we are justifiably proud.

I do hope to return to Treble Cone next year – there are goals we’ve set for ourselves which we have yet to achieve and challenges we can better confront. Mostly, after it’s all said and done, TC remains an inspiring place to ski and ride and Wanaka remains a home away from home, so I’ll look forward to coming back. But for now, in the midst of the exuberance of spring, I can throttle back, walk a little more slowly, take the time to enjoy my friends and my surroundings, and breathe a little easier here along the lakeside on the valley floor. Like the winter season at Treble Cone, my off-season is short and I need to make the most of it. The next winter is right around the corner and my flip-flops need some outdoor exercise.

Out of the Mists

2009-09-29T02:55:00.013-05:00

I recently made a trip from Wanaka to Christchurch to celebrate Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar (I love the irony of celebrating Yom Kippur in Christchurch). The five hour drive to Christchurch, the South Island's largest city, winds through some pretty amazing countryside. Among the many sights were the Lindis Pass, Lake Tekapo, Lake Pukaki and, best of all, Mount Cook / Aoraki, the tallest peak in New Zealand. It's Spring here and the two lakes are filled with glacial runoff that gives the water an iridescent blue quality. With sunlight breaking through the clouds of an approaching storm only intermittently, the views looking north towards Mount Cook / Aoraki from Highway 8 near the towns of Twizel and Lake Tekapo were particularly dramatic.

By way of explanation, as part of a larger effort to respect and include Maori culture, history and language as a part of modern New Zealand, many places go by both their English and their Maori names, hence the reference to "Mount Cook / Aoraki". It's a credit to the fruits of this effort that in NZ, dual names like this are a simple matter of course.

It's difficult to put the scale of Mount Cook / Aoraki into perspective, but it really is massive. I was fortunate to see its summit above the clouds for a brief spell on Sunday. Like so many of the world's natural wonders, seeing it in person is always more inspiring than in pictures. I do hope, however, that these photos convey a sense of the place.

Going Big, Starting Small

2009-09-17T16:19:00.011-05:00

Treble Cone is a mecca for a great many big mountain skiers (and 'wannabe' big mountain skiers). Our expert level terrain really is exceptional - exceptionally steep, exceptionally exposed and exceptionally challenging (the photo is of me dropping into Indicator Chute, a front-side run, a couple of weeks ago). In the Snow Sports School we constantly work to make sure that the public knows and understands that TC also is a terrific place for families and for beginner skiers and riders to learn and grow. In the hands of our instructors, the difficulty of our mountain and the jump in ability required for a student to move from our beginners' teaching area to the green runs up on the hill becomes far easier. We like to think that the result is that first time skiers learning at Treble Cone do not stay beginners for long.

The combination of these two traits - big mountain mecca and leading snow sports school - means that some of our instructors have some legitimately great big mountain "creds". One of our guys, my Kiwi friend and colleague Alex Lynden, has been competing in the New Zealand big mountain scene for several years, has a lot of results on his resume, and is a well-respected member of the NZ freeski community. Another of our Kiwi guys, my buddy Campbell Smith, is relatively new to the scene but brings great technical skill and a bright future. Both Alex and Campbell are also great instructors and are just as likely to be teaching beginners on the their first-ever day on snow as they are to be hucking themselves off of Treble Cone's many cliffs, switch. I like to brag about all of our staff to our guests while they wait for their lessons at line-up, particularly considering that most of our intructors - and it's certainly true of Alex and Campbell - would never do the boasting themselves to their students. All the guests know is that they've got this cool Kiwi instructor (or Austrian, Italian, British, American, Canadian, Czech, French, Swiss, etc.) who is excited to share their sport with them.

The video linked here is from the recent Black Diamond Big Mountain Competition at Temple Basin here on the South Island, part of the Chill Series of events. Alex Lynden is interviewed, there is some awesome footage of Campbell Smith going very, very big in the competition, and many of the other athletes featured regularly train at Treble Cone. Big mountain comps like this one are an increasingly important venue for the industry, whether it be among equipment manufacturers, resorts, apparel makers, film makers, or kids who simply want to show their stuff and who drive their families' consumer choices in the snow sports business. Alex and Campbell, and many other serious athletes devoted to big mountain skiing, provide a great example of how being cool, going big, and being on the edge is not antithetical to the idea of being a great, modern instructor. Ok, well, not at Treble Cone anyway. Way to go guys!

Black Diamond Big Mountain Event from Temple Basin from Richard Sutcliffe on Vimeo.

The Whole Wide World

2009-09-05T04:02:00.011-05:00

It’s spring here on the South Island of New Zealand, or rather it’s supposed to be. You wouldn’t know it from the amount of recent snowfall at Treble Cone and the quality of it. Rather than the usual spring-time corn snow which morphs into mashed potatoes by the end of the day, the cold temperatures are giving us snow that has remained dry, light and incredibly joyful since a series of storms dropped several feet of it on us over the past week-and-a-half. We’ve been kicking ourselves lately, and the number of people walking about the resort at the end of the day in a powder-induced daze with immense grins on their faces is a testament to the astonishingly good conditions. Looking briefly at the scoreboard, the stakes our ski patrol uses to measure the accumulated snow pack in the Saddle Basin (TC’s backside) had to be extended recently, several snow fences which normally protect some of our groomed runs from wind are now completely covered, and chutes and bowls that were closed a few weeks ago due to severe avalanche danger brought on by unusually mild spring weather are now fully open and providing the best skiing and riding of the season. Oh, and did I mention that we’re getting what seems like an additional ten minutes of daylight each day as we head into the last month of the season? For crying out loud, a week ago Treble Cone kept the lifts open until 4:30, a time that would have been nearly pitch dark a month before. All of this and TC in all of its glory makes for some pretty inspirational skiing, and I mean “inspirational” literally.

So, in a contemplative mode brought on by several days of continuous powder and a great deal of business for our Snow Sports School, I took advantage of a rare lull in the early morning grind to ride our “six-pack” chair lift solo this morning around 9:15.There were literally no clouds in the impossibly blue sky and I needed to find a place to sit and breathe in the day. Camera in hand, I headed towards a spot at TC called View Point. View Point sits at the top of the Matukituki Basin, which is the only section of our mountain facing north towards the heart of the Mount Aspiring National Park. To get there, one has to traverse a bit, round a sharp corner and go up briefly over a short rise before getting flattened by the view shown in the photos here. It’s shocking. Really.

The reality of my mornings at work is that I’m very busy, running from the moment I step out of the staff vans between 7:45 and 8:00 pretty much straight through until 11:00. I have a lot of ground to cover with my supervisory colleagues and a lot of guests and staff to look after, and frequently training clinics to run for our instructors. Rarely do I get the time to stop and really appreciate where I am and just how extraordinary it is. Thankfully, this morning I made sure to take the time to put it all into a clearer context, in the rarified light of the high alpine sunshine. My few moments sitting at View Point were well worthwhile, like a transfusion of clean air, quietude and a refreshed perspective. When working in this environment day in and day out, I’m busy enough that such moments are few, and I need to seek them out on occasion.

From View Point this morning, the whole of the Southern Alps seemed visible. In the photos here are great views of Mount Aspiring and its neighbors, Mount Earnslaw, several glaciers, and the whole of the Matukituki River valley. In the far distance I could see Mount Cook and it was so clear that I’m reasonably sure I could see the Eiffel Tower. Ok, maybe not Eiffel Tower but perhaps the Petronas Towers. The bright green valley floors, the vast and picture-perfect blue sky, the lake below, and the white snow-capped peaks are the stuff of childhood fantasy and, thanks to my good fortune, the stuff of my every day reality. I just need to stop and look every so often to be reminded.

Spreading the Gospel

2009-08-29T20:17:00.009-05:00

One of the major downsides of working professionally as a skier, teaching and supervising teaching for ski schools year-round, is that there is a real danger of losing proper perspective. When acting as a supervisor and coordinator of programs, I find myself in the position of needing to keep instructors focused on what our goals and purposes really are and why we do it. I occasionally tell them that somewhere in the world there is a cubicle or an office for each of us, with a telephone, a computer, fluorescent lights overhead and our name on the door. We can choose to find it, to lead a more conventional existence with its particular rewards, pleasures and comforts, or we can choose to teach skiing and snowboarding for a living. Sometimes it works, sometimes the staff turns a deaf ear. Sometimes, I am the one who needs reminding and, luckily enough, I find those reminders frequently in many places, both expected and unexpected. I found one such reminder this morning, and a small chance encounter drove to the heart of why I love what I do and am so devoted to it.

Treble Cone closed today due to severe weather. It’s an infrequent occurrence here, but the resort does sit precariously on a shelf on the side of a big, high alpine mountain, so it is particularly vulnerable when big spring storms roar in off of the Southern Ocean. So, on days like today, all gray and stormy, the resort staff and guests wander aimlessly from shop to shop, drinking familiar espresso drinks with odd Kiwi names in the many cafes in Wanaka, grateful for an extra day of rest but anxious with the hope of a powder day tomorrow. It’s a nice vibe, in the way the occasional storm can enforce a mellow quietude on any small town. Even I succumbed to the impulse to buy something for myself, stopping into a sport shop in town

In the shop, I was surprised to be recognized by a guest right away, asking me “Are you Russ?” At first, I had no recollection of him – not unusual given the number of people I meet while working. Then he sprung it on me: I had taught him to ski from scratch two years ago during my first season at Treble Cone. Searching the mental rolodex, I remembered. He’s an Australian in his ‘30’s named Michael, and I remembered him in part because he is probably the tallest person I’ve ever taught skiing. His lessons presented an interesting challenge at the time because of his height – he is a good athlete, but lets just say that he exerts different forces on his skis and moves in a way slightly different from people who are under six feet ten inches tall. We had a lot of fun two years ago and, like many people hesitant to learn skiing at Treble Cone because of its reputation as an expert’s mountain, he stayed and enjoyed our resort because it is a very different and immensely more personal experience than beginners can have at our vastly busier neighboring resorts.

Michael is hooked on skiing. He loves it, and he told me that he’ll always remember having had his first ski experiences with me at TC. He now lives in the UK and has been skiing in Europe when he can during the Northern Winter. He is excited to be back in Wanaka and skiing at Treble Cone this week – returning to his roots in skiing, so to speak. I say it all the time: in my view one of the central tenets of our profession is sharing our passion for our sports with our students. It’s infectious, and when we welcome new people to our sports, get them hooked, and later have the opportunity – on the hill, in passing and in chance encounters in town – to see that they love it as much as we do, it reinforces what a wonderfully gratifying experience our jobs can be.

The storm will clear this evening and tomorrow we and our guests will ski and ride at Treble Cone in deep powder on some of the best and most beautiful terrain for it anywhere in the world. Plus, if I’m lucky, I’ll get to spread the gospel to more people and maybe even make some turns for myself.

Technical Difficulties

2009-08-24T04:10:00.004-05:00

I'm currently experiencing problems with my internet access at home here in NZ. Please bear with me, as I have some insights, stories and great photos to share. I hope to have the problems resolved shortly. In the meantime, here's a recent photo for you to enjoy, taken on a recent morning as a storm cleared and left us with an inversion at Treble Cone.

Into The Light

2009-08-08T13:14:00.007-05:00

I took the photos immediately above and below while standing in my backyard yesterday evening - no editing, filtering, tweaking or fancy camera settings required. In the far background is Mount Niger, which sits next to Treble Cone in the heart of the Mount Aspiring National Park. I took the bottom photos at sunrise on the same day, the first while in the middle of our morning commute and the rest from Treble Cone. On our commute as the sun rose above the horizon, Lake Wanaka turned to fire, and we stopped the staff van on the side of the road and all had a "moment of zen" as we took in the light show.

The circumstances of all of these photos are a sure sign that Spring is approaching here in Central Otago - the sun rises before we get to work and the sky is still light when we get home at the end of the day. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I may endure two winters every year, but I am blessed to be able to experience the joys of Spring, twice. It's already been an exceptional season of skiing and riding at Treble Cone. We've had an amazing amount of snow, we've been quite busy in the Snow Sports School, and the quality of the teaching and skiing of our instructors has been inspirational and quite gratifying given the hard hours put in by those of us responsible for the management and training of our staff. There's still over a month left of the season, and I'll enjoy all of it while looking forward to looking back on it from the warm embrace of Spring.

Line 'Em Up

2009-08-03T03:08:00.006-05:00

A picture is worth a thousand words and, in this case, a lot of snow. We're in the middle of an amazing storm cycle here on the South Island of New Zealand. At Treble Cone, we had a big storm Thursday night into Friday morning, and another storm Sunday morning with some heavy snows and then sunny skies in the afternoon. There's a massive storm due to hit us on Tuesday morning, another on Wednesday morning, and (for those who are counting) a fifth storm on Thursday. At the moment, avalanche danger is pretty severe in the resort, so ski patrol is working overtime and we're all trying to temper the excitement of everyone anxious to head to the backcountry - a big task given the amount of backcountry access at Treble Cone, the large number of TC skiers who routinely venture to ski it, and the astonishingly large crowd that came to our resort today after word of our fresh powder spread.

The pictures here are from an awesome weather prediction website called MetVUW. They show the next three storms we're expecting on each of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. It's a big line up of weather and, if all goes well and our hard-working patrollers can help keep Treble Cone safe from avalanches, we're in for some pretty serious powder.

Patience Rewarded

2009-08-01T02:59:00.006-05:00

On Friday, July 31st, Treble Cone was closed due to severe weather. As is always the case when this happens those few times during a given season, the staff of the resort and the staff of our neighbors at Cardrona and Snow Park were all wandering aimlessly around town all day, sipping coffee at any number of cafes, and generally working hard to appear occupied. This morning, August 1st, there were clear skies in Wanaka as we left town on the staff transport, and the storm lifted from Treble Cone just as the crowds were beginning to line up for a great powder day. We conducted our regular morning instructor training clinics with the sun striking us head-on, making turns in a foot-and-a-half of fresh powder (on top of some already great conditions). I was fortunate to be able to ski all day - first while conducting a clinic and then with some guests who ski well and know the mountain's particular nooks and crannies. It was a terrific day without qualification, and we definitely reaped the rewards of patiently awaiting the end of the storm. There are another few storms literally lined up and waiting their turn to hammer us with snow here on the South Island of New Zealand, and the skiing and riding should continue to amaze even those of us who work here. I hope to post some more ski specific photos in the coming weeks, but today I was a little too busy actually skiing to stop and pull out the camera. This photo of skiers' tracks off the Treble Cone summit this afternoon will have to suffice in the meantime.

ABS, Again

2009-07-27T04:40:00.006-05:00

Blah, blah, blah; yutta, yutta, yutta; ho hum. Ok, enough already. I get it, the sunrises from Treble Cone are absolutely gorgeous and the scenery from town is stunning even on the worst of days. I mean seriously, the beauty of the natural environment here really does get monotonous after a while.

I have a friend who grew up on a lake in Minnesota and lived most of his adult life on the coast before moving to Santa Fe several years ago. When we first met he explained to me that he had been reticent about living in the high desert of New Mexico because he thought the landscape would bore him compared to the ever-changing views on the shore or the lakeside. What he found was that the quality of the air and the sunlight in the high altitude mountainous desert meant that the views of the landscape around his home changed every minute of every day, just as on the water, and that it never got old for him. Here in the Southern Alps it's much the same. The biggest problem is deciding whether to take photos and with whom to share them.

Here are a couple of photos I took this past Friday from Wanaka and on a recent morning from Treble Cone. Please understand that no photo can adequately capture the scope and beauty of the place. I hope you enjoy them nonetheless, '"another bloody sunrise".

Change in the Air

2009-07-18T00:59:00.002-05:00

After weeks of the same drudgery, day after day of stunningly gorgeous weather with blue skies, no wind, and no precipitation to speak of, we've finally got some change in the air, literally. On Saturday evening, the wind is blowing at Treble Cone and if all goes well, it'll bring with it some weather bearing some snow for us. The skiing remains outstanding, so perhaps we're being a little selfish, but a powder day would go a long way to bolster the spirits of a resort staff that has just completed the busiest two weeks of the season.

Schnitzel Fest 2009

2009-07-14T23:56:00.003-05:00

Take a fillet – sometimes pork but traditionally veal, pound the heck out of until it is flat as a pancake, dust it with flour, dip it in egg, coat it in breadcrumbs, deep or pan fry it, douse it in lemon, serve it with spaetzle or potatoes, accompany it with a good beer, and you’ve got the Austrian national meal and one of my favorite words these days: schnitzel. As in “that’s not exactly your Uncle Hans’s schnitzel”, “the light this morning was as flat as your grandmother’s schnitzel”, or “I’d take that meal over your schnitzel any day”.

In Austria, being a ski professional – whether as an instructor or as a coach – holds a vastly different status than in the US. Skiing is, after all, the national sport there and its importance is such that government funding is an essential component of the national sports institute, the national instructor certification programs, and many of the resorts. It’s not an accident that the highest level of instructor certification is the “statlicher”, meaning state certified. What this means, in my experience, is that the Austrians I’ve worked with both on the race side and on the instruction side of the business take a vastly more career-focused orientation to their jobs than their average American counterparts. While it is true that many of our best instructors at Okemo and elsewhere in the US only teach skiing part-time or do so either before or after other careers, the fact is that few people choose ski or snowboard teaching as their dedicated vocation. Given this professional view, it’s no mystery that the Southern Hemisphere resorts often have Austrians at the core of their staffs, and here at Treble Cone that’s certainly the case. In the Snow Sports School, we have a few Austrians this year, including our new director, and the immensely successful Treble Cone Race Academy has quite a number of them.

Despite our view at Treble Cone that we are and must remain a Kiwi organization, we have precious few Kiwis on our resort staff, and the rest of us occasionally feel quite foreign despite our best efforts and our love for the place. Sometimes we all simply need a small slice of home, and it is for this reason that a little over a week ago I attended what I have been referring to as “Schnitzel Fest 2009”.

Imagine a large great-room of a lodge, one of several in town normally used to house our many overseas athletes enrolled in the Treble Cone Race Academy, filled with a convivial atmosphere, jolly conversation, real gemutlichkeit, and only three non-native German speakers in the place. Beyond the twenty or so Austrian coaches and instructors, diversity was provided by me, Kiwi big mountain skiing legend and TC ambassador Geoff Small, my friend and the TC race administrator Megan from the US, a Swiss couple, and the German lodge manager. Yes, that’s right, the German and Swiss people made it diverse. The schnitzel was flying, the homemade strudel was outstanding, and my friends from Austria could relax, speak their own native dialect and feel that they had a little slice of home before the season at Treble Cone got really busy. For me it was a fun evening even without any real understanding of the language. It was really great to see my friends and colleagues in easy, native conversation.

I should note, selfishly, that Schnitzel Fest 2009 was followed a few days later by a proper July 4th BBQ at my house with real hot dogs, hamburgers, yellow mustard, actual Heinz ketchup and my annual ribbing of any and all of the British people present. Hey, that’s America, even if it is in Wanaka. And a little slice of Austria too.

Holidays

2009-07-09T04:27:00.007-05:00

We're in the middle of a two-week holiday period for the schools here in New Zealand and in Australia, so it's the busiest two weeks of our season. It is a strange and challenging thing for us that the holidays fall so quickly after we open for business, so there's an enormous premium on training our staffs, working out all of the kinks, and getting ship shape. Thankfully, Treble Cone seems to be working like a well-oiled machine and our Snow Sports School is providing some of the real highlights. It's a wonderful thing to be at least partly responsible for what, so far, appears to be a remarkably gifted, hard-working, cohesive and fun group of instructors providing an exceptional product for our guests.

The long busy days mean that I arrive to work in the dark and leave in the dark, but at least I get the chance to see the sun rise and set in stunning surrounds each day. The photos here are of a sunset a few days ago. Enjoy.

Inversion

2009-06-27T04:02:00.009-05:00

Up is down. Right is left. Young is old. Fast is slow. Steep is flat. Deer are raised in paddocks. Driving is on the left and steering wheels are on the right. 'Tomato sauce' is used on french fries, which are called chips anyway. We look north to the sun. 'E' is pronounced like 'i' and 'i' is pronounced like 'e'. Summer is winter. And, for the last several days, the sky has been below us and looks like the ocean, the weather on the top of the mountain has been warm and sunny while town has been gray and gloomy, and the inmates are running the asylum.

At Treble Cone and in Wanaka, we've been "stuck" in a weather pattern known as an inversion for several days. Technically, an inversion occurs when warm air rises and sits above a layer of cold air, meaning that it's warmer at higher elevations. Often, the air layers are separated by a dense layer of clouds. What this means for us is that in town it's been very gray and very cloudy with not a hint of blue sky. In the mornings when we collect the staff in our vans and make the drive to Treble Cone, twenty minutes from town and another twenty minutes up our rather crazy access road that winds its way up the mountain, we're in the dark until the point on the road when we rise above the clouds. At this time of year, with the days as short as they are, it means that we rise above the clouds just as the sun rises above the horizon. It's amazingly dramatic, incredibly beautiful, and frequently stops me in my tracks. Fittingly, given that it was the first day of a new ski season, today we departed as the sun dropped below the clouds in perfect symmetry.

We've opened with better conditions that we have in decades, so regardless of whether the moon is upside down in the sky or not, it's already a great winter and it's only just begun.

Rocket Surgery

2009-06-20T01:41:00.007-05:00

Treble Cone is an industry-leading mountain resort here in the Southern Hemisphere, there’s no doubt about it. We are justly proud of the quality of the services we provide to all of our guests – whether in the café, the car park, the lift lines, or in lessons with our award-winning Snow Sports School, and that doesn’t even take into account the incredible terrain we have at our disposal. One of the more challenging aspects of working here, however, is that we are only open for about four months of the year. Combine that short season with the fact that the overwhelming majority of the resort staff comes from overseas, and it means that at this time of year, in the weeks before we open to the public for skiing and riding, there is an awful lot of work to be done. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that we get fully up to speed from a standing start in a matter of just a few weeks. The metaphor that I’ve been kicking around is that it’s like getting a Ferrari ready for Le Mans after it’s been sitting on blocks in the front yard over a Vermont winter.

There are many, many details that we need to get right in order to set our Snow Sports School in motion in a way that meets our expectations for excellence. Policies have to be articulated and the processes of scheduling, selling, setting up, organizing and executing ski and snowboard lessons have to be ironed out in ways that are consistent with our ethos of guest service. Schedules and systems need to be established, uniforms issued, passes provided, and the staff must be trained and joined together into a cohesive team of professionals. It’s a bit of a mad rush, but it is a forced reevaluation of our priorities and our philosophy which in the end is rewarding to those of us responsible for setting the tone and running the business.

At the end of the day, as I always like to point out, our jobs are about sharing our mountain, our passion, and our sports with all comers. It may not always be easy but, as an Italian colleague of mine in Vermont so aptly pointed out to me a few years ago, “it’s not rocket surgery”. Our lifties, baristas, patrollers, ticket sellers, parking attendants, groomers, snowmakers and, yes, instructors are all pros, we’re all anxious, and we’re all excited. Treble Cone has more pre-opening snow than we’ve had in several years, and it is, without qualification, going to be a great season.

Back In Time for Dinner

2009-06-01T12:33:00.007-05:00

Ah yes, the lazy days of summer. For most of us in the adult world, those days are gone completely. Unfortunately, for most children, those days are gone completely as well. Unstructured outdoor playtime was the hallmark of summer, though not limited only to summer, and was when I really explored the world outside, made stuff up, built forts in the woods and hung out in them, developed strategies to contend with mosquitoes, sadistically plotted the mass destruction of the tent caterpillars that carpeted the street I lived on, and played soccer in the neighborhood with my friends until it was either too dark or one of our parents finally had had enough of our shenanigans. I didn't need a day planner and none of us even knew what a cellphone was. If our parents wanted to reach us, they had to yell very loudly, call someone else's house, or send out a search party. Nobody ever worried whether we were being properly supervised and we never were. Amazingly, as kids, as long as we were outside and it was summer, we were never bored even if we had nothing in particular to do. How cool was that!

As a ski instructor, I am a very big proponent of unstructured outdoor play time. Yes, when I am conducting all-day lessons for kids we do learn a bunch and I do use certain activities for their technical merit and with specific goals. But, as I often tell my students, it definitely is not "school". It is not unusual for parents to express dismay that their children were able to pay attention in their "class" for an entire day. What those parents fail to realize, and what I take great joy in explaining to them, is that there is no one thing to which their kids need to pay attention constantly throughout the day. The amount of sensory input and the variety and quantity of stimulus is incredible and, of yeah, it's a ton of fun, it's active and it's thought provoking. It's just like summer, only it's winter. Our skiing becomes a vehicle for all manner of exploration and, if I'm doing my job right, the day becomes much more than a mere ski lesson - for me and for the kids. Oh, and by the way, it's also true for adults, but don't tell my adult students that.

As a proponent of unstructured outdoor play time, it is at the core of my beliefs about childhood development that over-planned, over-structured, antiseptic, hyper-scrubbed, danger-free childhoods are actually bad for kids in ways physical, psychological and sociological, and that they are also bad for our society as a whole. Wait a minute, you may say, isn't this just about ski lessons? You're darn right it's about lessons, but it most certainly is not about skiing. We're not all winners, we're not likely to make the Olympics, there is sometimes scary stuff out there, falling hurts, skiing in the woods is dangerous, sub-zero weather stinks, rain is wet and nasty, and icy bumps are really a challenge. Sweet!

There are many facets to this way of thinking and many tangents I can explore which really get me up on my soapbox. Suffice it to say that there is a subtle and very interesting sociological movement afoot about child-rearing in the modern hyper-scheduled world. Thankfully, you don't have to take the word of a ski instructor who doesn't have his own children on this subject. In yesterday's New York Times Magazine, Lisa Belkin wrote a good piece which highlights some of the evolution in parenting over recent decades from this perspective ("Let the Kid Be", by Lisa Belkin, The New York Times Magazine, May 31, 2009, p. 19). Another good work on the subject that really got me thinking about my role as the pied piper of unstructured outdoor play time for kids (and adults) is Richard Louv's book Last Child Left in the Woods (Algonquin Books, 2005).

Regardless, in good times and bad, good weather and bad, summer, winter, morning, noon and night, the resilience and creativity of children never ceases to amaze me. It's a good lesson for all of us. So, go outside and don't come back until it's time for dinner. And make sure your little sister gets to play.

Ease of Green

2009-05-14T19:44:00.004-05:00

Spring is almost at full strength here in New England. The hard wood trees have yet to reach their complete cover of deeper, darker hues, but there are buds everywhere in the fields and on the forest floor. The hillsides at this time of year in New England have a pale, almost yellowish green aura about them, well-matched by the pale, almost yellowish green of the pollen which is wreaking havoc with my eyes and nose. Despite that, the sounds and smells of Spring, almost more than the sights of it, are what really brings me joy after a long winter. I'll take the pollen, the occasional drenching rains and the emergent bugs along with it all because, hey, after all, it's not easy being green.

Boundaries & Borders

2009-05-02T12:17:00.005-05:00

This week, like most during my “shoulder season” in between winters, I’ve spent a lot of time riding my road bike. My much beloved bicycle was manufactured in Spain (the Basque country, actually, if you ask the good folks who made it). I ride on tires made from South American rubber by a Dutch company, on wheels made in France, using a drive train made in Japan, with handlebars and stem made in Italy, and with several other bits and pieces from here in the United States and elsewhere. On a good day, when I have fresh legs, the right combination of food and drink in me, the right amount of sleep, and the right frame of mind, this model U.N. of components and pieces works together in perfect sync, translating my effort to the Vermont tarmac smoothly in a way that allows me to work my body, clear my head, and enjoy the beautiful countryside. On a good day, the origins of the various components fade away with the stresses of everyday life. Don’t worry, I’m not about to break out into song here but I do have a point to make.

In the coming weeks I’ll be traveling overseas a bit, passport in hand. When I arrive at JFK airport in New York City for my flights, I’ll be with the largest number of people I’ve been amongst in several months, converging there from all over the globe. It’ll be like a human version of the international flow of commerce. Having not had a sniffle all Spring apart from some hay fever, and having survived the long winter without having gotten sick at all, I now am a little concerned about the current swine flu scare. I’m not worried about actually contracting swine flu, but I am a little nervous about the perception of illness. What if I forget to take Claritin and display cold symptoms on the flight? Will we be forced to land in Nova Scotia and be quarantined until after the minimum incubation period has passed? Should I wear a surgical mask to protect myself from the rest of the traveling throngs? I have places to go and people to see, and I have no interest in being a news story or a case study. Should I be pounding some sort of cocktail of Magnesium and Zinc? Gosh, the folks reading the “news” on TV certainly make it seem as though I should consult with the Center for Disease Control before going anywhere or doing anything.

Enough already. No, I’m not going to worry about it. No, I’m not going to do anything or take anything out of the ordinary to protect myself. No, I do not have swine flu and, odds are, definitely will not catch it. My lifestyle, moving back and forth between winters in the U.S. and New Zealand, spending my time with guests from all over the world and a largely itinerant collection of staff, puts me four-square in the modern realm of people taking advantage of the blurred lines of demarcation between countries, economies, languages, and cultures. Heck, getting ready for the approaching season at Treble Cone in New Zealand, I’ve had several conference calls recently with our Austrian director, who has been in California, about hiring staff from more countries than I have fingers, all conducted in English for free using an internet phone service. Swine flu is the least of my concerns.

At the end of the day, I rely on all the various, minute facets of this cross-border existence to work seamlessly together in order to do my job, enjoy my time, and live my life. On a bad day, I may feel every cog in the chain as I work to do what I need to do. On a good day, I won’t be aware of the chain at all, and the components will free me to look to the horizon and enjoy my time on the road.

Mud Season Be Damned

2009-04-16T09:31:00.014-05:00

As in any community that depends on tourism and second home ownership as major components of the local economy, the building trades in Ludlow are very active and employ an awful large number of the residents, even in a down economy. Now that the winter is over and our resort has closed, the sounds of hammers and saws resonate throughout the woods all over town, all day, every day. There is a “but” coming here, and the “but” is mud season.

Mud season is not a joke, it is not merely some folksy Vermont reference to April showers, and it is not a relic of a gentler time relegated to Norman Rockwell prints or the conversations of old-timers in the village cafes. Mud season is real and we’re in the thick of it, literally. With so many of the roads up in the hills around town remaining unpaved, they can get pretty nasty when the snow melts – worse so after a particularly snowy winter like the one just passed. Ruts that can run up to my car’s wheel wells, pot holes big enough to curl up in and take a nap, and mud that splatters everything in sight and then coats everything with a thick layer of dust when it’s warm and dry are the norm this during time of year. It’s a good time to head for more temperate climes.

The “but” problem for the building trades is that during mud season, the town officially closes many of the dirt roads to commercial traffic over a certain weight. What this means is that if you’re in the middle of a building project and you haven’t had the foundation poured or you haven’t had your lumber delivered before the roads close, you are likely to spend your time sitting and twiddling your thumbs until things dry out at the end of April or early May. Projects ill-timed to accommodate for mud season can really cause headaches for the unprepared builder. There is one set of notable exceptions. Let’s call them “Nature’s Carpenters”, at the risk of being too cute. I’m talking about beavers, lots of them. And they definitely have been busy.

I took the photos below yesterday, April 15th, alongside Route 100 between Plymouth and Bridgewater, Vermont. The valley floor there is narrow in spots with lots of running water that feeds the many lakes with clean, clear runoff from the surrounding mountains. It’s the perfect spot for beavers to go to work, mud season be damned (pun intended). The conical shaped stumps are characteristic, and the sheer size of the dam and the volume of timber felled by the critters is remarkable but typical. In some of the photos here, look carefully and you’ll see the tooth marks in the stumps. I’m not certain whether dam building is a more effective way of catching fish than dropping a line or casting a fly (the methods preferred by biped carpenters), but it certainly is enough to leave me marveling at the beavers' handiwork.

Throwing Out the Book

2009-03-29T17:23:00.002-05:00

Among the many subjects that ski and snowboard instructors study as part of our professional development, to say nothing about the certification process, is the nature and stages of childhood development – both physical and intellectual. Piaget’s Stages of Development, Maslow’s Pyramid, the CAP Model and other scientific theories form an important part of these studies and of our understanding of what we do and the people with whom we do it. It’s interesting stuff, if not a bit dry and occasionally as effective as an Ambien. On the ground in the day-to-day work of an instructor, there are more basic and obvious concepts that play a more immediate role. Simply put, there are some well-known truisms about teaching kids and about childhood development that we encounter frequently. On Saturday, I ran smack dab into one of these.

Girls generally develop certain fine motor skills earlier than boys. As instructors, it is widely accepted that girls who participate in certain specified activities - gymnastics, martial arts and dance in particular, more so than common sports - take to skiing and riding faster than their peers. While we hate to classify kids and try our best to assess each child on their on merits as athletes and students, sometimes we just can’t help ourselves when we find one of these rare children whose rapid progress through our sports can be bewildering to even the most seasoned teacher.

At Saturday morning’s group ski lesson line-up, I was assigned to teach a 12-year-old girl on her first ever morning on skis. A family friend had taken her up our Magic Carpet beginner’s lift for a few runs before the lesson started and informed me that the girl – we’ll refer to her as “RockStar” – had successfully made linked wedge turns down from the top of the carpet with virtually no instruction. Bear in mind that it is not uncommon for a beginner’s lesson to end with successful completion of a run from the top of the carpet with linked wedge turns. My first question of RockStar was, naturally, what other activities she likes to do, anticipating the gymno-taekwon-dance-alete response. I was not disappointed. The next noise was that of me tearing up the level 1 lesson plan and moving into the accelerated “when are the next Olympics” mode for RockStar.

RockStar and I had a ball skiing together for two hours that morning. We skied a ton, explored terrain and saw some views of the surrounding countryside rarely seen by novice skiers. By the end of the lesson, she was skiing parallel on some of our more challenging green trails, using her super short rental skis in what quickly became shin deep slush as the day warmed up to near 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Honestly, making slow parallel turns in shin deep slush is hard enough on the long, wide skis and perfectly fitted boots I was using, so RockStar’s rental equipment, perfect for a true beginner, quickly became a handicap which, amazingly, did not seem to hinder her progress much. You try skiing in slush on a pair of 120’s!

There are two things that I try hard to bear in mind when teaching kids like RockStar. The first is to get the heck out of the way – if kids like this are going to succeed, a lockstep, technical ski lesson with drills and exercises thinly veiled as kids games is the very last thing they need. The second is to be patient and not get overly ambitious or exuberant - RockStar may have been a rock star, but she was still a nervous kid experiencing a lot of new stuff in a strange environment with a strange and scary-looking man as her guide. A little tweak here and there, some fun, conversation on the lift about what we’re doing and how it relates to something with which they are familiar, checking out the view, giving a tour of the ski mountain (no, the half-pipe is not a “ditch”), and enjoying our time outside in the mountains is what they really need to do once they get rolling. That, some mileage and strident avoidance of the Siren-like smells coming from the Waffle Cabin, and we can successfully welcome great kids to our sport and prepare them for a lifetime of sliding on snow. The sky is the limit.

Roots Rock

2009-03-21T19:30:00.007-05:00

Having been a collegiate ski racer, race coach, and ski professional here in New England, many of my colleagues frequently throughout the years have teased me for being from New York. Though New York has not been home for me in a very long time, I grew up in the Hudson Valley and, most obviously, my sports team loyalties fall squarely West of the line dividing the New England states from their neighbor.

For some reason, New Englanders seem to be oblivious to the immensity of New York State and its incredible diversity of landscape, economy, spoken English, and culture. There's so much more to it than New York City and the surrounding suburbs, and I have often felt the need to remind my friends of this fact. My favorite thing to do in this respect is to ask New Englanders "How many Winter Olympic Games have been held in New England exactly?" New York, of course, has had two.

For the uninitiated, the Adirondack Mountains in New York are immense, craggy peaks. The Adirondack Park is massive, encompassing many towns, a large population, and substantial industry based upon its numerous natural resources. For centuries, it has been an interesting study of the relationship between conservation and development, residents and tourists, and public and private interests on a scale that dwarfs that of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

I spent a few days this past week skiing at Whiteface Mountain near Lake Placid, site of the ski events from the 1980 and the 1932 Winter Olympics. Whiteface has the longest vertical drop of any ski area in the Eastern U.S., and has some pretty exceptional steeps. It's a great place to ski. Lake Placid itself is the original winter destination resort in the U.S. and is full of some wonderful things to see and do, going well beyond the Olympic site activities (it was the home of the recently completed 2009 Bobsled World Championships).

Regrettably, I was too busy while skiing to tend to any tourist activities or to take many photos of the area. The few posted here are, literally and figuratively, the simplest of snapshots of the area. I hope to return to Lake Placid in warmer weather, on foot (not clad in ski boots), and slow down long enough to really experience all of it. In the meantime, it was enough to ski elsewhere, in big mountains, and be reminded that deep down in my being, I am a New Yorker. Knickerbockers, Rangers, Giants, Cosmos, and yes, proudly, the Yankees.

The Joys of Spring

2009-03-10T21:06:00.007-05:00

Sometimes, as the expression goes, Spring comes roaring in like a lion. Sometimes it comes in like a lamb. Apparently this year it's neither. This year, Spring is coming in like an early-season New England beach-goer, dipping one toe in the water at a time, pulling it out, then trying it again, hoping the water will somehow get warmer.

I took the photo on the left at about 7:15AM on Tuesday, March 3rd. I took the photo on the right at about the same time on Thursday, March 5th. Yes, the photos are of the same thermometer and yes, it was located in the same spot when I took both photos. Since the time of the second photo, the weather has continued its roller-coaster though it has remained generally warmer. Naturally, we received about seven inches of snow during the day yesterday, it was sunny and in the mid-30's Fahrenheit today, it's going to rain a bit tomorrow, and we're expecting a big freeze-up tomorrow night. Are you following this?

Thankfully, as has been widely reported, Okemo has already surpassed last year's snow accumulation total so the skiing and riding continues to be outstanding - bearing in mind that last year we had a banner season by any measure. March is always the snowiest month of the year here in Vermont, so we should enjoy great conditions for some time to come. The questions to ask, therefore, are at what point Mother Nature will decide to go beyond merely dipping a toe in the warmer weather and how fast will we become immersed fully in the joys of Spring?

When It Rains ...

2009-03-01T21:29:00.004-05:00

The past ten days have been remarkable. We had two very large snow storms – one in the heart of Presidents Week – which dumped some incredibly light, dry snow on our mountain. The second storm, which hit us hard for the entire day on Sunday, February 22nd and into the early morning hours of the 23rd, made for the best single day of skiing I’ve had in the Eastern U.S. in a very, very long time. Seriously. Last Monday was definitely “pinch me” time, and I was fortunate to be able to spend the day teaming up with some great instructors to ski with a family that are some of my favorite guests. We giggled like school kids all day, had some great crashes in deep powder up to our knees, skied the double diamond woods and bumps in good form, and got to see some terrific children make a lot of progress while grinning from ear to ear.

That was last weekend. This weekend was a different story.

On Thursday, the weather warmed to above freezing. On Friday, the heavens opened and it poured rain on us. Late Friday night, everything froze solid. On Saturday, I’m fairly certain that Okemo set a world record for the largest vertical drop of any ice skating rink in the world. It was scary out there, as in granite countertops scary. Overnight Saturday and into this morning, Sunday, our snowmaking and grooming crews showed why they are the best on the planet, and today our guests had reasonably good conditions on a pretty nice day, all things considered.

Naturally, there’s another big storm on the way tomorrow. There’s nothing like “dust on crust” to keep us honest on the hill. What will come our way after that is anyone’s guess, but it is Vermont and March tends to be our snowiest month, so we’ll just have to take it one day at a time. After all, when it rains, it freezes.

Asteroid Belts, Family Values, and Recession

2009-02-16T22:11:00.004-05:00

This past Saturday morning, I stood with a student of mine on the side of Heaven’s Gate, a wide, rolling intermediate run typical for Okemo Mountain Resort. We spoke quietly and calmly, having the run all to ourselves for a moment. A brief moment. Shortly after our conversation began, we each glanced up the trail and saw a veritable wall of humanity coming at us. Seriously. Heaven’s Gate went from a tranquil ribbon of white to the Santa Monica Freeway in a span of a minute or two. The throngs of people continued unabated for several minutes while we stood there, incredulous and unable to move. Then, as quickly as the crowd had appeared, it vanished and we were left alone once again. It was as though an asteroid belt had passed through, a metaphor that has proven apt for the continuing madness of Presidents Week. I now wear a helmet while teaching skiing and, when the asteroids fly by, I wonder if I’d be better off sitting in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon instead. Fasten your seat belts, Chewy, it’s going to be bumpy. And in a down economy, the asteroid belt phenomenon is a good thing.

Generally speaking, in the snowsports business there are three periods of time which can make or break a season. They are the holiday period in December and the beginning of the new year, the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend in mid-January, and Presidents Week in mid-February. By way of example, if the weather doesn’t cooperate during one of these stretches when the vast majority of schools are on break, it can have a major effect on our business. This winter, MLK weekend coincided with the Presidential inauguration, two major football games, and Northeastern weathermen predicting doomsday cold. So, despite the fact that conditions here in Vermont were absolutely superb, business was down considerably relative to last year and it’ll have a big effect on our seasonal bottom line.

Needless to say, we do all have a sense that the resort is going to have a down season on the whole relative to last year (bearing in mind that the 07/08 season was exceptionally good). I am not privy to the numbers, but Okemo certainly feels a bit less busy. Those of us who work at the resort typically gird ourselves for an onslaught of humanity during Presidents Week and, while we are busy, we’re certainly not overwhelmed, asteroids or not.

I remain optimistic that ski trips to mountains close to home represent precisely the type of activities families will continue to do even though the economy has turned sour. Extravagance may be out, but fun, active, outdoor activities which kids and adults of varying ages and abilities can enjoy together are wonderful remedies for the ills of every day life. Certainly, our chosen sports and the environment where we participate in them represent the kind of values people look for in difficult times. Whether they represent enough dollar value remains to be seen. For me and for all of us who teach skiing and snowboarding for a living, making our guests feel that their money has been well-spent, recession or not, remains a welcome challenge and a worthwhile endeavor.