On The Mend & Open for Business

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

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!

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

Of the over 220 days each year in which I wear ski boots, all but a handful are spent in uniform. At home in Vermont and here in Wanaka, I have a wide array of responsibilities at the resorts where I work, and any real down time when I get to simply be a skier is a precious commodity. Despite the well-deserved reputations and the number of guests accommodated by the resorts where I work, all are actually pretty small places when it comes right down to it. The total number of staff at Treble Cone in particular is miniscule compared to our position in the industry, and combine that with the number of our day-to-day guests who are season pass holders who spend a lot of time there and who know all of us, and it feels smaller still. It’s incredibly hard for me to go for ski, quietly, on my own or with friends without feeling the spotlight on me or the need to be on my game for the kind of guest service which is so key to our success as a resort. I love it, all of it, but it does get tiresome. So what can I do? How can I set aside the pressures and the attention? I leave, that’s how. I take a road trip to ski elsewhere. I go to Ohau!

Ohau is a small ski field about a two hour drive from Wanaka and Treble Cone. The place has one chair lift that goes right up the middle of the big, main bowl of the mountain, and a long, expansive ridge with some awesome terrain that requires a bit of hiking from the top of the lift. And it’s quiet there. Very quiet. And nobody knows me. And they don’t care what I do or where I do it. And then there’s the Ohau Lodge. It’s at the bottom of the road leading to the ski field and is one of the great ski lodges –the rooms are utilitarian but clean, the common spaces are comfortable and casual, and the food in absolutely terrific. Spending a couple of days between the lodge and the mountain really can lull even the most grizzled old pro into a state of lucid, contemplative relaxation that is a tremendous gift during a busy ski season. A couple of weeks ago, for the second year in a row, I did just that.

It’s a rarity for me to work a 5-day week at Treble Cone, so when I was gone for the two days of my trip my absence was notable. When I returned to work, many of my friends and colleagues inquired after the conditions at Ohau, knowing how much I had been looking forward to skiing there. The honest answer was that the conditions were awful. The majority of the snow was frozen chop having the consistency of coral reef, the snowpack was quite thin leaving many of Ohau’s legendary steeps without much cover, and despite a cloudless first day it never became warm enough for the snow to soften except in a few aspects off of the hikeable ridge above the bowl. Yep, pretty awful. And that didn’t matter whatsoever.

My friends and I didn’t go to Ohau to ski in hero powder up to our guts. We didn’t go there to get our fifteen minutes of fame with youtube videos of our skiing on sick terrain. We didn’t go there for any reason other than to enjoy making some fun turns in an unhurried atmosphere with precisely no pressure to perform in any way, for any reason. We went to relax, to take in the view, to spend some time outside without it being work, to enjoy each others’ company, and to find the skiers that live somewhere buried deep beneath the veneer necessary to function effectively as ski pros. It worked, flawlessly.

Ohau sells these great t-shirts that say “Ohau I Love to Ski”, and it’s true. For me, the atmosphere of the place encourages the simplicity of merely enjoying skiing for skiing’s sake. The thing about it, however, is that in an atmosphere like that, skiing becomes a vehicle for something else, something deeper and more important. During my time at Ohau, skiing with that ease, that lack of pressure, that lack of attention, pure and simple sliding on snow and enjoying the thrill of it, the skiing became a vehicle for escape from the mundane, from the daily grind. It permitted us to take stock of where we are, what direction we’re headed and how we’re going to get there. That’s the real reason I go there, and saying that I’ve gone to Ohau for the skiing is such a simplification that it’s just a convenient lie. I go to Ohau to be a skier, to enjoy life the way a mere skier does, with friends who appreciate all that being a skier means, and to remember why it’s so good that we’ll happily dedicate our lives to the craft of it.

Skiing the Summit Slopes at Ohau

The summit of Mount Cook / Aoraki viewed over Lake Ohau

Far, Far From Home

 

I’m in the middle of my fifth winter season here in Wanaka and at Treble Cone. Over the course of those seasons, that time spent here in New Zealand, I’ve become very attached to the place and its people and have been made to feel very at home here. But, at the end of the day, Wanaka and New Zealand are not home for me; the State of Vermont is.

I’m often the first person from Vermont that people here in Wanaka have met, so I thought some statistics about our beautiful little corner of the world might provide context. The Green Mountain State, as it is known, is among the smallest of the fifty states. According to the 2010 census, we have a population of 608,827 (larger than only Wyoming), and more than a third of those people reside in our largest city, Burlington. Our state capital is Montpelier, which with a population of 7,705 people is the least-populated state capital in the country. Vermont has a land area of 9,629 square miles, and our land is overwhelmingly mountainous with so many lakes and rivers in our narrow valleys that 3.8% of our land is covered by of water despite being landlocked. Because of its lack of development, the entire state of Vermont has been designated one of America's most “endangered historic places” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Vermont can justly be considered the cradle of American snow sports. The first ski tow in America was located on Gilbert’s Hill outside of Woodstock, site of the Suicide Six ski area where I spent so many winter days as a young child. Vermont is also the home state of Jake Burton Carpenter and the Burton Snowboard Company, and he created snowboarding on the hills outside his home in Londonderry. Vermont is the home of numerous current and former members of the U.S. Ski Team and their coaches, and our several ski academies and universities provide the proving ground for many more snow sports athletes.

On August 27th and 28th, 2011, in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, every one of our many rivers and our many lakes flooded. Badly. Very badly. The torrent of water rushing down our mountainsides and into our valleys packed a destructive force never before seen in the Northeastern United States. In a rural and very poor place, the flooding this past week has been so severe that on the morning of the August 30th, several days after the storm ended, the Air National Guard was still airlifting food into 13 towns totally cut off from the outside world. Hundreds of bridges and roads have collapsed or washed out entirely and countless people remain stranded, unaccounted for and in danger. The water is now receding and the full extent of the damage is coming to light - it is very, very severe.

As I write, it is the evening of September 1st at home and crews from the State of Vermont, my home town of Ludlow and Central Vermont Public Service (the state power utility) are already hard at work. The Red Cross, National Guard and every local service organization have been working around the clock – a friend on the Ludlow Ambulance job just completed a 36-hour shift! Every article available on the web, every comment made by members of our community makes note of our ‘hearty Yankee stock’ and the resourcefulness and indomitable spirit of our people. These comments may represent a combination of truth and hope, but there definitely is much truth in them.

Our season here at Treble Cone concludes in early October, a few weeks from now. I’ll stick around here in Wanaka, enjoying the down time and the sunshine for a bit before heading home, and I’ll enjoy every minute of it. Still, in the back of my mind, in my heart and in my stomach, I’m feeling the distance between myself and the state, the community I call home. Every last mile of it. And it feels far, far away.

Even with all of the reasons to keep our chins up and our spirits intact, there are organizations we can help provide assistance to Vermont’s people. Black River Good Neighbor Services (www.brgn.org) is a local charity in Ludlow that provides food and household goods to local families in need. The American Red Cross of Vermont & The New Hampshire Valley (http://www.redcrossvtnhuv.org) is very active in the area. One cool item is a t-shirt created by Independent Vermont Clothing to benefit flood relief, with all proceeds going to the Red Cross efforts in Vermont  (http://independentvermontclothing.bigcartel.com/). I’m certain that there are many more organizations and opportunities that I’m missing here.

The photos here are of the mountains outside Killington, Vermont, which has been devastated, and the covered bridge at Quechee, Vermont which has been almost completely destroyed.

Simple Joys

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

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.