The Next Valley Over

This is a small slice of the view from the Lincoln Peak base area at Sugarbush.

When I’m in New Zealand during the summer / winter / whatever it is, I often encounter people who have no sense of Vermont – where we are, who we are, what it’s like culturally, topographically, economically, and so forth. In order to describe where I live and work, I usually explain that the whole place is covered by mountains, that the mountains run in ridges that are typically on a North-South axis, that at the foot of every mountain is a river on the valley bottom, that next to every river is a road, and that every town is sited at the bend in one of those rivers. Last year, it helped put the devastation of tropical storm Irene in context – the storm’s destruction made the news in New Zealand for days on end. At the moment, for me personally and professionally, this way of looking at Vermont puts my recent change of job, change of resort, and change of location in context.

Okemo is in Ludlow, which sits at a bend in the Black River as it turns to the East and makes its way towards the Connecticut River. The Connecticut is a major waterway that forms the border between Vermont and New Hampshire, travels through Massachusetts and eventually spills out into Long Island Sound at between the towns of Saybrook and Lyme, Connecticut. In the Black River Valley, the mountains are older and a little lower, so the valleys are a bit wider and shallower, and the rivers are a bit gentler, more placid. Sugarbush, where I am now the Director of the Ski & Ride School, is quite a bit further North and sits in the Mad River Valley with the towns of Warren and Waitsfield at its base. The section of mountains where Sugarbush is located is known as the “Spine of the Greens” and contains some of the highest mountains in the state – highest, steepest, and craggiest. For perspective, Mount Ellen, one of the two lift-serviced peaks in the resort, includes the longest ski lift and longest vertical drop in the state. The river is called the Mad River because, unlike every other waterway in the state, it flows from South to North, going up the valley and then around to the West before spilling into Lake Champlain. Because the peaks are so tall and steep, the valley floor is quite narrow and the towns are densely settled, with all development in Warren and Waitsfield perched directly on the banks of the river. Both towns were hit incredibly hard by Irene even by Vermont standards and, like all of our towns including Ludlow, Warren and Waitsfield have bounced back amazingly well in typical Yankee fashion.

What all of this means for me at the moment is that I haven’t simply switched resorts and communities, I have switched valleys. The Mad River Valley, as I’ve found over the past week, looms large in the minds and hearts of the people who live there. Someone is either from The Valley or not, has worked in The Valley before or not, and understands the particular sensibilities of the folks in The Valley or not. Though it is striking in its use in the lexicon of the area and the resort, it’s particularly interesting in what it tells us about the people who live and make their livelihood in The Valley. People in The Valley are very prideful of their small place in the world and proud to be deep in the heart of Vermont, both literally and figuratively - it is strikingly beautiful and definitely draws people who are particularly devoted to their passions, skiing and riding at Sugarbush among them. I don’t mean prideful in a chest-thumping sort of way, rather it gives them a sense of being in a place that’s a little different, a little bit separated, and definitely reliant on themselves as a community to sink or swim together. I am not from The Valley, I haven’t had a lot of exposure to The Valley, and as an outsider coming in, it’s important that I respect what makes the place so great and so different.

My sense of things is that the ski industry in America is at the end of an era where the watering down of skiing and riding and the resorts where we pursue them was the norm, and at the start of one where adventure is coming back into it’s rightful place in our lives. At Sugarbush and in The Valley, the response to this idea is “Duh, where have you been?!” Well, I’ve been in a very different valley, not better or worse but different, and I’m now very excited to be in The Valley. Every morning when I arrive at work and I look up from the Mad River to the tops of Lincoln Peak and Mount Ellen, I’m aware that I’ve arrived somewhere special. T.S. Elliot said in 'Little Gidding' “The end is where we start from”, and that’s true of moving from one valley to the next and from one resort to another. My time at Okemo and the Black River Valley has ended and my time at Sugarbush and the Mad River Valley has started. And I just can’t wait to ski here!

Signing Off from Wanaka

As often as I travel, some things never fail to amaze me. This morning, Monday, I woke in Wanaka, New Zealand where I am now sitting amidst packed bags. At the end of my day, a very long day, I'll be in the high desert of Arizona for a few days of contemplation before heading home to Vermont. Despite the lack of snow here in New Zealand (until today, apparently), I've had a terrific season of teaching at Cardrona, benefiting from their exceptionally professional staff and their incredibly welcoming atmosphere. They really made me feel at home, something for which I'm very grateful. I've enjoyed being a ski teacher this season as much as I have in a very long time. Still, new adventures await me at Sugarbush Resort in Vermont - I'm definitely excited, I have a lot to learn and there's a lot to do. In the meantime, I'll take one last look at the always jaw-dropping Southern Alps before getting my flip-flops some much-needed outdoor exercise on my way home. So, that's me done, signing off from Wanaka after another winter. Until next time ...

Come On, Spring, Hurry Up!

Just my typical day off stroll to town along Lake Wanaka. Ho-hum.

The ebb and flow of my days here in Wanaka as a ski instructor at Cardrona differs in ways big and small from home in Vermont. Principal among those is how we get to work and the logistics involved. Staff vans pick up everyone at selected locations in town, swing by the town office in Wanaka for a head count, and then we make the forty minute drive to Cardrona - twenty minutes from town to the bottom of the crazy, windy, mountainous, unpaved access road and another twenty minutes from there to the resort. All in, from the time I walk out of my house in the morning at 7:00AM it takes about an hour. The folks here find it amazing that at home in Ludlow, I could roll out of my house and be at my old job at Okemo in five or ten minutes, with the largest chunk of that time spent waiting for my engine block to heat up on cold winter days.

One upside of the logistics of getting to work here is that I do get a few minutes of downtime each morning, looking out at Lake Wanaka and the Southern Alps and observing the change in seasons. Wanaka is far enough south that at this time of year we see daily reminders that spring is on its way. Some of the signs are funny. Are the street lamps still on when we are leaving town? Are they still on when we're at the pickup spot? Do we need sunglasses when we get to work? On the road? In town?! Over the past week, there has been a significant increase in the noise from the birds in the trees around our house in the morning, in the amount of traffic on the roads, and in the number of people exercising off their winter insulation as I leave my house. In late August and September here on the South Island, we add something like three minutes of daylight every day, and we feel it! Like Spring everywhere, all of the changes come with a great sense of relief and release. Winter may 'set in' but 'spring has sprung', for crying out loud.

I head home from New Zealand next week to start my new role as the director of the Sugarbush Ski & Ride School. I'm very much looking forward to my first September in New England in a long time and I'm anxious to get cracking. In the meantime, I'll make use of all of the spring and all of the daylight I can get.

Lessons Well-Learned

A piste marker at Cardrona, essential
when air and snow are the same color

One of the indications of a great lesson, about skiing and riding or otherwise, is that it resonates with the student not only on the day and at the time, but also for weeks and even years afterwards. I am fortunate to have been the recipient of many great lessons as a skier and a ski pro, taught to me by some truly remarkable people. Some of those lessons are about technical skiing and teaching, some are about the business of snow sports, and many of them continue to inform me on a broader level, at a higher altitude.

After finishing my undergraduate degree more than twenty years ago, I moved to Colorado with some close friends and began my journey. In the years since, as a skier, coach, teacher, and trainer, I have been very fortunate to work and become friends with many pros and guests from around the world and from among several generations. Each contributes in some way to my understanding of skiing and ski teaching and to the joys I find in them. At times, whether I’m making wedge turns on the beginner hill, simplifying the world for nervous intermediates, giggling with great kids as we rip around, training instructors, and coordinating programs, certain lessons percolate to the surface. I work hard to take them to heart and to continue to learn from them.

Marty Harrison, Dan Bergeron and the many staff, guests and friends in Ludlow and at Okemo with whom I have shared so much over the past eleven seasons have helped me hone my own concepts of skiing, ski teaching, ski philosophy, line-up joke telling, edge bevels, the restorative effects of good Italian cooking, the psychological benefits of smoked salmon, why kids rule and why teaching them is a privilege, and how to find great satisfaction in eking out a living in such a beautiful place. I am grateful to and for all of them. Period.

Why the contemplative and rearward-looking histrionics while a big winter storm hammers the Southern Alps here in Wanaka? I’ve just accepted a big challenge, a major shift in my role in the industry, and I’ll need to take all of those well-learned lessons and put them into practice daily. I have accepted the position of Director of the Sugarbush Ski & Ride School in Warren, Vermont. I am excited and I have a lot to learn, but I am confident that I am ready, that Sugarbush represents a terrific opportunity for me, and that I can help lead the school there into an increasingly successful future. So, as I look ahead, please forgive me as I also take a few moments to look back and consider where I’ve been. Soon enough, I’ll be in Vermont charging forward.

In the meantime, it’s dumping at Cardrona right now and I’ll be in civies on my day off tomorrow enjoying all of it. If I’ve learned anything in my life as a ski pro, it’s that we have to take the time to enjoy our life as simple skiers when the opportunities present themselves. This coming winter in Vermont, I’ll look forward to doing that and more at Sugarbush!

After writing the foregoing, I did in fact have a great day of skiing except for the fact that we couldn't see past our noses. Can't have it all, I guess, but tomorrow ...


Yours truly dropping in

Darkest Before The Dawn

The view from Bremner Bay in Wanaka this morning

It’s dark out there. Very windy, very ominous, and very dark. Visibility up in the mountains is quite poor, there was icing on the lifts this morning and the wind is howling. Here in town it’s warm as I roam around on a day off, and one would think that looking upwards and seeing the storm slamming the mountains of the Mount Aspiring National Park while it’s so warm would not be a good thing - at home in Vermont that certainly would be the case. Here, like so many other details of the weather, precisely the opposite is true. With the tree line at an elevation barely above town and the skiable terrain all on the top half of the mountains, warm weather in town doesn’t necessarily mean the dreaded “r” word up on the hill – quite the opposite. It can be downright tropical at the lakeside while the driest, fluffiest, dreamiest snow this side of Hokkaido falls on our resorts. Of course, that hasn't happened in a while.

The resorts here in Wanaka have done a good job keeping conditions reasonably good for our guests, particularly so at Cardrona where I work, but we’ve all waited for the current storm with more than a bit of anxiety. So, as I look up the hill and understand that today may be only for the most intrepid skiers and riders, I have been a bit giddy with anticipation for the snow that is falling. Cardies' operations crew may have been doing an amazing job, but I’d love for them to get a break while I rip around and enjoy some fresh powder in the off-piste terrain that has been unskiable for a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed, tomorrow will be the day. It’s always darkest before the dawn, as the expression goes, and maybe it’s always ominous before the pow. My fat skis await me in the locker room and I expect to let them loose in the morning. Gratefully.

Seeing The Light

Sunrise view from Cardrona Alpine Resort

Here in Wanaka, we’re nearing the end of the busiest two weeks of the season. During the “school holidays”, all New Zealand and Australian schools are out and families often travel for their vacations. At home in the US, ski resorts depend on the December holidays, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. birthday long weekend in mid-January, and Presidents Week in February for an enormous portion of our annual business, particularly in the Northeast. The school holidays here in NZ affect our season in similar fashion, except that it all happens in a single two week period and that those two weeks happen to be the second and third weeks of the season. As evidenced by my complete inability to post anything on this blog since I arrived in NZ almost a month ago, the importance of these first few weeks puts a lot of pressure on the resorts here and, especially with the often spotty snow at this time of year, it can be a bit stressful. This year has been no exception but now, at the end of the second week, we can see the light.

For the 2012 season here in Wanaka, I’ve switched resorts. After five seasons at Treble Cone including the past four as a program coordinator, supervisor, staff psychologist, spreadsheet guru, mass-scale-guest-service-maven and ‘any-problem-that-comes-down-the-pike-go-to-guy’, I am exceptionally happy to have moved to the other side of town and to be simply teaching skiing at Cardrona Alpine Resort. While Treble Cone is justly renown for being a ‘skiers mountain’, Cardrona is a much busier, very smoothly run family resort and it’s a great place to be a ski teacher. The instructors are quietly a remarkably impressive group - no chest beating here, no bravado, just good dedicated professional teachers from all over the world. All of the staff at Cardies have been incredibly welcoming to me and  have gone out of their way to make me feel at home and appreciated, for which I am very grateful. One of the interesting sidelines for me this year is that it’s the first fresh start I’ve had as an instructor in a very long time, and the truth is that it’s refreshing to simply start from scratch. The best part is that I’ve been able to do this while still living in Wanaka, maintaining the many friendships that have become so meaningful to me and making new ones at my new home mountain. With a less stressful (and marginally more lucrative) working life, I’m able to focus more on my skiing and my teaching, finding joy in the reasons I got into this business in the first place.

The holidays will officially end this weekend, and for now that’s a good thing. I’m pooped. Seriously tired. I’ve been getting a ton of work with a diverse group of great guests and I’ve been able to bring a lot of energy to the job, but I’m definitely ready for some rest. It’s not so much ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’, because the busy period is such a great time to be at the resort. It’s more that the end of the holidays will bring an opportunity to get some rest and shine the light of day on how we’ve done, and then to return to our mountain next week with renewed energy and enthusiasm. In the meantime, I’m going to try to levitate across my living room and get into bed early without having to expend much energy - I’ll need all of it for work tomorrow.

Talking About Cars, From New England to The World

Town hall in Grafton, Vermont in March

In the nineteenth century, Yankee clipper ships were instrumental in the growth of the United States as an industrial power. The sailors from ports from Connecticut to Maine raced around the world’s oceans bringing American raw materials and industrial products to Europe and Asia, making friends, opening markets, spreading the gospel of democracy and capitalism and, occasionally, empire building. No, this is not a post about the state of America’s relationship with the world, our economy, or our current political situation. It’s about radio. One radio show in particular.

I giggle a bit when I imagine the reaction some of the Yankee sailors would have encountered when they arrived on the far side of the world and the locals first heard their accents. [N.b. For folks here in America, a “Yankee” is someone from New England, meaning the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine with the notable exception of baseball players. Yes, it’s ironic that the baseball Yankees are from New York and are reviled in New England, but that’s another story altogether.] Consider, if you will, the iconic ‘paaahk yaw caaaah in Haaavaahd Yaaad’ (read: park your car in Harvard Yard) accented Bostonian arriving in nineteenth century Japan (for reference, think of the accents in the film Good Will Hunting). Granted, this year the same person would be able to have a very interesting conversation with any Japanese baseball fan about the pros and cons of Bobby Valentine as a baseball manager, but I digress. Along with the accent, these intrepid Yankees brought with them a freshness, unencumbered by hierarchical class society and its stultifying self-consciousness. Easy in their openness, quick to laugh out loud at anything remotely funny, and genuinely curious, the world’s first wide exposure to Americans must have been entertaining at a minimum. Ok, ok, I do like where I live and I’m biased, but it does crack me up to think about some jamoke from Southie roaming around the globe in a sailing ship. But again, this is about a radio show.

For the past twenty-five years, a couple of brothers from Cambridge (“aaah feh city”) have been hosting a radio show on National Public Radio once a week (and for 35 years over all). It’s called Car Talk (“Caaah Taaahhk”). The show's hosts, Tom and Ray Magliozzi (a/k/a Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers), are graduates of MIT, are owners of a repair shop Cambridge, Massachusetts, and are bearers of accents that make Kennedys sound like Roosevelts. The premise of the show is that the guys field phone calls from listeners about their car troubles. Sounds simple enough. The subjects frequently proceed into the real issues at hand – relationships, travel tips, dispute resolution, buyers advice and remorse, dealing with dim-witted brothers, lazy mechanics, and so forth. I’m not particularly a car guy and, though I have learned a fair bit from listening to Tom and Ray over the years, any information I get about cars has been secondary to why I’ve been listening. The guys are simply funny in a totally unpretentious, incredibly inclusive and endlessly entertaining way. Mostly, the guys crack themselves up and they manage to crack me up as well. This past week, much to the chagrin of their many fans, Tom and Ray announced that they will be retiring from live radio. As one of them noted: if my brother retired, how would we know? I like to think of Click and Clack as refurbished, updated ambassadors of our particular sensibility and character here in New England, carried on the airwaves instead of by clipper ships. And yes, I do realize that’s a stretch but work with me here.

In my years as a ski race coach, I hit the road with the team every Friday night for our weekend of collegiate races and would time our departure so we could all listen to Tom and Ray on the radio. In the few years when I was out of the ski business and in the dark world of the weekend warrior, Tom and Ray again accompanied on my every-weekend drives to the mountains. Now that I’ve been at it full-time in the ski business for well over a decade, Tom and Ray accompany me in a different way. I download their podcasts to my iPod and listen to them while I ride the spin bike at the gym I use in New Zealand in the summer/winter/whatever. I miss my bicycle while I’m away and I hate spin classes, so I close myself in the spin room of the gym when there’s nobody else in there and I listen to the boys. By mid-season in Wanaka, there’s enough sunlight still outside when I get to the gym that I’ll set up shop in the spin room with the lights off. The problem is that I get lost in listening to Car Talk and occasionally can be found alone in a dark spin room, sweating profusely, and laughing out loud all by myself. It’s given quite a fright to a few people over the years, but it makes me happy. What can I say?! There I am, as far from the ports of New England as one can get, finding some entertainment in the sounds of the people from home, the personalities from home, in a way that has unified my various experiences in the ski business. They’ve traveled with me all these years, and I’m grateful for them.

Car Talk will continue on the radio in a ‘best of’ format for years to come and I have a library of back episodes of the show that I have yet to hear. I’ll be able to listen to them for some time. Still, it’s a little bittersweet, the end of an era. So, going forward, it’ll take just a little longer to explain to people why every cab and limo driver in the world is referred to as Pikup Andropov, customer service people as Heywood Jabuzoff, and law firm partners as H. Louie Dewey. They’ll be missed, but I’ll still be laughing, by myself, in the dark, on the bike. Thanks guys!

For more on Car Talk and Tom and Ray's decision to retire, go to:
http://www.cartalk.com/content/time-get-even-lazier

Newport, New Hampshire in June