“To ‘know’ reality you cannot stand outside it and define it; you must enter into it, be it, and feel it.” – Alan Watts, “The Wisdom of Insecurity.”
Don’t get me wrong, I think that chairlifts are wonderful – most of the time. But this is the Deep December of 2025. Wait, it’s early December. It cannot be this good! Not yet, there is no base, at least I have no base of reference for this pre-Solstice skiing. We are accustomed to freeze and thaw cycles that build a frozen, refrozen, cementitious covering of rock, root, and roll. It is almost inconceivable, and yet, there is deep and soft snow. Instincts are not 100% reliable. They say “dive,” because there is fresh, natural snow. The entrenched memory says, “whoa, it isn’t even the solstice yet.”
At the trailhead, I overheard this from a group of ski touring folks, “He said to me that it was about the ‘going up’ and not the ski down, and that’s when I got it.” What a remarkable breakthrough! Nordic meets alpine. Telemark is squeezed into the middle with the split boards. East meets West and the circle completes. Knowledge is a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of wisdom.
Breaking trail through this Deep December snow was pure pleasure. The snow is so light that it does not offer resistance, and yet so deep, that it supports. This is a vintage snow that should be bottled up and saved. But you cannot bottle it. It is here today and gone by Thursday in a predicted 50 degrees and rain. Sad.
There is the pleasure of your crew when skiing. Ideally you are working out decisions about where to go when skiing powder, which is a rare and pleasant experience. I had a taste of this vintage snow, just a taste, but it was champagne. A reported 59 inches” at Sugarbush, 177 inches” incredible inches at the cloud-based Jay Peak, and somewhere in the middle, was Stowe.
Ridgelines are hard to read when they are obscured by clouds. What then are your reference points? An existing skin track? Who knows where that goes? So, then you must read terrain. A compass can help you identify which ridge faces which cardinal direction. A topographic map studied in advance would be helpful. It would also be nice if we had more gas in the tank. Young people, those with boundless energy have not yet realized that concern.
Your own skin track that you set on the approach is a reliable reference point. It definitely leads out. You know from whence it came. The obstacle is not the path; the path is the path.
Back on the skis. After what seemed like a prolonged absence, especially in this Deep December, it is a relief to be back on skis. This we know, how to do it and do it well, with efficiency and looseness. Remove the effort and fly. What is the path to competency? It is improvement, one step at a time. You build on each improvement; each gathered level of competence and build from there. But at some point, you have to jump onto rapidly accelerating skis and shoot them out from under you, high and early into the next turn. You must launch, off the cornice, and into 20 or more feet of air. There is no middle way.
The Tao marries well with skiing philosophy. It is the measure of efficiency. In the new Winter/Spring Stowe Guide, Dave Hatoff describes efficiency in motion in his excellent article on backcountry skiing. Among the Ten Thousand Things, two things stand out: the acceptance of what is and the aiming for the peaks. Somewhere along this path we find the Middle Way.
But we know this path to fluid movement. We have been this way before. As we age, our comfort zones may have been cinched up a bit. I don’t know how Lindsey Vonn does it. It must be the coaching. Aksel whispers sweet Norwegian nothings in her ear and off she flies. Lindsey Vonn has overruled all the old man objections – she has had so many operations including a knee replacement – and she just won a WC Downhill.
The Harwood High School CARE students have come up against a Ray Bradbury level of controversy. If Ray Bradbury were writing today, would he write about the combustion temperature of film? Do kids, or even adults read Fahrenheit 451 anymore? I have read that 47%, or maybe it’s 1600 % of the United States reads below a sixth grade reading level. Sad.
The Season Opener Champagne Cowbell party is Saturday at Mount Ellen, pop some corks and celebrate this bubbly start to the season!
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