With sunshine, blue skies, 20 degrees of Fahrenheit and fresh snow, this is what people think about when they think of skiing. The Summit chair felt like a tanning booth, with the low mid-day sun reflecting off freshly fallen snow.
The conditions this year call for skiing. We cave. No house projects, just skiing. After all, the situation is in charge. We are skiers, so we go skiing. It is what fate calls for –Amor Fati.
In the days around the solstice, the sun hangs low in the south, not moving hardly at all.
The lighting conditions are as numerous and as specific as the snow conditions. Brightly sunlit trails are best, yellow lenses covered with freezing fog on flat light days are second best.
Fine tuning. There is nothing like brand new skis with virgin edges. Going out for the first turns…how will they ride? I used a ceramic stone to polish the edges, a skim of red wax, a little too warm for the day, but at least they will slide, it would be unconscionable to take them out without something on the base.
On Stein’s Run, the spine of the whales is flat snow, and the shape of the turn feels like the type that a surfer makes when carving up the face of a wave. The turn is shaped in long, luxurious arcs. You cannot be locked in to turn size. The terrain and the snow conditions determine the turn size. Long turns chew up all the soft snow available. The skis skim high and wide of exposed ice patches. The skier makes one turn for every two bumps with the bending skis taking advantage of every available roll and drop. Why waste these luxurious efficiencies because you want a 14-meter turn when the terrain prefers a 20-meter turn?
We know what the racers are doing. Mikaela has – what is it now – six slalom wins in a row! But we’re ski bums. The winningest skiers, at the moment, are us! We are on a lift and headed for the summit. This is the here and now. Stick with us kids. We’ll show you under the ropes.
The energy, the boundless carefree fun of skiing and, of course, the celebrating, afterwards. Wow, we skied side to side, full width natural snow on Black Diamond. A superb opportunity to practice focus. Mikaela can do it. So can you. It is a choice, a decision to drop distraction and to focus. When you have focus, you return to it again and again. Two skis return energy. Do not move the skis ever. Let the skis move the skis. The energy for the turn comes from the skis. To do otherwise is to waste valuable energy. Use the skis. You paid enough for them. You tuned them, waxed them, put some stickers on them, maybe? Now own them and become one with them.
Just before the holidays started, it rained hard all day, and the wind howled all night. You could imagine that it might not be good skiing. Don’t kid yourself. When has it ever not been good?
In the Valley:
As I wheeled into Warren Village, it was obvious that something was up. Cars were parked as far as I could see. I parked somewhere south of Granville Gulf. I opened the door to the Warren United Church and there was room for just one more. Each time that the door opened, there was room for just one more. The town and the church were packed to the rafters for the service of a skier that nobody seemed to know. John Michael Bridgewater. You don’t know that name? How about “Toons”?
Barrie Fisher recounted some high-flying GS turns when she dove under Toons and used him for a breakaway gate. Beautiful girls who can ski like that are rare, so being the red-blooded and possibly red-waxed ski professional that he was, he tracked her down at the lift and a friendship was made. Tim Piper recounted a glorious powder day at Aspen when Toons played the “no friends on a powder day” card. See ya!
I stood in the back with a full complement of ski bums. In her eulogy, the Deacon closed with words of enlightenment. There was talk of skiing Tuckerman Ravine, the Mad River Valley, and Aspen. The heights: that’s what Mike sought. The loss of a skier like Toons feels like that jolt of awareness that you get when you drop a pinch of snow down the back of your neck before a race.
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