Nordic Tracks columns are filed the Monday before the Thursday The Valley Reporter shows up on newsstands. And I begin thinking about the next column almost as soon as I file. Usually this works out fine. I’m not reporting news after all.
I had thought this column would be a season recap. On Thursday afternoon, March 19 that made sense. What with the all-brown ground and the dry long-range outlook. I haven’t been on my xc skis in about two weeks. Not because I didn’t want to ski. Here’s what it looked like at Blueberry Lake on Wednesday the March 18. Those red-topped stakes mark trail number 3.
And here’s how I thought this column would begin:
“It happens every year. Winter turns to spring. But usually it’s not like falling off a cliff. It’s more gradual than that. More like a teenager trying to decide between two options, neither of which perfectly matches a desire itself not well understood.
So, we take what comes. Not that we have a choice. Easy to say. For the second year in a row March has behaved more like April, supposedly the cruelest month. Were T.S. Eliot a Vermont skier he might revise that line. But I’d ask him not to revise the line about winter keeping us warm. One of the delights of Nordic skiing is the warmth one generates out on the trail.”
By the time this column runs (March 26) we’ll know if March spurned us. We’ll know how we reacted. It was all going so well. Until it wasn’t. For a skier like me – avid but older and wiser – it’s not about snow. It’s about when. A meltdown in January is one thing. My emotional resilience is intact. By March, not so much. One measure of this – more objective than the falling-off-a-cliff feeling – is the falling-off-a-cliff graphic of the snow stake atop Mt. Mansfield. Since March 4 the snowpack on Vermont’s highest peak has shrunk more than two feet. For places like Blueberry Lake and Ole’s, which didn’t even have two feet on the ground on March 4, it means bare ground.
Now as I write this (midday Friday, March 20) I’m watching the snow coming down, as it’s been for a couple hours. The ground is white again, but if the forecast on my phone is to be believed it will change to rain within the hour. If it doesn’t, maybe the snow will add up to a skiable depth by the time it stops.
Yesterday (Thursday March 19), some forecasters were predicting a massive snowstorm for Sunday-Monday (March 22-23). One forecaster saw the possibility of three feet in that time period. Another saw 2-5”/hour snowfall rates. Twenty-four hours later we’re being told we might get 4-8”. We’ll see. As it happened, at the elevation of our two Nordic ski centers, the “storm” total was more in the 2-3” range. Not enough to run the grooming machines. And as it so often happens this time of year, the snow turned to rain before the over-night temperature drop turned it all into a frozen mess.
Enough of that. Back to St. Patrick’s Day: on that day there was just enough in the long-range forecast to breathe a little life onto the dying embers of hope. These are the forecasts that look at what’s happening in the equatorial Pacific and Alaska as a harbinger of our weather two weeks out. But a lot can happen between there and here, then and now. Just one more decent snowfall, enough to slide on. Too much to ask? A reasonable expectation for mid-March. Two days later, Thursday, March 19, the forecast maps are lit up like a Christmas tree. Weather porn. Psychic whiplash.
We’re lucky to live in a place with so many options for outdoor activities. Year round. Around here, winter takes a backseat to none of the other seasons. If I look back at my preseason punch list I see there are still some things I wanted to do that I haven’t yet. And now it feels like it’s over just as I’m hitting my stride.
I’m not alone. Many of the passing conversations I’ve been having the past couple weeks are a variation on this theme. I don’t think it’s quite right to say we’ve been cheated. It’s more that we’ve been surprised in an unhappy way. That cliff? We didn’t see it because we were too focused on the lavish snowpack right beneath our feet. By the time this column runs we’ll know whether it was in fact a cliff or a cornice, and whether we land in the muddy ruts of our dirt roads or the powder stash of our dreams. In the meantime, I’m still reliving the many happy conversations about how great the skiing’s been this season. No matter what happens from here, we’ll always have that.
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