Question For You: The Best Of The Virus Year?
One Year On, It Is Time For Reflection.
Breckenridge lift line in Dec 2020 when the resort had “significantly reduced capacity.”
This year of sudden shut down when everything about lives has changed has thrown a lot of plans out the window. While many readers have found a way to get out in the snow, others have given this season a bye, and still others have taken up alternative snow sports, like cross-country, snow shoeing, and even fat biking.
Whatever path readers have taken, this entire year has been a significantly different experience, so different that many folks think it is the most distinctive experience of their entire lives, except perhaps war, injury, or spiritual enlightenment.
While we have all grumbled about what has been taken away, we might have also noticed that some changes and adjustments brought about by this virus have been a gift. Perhaps that gift had to do with how we enjoy the outdoors in winter, or what we’ve learned about your local ski area or fellow skiers or your skill level and pursuit of improvement. Or how you’ve managed to maintain fitness cooped up and socially isolated.
Question For You: On this COVID close down anniversary week, what’s the gift you have been given this year? Were you surprised? Can you keep this gift going into the future?
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Snow In Literature: Cross Country Snow
By Ernest Hemingway
(This is an excerpt from the short story which appeared in the collection In Our Time (1927). To read the complete story, click here.)
The funicular car bucked once more and then stopped. It could not go farther, the snow drifted solidly across the track. The gale scouring the exposed surface of the mountain had swept the snow surface into a wind-board crust. Nick, waxing his skis in the baggage car, pushed his boots into the toe irons and shut the clamp tight. He jumped from the car sideways onto the hard wind-board, made a jump turn and crouching and trailing his sticks slipped in a rush down the slope.
On the white below George dipped and rose and dipped out of sight. The rush and sudden swoop as he dropped down a steep undulation in the mountain side plucked Nick’s mind out and lift him only with the wonderful flying, dropping sensation in his body. He rose to a slight up-run and then the down, faster and faster in a rush down the last, long steep slope. Crouching so he was almost sitting back on his skis, trying to keep the center of gravity low, the snow driving like a sand-storm, he knew the pace was too much. But he held it. He would not let go and spill. Then a patch of soft snow, left in a hollow by the wind, spilled him and he went over and over in a clashing of skis, feeling like a shot rabbit, then stuck, his legs crossed, his skis sticking straight up and his nose and ears jammed with snow.
George stood a little farther down the slope, knocking the snow from his wind jacket with big slaps.
“You took a beauty, Mike,” he called to Nick. “That’s lousy soft snow. It bagged me the same way.”
“What’s it like over the khud?” Nick kicked his skis around as he lay on his back and stood up.
“You’ve got to keep to your left. It’s a good fast drop with a Christy at the bottom on account of a fence.”
“Wait a sec and we’ll take it together.”
“No, you come on and go first. I like to see you take the khuds.”
Nick Adams came up past George, big back and blond head still faintly snowy, then his skis started slipping at the end and he swooped down, hissing in the crystalline powder snow and seeming to float up and drop down as he went up and down the billowing khuds. He held to his left and at the end, as he rushed toward the fence, keeping his knees locked tight together and turning his body like tightening a screw brought his skis sharply around to the right in a smother of snow and slowed into a loss of speed parallel to the hillside and the wire fence.
[Editor Note: On April 5, PBS stations will be airing a new, three part series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick on Hemingway, who was an enthusiastic skier in Europe in the 20s. SeniorsSkiing.com previously published an excerpt from The Snows of Kilimanjaro, describing skiing in the Voralberg.]
Spring Comes to Wildcat
Long And Winding Runs. Great Views.
Getting ready for spring skiing at Tuckerman. Credit: Tamsin Venn
It was serendipity to arrive at Wildcat in the northern Presidential Mountains of New Hampshire the first week in March and find spring skiing. Many of us missed that part of the ski season last year in the pandemic shut-downs.
Due to its north facing slopes and deep snowpack, Wildcat usually is the last ski area to close in New Hampshire. This year it’s April 18.
While there, temps shot up to 66 degrees. Wildcat is not always so hospitable. It sits across the street from weather magnet Mt. Washington, tallest peak in the Northeast at 6,288 feet, and highest recorded wind speed 231 mph.
Away we go down Upper Catapult. Credit: Tamsin Venn
This year we were on the lookout for non-crowded midweek slopes, a friendly local atmosphere, and no state travel restrictions for us. Wildcat fit the bill.
The L-shaped parking area minimizes the schlep to the main lodge. Boot up from your tail gate, tiptoe across the icy parking lot, hike past four new, neon-colored porta-potties, get your RFID card zapped, and hop onto the Wildcat Express Quad. Seven minutes later, in one of the swiftest trips in skidom, you have reached the summit.
For several hours I lapped the Express Quad, zipping up-down-up, alternating from the left to the right flank on long, winding trails of 2,100 vertical feet. The trails draw you down as the head and shoulders of Mt. Washington rise. It’s like being in a movie… with good lighting.
Snow was corn, sweet, smooth. My left-foot steering was working as well as my right, always a good sign. Around 11, soft conditions required maneuvering into skied-off slots to save on thigh burn. Clearly early-morning skiing is best for spring skiing, even at a north facing mountain. But when I left early afternoonish, the parking lot was jammed. Spring fever had hit.
Although it has a reputation as an expert’s mountain, Wildcat has beginner terrain (20 percent)—Pole Cat is a 2.5 mile beginner trail, longest in New Hampshire—(see video article in this issue)— intermediate terrain (47 percent)—Lynx is a sweet roller with fun intermediate pitches—and expert terrain (33 percent)— famed black bump runs under the lift line. Midweek, you’ve got your turns to yourself and stress-free trail junctions.
The “cans” are display only. Credit: Tamsin Venn
Looking across to the top of Mt. Washington and thinking of spring skiing Tuckerman Ravine, you will always be grateful for the Express Quad that whips you to the area top at 4,028 feet. No hiking required. On wind holds, the Tomcat Triple gives you the bottom three-quarters.
When Vail Resorts bought Wildcat two years ago to add to its Epic mix, it took many by surprise. Wildcat is loved for its no-frills amenities and boot-scarred lodge, not exactly a Vail kind of place.
But a modern mega-resort corporation can’t erase the memories. My neighbor asked me:
“Does Wildcat still have those cold gondolas? When skiing there circa 1950s, the cable jammed [and] we near froze in the can in the hour it took to get them moving. When people did emerge at the top, all the men ran for the bushes! Anyway, it was exciting to ski there.”
It still is.
Click here for Wildcat Trail Map
Click Here for Wildcat Tickets
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