Into the Woods

I fully recognize that posting my first ski entry of the season on September 8 completely flies in the face of the message herein.

For better or for worse, I’ve been positioned amongst my friends, if not as an expert skier, at least as an expert on skiing. I can usually help people pick out the right gear and bargain for a good price, pick resorts for and plan vacations, find cool movies, etc… This past season, I got a few of my close friends much deeper into skiing than they ever planned to be. I can’t take full credit of course, great times at Killington and Heavenly certainly had their effect. Neverthless, I feel responsible for warning you (aforementioned friends and anybody desperate or bored enough to read this) about a phenomenon I discovered two seasons ago, in the fall of 2004, and which I am in severe danger of immersing myself in again…

I don’t want this post to become “confessions of an obsessed skier”, but the following demonstrates my point. In August/September of 2004, I got the skiing itch so I planned trips to Whistler and Tahoe and ogled in Freeskier Magazine (and purchased) a pair of limitted edition freestyle skis. In October/November, I bought my first share in a ski house in Killington. I also went to numerous ski movie premieres, watched many ski DVDs, checked out the Boston ski expo, performed a compete depth-first-search of several ski company web sites, and who knows what else. The point is, that by the time I went for my first tracks at Killington in mid-November, my ski stoke (weak translation: excitement), had peaked, as opposed to being in a state of acceleration, which it should have been, leading up to my Tahoe trip in January. Furthermore, I got out on the snow, and realized that I had not been looking forward to the skiing itself. Perhaps this is the charm of the skiing lifestyle, but I had forgotten to look forward to the act of digging my edges into the snow, and flying down the mountain.

The title of this post may lead you to believe that I posses a solution to this problem, I don’t. However, last season, Fall 05 -> Winter 06 I was at least aware of the issue. I didn’t buy any new gear until New Years, put off getting a house until early November, didn’t plan my first West Coast trip until Thanksgiving, and greatly limitted my ski movie screenings. (Though I did play quite a bit of “SSX on Tour” on my PS2.) As a result, the frozen fire didn’t really get stoked until I went to Killington for my first turns on the backend of Thanksgiving weekend. It built up rather organically throughout the rest of the season with high points during several weekends, Westcoast trips and Olympic moments. (see previous posts in the skiing category).

However, my epic last season consisting of making some really good friends at Killington and Tahoe, Jason taking up skiing like crazy out of nowhere, taking an amazing trip to Park City with Lauren (romantic dinners and powder), having a blowout trip to Tahoe in March highlighted by the freestyle camp and 70+ inches of snow, a surprise trip to Tahoe in April, and a season finale at Tuckerman’s Ravine, is raising the stoke even earlier than before. It doesn’t help that I need to replace both pairs of skis this season and am in ski-research mode. But the greatest source of the phenomenon this summer is the group of friends I have to feed off of. Talks with Jason in Palo Alto about new gear and trips to Tahoe, emails back and forth about ski movie premieres and ski house signups, general buzz about skiing, and perhaps a bit of cooler than normal September air, all make the ski season seem much closer than it is.

I don’t really have a good conclusion or specific main point. I’m also the last person to tell people to not take part in pre-season activities or get excited about skiing or riding or whatever, and this post probably just got you more stoked (or possibly more confused) than you were before. However, lets recognize a few things. The first day of skiing on two trails of Killington’s best blown snow, won’t live up to the British Columbian backcountry we’re sure to see in the MSP movie premiere. That day is also probably 60+ days off, so we have a lot of time to build up, go out for drinks, plan trips, watch movies, dream about new gear, and pray for Snow. Let’s enjoy it all together and lay the ground for the best season ever!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 8th, 2006 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Skiing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.