Ski In Ski Out
A road trip across country at my age is bound to raise lots of memories. Indeed, today was a day of memories unlike yesterday. There is nothing wrong with the ride from San Diego through Las Vegas and up through the Virgin Valley Gorge into the red rocks of Southern Utah. In fact, it’s fair to say it’s one of my favorite areas of the United States, but we were just there two weeks ago. In fact, the Rt. 15 track with its branches off towards Hurricane and Zion and the Cedar Breaks and Brianhead were places we rode through again for the umpteenth time in May (it never gets old). We went a little further north through the verdant Fishlake National Forrest to Richfield, which feels like the farming center of Utah. We were struggling to solve Betty’s digestive issues and that all ended with a very early appointment at a vet in Grand Junction, a whopping 220 miles from Richfield. To make the only open appointment at 8am, we set the alarm for 4:30am and beelined it for three hours on Rt. 70 in the pre-dawn and dawn hours when the trucks are smart enough to stay off the winding canyon-splitting interstate Highway. I watched the GPS go from 8:22am at the start (at about 4:57am) down to an ultimate arrival at 7:52am in the vet’s parking lot. I did that with one nine minute rest area bathroom stop, which means I averaged 79.5mph in what ranges between a 70-80mph road. Not bad, but no Cannonball Run, whose record now stands at an average 109mph across the full continent.
Once we had gotten to the vet and Betty was pronounced to be on the mend and got some other meds to speed that along, we found ourselves in the middle of the Rockies from Grand Junction to Denver. Rt. 70 wends it’s way through what may be the true heart of American ski country. Driving through Vail and Loveland Passes to a height of 11,992 feet and over the Continental Divide, it is impossible not to think about skiing and all of my years with the sport. As we were driving out of Denver, SiriusXM radio saw fit to play Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild. That’s a song that always takes me back to 1968 and my high school motorcycling heritage. But that memory comes and goes. While driving through Loveland Pass, SiriusXM put on Lou Christie’s 1966 hit, Lightnin’ Strikes, which made the #1 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 in February that year. I remember that song like it was yesterday because I first heard it that February on the Poland Spring Ski Hill in Maine, where I learned to ski at night on the single blue, 2,000 ft. run. That’s a song that dredges up my entire skiing history.
I first got on skis in Madison, Wisconsin, which is far too flat to have anything alpine and thus focused on nordic skiing (jumping and gliding rather than downhill). So, when we moved to Maine in January, 1966, I wanted to learn to ski right away. My mother let this twelve-year-old buy a pair of used wooden skis with metal edges and cable bindings. Then all I needed was to learn how to ski. Luckily, all my new Mainiac friends were all skiers and happy to oblige. Their idea of teaching skiing to a friend was to take me to the top and let me go down to figure things out for myself. In fairness, they did give me a pointer or two, but mostly this was DIY and OJT skiing. Those three years in Maine, when I skied an average of six days per week for the entire season (day and night), locked in the skiing muscle memory down deep.
When we moved to Italy in 1968, I picked up my new passion for motorcycling, but I also took my skiing passion to a new level. I upgraded my gear to world-class equipment. I got Kneissl White Star skis with Look Nevada all-steel bindings. These were monstrous 215cm heavy skis with the heaviest bindings ever produced. The skis went downhill very fast, but turning them took plenty of that muscle memory. In Europe I skied weekends at Terminillo Ski Area in the Apennines (two hours from Rome). I went on trips with friends’ families to places like San Martino de Castrozo in the Dolomites. And I went with my family for ski holidays to Zermatt and the like in Switzerland. If Maine got me started to the dulcet tones of Lou Christie, Europe made skiing a mainstream activity for me, especially when kids from school saw me ski at Terminillo and realized I was not all stumbling ox.
At Cornell, skiing took a back seat to getting my feet on solid collegiate ground, but nearby Greek Peak kept the ski edge honed. The working life in NYC almost put a nail in my skiing Jones because it was a long way off and my first wife didn’t ski and had no interest. But luckily, a divorced work friend got me to go up to Vermont during the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics and I got the double dose of ski bug revival. During the 80’s my crowd in Latin America banking (a bunch of Mormons) introduced me to Utah skiing, something better and unlike anything I had ever experienced. I also got a chance to ski the Chilean Andes. When my career took a turn putting me in Canada, I used it to ski the entire country from Mt. St. Anne in Quebec to Banff and Lake Louise in Alberta and Whistler/Blackcomb in British Columbia.
Then in 1992 I decided to buy a condo in Park City, Utah and to use it as my Christmas venue for my kids. For the next fifteen years, through five homes in Park City, I skied mostly Deer Valley and all three of my children became avid skiers with me. That ended in 2007 for a combination of reasons and I ended my forty-year love affair with the ski slopes. I got reasonably good and skied all over the world during those forty years. Most importantly, I passed the passion along to my kids and my daughter (probably the least passionate skier of my three kids) has succeeded in passing along that passion to her two daughters. It warms my heart every time I see videos of the little girls (ages 8 and 5 now) skiing long before I ever skied as a child.
It pleases me to know that my descendants have had the chance to be exposed to a wonderful wintertime sport like skiing. I don’t really care if it’s sking proper or snowboarding (my sons have done both). What’s important is not the form of their skiing or even the quality of their skiing. What matters is that they have had the opportunity to taste this wonderful pleasure of life that I enjoyed for many years.
While driving through Vail Pass I pointed out to Kim all the high-priced real estate on the hillsides and found myself explaining the difference between ski-out versus ski-in-ski-out versus off-piste ski houses. It reminded me that skiing is a luxury sport that is most often enjoyed by the privileged. I’m not so sure I started the sport as a privileged kid except in one way. I had a mother who had skied Tuckerman’s Ravine when skiing first started as a sport in the 1930’s. My privilege allowed me to ski-in to the sport and the completeness of the cycle of passing it on to my kids allowed me to ski-out of the sport with equal grace.