Snow Day
No, it is not snowing here on the hilltop, but as I look out to the north, for the first time this season, I see snow on the tops of the San Gabriel Mountains to the direct north and the San Jacinto Mountains to the slight northeast. It does not look like a full-on snow covering, but just a dusting. Nevertheless, it is a reminder of all the fun I have had in the snow over the years.
I first encountered snow in Wisconsin in 1961. We had just moved up from the tropical valley where we lived in Costa Rica and found ourselves in one of the cold and snowy northern midwestern states where my mother had decided to go to attend graduate school. My memories of Wisconsin, while they did include snow and ice (particularly lake ice on Lake Mendota where ice fishing and ice boat racing were all the rage), those memories are mostly of extreme cold weather more than snow. The snow memories really came into play when we moved in 1965 to Maine. It all began with our arrival by car (a 1962 Chrysler New Yorker with the first electric windows and seat belts I had ever enjoyed) during a tempestuous blizzard that buried our car at the Inn we were staying at in Poland Spring, Maine. People often say that it doesn’t snow like it used to and for my memory and recollections that is totally the case. I recall the snowplow manufactured drifts in the Inn parking lot, once the blizzard ended, as being about 12 feet high. It took us a whole day to uncover our car from all that snow. I also remember learning about the day-glo styrofoam balls that everyone put on their car antennae so that they could see each other approaching at intersections since the snow drifts prevented lateral visibility otherwise. Maine is where I learned to ski and skiing proved to be one of my favorite sports over the years.
I often joke that I am not inclined to participate in any activity that involves too much gravity. That is my self-deprecating humor about my bulk and the tendency to Newtonian physics to work particularly harshly on on my bodily mass. But skiing is about using the momentum created by gravity to gracefully wend your way down a slope at speeds that thrill you and amaze onlookers. My wife Kim is not and has never been a skier, but she did see me ski in my prime and still comments about how amazing it was to see me slide effortlessly down the slopes. In all fairness, I was a pretty good skier, but not so much better than many other good skiers and certainly less accomplished than many others. But when you are big like I am, there are very few opportunities to be called graceful and I will admit that many people who saw me ski thought I was pretty damn graceful. The biggest advantage I had was that about the only place that non-skiers could really see me ski was at the bottom of the main run approaching the ski lodge. That finishing slope is almost always relatively gentle and comes off some sort of last headwall, so it is just right for a final flourish for the crowds when, in fact, it is a much easier spot than 95% of the rest of the mountain and the snow is usually very well -packed so as to create the optimal conditions for a little showing off.
While I learned to ski in Maine and then honed my skills in Europe during high school, I only skied a little during college since Upstate New York and particularly Greek Peak (the ski area closest to Ithaca…in the very Greek settled part of New York State) were not that special or that snowbound for skiing purposes. Post-graduate skiing in New England got me started again on my love affair with skiing, but it was a trip out to Utah in the mid-80s that really ignited my passion for the sport. The snow in Utah is light and powdery as only snow that has travelled over the desert to deposit itself on the Wasatch Mountains can be. To the west are the Sierra’s where Sierra Cement is the name given to the cold wet stuff that falls most often on those mountains. To the East in Colorado, the snow is good to be sure, but I never found it to be as great as the light powder of Utah. So, Utah is where I first bought a dream ski condo in Park City, Utah in 1991.
For the next 15 years I owned a progression of two ski condos and three ski houses. I even fulfilled one of my childhood dreams of owning a big and beautiful Frank Lloyd Wright style ski house of 11,000 square feet that my family and I enjoyed for five years over the turn of the millennium. In Utah, you have a choice of many ski areas and in Park City, there are three to choose from. The most upscale and best groomed area is Deer Valley and that is where I tended to base my skiing over those fifteen years. I was actually a member of the Deer Valley Club and used to go up every morning I was there during ski season and use my locker there to launch my early morning first-chair runs on the immaculately groomed slopes of one of the most noteworthy ski areas in the world. On a powder day when most of the grooming had been done before the last of the powder had fallen, the first runs down those sun-dappled slopes create some of my fondest athletic memories. I would put on my “fat-boy” skis (a name that really resonated with my persona) and glide off the chairlifts to the top of one run or another and literally glide down the slope on a cushion of air and light powder snow. When skiing powder, you have to sit more back on your skis than you do on an otherwise groomed hard-pack slope, so you would feel like you were floating down the slope with the powder snow flying off in the opposite direction of every turn. When you got to the bottom on those first runs, you would look up to the slope you had just traversed and see your tracks and feel about as all-powerful as I’ve felt in my life.
Warren Miller is the famous ski videographer whose ski videos are on the screens at every ski area in the world. They are inspiring videos of men and women conquering the biggest slopes in the world and doing more daredevil antics on snow than any of us could ever imagine. Watching a Warren Miller video would inspire you to get out there for first tracks in the morning and make you want to go heli-skiing in some distant range like the Bugaboos of British Columbia. I never actually went heli-skiing, but for my fortieth birthday, I did treat ten friends and myself to a day of powder skiing via Snow-Cat on the ridge lines of the High Uinta Mountains of Utah, just south of the Wasatch Range. It was a glorious day and perhaps my most memorable birthday for all the excitement and camaraderie it gave me. There are few things more inspiring than a sunny day on a snow-covered remote mountaintop where your only job was to avoid losing yourself in an avalanche.
I stopped skiing in 2007 at the age of 53. that was more circumstantial than anything. I had never injured myself and that was a good thing for someone my size skiing as hard as I used to. But Kim did not ski and my career on Wall Street came to an abrupt end that year, so ending my skiing career on a high note was appropriate and I sold my last ski house in Park City just before the market crashed on Park City real estate. Now I sit at my desk on my hilltop, looking at the distant snow-covered peaks of Southern California and remember my skiing days very fondly. My other great sporting love is riding motorcycles and this trip down memory lane is causing me to think that today i should mount up and head towards Mount Palomar for a ride. It’s not exactly skiing and i certainly do not hope for snow, but it does involve speed and feeling light as a feather, so I will call it a snow day for old time sake.