It’s the most wonderful time of the year. The leaves have fallen, sweaters are banal, and pumpkin spice lattes are finally on the way out. Santa Baby haunts your local FM radio. You can simply exist without sweating through your underwear. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s ski season.
But it’s not quite that simple. Ski season is not binary. It is a process that each of us goes through once a year, and like any good story has a clear beginning, middle, and end. In fact the story arc of ski season can be summed up in five distinct stages.
Stage 1 – The Stoke
This is the time when you pore over Unofficial Networks for the first reports of snow on Beartooth Pass or Big Sky or Mount Hood. You spend hours comparing flex and sidecut profiles to pick your quiver for the season. You cook breakfast in your ski boots for no reason whatsoever. You watch and rewatch the best ski movies ever made. You pour a little out and maybe cry a bit for Shane, Liz, J.P., and the others. Your focus is singular: all you want to do is ski.
The Stoke might come during a really smokey July, or when the first dusting of snow settles on the horizon. It can last for months. A few hopeless addicts never lose it. But for most of us, this is the time we’re most excited to ski, and it comes before we ever step into our bindings. The Stoke is all about anticipation.
Stage 2 – The Junk Show
Here it is. You bided your time, and now you’re ready to get out there. Of course this is when it all falls apart. Sure, you had all summer to get those core shots fixed, and to replace that broken boot buckle, and to sew the giant gash in your skins. You had plenty of time to replace the batteries in your transceiver. But you didn’t.
You waited until the first day of skiing to remember that your boots, skis, poles, skins, shovel, probe, beeper, goggles, hats, gloves, buffs, good socks, and long underwear are scattered across storage units, closets, and Subarus in three different states. You may wake up on the first day of the season and realize you don’t have any idea where your skis are.
Rest assured that you’re not alone. You can count on someone in your group forgetting poles, skins, or boots on the first day out. It happens. The Junk Show is an essential part of ski season, and serves an important role.
When the group is barely capable of forward locomotion, it keeps the expectations low. It lets you move slowly and laugh and think about the snow. To dig around and get a feel for how the season’s snowpack is setting up. This is a good thing. Embrace it. The skiing isn’t any good right now and it might just save your life. This is also when you find that twenty bucks in your ski pants from last year, so, bonus.
Stage 3 – The Honeymoon
It’s on now. This is when you hear the most about skiing in public (during The Stoke most people tend to be more private). Stinky ski pants are common fare at the brewery during the Honeymoon, and some folks are starting to get goggle tans. It’s mid season and the skiing is pretty good. People still don’t hate shoveling out their cars and on a good day you can get away with skipping work.
Early morning alarms are still exciting, and the days are still short enough that you can ski dark to dark and still spell your name when you’re done. Any dilettante will tell you that The Honeymoon is the best part of ski season.
Stage 4 – The Sweet Spot
But you know better. The Honeymoon is great, but later in the year the storms hit harder, the snowpack is deeper, and stability gets better every day. At the same time that your neighbor starts tuning up her mountain bike, you’re still leaving the house early and coming home late. The best time to ski is after most people are burned out.
Your friends spend this time building their stoke for summer. Meanwhile you’re skiing steep couloirs and improbable pow days in solitude. Enjoy it. These are the best days. The Sweet Spot is yours and you earned it. Don’t forget to wear sunscreen.
Stage 5 – The Icarus Gambit
Of course all good things come to an end. Too often we don’t know how far we can push it until waxen wings melt in the sun and we plummet to our deaths, or something. Did you just spend seven hours walking on dry dirt to ski like 300 vertical feet? Are your skins caked in mud? Are you wearing only running shorts and a cowboy hat? Maybe it’s time to hang ’em up. Some people will try to convince you that skiing is a year round pursuit. Those people either a) go skiing for a living or b) are unreceptive of reason.
Skiing is great, but so are a lot of other things. Go for a bike ride. Drink a mint julep. Plant a garden or something. And for Chrissake put all your ski gear away in the same spot.
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