CHAPTER 1
THE SPORTING LIFE
A Day on the Mountain
Or
Why Skiing Is an Especially Apt Metaphorfor Life Itself
What do you get when you combine the annoyance of golf, the vastexpense of scuba, and the bodily risk of skydiving? That's right—skiing,a pastime whose origins are lost to antiquity, but which, in all likelihood,involved some Swiss or Austrian misanthrope—let's agree to call himGunther—living high on a mountain, who awakens one day to discoverhe is snowed in by a couple feet of fresh powder from the previousnight's storm, and on the very day he had meant to go into the village atthe base of the mountain for his semi-annual consignment of groceries.Well, shucks, our antiquarian hero says to himself, looks like the only wayI'm going to make it into town today is if I strap a couple pieces of wood tomy feet, rub a little goose grease on the bottoms to slick them up a bit, andslide down on top of all that snow. And so, for the moment neglectingto consider how he is going to make his way back up the hill with allthose groceries, Gunther deftly navigates his way down the mountainand into the village, to the astonishment of his fellow citizens, who stopand stare in awe at the grace and speed with which he makes his waydown the village's main street. And thus (at least for the purposes ofthis discussion) skiing is born.
Fast forward a few hundred years and you will find at your typicalmodern ski resort not socially-challenged mountaineers, but half-hourqueues, hundred-dollar lift passes, and eight-dollar cardboardhamburgers. But, like a first-time skier staring over the precipice of adouble-black diamond, I am getting rather far ahead of myself here. Imean to explain all of the nuances of the sport in good time, but first abit of backstory is required so that you understand the context for whatmight otherwise come across as an unnecessarily negative expositioninto what is, admittedly, a wildly popular pastime.
It will not be news to those who have participated in a sport of anykind that the earlier in life one begins said participation, the better at itone tends to be throughout the remainder of one's life, most especiallyif that early start is augmented with some quality instruction, and if,of course, the individual is amenable to that instruction. All of whichis a long and obtusely structured way of suggesting that I achievednone of these objectives, at least as far as skiing goes. The fact thatI grew up in Maine probably counts for something in all of this.Goodness knows, I came of age no stranger to snow, though all ofthe terrain on which its copious quantities lay during my upbringingwas unremarkably flat.
I not only grew up in Maine, but also lived in the same house formy entire memorable childhood. Our family was on the decidedlylower end of the economic scale, and we didn't engage in any of thesorts of recreation that required one to actually pay money. In fact,upon reflection, it still astounds me that I managed to grow up inMaine without once doing any of the things that people travel greatdistances and spend enormous sums to come from other parts of theworld to do. Oddly enough, I do not even recall having any friends inschool who were skiers. I include this apparent biographical digressiononly to help explain why it is that I took up skiing at such a relativelylate age.
It was only when I got to college, at the lofty age of twenty-four,that I first had the opportunity to give skiing a try. Once I mustered theverve to strap on a pair of boards and hit the slopes, I quickly discovereda few things, the lessons of which I mean to impart in the paragraphsthat follow. If you have never skied and are keen to give it a try, theseinsights will serve you well.
The very first thing you need to know is that skiing is expensive.If there existed a sliding scale that compared the prices of the variousathletic and recreational activities available to the average American,skiing would easily reside in the upper decile. In fact, there are tworelated but distinct components that comprise the overall budgetfor ski gear. The first has to do with the skiing itself, meaning theequipment needed to make one's way from the top to the bottom of themountain. The second tranche of expense has less to do with skiingper se, and more to do with surviving the abysmally cold temperaturesduring which most skiing takes place. Into the former category fallthree primary items—skis, bindings, and boots. Bindings, for theuninitiated, are the items used to connect the former to the latter, andwhose secondary but equally important function is to facilitate theseparation of you from your skis in the event of a spill, on which topicmore and copious details will soon follow. Without getting too deeplyinto the recondite technological details here, suffice it to say that arespectable set of new ski equipment can easily set you back in excessof a thousand dollars, though it can be had for a good deal less throughjudicious shopping and a willingness to own something other than thecurrent year's equipment.
As counter-intuitive as it may, at first, seem, the sartorial expenseassociated with skiing can easily surpass that of the equipment,particularly if you're the fashion-conscious sort. It's actually surprisinghow many people will scrimp on gear, but then break the bankbuying the down jackets, pants, socks, thermal underwear, hats,helmets, gloves, scarves, face masks, backpacks, and endless otheraccoutrements that are (possibly) necessary in order to survive aday on a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain. But the critical thingto keep in mind about these decisions is not so much the fashionelement, though this is frequently the bigger driver of cost. Rather,the principal concern should be the efficacy of one's purchases. Howwarm will that five-hundred-dollar jacket keep you when you'resitting on a stuck chair lift, in a twenty-knot wind, fifty feet upin the air, for fifteen minutes on a cold, cloudy day? Will yoursocks slide down and bunch up in the toes of your ski boot? Willyour mask fog up just as you're approaching a bump at high speed?Unfortunately, the answers to many of these critical questions areunknowable until you've committed to the purchase and are actuallyout there on the slopes freezing to death and cursing the salesmanback at Sun & Ski who assured you that this was the finest jacketmoney could buy because of its synthetic Argentinian beaver-skinlining and state-of-the-art solar-cell rear panels, or whatever. Sufficeit to say that judicious research and active solicitation of the opinionsof knowledgeable friends can save you from some very pricey andfrustrating mistakes down the road.
Having outfitted yourself appropriately, your sense of anticipationwill, no doubt, have risen to a fever pitch as you try to sleep the nightbefore your impending assault on the mountain. Once the big dayarrives, the first thing you will notice about the skiing experienceis that it takes a rather extraordinary amount of time and effort toactually transport all that clothing and gear you've spent the past fewweeks buying. Assuming, though, that with a good deal of creativepacking you've managed to fit it all into (or on top of) the car, thenext significant challenge for any new skier is getting from the carin the parking lot to the point where you're in a position to actuallyjoin a lift line.
Getting from the car to the lift is sufficiently challenging to almostqualify as a sport in its own right. It goes something like this: Youpull into your parking spot, daunted perhaps for just a moment bythe sound of the tires crunching and squeaking on the hard-packedsnow. Understand that by this point you've typically been riding in thecar for a good long while after having stopped at McDonald's™ andquaffed a couple of Egg McMuffins™ and a quart or so of coffee. You'recomfortable, warm, and likely half asleep. When you reluctantly pushopen the car door, the first sensation that hits you is the biting coldand rarified air of what is already a pretty high-up place, even at thealtitude of the parking lot. You grudgingly step from the car, removeyour ungainly skis from either the roof rack or back of the car, takingcare in the rapidly growing cold not to ding the cars around you (oryour own) with those freshly sharpened edges. You then proceed tospend five minutes or so zipping up, buttoning down, tying together,and generally ensconcing yourself in all the clothing you purchased inpreparation for this adventure, but which you did not wear in the caron the ride up. At some point, as you're wrapping yourself in layer uponlayer, it will occur to you that you at last understand why that little boyin A Christmas Story couldn't get back up once he'd fallen over intothe snow bank near his house. The first sobering lesson the new skierdiscovers at this point is that it is a challenging thing indeed to walkacross an icy parking lot wrapped in several layers of winter survival gearwhile carrying skis, boots, poles, and a backpack. The second insightfulthing you learn is that skiing has, as one of its more charming attributes,the very real possibility of your becoming completely exhausted beforeeven beginning the actual sport.
Having made your way safely into the lodge, you now discover twonew and daunting obstacles. The first is that you must get your bootson. The seasoned skier will make this look easy. If, on the other hand,you are an infrequent skier or totally new, this will be the momentwhen you get your first inkling of how the rest of the day is going togo. Assuming you were prescient enough to have brought with you thesame socks you wore when you tried on your boots back at the shop,you should be okay. If not, you may well end up with boots that aretoo tight or too loose. Without belaboring the point, suffice it to saythat you can expect to spend ten minutes or so getting the boots toslide on, figuring out the byzantine clipping mechanism that holdsthem closed, and finding the precise sweet spot at which the ski pantsand boot tops will meet without pinching your ankles, cutting offcirculation to your feet, or allowing snow to get inside. If, once you'vegot everything jammed into place, it turns out you have gotten bootsa size too small, or put on one too many pairs of socks, you can lookforward to poor circulation in your toes all day and a resulting caseof frozen lower extremities.
But let's say, just for laughs, that you've managed to get your bootson with a minimum of invective, there isn't too much pain, and youaren't sweating that profusely yet, despite having put forth all thiseffort while wearing a full ensemble of Arctic clothing that precludesnearly all joint flexure—and all in an eighty-degree ski lodge. Whenyou first stand, you will notice an interesting and slightly awkwardsensation. Your boots have been designed so as to force you to bendyour knees slightly forward all the time, whether you want them tobend or not. For now, this is merely fascinating. It will be a couple ofhours before it starts getting irritating. At long last, the time has cometo exit the lodge, step into line, and buy your first lift pass.
This is not a good time to realize that you left your wallet back inthe car. Because if that is the case, you now face the unenviable choiceof walking back out across the icy parking lot in ski boots or swappingback to the shoes that you had on originally. It's also not a good timeto realize that you, in fact, have your wallet on you, but it's in the backpocket of your jeans, which, of course, means that it's under your skipants and your jacket. If, however, you have managed not to fall prey toany such neophyte faux pas, you will, eventually, make it to the front ofthe line, where you will make the alarming discovery that purchasinga lift pass for a single day of skiing is, these days, about on par withpurchasing an airline ticket. Standard daily rates are now in the seventy-fiveto one hundred dollar range, depending on which mountain you arevisiting. And, to add insult to injury, it's not even like you're reallybuying a full day of skiing. The lifts typically don't open until 8:30 or9 a.m., and they're generally closed by 4 p.m. Subtract time for lunch,and you're really paying for five or six hours on the slopes. It also willnot help your frame of mind at this point to dwell on the fact that yougot up an hour and a half before sunrise and drove three hours for theprivilege of laying out all this money.
If you've never skied before, take a moment to read that paragraphon the back of your lift pass, the one with the indecipherably tiny font.It's hard to read for a reason—if people scrutinized it too closely, thepopularity of skiing would doubtless suffer. In short, what it says isthat skiing is fraught with peril and that if you hurt, maim, or killyourself, either through your own actions/inactions or the actions/inactions of others, the resort is not at fault and that neither you noryour designated heirs/survivors may sue the resort, since you werepresumably well-warned in advance. And you don't get to check alittle box or otherwise acknowledge that you voluntarily accept thisstate of affairs. The fact that you chose to get in line, pay for the liftpass, and affix it to your person constitutes your acceptance of fullresponsibility for whatever happens. And finally, the disclaimer saysthat you can't get your money back if, by 9:30, you've decided thewhole thing sucks, you're cold, and you just want to get back in thecar and go home.
But you, of course, are made of sterner stuff and have decided to gothrough with it. After all, you drove all the way out here. You paid forthe lift pass. May as well see what the fuss is about. How hard can it bewhen six-year-old kids are flying past you and effortlessly sliding intothe back of the lift line like they were joining the lunch queue at theirelementary school cafeteria? Well, pretty hard at first, as you discoverthe first time you click your boots into the bindings and promptly fallover before you've even had a chance to start moving forward. Everyski resort has a dedicated section—pejoratively known as the bunnyslope—where neophytes can begin to get the hang of things withoutexposing experienced skiers to the hazards of their ineptitude. That'sthe idea, at any rate. In actual practice, most bunny slopes are nothingbut a relatively flat area at the bottom of the hill, that last sectionbetween the steeper upper sections and the lift line toward which allskiers regularly return. Which means that what you really have on mostbunny slopes is a bunch of horrified, stumbling newbies interspersedwith experienced skiers flying through and between them. What couldpossibly go wrong?
This is as good a spot as any to digress for a moment andremark on an important psychological issue associated with skiing,particularly first-time skiing. It's not so much about putting mistakesbehind you, as in golf. Nor is success on the slopes based on a killercompetitive instinct like, say, football or basketball. Introductoryskiing is primarily about tenacity. Depending on your native levelof athleticism, getting to the point where you can credibly get intothe lift line and make your way up the mountain can take anywherefrom fifteen minutes to several days. In fact, it's difficult to learnmuch on the bunny slope because they're generally not more than acouple of hundred feet long, so if you do manage to start moving atsomething faster than walking speed, or even carve out a half-decentturn or two, the whole thing is over almost as soon as it begins andthen you're crawling back up the hill on the rope tow or tee bar thatserves most beginner slopes.
But, because we're all optimists here, let's fast-forward again andimagine that you've mastered the bunny hill and successfully made itthrough the lift line and onto the chair lift. During the five to tenminutes it typically takes to get to the top of most mountains, youdiscover the first pleasant aspect of the sport. Assuming that it is adecent day and you aren't skiing in the middle of a blizzard, you willfind that the views from the lift can be spectacular, particularly at thebigger western resorts in Colorado and Utah. In fact, during thelift ride up, you will encounter numerous interesting, sometimes evenhumorous, sights. You will see skiers below you who make it all lookterribly easy, moving with grace and skill like they're auditioning for aWarren Miller documentary. And you will see some making their wayfeebly down the hill, appearing to know no more about this thing thanyou do, which is always heartening. You will see occasional pieces ofrandom ski equipment lying in the snow beneath you—a glove here,a pole there—that will make you curious about how they came to bethere. You will gaze upward in wonder at many of the hills you willlater have an opportunity to ski down. You will see the tops of treesgoing by your chair, from which you will frequently see hanging all sortsof incongruous items, the two most common of which are Mardi Grasbeads and women's underwear. Apparently there is a sub-sport associatedwith skiing whereby bored people on lifts play a sort-of ring toss gamewith the tops of the trees and their partners' undergarments. I haven'tlooked into this too closely yet, but it may make an intriguing essayin its own right. Finally, as you continue upward, you will eventually,inexorably, see, to the horror of every new skier, the station where youmust exit the chair.
