So what is it about skiing? Why all this time (the month of February) at Monarch and Copper Mountain and Winter Park? Well a bunch of reasons. Like the beauty of the mountains in winter...riding a lift (and that in and of itself is fun...sitting on this open seat suspended above a steep mountainside)to a high ridge and taking in the mountain ranges...some close, some far.
From a ridge line at Monarch this morning, you could see the Collegiate Range over which Monarch Pass is the only open road in winter, to the west the San Juan Range, to the southeast, the Sangre de Cristo Range.
And then there is the sense of focus that comes when you are racing down a groomed slope or skiing the trees (gotta avoid those logs and those low branches) or making your way through choppy powder, cutting curves in the snow. This focus is purely physical...your senses feeding information to the brain, the brain sending signals to the hips and knees...keeping your body pitched forward down the slope or around the obstacle, using the skis and poles as extensions of your body...no time to be thinking about health care reform...just a kind of basic survival as you test yourself against the pull of gravity and the conditions under your skis at this moment and looking ahead for the next ten moments. That's what this towhead (well I assume he's a towhead under the helmet)is just beginning to get a feel for.
But it's not just about downhill. After skiing at Monarch this morning, I switched to my cross country skis and skied up a nearby trail to the top of Old Monarch Pass. This was the pass used from the 1880s to get horses, carts and prospectors down into the Gunnison River Valley from the Upper Arkansas. It was replaced in the late 1930s (ahhh...stimulus money back then) by a new road (Route 50 from Sacramento California to Ocean City, Maryland)with fewer tortured curves.
The old road makes an ideal cross-country route...it parallels some of the downhill runs at Monarch...but it requires work. And the reward that comes from rounding that final curve is different...a feeling that somehow you have earned that downhill that comes when you turn around and head back down.
Either way it's not about the gear. It's about what the gear allows you to do and to feel. My father came from Telemark in Norway and I've always felt I should learn that style of skiing out of respect for my traditions. But that will have to wait for another season.
