Skier Dude – Michael Mort, PhD, Esq

Skier Dude

For all the skiing I do, all the ski trips I take, I have to admit, I’m not a great skier. Just an advanced intermediate. I don’t do really scary stuff. But a couple of things recently buoyed my confidence: I bought new, shorter skis; and, I took a week of lessons last December at the Club Med in Crested Butte.

Right now I’m in the middle of another two week trip in Aspen and Vail, and every day since I arrived in Colorado, the advice of my Crested Butte ski instructor has been ringing in my ears: Ski everything. Try the bumps, the deep powder, the steep stuff, the crud. If you’re coming down your favorite groomed run, she told me, and you see some broken, bumpy snow along the sides of the trail, dive into it. You have to continuously expand your repertoire of trails and conditions, or you won’t get any better.

So I’m taking that advice every chance I get. And because of my new shorter skis, I’m feeling really comfortable. Shorter skis let you turn faster, they’re easier to control. Yet, because of the latest technologies in shape and design, you can go just as fast as you want on groomed trails. My new skis are doing all the work, I’m just riding on top of them. After a week in Aspen and one day here in Vail, I’ve started mastering the crud along the sides of groomed trails, doing some deep powder (well, ankle deep) pretty well, and I’m even doing harder and steeper bump runs. The only thing I still will not attempt is skiing through the trees.

Now you have to realize, it has been snowing like crazy in Colorado for months; the surface is soft and powdery everywhere. Even the big moguls here at Vail are easier because of all the soft powder that has built up just over the last few days of snowy conditions. In the last week, I’ve been skiing runs I never would have considered doing last year, all because of my new confidence, my new skis, and the excellent surface conditions this year.

So I awake this morning to a beautiful blue sky day in Vail, and I think to myself, I’m doing the back bowls today! I even get out of the hotel fairly early, riding the Vista Bahn chair lift up from Vail Village at 9:30 a.m. At the top of that lift is Mid-Vail, and the line of people waiting for the Mountaintop Express, the most direct way to the back bowls, looks too long for me. So I take the other lift out of Mid-Vail, Wildwood Express. I am a little cold on the chair, but I’m psyched about hitting the ungroomed stuff Vail has in their back bowls.

I get off the Wildwood lift just like I’ve done dozens of times before, but this time, for the first time in my twenty-year skiing career, instead of looking for the sign that reads “Easiest Way Down,” I’m looking for the sign that shows a black diamond and points toward the back bowls. I’m feeling like a real skier dude.

There it is. Directly across from the unload point at the top of Wildwood, a big black diamond sign with an arrow that points to Sun Down Bowl. That’s the one for me. The first thing I do is tighten the buckles on my boots. You must have tight boots, snugly fitting around your ankles, when you attempt anything the least bit difficult. You have to control those skis, and loose boots let your feet slop around too much, meaning you’ll lose control.

Okay. My boots are snug. My clothing is arranged. My spirits and confidence are peaked. I’m ready, and most importantly, my new skis are ready to carry me. I pole and shuffle over to the edge and look down. There, between two stands of trees, is a very steep bump run with moguls the size of a VW. Hmm. The run is not too long and I can see that it terminates in a less-steep cross trail with much smaller moguls. I quickly make an important decision, and a fateful assumption. The decision is that this steep run with behemoth moguls is just not necessary right now, because only a hundred yards off to my right is a shallower entrance to that cross trail, where the moguls aren’t nearly as large. And the assumption I make is that the rest of the trail down into Sun Down Bowl will look more like the less-steep, smaller-mogul cross trail than the really scary big bumps.

W-T-H was I thinking?!

I slide a hundred yards to my right and nearly expertly maneuver myself down the soft, medium sized bumps onto the gentler (a relative term) cross trail that goes off to my left. As I do that, two boarders and a skier dive in just ahead of me, and I’m feeling like a real man, a real skier, a dude among dudes. Nothing’s going to scare me today . . . well besides that short little mega-bump run that I just bypassed, but I’ve already forgotten about that little detail.

I’m hopping over and around medium sized bumps, practicing my recently-learned technique of slightly dipping my inside shoulder and leaning forward into the turns as I maneuver my way through the maze of moguls. The soft powder has been chewed up quite a bit, but the crud just doesn’t faze me anymore. I might not be going fast, but I’m holding my own, and in fact I think I’m getting through rather nicely, thank you very much.

Ahead of me, moving somewhat faster than I am, the three dudes who jumped in here before me, my new buds (although they don’t know I’m thinking of them like that), turn to their right, around a large stand of trees, and dive down an even steeper incline. In this soft powder, who cares about steep? I’m ready for it. Hell! I’m ready for anything!

When I approach that right hand turn, I notice the last of the three dudes, one of the snowboaders, slowing down and gingerly easing himself into another large stand of tree across the trail. Crazies! I think to myself. Why go through the trees when there’s this broad, steep, wide open, fun trail of deep powder to slide down? In my mind’s eye, I see the enormous, sun-drenched, pure-white expanse of the Sun Down Bowl, which in previous years I’ve only glimpsed from below. The thought that in seconds I will be schussing down that pristine bowl myself literally makes me salivate.

But the next thing I see makes me choke on that saliva. I’m boxed in by trees on all sides.

I stop to survey my situation. On three sides of me is a dense forest primeval. On the fourth side is the steep I just descended to get myself into this predicament. No other human appears behind me. I sense only the ghosts of long lost skiers laughing at me. There is no way to hike back up. My only way out of here appears to be that little “trail” I just saw my buddy dudes slither into, a depression of snow between lodgepole pines whose trunks seem wider than the kitchen of my first apartment. I decide not to think about it. I’m just going to dive in there myself. After all, I’m a dude among dudes . . . sort of.

I ease my way over to the edge of the trees to peer through, expecting that I’ll see maybe one turn and then the broad expanse of the Sun Down Bowl on the other side. What I see in fact is the dark interior of an enchanted forest with a tiny trail of compressed snow snaking through it. I’m pretty sure I also see skeletons in tattered ski suits plastered against trees at every hairpin turn.

Deep breath. I can do this.

I plot the first turn, and gently push my skis over the rim. That first tree comes at me really fast. I feel its low branches brush my shoulder as I whip my skis around it and angle them into untouched snow between it and the next tree, maybe 8.375 feet away. The tips of my skis rise and I stop. I hope I’m not standing on top of a rock that’s scraping the bottoms of my new skis, but really, the only thing I care about is that I did stop.

I’m one turn into the forest and it’s already dark. I expect the concussion caused by my pounding heart to vibrate the air and force the branches overhead to dump all that snow they’re carrying on top of me. But, outside of my God-awful heavy breathing, there is only silence in here. Deadly silence.

I see where I have to go next. The deep powder has been flattened out throughout this next turn by all the dudes who have previously ridden through here. So I plot my turn around that next tree using that track as my guide. I have to back up a little to get myself into position to do that turn, but in the process of backing up, the tails of my skis bury themselves into the deep snow I have just used to help stop me here after the first turn. Now stuck, I have to take a minute of vigorous exercise to rock my self out and reposition my skis, all without losing balance or letting my skis slip out from under me.

Finally ready, I take a deep breath and leap onto the packed snow that curves around the bristling bark and branches of this ugly pine tree next to me.

The packed snow is slick, the slope is steep, the surface has bumps like a road that buckles after a flood or an earthquake or a galactic cataclysm. If I were a good skier, I would know how to kill the speed that I immediately pick up on this shiny surface, and I would know how to jump immediately onto my other ski and make the next hairpin turn around the next tree.

But I’m just an advanced intermediate skier, and people like me have no business being where I am right now. So I forget about trying to make the third turn, and instead I point my skis into some more deep snow, expecting to stop short of the next really nasty looking tree right in front of me.

Did I mention it’s really steep here? So steep, even deep snow won’t stop me before I hit that really nasty tree with pointy stubs of branches that look like spears which almost cry out their desire to puncture my body. Realizing this disastrous situation within the blink of an eye, which, by the way, I am not blinking right now, I throw my weigh back (my apologies to every ski instructor I’ve ever had who’s told me that is exactly the wrong thing to do), and sit down in the snow, just as the front tips of my skis surface, cross, and wedge themselves up against the trunk of that tree. I feel the shudder of the impact in my knees, thighs, and back. But I’ve stopped and I’m still alive.

I lay back in the soft stuff and take stock of my situation. I’m on my back in at least three feet of powdery snow inside a stand of dense woods that threatens to eat me alive. My skis are mostly buried beneath me and the front tips are crossed and hung up on a bristly-barked pine tree that almost seems to be moving its way toward me. It’s mysteriously dark, even though it’s maybe 10:00 a.m. I have no idea when or even if any other human being will come this way today, this year. My heart is pounding so hard I think I might have a heart attack. And I have to pee.

After a minute, I realize I have to get myself up and out of here under my own control. I briefly consider taking my skis off and walking out, but that would be disastrous as well. If my skis bury themselves this deep here, in boots alone I could never walk out of here. So I have to get up onto my skis and ski out.

I wait another minute to see if my hard breathing and heart pounding will subside. When they don’t I decide to resume my work anyway. I push one pole down, and it buries up to the handle. No leverage there to get me on my feet. I remove the pole straps from my wrists and put the poles together. But before using them, I pack down some snow next to me with my left hand and forearm. I also decide to spend the energy it takes to uncross the tips of my skis. After a few minutes of all this thrashing about, I finally manage to get enough leverage off my poles to stand up. The branches of this tree I’m now so intimate with are very low; my head hits them and they dump all the snow they carry onto me, just as I had predicted would happen from another cause only moments before.

But at least I’m on my feet again. I duck as low as I can under the branches and inch my way partially around the tree, on the side opposite the scooped-out, patted-down, track that my predecessors have snaked through here.

I see light!

But I also see what I have to do to get to that light. The packed track is the only way to the light and life beyond the trees. Any other direction leads directly into another tree. The track makes three “S” turns, left, right, then left. It doesn’t really go around any trees, but I wouldn’t want to miss any of those turns, or else “ouch” might be my last word on this planet.

I’m fairly confident I can execute those three quick turns, but what bothers me is for that last turn, just beyond the last tree of this God-forsaken forest, the track makes a very sharp left bank in front of a wall of snow. This wall has obviously been pushed up by every other rider who has gone through here, and it seems to me on the other side of that wall there might well be a cliff, or dragons. Whatever it is, it’s enough to keep the really good skier dudes from wanting to go over it, so I’m sure I won’t want to either. I have to make that last really sharp left turn.

I can do this. Or at least I have to try to do this.

I side step from my position in the deep stuff on the other side of my, up until now, most intimate tree, and prepare myself at the lip of the smashed down track of snow. Three quick turns and I’m free. I can do this.

Do you know what a femto-second is? Technically speaking, it’s a millionth of a billionth of a second. It’s the shortest unit of time I know the name for, and it’s approximately how long it takes me to reach that really sharp left hand turn in front of the bank of pushed up snow, which turns out to be pushed up against a boulder which is as large as a femto-second is small.

But that turns out to be the good news in a two-part news story. For just as I make that third glorious turn, and I’m out of the Dark Wood, into the brilliant light, traveling at something close to the speed of light, I see that I counted by one too few the number of really quick turns I had to make. There, a femto-yard in front of me, the track turns right again to avoid a lone pine tree directly in my path. It’s the gnarliest, nastiest, deadliest-looking pine tree my wide eyes have ever beheld.

I am leaning on my right ski really hard, having just completed what I had previously thought would be my last turn, little to realize how “last turn” might be interpreted in an eternal sense. With all my weight on that right ski, there is no way I can make a right hand turn right now! So I punch that right ski sideways, directly into the snow at the base of that nasty tree to make the fastest hockey-stop any human has ever made on skis. That is, my skis and feet make the fastest stop. The rest of my body cannot comply.

My body catapults, head first, over my right ski. I feel my unhelmeted head plunge into deep, cold, wet snow, then, as if I am a living slinky going down stairs end over end, my feet, with skis still attached, fly up over me; then those same feet come quickly down, all together with my heavy skis still attached to them, onto the slope below me; the force of which action, in true slinky form, pulls my head and shoulders out of the deep snow; and finally, suddenly, miraculously, un-slinky-like, I’m standing perfectly still, on my skis, poles in hands, at the sun-drenched edge of the beautiful and broad Sun Down Bowl.

I shake my head to release the balls of icy snow that have attached themselves to my hair and headband and sunglasses, all of which rest perfectly in their correct positions on my head and face. I sense there is snow down my neck, inside my suit, but I’m willing to ignore that since the cooling sensation is rather welcome right now. Then I take a brief moment to find the track I want to take from here, and with a huff, I start winding my way down the wide open Sun Down Bowl like the really bad skier dude I know myself to be.

You gotta try all the conditions in order to improve your skiing, my ski instructor told me.