Mount Snow Weekend Round-Up: A Skiing Story

Sally and I went to Mount Snow over the weekend for what proved to be a fun, somewhat eventful weekend.

Sally and me at Mount Snow Saturday afternoon

We didn’t get away until a little after noon on Saturday. Sally had to work, which was fine, especially since it gave me a chance to swim Saturday morning. Wound up putting in every bit of 3000 yards. Did 7 x 200 @ 2:50, tempo pace, as my main set. 

Well. I tried to hold tempo pace. I stayed solidly in the 2:35/200 range through the first 3-4 reps but fell apart as the set dragged on. A woman came over to wait for my lane, so I tried to hurry. Oof. Finished the set just off 2:40/200 and feeling very much like a wrung sponge.

Got home, made and ate some oatmeal, finished packing the car, explained our stereo set-up to our new dog-sitter — who turned out to be something of an audiophile — and at last, we got off. Arrived at Mount Snow some two hours and forty minutes later.

We were finally ready to hit the slopes.

We rolled in there at quarter-to-three, just as damned-near everybody else was starting to pack up. We parked at Carinthia — right in front of the lodge! — dressed quickly, and caught the lift. We then hung a left down into SunBrook, whereupon we caught the very last lift back up. This sucked because it meant that SunBrook itself has just closed. We had to hike up to the summit instead of banging a few quick laps right then and there.

I spent that time trying to convince my beautiful bride to ski back down to Sundance, still visibly in motion from where we were on that part of the mountain, so that we could bang a few laps closer by rather than skiing to the Main Face and chancing the Bluebird Six. No dice. We did one lap at Sundance, but Sally very much wanted to catch at least one ride up the main lift.

What can you do?

We set out for the Main Face at 3:40 with lifts cutting off at 4:00. We’d also already been thrown off one part of the mountain. If we didn’t get onto the Bluebird before it closed, we’d have to take the shuttle bus back to our car. Clearly not a disaster at scale with dismantling American democracy for the LOLs, but also decidedly not desirable, either. I was concerned.

Okay, so it turns out that Sally was right, and I was wrong. We made it to the lift with ten minutes to spare, easy, and in retrospect, I felt silly for worrying about it.

Sigh. 

We skied uneventfully down the long run back to Carinthia, dropped our skis, changed back into shoes, and went to the bar. We'd put in maybe 5000 vertical feet in the space of an hour. With beers in hand, we sat overlooking the mountain and tried not to talk about the news. But it’s both all-consuming and infuriating. We’ve both cut off so many people in the past few weeks just because we both know whose fault all of this is, and neither of us ever want to see any of those dumbasses again.

We stopped at the grocery store on the way to the Ski Club lodge. Sally said, “Go pick out some wine, and I’ll get the food.”

Am I qualified for this? I have a degree in European History from the U.S. Military Academy, and I like wine quite a bit. But this place had tons of bottles, no shelf-talkers, and even I cannot look at 200 random bottles and automatically know which is gonna be the best under $20. Given a dizzying array of nondescript choices, I finally settled on something safe — a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc from Oyster Bay.

We made dinner, had some wine, and everything was more or less going to plan when one of the other guys rolled into the lodge with a little backpack. He pulled out a 2005 Spanish Rioja, uncorked it, and invited everyone over. Turns out that his buddy had been a professional wine critic, and when he passed, the critic left behind ten entire storage units full of wine that various winemakers had sent him to review. Some went to auction, and some went to the family, but a lot just went into a dumpster behind this guy’s house. This Rioja being one that had gone into the dumpster.

Friends, this was a $100 bottle of wine, easy. Aged twenty years, it's also the oldest wine I’ve ever personally partaken. It was amazing.

Rioja finished, the night devolved as first a 2005 California Cab came out, followed by something else that I can’t quite remember. Alas, the Cab had turned, though I still had two glasse. The third bottle proved pretty good but not at the same level as the Rioja.

Outside, it started snowing.

We’d planned to go to bed early. Dear reader, that is in no way what actually transpired.

I awakened in the middle of the night bathed in a cold sweat. My head pounded, as you may well imagine, and my stomach churned. Got some water, fell back asleep, then awakened again at seven. Felt vaguely ill and quite extensively dehydrated. Got up, immediately felt more more unwell, and finally resolved to just vomit a little, spewing forth what can only be called the dregs from the previous night’s adventures. 

Literal dregs. From a dumpster Cabernet. How did I drink those? 

Why?

Thankfully, two Advil and a cup of coffee set me to rights, followed by some cuddle time with my beloved and some oatmeal. We then packed up, cleaned the lodge a bit, and headed out for Mount Snow around 8:30 am.

View from the lodge window Sunday morning.

It was at this point that I discovered my beloved doesn’t much care for powder skiing. Or, more accurately, she just hasn’t done it very much.. Regardless, it’s quite a bit different than skiing groomed runs at a resort. Which sucks because we had maybe six to eight inches out there, and those are by far my best conditions. But it that kind of snow gets bumped up quickly, and like I said, it then becomes a very different proposition from what you get on a groomed ski run.

I tried to stay patient and cheerful. Sally felt like I was rushing her. She then got frustrated, either with herself or with me, and at length, she convinced me that we should split up and meet back at the summit lodge around noon. I didn’t love that plan. However, I could see that my “support” had become counter-productive. At that point, there was not much to say. I put on The Midnight's Red, White, and Bruised and headed for Sundance, which I love in powder.

Sally quickly got it together without me watching over her, while I just banged some runs as hard as a could. That Midnight album proved perfect for this because it was cheery and upbeat to match the surfy conditions, but it's not remotely aggressive enough to inspire stupid choices. As you might expect, Sally and I were both exhausted by the time we met back up at the summit, but overall, I have to say that we had a great day — though separately.

We skied Super Bowl Sunday on purpose. The mountain got crowded early with all the fresh powder, but the crowds started thinning around 11:00, and by noon we all but had the mountain to ourselves. We met back up at the lodge, had some chilly, then headed out for one last set of runs. Sally and I both train extensively to ski, but navigating that fresh, heavy pow remains a legit athletic event. We took it easy down Cascade to River Run, caught the North Face lift up to SunBrook, banged one last run there, and then rode the Bear Trap lift back up for the run down to the car. 

Selfie looking down towards Sundance.

I took arguably my hardest fall of the season at SunBrook’s base, catching an edge on an unlooked-for patch of ice and landing face-first. 

SPLAT!

Eh. I rolled through it. No biggie. But it had to have looked spectacular because I wound up in an uncontrollable flat spin facedown in the snow.

After that, we were both more than ready to leave by about 2:00. That got us home in plenty of time to unpack and make dinner before the game.

We’re skiing again on Thursday and Friday this week, if you’re wondering. I already can’t wait. Hopefully the weather will hold up on Thursday morning. Ullr can't seem to decide if we're in for rain, sleet, or snow.