Guestwords: Skiing With The Neo-Puritans
After more than a decade off the slopes without missing it, I recently conspired in a ski trip with my new friend the Hotshot Skier (a purely descriptive term in ski-patois meaning "master of the slopes" [not to be confused with Hot-dogger, or high-altitude clown]).
By inclination and training I'm more partial to the indolence of the tropics. The climate is ideal for reading. I have a passion for St. Thomas because there, beneath an umbrella during a monsoon, I first read "Brideshead Revisited."
Though I'd once spent a festive week in Aspen, mostly in a hot tub, I wouldn't soon forget the terrors of Vermont ice; the Gestapo stomp of boots overhead in the chalet while I was hunched over "Anna Kareni - na."
Why Not
Assembling the gear would make a crater in my finances, even if I skipped the Hotronic foot warmers. I'm no stranger to gyms, but I'd recently pulled a hamstring while wrestling open a double-hung window, which didn't bode well. I've also long suspected that your basic thinking person doesn't belong on ski slopes or sailboats.
Still, sunning has become a capital offense. And I could rack up points as an accommodating companion - to be redeemed at some strategic future moment. Skiing, if it doesn't kill you, might be a recipe for longevity, operating on the same meat-locker principle as cryogenics.
. . . In the end, the Hotshot Skier's enthusiasm prevailed, and we headed for Alta in Utah, a 40-minute drive from Salt Lake.
Culture Shock
No sooner was I in the van en route to the lodge than I was hit by a wave of depaysement, as if I'd entered a foreign culture. The driver pointed out the roadside compound of a Mormon polygamist with 45 children. The other passengers reminisced about friends lost to local avalanches, agreeing that beepers function mainly to locate the bodies.
I focused on the salutary effect of mountain air on allergic rhinitis - this would be Utah's answer to Davos; and images of lolling hearthside contemplating my upcoming talk on "The Age of Innocence."
Next morning the H.S. led me on a virgin run down a green (beginner's) trail. Then he was off with an elite black diamond squad for a "workshop" in off-piste skiing in deep powder.
Survival Skills
Me, I needed a workshop in ski boot buckling and removal (requires steel talons plus a giant shoehorn); ski-and-pole-portage without clobbering or skewering the neighbors. Techniques
Only in America the earnest, where the health police have outlawed most forms of fun, could you find the vacation as combined self-improvement course and boot camp!.
of triple-chair mounting - and dismount skills to avoid a blow to the coccix from the departing chair, and the mortification when lift stops while you scrape yourself off the snow.
I also needed a course in panic control when lift stalls, rocking you over the abyss, because some other spaz got clipped in the coccix. How to attract attention when you drop a pole or glove mid-lift.
Walking in boots (heel first, I finally figured out); tackling stairs in boots (forget it); negotiating the Ladies in a one-piece powder suit; riding the horizontal rope-tow without dislocating shoulder or when encountering the sport's single greatest hazard: tots on skis.
Wicked . . .
When blazing sun was followed by an arctic blast, leaving me trapped in clammy duofold, I knew I needed an intensive course in underwear management. Everyone on the lift line contributed insights about the respective merits of layering with Polypro, Capilene, thermostat, or DryLayer.
My problem was soon diagnosed: You're wearing cotton next to the skin? people exclaimed in horror. You're not wicking.
After lunch it seemed unwise to return unwicked to the slopes, so I retreated to the lodge "cafe" - which served only Coors or cider. A film came on the giant TV screen called "Doing Air." The insinuating beat of the soundtrack suggested ski-porn.
. . . Not Wicked
Not in squeaky clean Alta, where wickedness is doing bacon with your eggs. "Doing Air," it turned out, was a useful short about flying through space while executing an entrechat with your skis. At least, I thought, lumbering up the stairs sideways, anticipating a hot shower, there would be apres ski.
Wrong, I discovered, eyeing the dim cafe occupied only by two refugees from a David Lynch movie. At Alta, apres ski is not only beside the point, but possibly punishable by law. Hedonistic lolling prevents you from achieving your Personal Best on the slopes. The unofficial curfew was 8:30 p.m. (which maybe explained why the fellow down the road had 45 children).
I had landed in the Ski Puritanism capital of the West. Only in America the earnest, where the health police have outlawed most forms of fun, could you find the vacation as combined self-improvement course and boot camp!
I thought wistfully of Aspen, thatdecadent holdout, its slopes still pristine at 11 a.m. thanks to all the hangovers. The T-shirts proclaiming Give Me Rossignol or Give Me Head; hot tubs overflowing with imbibing Texans in stetsons; indoor-outdoor pools with swim-up bars serving margaritas; posses of just-guys on furlough from their wives; the raunchy ambiance of an overage frat party.
At Alta the only apres ski occurred at a bar we visited one night that actually served chardonnay, when a stockbroker in pink cashmere tried to pick up the H.S., with me perched at his side. Maybe 8,000 feet reconfigures social etiquette? What, I wondered, would Edith Wharton have made of this?
Our own lodge promoted sociability only at meals, when they seated you family style with other guests. At first I wondered what on earth would we talk about, especially without spirits to oil the flow. Where was the commonality? Was this some Bruderhof born of skiing, like groups of battered wives? I suspected my companions had a limited interest in narrative strategies in the "Age of Innocence."
Snow Talk
Ditto for me. I had entered a state of mental white-out resembling the weather conditions I'd encountered that morning at the top of Albion lit.
I had also underestimated the conversational potential of snow. From Athens to San Diego, zealots converge on Alta not only for the quantity of snow, quoting inches of base, plus amount of powder after a "dump." They come for the quality of snow.
Deconstructing the day's powder, crud, junk, hard-pack, corn snow, breakable crust, wet snow, dry snow, frozen granular, ice, or blue ice will easily take you from borscht to beignets.
Injuries
Another consuming topic is past accidents. Curiously, the wounded persist in skiing even without their original body parts; apparently no one has ever told them that with steel plates in both shins you don't absolutely have to.
We dined one night with a dad grimly determined to keep up with his son the downhill racer, though the man was fresh from the arthroscopic ward (he wiped out the next day on "crud"). Then there was the hearing-impaired fellow with double vision who skied in a helmet since scrambling his brains against a tree in Crested Butte . . . .
Of course there are privileged moments. You've ridden without incident to the top of the mountain, layered just right against stabbing winds and blistering sun, burnt schnooz resplendent in zinc oxide. Your eyes sweep the panorama of peaks and cirques of the Wasatch range, dusted in prized powder like confectioner's sugar.
Privileged Moments
The H.S. heads down Devil's Elbow, despite the name an intermediate trail. You mimic his moves; he watches, calling out pointers about the pole plant - "No, don't spear a fish!" You try again, and again, and suddenly it comes together, the one/two rhythm - pole plant, plus pivot - "Just let the skis float around" - and suddenly you catch it, the rhythm of skiing, and the skis . . . float, you with them.
Yet a seductive alternative beckons. Apparently at nearby Deer Valley, which attracts a Hollywood crowd, they have sherpas to carry your skis. I'd want something more along the lines of a full-service personal attendant to suit and buckle you up, carry you down stairs, convey you sedan-style to the lift -
Such pampering contradicts the rugged spirit of skiing, the H.S. objects.
Exactly so. But there's another option. Why not pamper without conflict in the indolent tropics.
Erica Abeel often rents houses in Sag Harbor and Springs, where, she said, she "haunts" Louse Point. Her most recent book, "Women Like Us," is out in paperback from St. Martin's.