This is a confession from a reluctant ski mountaineer. Truth be told, I’ve only ever tolerated winters despite living in Colorado for 15 of them. Last year, though, a switch was flipped and the darkness of the season got a bit brighter. This winter, I hardly noticed the 4:30 PM sunsets. I didn’t get a tanning bed or escape to Hawaii for 6 weeks. It was the delicious suffering of skimo that turned me on to snow.
The first skins of November were the hardest. They required a very early wake-up, a very dark westbound drive, and the niggling uncertainty of whether the bathrooms would be unlocked when we arrived. But A-Basin was the only place with snow early in the season, and – it’s really true – misery loves company. The first Rise and Shine race got 100 people up and out of bed for that 7 AM start!
In addition to tolerating winter for so many years, I also never subscribed to the ‘racing is the best training’ theory. I like to ride my bike so if I heard of a race in an interesting and beautiful place, I might sign up. But I never raced to get good at riding. I was resistant to apply the concept to skimo, too, but luckily the Rise and Shine races were so oddly fun (really, it was j
ust redeeming the complementary hot beverage coupon in the lodge afterward) that I began to want to race. This was totally counter to my normal ‘let’s just go for a four hour tour’ attitude.
So, the calendar got penciled in. Eldora, Monarch, and then the heavies – Power of Four, Five Peaks, the Grand Traverse. I snuck out of work every Wednesday evening to sprint up the canyon to Eldora’s Nighthawks series. My sock drawer filled up with the freebies tossed into the crowd at races, and I upgraded my boots. I pushed harder (and felt worse) during Five Peaks than any race before. I questioned my motives but was impressed with what I was capable of. I was having all of these experiences that I’d only read about in interviews with professional athletes (ie. questioning my motives and feeling horrible but wanting to do it all over again). And, I was doing it all IN THE WINTER.
Now it’s springtime, and instead of pumping up tires and lubing chains, I keep my skis in the truck. I’m not gazing at mountains wishing they were laden with wildflowers, I want to ski those lines! After the Father Dyer Postal Route race (where my partner and I finally scored a top row on the co-ed podium!), I got a little teary, and it wasn’t just from exhaustion. With everything else – biking and trail running – I just liked to do those things, and that made them seem easy even when the mileage or terrain was epic. Since skiing had never really been my jam, and I prefer hot summer nights to frigid winter mornings, and everyone around me gushed over winter while I nodded and smiled – well, all of that made me feel really focused when I was skinning up and skiing down. Turns out, focus doesn’t feel bad, it’s actually a reprieve from a wandering and sometimes unmanageable mind.
Now I know: I don’t have to dread next winter.
Betsy lives in Colorado where she spends most of her time riding bikes or in the kitchen. She’s a writer and a public health RN who follows a self-prescribed diet of singletrack, road trips, strong coffee and hoppy beer, pirate radio, homegrown veg, and the occasional salt-water sunburn.
ig: @thebootsappeal
