The Highly Selective Skiography of gincognito

New Ground

Thirteen years old and thrown into a new social environment. A daunting situation. The school I would be attending was small and cliques were already well formed. A launch ramp in front of our home soon had us part of the local skateboarding gang, but I didn’t quite fit in with their school persona. Being able to hold my own in most gym activities granted me moderate respect from the jocks and, hence, the popular girls, but it never went further than that. Consistently scoring in the upper 80’s on all tests and assignments gave me an in with the “smart kids”, but I was far from a keener so that never quite gelled.

No, I pretty much slipped through the cracks and fell in with a handful of fellow drifters. Rejects if you will. I ate lunch with them, played football with them during breaks, talked with them in the halls. Some were the school losers, some popular in their own way, others just were.

Me? I was the skier. It didn’t take long for a few pictures in my agenda and a License to Thrill t-shirt to give me an identity. And I latched onto it. In the wolf pack it is essential to know who you are – or, in the high school equivalent, at least put on a good show. So partly as a front and partly for real, I quietly encouraged my peers to think of me as skiing obsessed. When a student’s drawing of the class had me sporting a ski t-shirt, I couldn’t help swelling with pride.

But whatever amount of exaggeration I may have put into my persona, it soon fulfilled itself. The next step up in ski terrain had me falling in love all over again.

The skiing was different here. It was bigger. There was more of it. It was – odious comparisons be damned – better. This was not Europe or Western North America, but with the Laurentians, Eastern Townships, and Northern New England all within day trip distance, it was the perfect progression for an Ontario raised teenage skier.

The Saint-Sauveur Valley with its handful of 1,000 foot ski hills all within spitting distance garnered some favour for being a mere 45minutes from downtown Montreal. With two ski partners established and the mighty drivers licence now in our possession, it’s where we’d head during our class-less Friday afternoons. I remember crashing into a friend twice on our first day skiing together (a trend that would continue throughout the season). I remember mini-manning down ridiculous pitches. I remember more moguls than my legs could dream of handling today. I remember perfecting the daffy. I remember exploring different hills every week, sampling the goods in all directions and discovering the gems of each.

Three destinations soon came to the forefront: Tremblant to the north, Sutton to the east, and Jay Peak to the southeast.

The sheer size of Tremblant was reason to be impressed. With two sides and over 2000 feet of vert it literally doubled everything I was used to (Swiss introduction expected). And, in the pre-IntraWest days, it had charm. The north side was the place to start and two creaky doubles would take you up the famed Expo. Up over the steepest field of moguls I had ever seen with an unavoidable ribbon of ice across the middle and numerous rocks and cliffs on the side.

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Succumbing to peer pressure and launching myself onto the Expo

What was this shit? Watching people spazz their way down it soon gave me my answer. It was the proving ground. It was, in fact, the shit.

Yes, the Tremblant of years gone by had a rustic-ness that suited its climate. A round warming hut up top with fire constantly blazing pretty much summed up the experience. Dark and cozy with mitts hanging everywhere. The smell of winter drying.

We mined this hill hard. Finding the off-piste glades, knowing which lips we could air off, dropping all rocks in sight. The jumping rules were more liberal here – or maybe the place was just too big for the boys in red to keep an eye on us.

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Finding the sweet spot

Regardless, the only thing that required stealth was the newly formed halfpipe. Snowboarding brought us many things, but it also brought a bit of reverse discrimination in the early years as skiers were banned from taking to the pipe. But, as they rightly did before us, we rebelled.

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Probably still the best form I have ever shown in a halfpipe

As is well known, Tremblant changed a lot in the last ten years. And regardless of what good came from it or how the soul still lives in quiet corners of the beast, I cannot look at it the same way. The Tremblant of my youth died with the removal of those doubles and the taming of Expo, and I have little interest in a resurrection.

Sick and ashamed and happy (and just answering my fans (in my head)),
d.

Always a great read!

Even better when added on Friday afternoon! :D

Freedom in the Trees

It started at Sutton. Runs with names that went from Sous-Bois I to Sous-Bois IV literally translated to Under the Woods. Here was a hill that did not believe in McSkiing. Trees were not clearcut to make way for homogenous bouleveards. They were embraced. They were made to be part of skiing.

This isn’t to say that all the runs were fully gladed. More like the designers of the pistes opted to leave a few reminders throughout the fall line. Plenty of room to move, but tangible reminders that this was once a forest.

The Sous-Bois runs in question were steep, twisting affairs that merged and split up with such regularity that you soon lost track whether you were on I, V or something all together different. Perhaps Reaction or Emotion. Moguls and natural features combined to give us a sneak preview of the terrain parks which were still a few years in the future. Creek walls were ramped up, fallen trees were ducked under, and all rocks were aired over.

My buddies from Southern Ontario were still visiting me every winter, as they would for about 4 years. Each spring break would find them crashing in my parents unfinished basement (I’d usually join them) by night and following me around my new stomping grounds by day. It became evident that I was benefiting from my new surroundings and that skiing was slowly slipping out of their lives. But they were always game to step it up, if only for one week out of the year.

Into the trees of Sutton they went and it wasn’t long before we began foraging for even tighter spaces. Our first taste of significant hors-piste came when we found a couple of unofficial glades between standard runs. It was obvious that these had been cut, but their exclusion from the trail map kept the traffic low. As did the hidden entrance and bobsled like terrain features. Barely wider than a ski length in many places, the technique often consisted of hail mary straight lines to emergency schmears in the clearing you hoped would appear. Many spills, hang-ups, and awkward positions were had. And of course, many laughs.

The laughs constituted as much of the ski day as the actual skiing. Skiing bumps in front of, let’s call him Bruce, one couldn’t help but smile at the constant streams of “oomphs” and “argghhs” coming from behind. Ears would be finely tuned for the frequent “aiiii-eeee,” as this suggested that Bruce was either in the air, on the ground, or about to be a combination of the two. One always stopped to look behind at the first sound of an “aiiii-eeee.”

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Bruce, no doubt making some noise

Ah, Bruce. There seems to be one in every crowd. The guy that, through little fault of his own, everything seems to happen to. When Ed threw everyone’s sneakers over the waterfall, Bruce is the only one who didn’t recover the full pair. When we tried kayaking for first time, Bruce is the only one who tipped and lost his sunglasses. And when we all took turns jumping out of the woods and onto the ski trail, Bruce is the only one who ran into a gaper. Despite my father standing guard and giving the all clear sign, Bruce managed to time it perfectly so that the tip of his skis made contact with the surprised cruiser at approximately mid-boot. They both went sprawling and M. le Cruiser was none too pleased about the incident. My father, bless his heart, hurried up to take responsibility and was able to suppress his laughter until the offended party was well out of earshot.

I’ll never forget those early days of skiing when responsibility and consequence were foreign concepts. When every jump seemed like the biggest ever. When every tree was missed by that much. When every terrain feature was exploited to maximal potential whether it was a run intersection, a 2-foot rock, a banked corner, or a contoured creekbed. When everything was made into an adventure no matter how trivial it may have been.

Technique didn’t matter, style hadn’t entered our conscience, and our world was relatively small. All that mattered was making it done a given run with a huge smile on your face. And if your hat was snow covered from the fall, if the gnarly air was a three foot ollie over a tree branch, and if your tracks coming out of the woods were far from perfect; it didn’t diminish your smile one bit.

Sick and ashamed and happy (and contributing my own Friday Thread About Nothing),
d.

Best "Friday Thread About Nothing" ever! And more about something than pretty much everything else.

We gotta wait a whole nother week for the next?

Moving On

Eventually my buddies stopped coming to visit me in the winter. The feeling wasn’t able to last for them and they drifted to other things. Bruce still gave it a game effort and I’ve managed a few days with him in the past couple of years, but the gang as a ski gang ceased to exist sometime in the early 90s.

I, however, was still powering forward and the 93-94 season saw things falling in place, as they too seldom do. During the last year of High School I became aware that others beside myself enjoyed this thing called skiing, and in the first year of college I hooked up with two of these like minded souls. We shared classes, we shared rides to school and we shared Friday afternoons at local hills. A bond was establishing. A plan was formulating.

Preparation for the second year of college was intense. Courses were scanned, sacrifices were made, schedules devised and phone lines tied up as we set out with one goal in mind: no classes on Friday. Not an easy feat for people enrolled in the Pure and Applied Sciences. Our Tuesdays and Thursdays were stacked with math, chemistry and physics and I took one for the team by enrolling in a Monday morning Animal Poetry class, but the toil was worth it. Fridays were ours. And, as a well-earned bonus, we managed to fit into a Telemarking class to fulfill our phys-ed requirement.

Wednesday nights we’d crowd into a school bus and time would reverse as the big yellow brought me to the modest ski hill. The people were older, but the feeling was the same.

The telemark skis the school provided were long and narrow and barely a baby step above cross-country skis. It was humbling to be a beginner again, but we forged on and by the end of the season were flailing through the bumps and managing respectable tele turns on the groomed (in one direction anyhow).

But the real star of the 93-94 season was Jay Peak. We started off sampling various hills on our Fridays off. A day at Tremblant, followed by Sutton, perhaps a little Mont Blanc if we were feeling cheap. But soon enough Jay Peak took hold and dominated our schedule.

Whereas Sutton gave us a glimpse of the forest and the skiing to be had within, Jay Peak threw us right into the dark belly of the beast. At the time, their network of gladed trails did not amount to more than a handful, but their “Woods Skiing Policy” seduced us into finding our own. The woods here were not open or closed, they just were. We were free to explore as long as we did so at our own risk and did not enter or exit on to closed runs. A sense of freedom pervaded this isolated mountain hunkered down in the bitter climate of northern Vermont.

Soul is a much ballyhooed word and a slippery concept to grab hold of. The more you search for it or try to define it, the more elusive it can become. Soul does not always stand up to analytical reasoning. Soul is not always where you’d expect it. Maybe it exists, maybe it doesn’t. But something about this place, from the cranky red tram to the bouncing green double; from the rudimentary snowmaking to the solid wood chalet; from the bitter cold January winds to the bitter cold February winds; from the glaring ice on some trails to the light powder on others; something about this place was right.

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T. taking the rock in Green Beret

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A blink later from a different camera (we sure tried to be sluts back in the day...)

Sick and ashamed and happy (and not too concerned about anything right now),
d.

NICE!

Keep 'Em Coming, gin!

The Jay Cloud

More than anything else, Jay Peak gave us snow. There are various theories involving weather patterns and barn yard animals and containing words like “orographic lift” and “swollen ankle bones”, but to be honest, I know little about the process. All I know is the result. The winter of ’94 introduced us to the 2 for 1 ratio: for every inch of snow that fell in Montreal and the Eastern Townships, you could be sure that Jay Peak received double.

Up until then we were primarily bumps skiing hooligans, looking for air, punishing our knees, and only occasionally sampling a dusting of fresh snow when we darted off the trails or flirted with the sides. We had tasted the thrill of being first to touch a given trail, we had admired our tracks etched into the 2 inches of the otherwise untouched forest, and we had appreciated the silence that came with a turn executed on something other than hard pack. But over the boot, over the knee, around the waist, light fluffy powder flying all around you in euphoric explosions? No, we were not awake to this aspect of a sport we thought we knew.

I remember my first face shot. It happened in Timbuktu and it scared the shit out of me (in an addictively thrilling way). We’d hit the parking lot early, as we did every Friday, and marveled at the drifts that dwarfed anything we’d seen on the way up. Excitement was clearly building. The Bonaventure chair was closed so we skated over to the Jet and headed into a cloudy day. Ten minutes later and we were at the top of one of Jay’s newest glades, staring at a canvas of white with less than a handful of tracks through it. Smiling with only a hint of what waited for us, we dropped in.

I sank past my knees and did not hear a sound. I felt no edges and only a subtle resistance against my legs. I popped up for a turn and snow exploded all around me. Holy shit, it was swirling around my chest. Sound stopped, feeling took over. Down again and into a trough, the snow felt waist deep. Picking up speed, I came up in another explosion and suddenly I was blind. The trees in front of me, the line I’d visualized, my friends beside me – all gone. Replaced by shades of grey and black and white. I opened my mouth in surprise. I swallowed snow. Now I was blind and choking and not sure if the trees I’d last seen were 20 feet, 10 feet, or 5 feet in front of me. I freaked out and pulled out the well worn emergency schmear turn.

When the cold smoke cleared I was sitting in a pit of my own making, covered in powder from touque to ski boot. And I was thrilled. I looked around me and saw my friends in similar positions. Wonder gave way to giddiness and soon we were laughing our asses off at our good fortune.

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Eyes opening. (Sorry for the quality, all images in this post captured from a crappy/amusing video we made during that season)

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"I think I can grow to like this "powder skiing"

New facets were being revealed to us on a weekly basis it sometimes seems. From jumps, to bumps, to glades, to powder. Everything was a revelation that somehow built on the one before. The glades were no longer just for added obstacles and a sense of off-the-beaten-path adventure. No, no, at Jay Peak we discovered that the glades are where the snow hides. And now their liberal Woods Policy was really going to pay off.

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T. getting a taste

We harvested everything we could from that first day early in the season. Each run ending in whoops and hollers and ridiculous shit-eating grins. And we carried it over into every day that would follow. We were blessed with a Thursday storm cycle and every Friday yielded low crowd fresh tracks everywhere on the mountain. A routine developed wherein we’d hit the powder bumps of U.N. or Can Am in the morning while they were fresh, then move into the official glades where we knew the snow would still be waiting for us. Afternoons were spent alternating between marked glades and exploring on our own. We dubbed our first find Barkeater for reasons that were apparent to anyone who followed. Bushwhacking and trailblazing often resulted in lengthy slogs through dense underbrush and winding creek beds – sometimes we found the goods, sometimes we didn’t, but we were never bored. And we were always eager for more.

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Reaping the benefits of River Quai

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Still going...

Sick and ashamed and happy (and one reply is all I need),
d.

http://www.tetongravity.com/usergall...20Quai%201.JPG

i love the jay memories gin. really good stuff.

The best times I had skiing on the EC this year was with the maggot crew at Jay. Keep em coming Gin!

The Search

I’m still searching for that day. That feeling. I know it’s out there, I’ve caught glimpses of it, I’ve approached it, but, so far, nothing has equaled that first season of powder skiing. Nothing has touched those first two turns.

Every year Jay Peak would open new glades and every year we would add to our own discoveries. Each patch of forest between all runs was fair game. Sometimes our searches were in vain and the tangled underbrush just led to more tangled underbrush. Sometimes the impenetrable woods gave way to cleverly concealed lines…only to close up just as a rhythm was being found. It was a dance that I’m still learning the steps to.

And somewhere in the midst of this they opened the Face. Of course, by “open” I mean “put it on the trail map.” A couple of narrow shots down the ice, rocks, and scrub pine. A new proving ground that was first attempted in the thickness of fog (all the better to conceal one’s spasticity from the tram above). To be honest, the Face didn’t do much for us. The wind usually scoured it free of powder and the gaper quotient was often a little too high. “Overrated,” was the final assessment.

The Ridge, however, was a different story. A secret so poorly guarded that even back then it could hardly qualify as such. Staring up at the tram house, the Ridge extends to the left in an almost unbroken display of virtually unskiable cliffs and stunted pines. “Almost” being the key word. I’m not giving anything away by pointing out the slight dip in the contour and the short shot of snow beneath it. The Saddle as it is well known. The easiest way to get below the junk and onto the apron below.

Unless you’re the first one there after a storm, chances are the same scattering of rocks will return your gaze from roughly half way down the short chute. As it turns out, this somewhat of an advantage because at least you can see them. If not, you’re liable to ski over them and suffer a core shot for your troubles. Three turns and a hop to straightline is basically all it takes, but standing on the wind lip, staring down the gullet for the first time, the knees do tend to shake.

Which is perhaps why my friend opted for a line slightly left of it on our first attempt. He didn’t like the looks of those rocks one bit. Me, I wasn’t so concerned. My skis were just about due for replacing, and, to be honest, I was never as concerned about damage as others might be. I let him go first and watched him take a tentative stab at the first turn. His line avoided the wind lip but took a narrower path through a couple trees before entering an unknown quantity of scrub above the apron. A couple sideslips to get himself psyched and he was ready to charge.

That’s when the infamous Jay Peak Root made it’s presence known. A tip caught, a body twirled, and there he goes, taking his pristine line on his stomach. A human luge shoots through the steeps and over the bramble before getting flung over the billy goat exit and onto the apron. Nicely done.

Some years later, basom shows my buddy how it should have been done
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic18435.jpg

http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic18437.jpg

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photos courtesy of basom's helmet cam

He’s okay and I’m laughing, but my confidence isn’t exactly soaring. I look down the Saddle and contemplate my first move. An easy drop in. Hope the edges hold, controlled traverse to the right hand pocket, jump turn towards the rocky middle, jump turn to point-em, pull up and land, cruise to my buddy’s side with a grin in my face.

I can see it all. And the funny thing is, it pretty much happened just like that.

Sick and ashamed and happy (and still to come (eventually): More Ridge Action!! Waterfalls! Western Roadtrips! Tuckerman Ravin! The Chic-Chocs! And, of course, the Maggots!! (bet y'all are all holdin' your breath now, eh?)),
d.
--
"Set our watches forward like we're just arriving here
from a past we left in a place we knew so well."
The Weakerthans

Great stuff Gin. You looked fully dialed in the air as a kid!

Quote:

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Originally posted by Baconzoo
Sick beyond words......
http://www.tetongravity.com/usergall...al_OffRoof.jpg

Roots of phat cliff drops starts at home on the garage roof.

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I feel the same way looking at this pic as I do when I see pictures of run dmc....curtis blow.....and rakim.......nostalgic, actually seeing innovation happen

i feel lucky to be involved in Gin's skiography.
very soulfull thread my friend. a fun read to boot.

Have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy skiing with gincognito?

Quote:

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Originally posted by splat
Have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy skiing with gincognito?

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So what you're saying is you enjoy falling in tree wells and blowing up on icy corduroy?

Sick and ashamed and happy (and thanks to all (maybe we can all get together at Jackson and see if I still look fully dialed in the air (my money's on a resounding no)),
d.
--
"Those were the best days of my life."
- Bryan Adams (no shame)

Quote:

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Originally posted by splat
Have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy skiing with gincognito?

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I'll second this.

Although some of basom's headcam shots look an awful lot like one of my more miserable runs at Jay (2nd most miserable after the one when I did my knee :( ), except there wasn't nearly that much open space where I went. I do distinctly remember doing the butt luge to tree hug to lower-myself-off-cliff-while-hanging-onto-tree-with-one-ski-left-after-other-ski-javelin'd-itself-30-yds-down-slope over that terrain, though. Yeah, that was great.

Other than that, though, the Jay crew is great!

This is great stuff Gin!

A Blur

I lose track of the years. They mix and meld and form one big experience in my head. Going back to pinpoint places in time is often a futile attempt. But rest assured we are still in the mid-90s and somewhere in there we moved on to University. For one of my ski buddies, this meant a move to Vancouver where, somewhat ironically, he didn’t ski as much as he did when he was with us.

For T. and I it meant student passes at Jay Peak. Our first season passes of any significance. With those in hand we’d log 25 days a year at our playground and continue our exploration of the Ridge. New lines were being found – some obviously cut shots around the cliffs and through the trees, others consisting of awkward scraping and billygoating over the rough until in decent enough position to point ‘em off the last 10-feet and into the open field below. Once there, a handful of turns through knee deep snow in an unobstructed setting was the reward. After those were savoured, it was back into the woods for a bobsled run around trees and over waterfalls before being shot back onto the groomed trails.

Our course load relegated us to weekend warrior status, with only the occasional mid-week powder day warranting a round of hooky. Friday nights would often see us joining our non-skiing friends for a couple of beers which invariably led to a couple more and a blowing off of the self-imposed midnight curfew. Stumbling back to our apartment at two or three in the morning with the alarm set for 5:47 became a routine.

Mornings, of course, were rough. Groggy and somewhere between hung over and still slightly drunk, our faith would waver. Why were we up? Was this really worth it? The only think keeping either of us from voicing doubt was an unwillingness to bow before the other. Peer pressure can be a fine thing and once the car was pushed out of the snow bank, once the road was behind us, and once our gear was spread out over two tables in the Tram Haus Lodge, all negative thoughts were behind us.

We’d usually get there by eight. A full half hour before things were set to open. We’d be relaxed about getting geared up, we’d fuel up on granola bars and Gatorade, we’d shoot the shit until we were good and ready to go stand in the tram line for the first ride of the day. Not even a flat tire could keep us from our half-hour chill time. An explosive pothole had us making the fastest tire change in history in order to still be at the hill by eight.

Ah, to be that young again.

Somewhere in those late nineties my buddy spent a year overseas and I spent a season scamming rides, renting cars, and skiing with my Dad. His style never changed, he still skied by brute force, but he was always game to follow me around, or at least meet me at the bottom. Somewhere in there talk of Tuckerman Ravine started circulating. A mystique hung around it and we spoke in a reverence that made us nervous. Somewhere in there fatter, shapelier skis were tried and on our first test run, on the coldest day of the year at Owl’s Head (-30 C without windchill), we bombed down the hill laying the most confident arcs of our lives, grins frozen to our faces. Speed barriers were being broken and another aspect was opening before us.

We only had weekends so we would ski no matter what. Hung over? No excuse. Too cold? Please. Raining? Fewer crowds. Ice, powder, groomed. Trees, bumps, cruisers. We took what we received and counted ourselves lucky.

But somewhere in there I landed a 360 slightly askew. And I felt my left knee let go.

Sick and ashamed and happy (and apologizing to John Irving for the pilfered thread title),
d.
--
"But I lay there awake contemplating the horror of having
to look for a real job. The notion of earning a living...
The phrase itself was like those other obscene propositions
offered on a men's room wall."
- John Irving, "The Water Method Man"

Quote:

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Originally posted by gincognito

But somewhere in there I landed a 360 slightly askew. And I felt my left knee let go.

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ack! don't stop now! i can't wait til next week! you're just toying with us now.

The Lost Season (or My Life in the Bargain Bin)

(From the archives...)

I remember the moment with heart-breaking clarity. I sat in a small examination room and listened to the words that would shape my season: ACL reconstruction. That same old, worn out, familiar story. But there was a difference this time. This time it was me.

I tried to take the news in a calm and composed fashion - the truth is I was too stunned to do otherwise. But when the doctor turned to leave as if this was no big deal, I found myself struggling to hold my emotions in check as I called him back for more information.

“I realize this is old hat to you,” I said through slightly clenched teeth, “but it’s new to me, so if I could just have a few more minutes of your time…” He turned out to be quite understanding and was able to do a lot to clear up my fears.

Which is not to say that I was completely set at ease. On the way home I suddenly reached out and punched a metal traffic pole. The hollow echo reverberated long enough for plenty of people to turn and stare my way. I found myself wanting to throw things. Wanting to scream. When I got home I played the heavy tracks off of the Smashing Pumpkins’ Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness at a near deafening volume. I fumed in the privacy of my own home.

I used to think I was healthy, in good shape. Not anymore. I have a bum knee. I am damaged goods. Bargain bin stuff. Crammed in there among the mismatched gloves and hats with large pom-poms.

The initial damage occurred back in December of 1997. A 360 landed slightly askew twisted my knee in a most unnatural way. The pain was large but not what I thought ACL tearing pain was. I had heard so many horror stories that the fact that I hadn’t passed out had me convinced it was only a sprain. I even managed to eke out a laugh as my friend came over the same jump, stalled halfway through his rotation, and flew ass-first into the trees and patroller’s rope on the side of the run.

I thank him for that – for giving me something to laugh about as I held my battered knee.

I was diagnosed with a sprain and was on crutches for about a week. The doc then gave me the go ahead to get back to my life (read: skiing). So I did. Despite the fact that I still felt occasional flares of pain and despite the fact that deep down I knew things were not quite right. I thought time would heal things. I hoped.

But then, in August of 1998, with the first real yearnings for winter beginning, my friends and I found ourselves in the sand dunes with skis on our feet. And the inevitable happened. A simple jump with a compression landing and my knee let go on me again. This time there was no fooling myself into thinking things would heal on their own. I slid down the dune and could not pick myself up.

After many doctors and many physiotherapy appointments the inevitable became clear. ACL reconstruction would be needed. The soonest they could fit me in was fall. A ski season would be sacrificed for many more to come.

Two months after this diagnosis I hopped onto an operation table and felt strangely calm. I joked with the anaesthesiologist and faked concern when I heard him call the resident a “spastic bastard.” He set up the IV, stuck a needle in my hand and told me to say goodnight. Out I went.

The first memory I have after that is hearing a nurse telling me to wake up. I slowly opened my eyes and tried to get my bearings. I was obviously in the recovery room. I saw a nurse looking down at me. I felt a strange throbbing in my left knee. I tried to form some words but I was feeling so groggy. “Did they operate on my left knee?” I managed to ask. “Yes,” she replied still looking down on me. “But they were supposed to do the right one,” I said in my slow, drug induced speech. She stared at me. I could not read her expression but I was glad I was able to get out a “just kidding” before falling back asleep.

I am one week post-op now. I have to say that the drugs they gave me have been rather ineffectual. Fortunately the pain has been bearable. Again, the stories I had heard had me prepared for much worse. I could deal with this.

The crutches are a bitch though. I’ve truly come to despise them. They make me feel like a prisoner. My one goal in life at this moment is to get off of them as quickly as possible. I have already been given the green light to try to put a little weight on my bum knee and so far things feel all right. I’m hoping to be hobbling on my own in another week or so.

The knee itself looks ugly. A six-inch slice runs over my kneecap and the flesh is currently being held together by staples. Those will be coming out soon, but until then I actually enjoy lifting up my bandages and sneaking a peak at my Frankenstein features. I don’t, however, take any joy out of seeing the monstrous swelling. My knee has been replaced by a softball.

The hardest thing for now is feeling so weak and so helpless. My quad feels like Jell-O and the simplest tasks are rendered humiliating by the crutches. But again I keep my sight on my goal. Once these crutches are gone I will be free. Once the physiotherapy starts, the strength will return. Once I am active in just the slightest bit, I will feel better. I do not want to spend too many more days with my ass glued to the couch, watching daytime television.

Unfortunately, the start of my recover will coincide with the start of the ski season. My roommate and brother have already bagged a day on the boards and will be heading out again this weekend. The winter has begun even if significant snow has yet to fall.

Every now and then it hits me with its original force. I see my skis propped up in the corner of my room and I realise that I will not be using them this year. I flip through pictures of seasons gone by and know that this year I will not be in any of the shots. I hear my skier friends talk about the upcoming powder days and, although I do not begrudge them, I cannot ignore the fact that I will not be there. It will not be the same for me; it will not be the same for them. It will be the first time in about six years that my ski partner will spend a season without me. He is going to have to find someone else to share his runs with. Someone else to share the epic powder days and the bored goof-off days.

He will ski with my brother. My brother, whom I may not get another chance to share a season with. Last season he was in Switzerland, the seasons before he was busy being a ski instructor. This would have been the first time in many years that we could get some significant ski time together. Next year? Who knows what it will bring?

But I am coping. As I said, I will survive. People have gone through much worse that this, right? Right.

Yeah, but that isn’t going to help me when I see the snow raging outside of my window. Perspective will be lost when I hear my roommate leave at 6:00 am to bag some first tracks through the glades of Jay. I will lie in my bed and curse my knee and wish I was going with him, and, then, when I get up many hours later, I will go outside and sit in a snowdrift – not so much to mope, but more to feel some contact with the snow, to help me be there in my mind.

I think I will be doing that a lot this year.

Sick and ashamed and happy (and the season wasn't completely lost...),
d.

sniff........... he knows how i feel.

can't wait till next week

I enjoy reading your threads more than anyone else on this board, gin.

Hope to get many more turns with you this season!

Shit, man, that's strong. Taken with a grain of salt, but a buttload of thanks nonetheless.

Sick and ashamed and happy (and it's going to be an awesome season (can you feel it?)),
d.

gin, dude, you need to stop posting this stuff right now. Go back, delete the whole thread, then head up to AK or Jackson or wherever they back this stuff up and find the disks and destroy them too.

This should be published, like in a nice mag with glossy pages and stuff.

Damn fine words, d, damn fine.

One Day

New Year’s Day. Some unknown hours into 1999. The two parties in a friend’s apartment building had morphed into one. Momentum was building. Three units held an open-doors policy and people streamed in and out like shooting stars. Hallways and stairwells held the overflow. The front stoop became the breathing space - a spot for a bit of fresh air and drunken contemplation. The January air cooled our sweating skin and we watched our breath drift into the night before disappearing.

The night was beautiful. I wanted it to last forever.

In those drunken states, when laughter is prevalent and there’s never a dearth of people to talk to, I get overwhelmed with melancholy euphoria. Every joke is the funniest ever told, every truth the most profound. I have a hard time letting go. I want to soak it up, because even through the alcohol haze, I can see the fleetingness of the carefree moment.

And so it was that when most people had stumbled home, passed out, or otherwise vacated the party, I found myself in a much quieter hallway discussing the finer points of god-knows-what with my fellow closer. And so it was that we were there when the door at the end opened and a girl with blonde pigtails smiled her way towards us.

She joined our conversation easily and soon enough we were talking about skiing. After spending seasons in Whistler, her scholastic pursuits had brought her to Montreal for the year. Her skis sat in her apartment, but lack of transportation to the slopes had left them gathering dust. I rolled up my pant leg and showed her the reason that I too had been relegated to the sidelines.

However, not being able to ignore a skier in need, I offered my roommate’s services to right her horrible wrong and get her to the hills (safe in the knowledge that he was (and remains) solidly spoken for).

“He goes every weekend, I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” I convinced her. Numbers were exchanged and everyone left happy (except for my fellow closer who claimed to have felt like a third wheel: “As soon as the talk turned to skiing, she ignored me and only had eyes for you,” he complained. “If that was the case, why the hell didn’t you leave us alone?” I countered.)

In any case, the winter continued and my pain was tempered by this fortunate fling. Life conspired to keep my busy and I can almost convince myself that I didn’t notice the skiing I was missing. I hit the physio hard and spent many afternoons riding a stationary bike in a basement room that felt like a dungeon. Staring at a cracked concrete wall, it was easy to believe that the lights would go off if I had stopped pedaling.

Come March I was almost at peace with T. coming home from Saturday skiing with tales of powder. He was excited and meant no ill when he talked of glades in prime shape. So I smiled and tried to share his enthusiasm, all the while hoping he would soon shut up.

Then Tuckerman Ravine crept into the picture. For years we had talked about it, but had yet to sack up and make the trip. Now things seemed to be getting serious. My brother and a friend of his were making loud noises about going, so of course, T. would as well.

Again, I don’t fault anyone. Things come together at certain times and people should take advantage when they can. I certainly did not want to hold anyone back. Of course not.

Any yet…a part of me was pissed. Pissed that after years of hesitating, they were finally taking the plunge while I was out of commission. I don’t remember what I did the weekend they were away, but I do know that I acted very disinterested when they returned. “It was good? Yeah? Great,” was the extent of my questioning. When the pictures came in I rifled through them quickly and went back to watching the hockey game. In short: I sulked. Can you really blame me?

But I would feel redemption before the snow left the ground. I did not let the season go by without putting skis to slope. Good Friday came along and Jay Peak was hosting one last weekend of skiing. I was just over the 5 month mark of my rehab and determined to cash in. Armed with a knee brace, I joined T., my bro, and pig tails in what promised to be a quintessential spring day.

“I’ll just stick to the blues,” I said. “Just gonna take it easy.” Easier said than done. Under blue skies and over soft snow I was feeling prime. The simple motion of gliding down the hill brought back so much of me. Testing the knee like a fawn, I gradually grew more sure of my rebuilt self. Turns came easy. Instinct returned. I was home.

We ate our lunch on top of the ridge. Sitting on rocks amid stumpy conifers, throwing snowballs and soaking up sun. I was almost okay with my first day being my last. It felt like closure. Closure on my rehab, closure on my injury.

I followed the crew down Radio Chute, a steep narrow shot down the lookers left of the ridge. From the blue cruisers to here I felt the rush of rapid improvement. The satisfaction was equaled only by the beers we quaffed on the deck at the end of the day.

I was home.

Sick and ashamed and happy (and appreciative of the delusional flattery),
d.
--
"I've got a dream, I've got a plan
I'll leave this world, live of the land
When I get good, when I get better again."
-Rheostatics