The Ski Journal • Volume 17, Issue 2 • THE MEASURE OF IT ALL

We rise with the seasons. With devotion akin to religious fervor, the arc of our winter lives shifts toward what we find important. In life, in skiing, in time well spent. Water in all of its phases shifts through the sea, the clouds, the mountains and each of us. We are fortunate to catch that ride.

This season my favorite haunt saw more of that water than it had in a long time. Pessimism in knees, in traffic, in lift lines all took a back seat to something that was bigger than all of us. A collective energy grew and then continued to grow in a way that further helped us celebrate why we slide on snow. The Dolores LaChapelle edict that remains a driving force in my own life saw an uptick in its credence. Snow does only come in sufficient amounts in particular places. It does only last a limited time. However, last season, shifts in the cosmos saw fit to gift us with more snow in more places for more time.

By all accounts, it was the greatest season for our new generation of ski bums to rectify the chaos of the past few years. Everywhere I look, I see skiers in their 20s that remind me of myself. They restore my faith in humanity. To come through the storm of life-on-hold and be met on the other side with the snowpack of this winter remains one of the greatest recalculations of humanity’s winter soul. And we all knew it. We all felt it. My friend Burrito Tony’s oldest daughter finished school, and bummed around the San Juans for a year before landing in Tahoe. Through her images of buried trucks and homes, our hearts reckoning with the cycle of things, of a renewal in stoke that needed a proper jump-start.

My partners in crime for spring ascents, Le Rouge and Professor, felt it too. Messages meant to plan a heretofore-thwarted ski descent of the highest peak in the Rabbit Ears range were laced with news we had never before shared—there was still too much snow on the Continental Divide. Exercising patience, we struck at the perfect moment. From three separate towns, we converged on a snowy trailhead between Middle and North parks, a seldom-traversed road that on that day doubled as a raging river.

After a winter that will be talked about for a generation, one whose exaggerations will only further illustrate how great it was, the three of us were putting one final exclamation point on our 2023 winter masterpiece.

A summit free of crowds led to a corn descent that seemed never-ending. How many turns is too many? How often can we ski directly to the truck—in spring? How often do we have a chance to bookend the greatest season that ever was with the shared experience of bliss, clouds and laughs that surface for no reason whatsoever?

And so it happened that during the deepest season after the most tumultuous pandemic and with the very real acknowledgement that we would be shelving the skis after negotiating the runoff on the pass, the best day of skiing was one with friends in an unpopulated sea of corn with views of infinity and the aptly named Never Summer range. We run with the water downhill until we rise again, appreciating that, with another year in the books, we are measuring this season not in depth of snow, but depth of experience.

The Ski Journal - Volume 17, Issue 2

THE MEASURE OF IT ALL

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