Words COLIN CLANCY lake water presses the air from my lungs and I can’t get to the dock ladder fast enough. Robbie Koets had descended slowly in the January chill, forcing himself into a zen trance with only hands and head above the surface. He said this strategy allowed a thin bubble layer to form around his skin, offering some modicum of insulation. But my cannonball burst that bubble and shocked him from his reverie. The 50-degree air and gentle rain feel good as we emerge from the lake, but man it sucks for skiing. Bittersweet Ski Resort, the 350-vertical-foot hill I learned upon, had once been a 300-vertical-foot hill, but the sum-mer before my senior year of high school bulldozers added an extra cushion of earth for a new high-speed quad. Today, not one of those 350 feet is open in an attempt to conserve its meager snowpack. The mountain manager laughed at me this morning when I asked if we could hike a few laps, but I hadn’t been joking. It was an inauspicious start to this Michigan ski road trip that my group of friends, close since our eighth-grade ski club days, had talked about for a long time. Though the responsibilities of jobs and kids had made the prospect more difficult with each passing winter, we’d carved out five days in which to ski our home state. When I left my eight-months-pregnant wife, Amy, for a snowy drive to the Salt Lake City airport earlier this morning, I hoped my own next big responsibility would hold off at least another week. We’d lost a ski day to unseasonably warm early-January south-west Michigan weather, but tomorrow we’d head north on a mission to find snow and ski some of the best slopes the Great Lakes State had to offer. ICY 064 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 17, Issue 1: Page 64
