Pickleball?

So far it’s been a crappy winter.  Granted, solstice-wise, we are only two weeks in, but still, forty years ago in central NY my college ski team was well into hill training before Thanksgiving break. Today, recovery from New Year’s Eve festivities is complete and there is still no snow in Connecticut—even in the northern hills.  What’s a skier to do?

Rumor has it that there is snow in other New England states. SkiResort reports that 12 of the 13 northeast ski resorts they track are open—all in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire.  The “closed” ski area is in New Jersey—and since Big Snow American Dream is an indoor resort only open in the skiing off-season the stats reassure me—until I look at the “open slopes” numbers: 299 km open; 403 km closed!  Clearly, on this website Europeans are reporting about American slopes so without a calculator I actually have no idea what kind of distances they are talking about. But even without moving the beads on my abacus, I can tell that the total stretch of closed trails is far longer than the length of the open ones.  If total slopes equal those open plus those closed, then aren’t more than half of the slopes at northeast ski resorts closed??  In January??  Please tell me my math is still as bad as it was in high school.

In addition to the large “resorts” stats, numbers for traditional smaller ski areas are equally dismal. Skicentral reports that in Massachusetts only four of eleven areas are open, offering skiing on a mere 18% of the state’s total number of trails; In Connecticut just one of its four ski areas is open with only 6 of that area’s 25 runs skiable.

 
Skiers have always embraced alternate-season sports.  Talk to golfers, sailors, tennis players, bikers in the summer and you will find that many of these seemingly committed amateur athletes are only biding their time until ski season is back. No skier intentionally engages in a sport other than skiing during ski season!  But with less snow every year and temperatures so warm that window box geraniums are still viable in January, what’s a skier south of the 43^rd parallel supposed to do in the winter time?  …A friend suggested pickleball.

Desperate for activity, I tried it. How did it compare?  As when skiing, we were outdoors in January, peeling off layers as exertion increased, breathing hard, going for the win, traversing, cruising, staying focused. Also as when skiing, classic rock pumped through my earbuds, I kept water near, though not in a backpack bladder.   Other similarities: Courts can be green, blue or black, boundaries of play are well marked, some areas are lit for night games, it’s hard to get a court during peak times.  One of many differences: pickleball is a fraction of the cost of skiing.

In summary: Hard no. Pickleball cannot ever replace skiing.  But winter has changed in southern New England. Lack of snow means affordable day trips that used to supplement week-long forays up north and out west are gone. Sister sports cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and outdoor skating that filled the void between big mountain trips are also gone locally.  I have always wondered what people in snowless areas of the country did for fun in their “winters,” but I never really wanted to find out.  Yet now I know. It’s abundantly clear that the time has come to embrace outdoor activities that can be done in the cool, dreary, no-niveous weather that has come to be known as "winter in Connecticut." So, I am willing to pick up a paddle and play a new outdoor game on what used to be a snow-covered flat surface.

 
But I refuse to love it.

New England Ski Museum

A Visit to the New England Ski Museum, North Conway, NH

Anyone who loves skiing will love this museum--currently operating in two locations as described on their website. Old-timers will have their memories jogged by the exhibits featuring old equipment and photos of "lost" ski areas. Those new to the sport will learn the "backstory" of their current winter fun. For this visitor highlights included the skis, boots and vintage posters.

Wood skis.  Remember these?  The cable bindings held boots in tight with no emergency release.  A serious fall meant something might break--the question was whether it would be a ski, or a leg! On the up side, releasing the cable from the rear brackets transformed the skis from downhill to cross-country.  Getting to the lift was an easy glide. Hook the cable back under the bracket to go downhill.

Leather, lace-up ski boots.  What an ordeal!  Wool sock liners, then a heavy wool sock. Lace the inside boot as tight as possible and then the outside one even tighter. Regardless, by mid-day the moisture from the snow had stretched the leather loose so socks were wet and feet were COLD!  

Leather, lace-up ski boots.  What an ordeal!  Wool sock liners, then a heavy wool sock. Lace the inside boot as tight as possible and then the outside one even tighter. Regardless, by mid-day the moisture from the snow had stretched the leather loose so socks were wet and feet were COLD!  

The Skimobile. This is not your average ski-doo!  This was a set of tracked cars that skiers rode to the top of Mt Cranmore.  Installed in 1938 and removed in 1990, it is a fond remembrance but the high speed quad that replaced it will not yield to nostalgia.

Check out this article from the Conway Daily Sun or watch this video, "cinetopicalities in brief" to learn more about the Skimobile

Skiing and the NFS

According to U.S. Forest Service Visitor Use Monitoring Surveys the number one reason people visit National Forests is to hike. But guess what activity is a close second? Of course, downhill skiing! Each year about 57 million people visit U.S. ski areas and of those, almost half, visit ski areas that operate on U.S. Forest Service land.

Congress entrusts the National Forest Service (NFS) to “make such rules and regulations and establish such service as will insure the objects of the [national forests], namely to regulate their occupancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction.” According to a recent “water clause directive”(a strategy for providing adequate water to ski areas described in the Federal Register) issued by the NFS “there are 122 ski areas that encompass about 180,000 acres of lands managed by the Forest Service. [Those] ski areas receive roughly 23 million visitors annually, who contribute $3 billion yearly to local economies and support approximately 64,000 full- and part-time jobs in rural communities.” NHSC members are regularly skiing in the mix—both out west and in the east.


The first eastern ski area on federal reserve land was Wildcat, in New Hampshire. The ski area maintains a park-like setting with no on-site lodging and plenty of brown-bag lunches in the base lodge. The slopes here are steep and fast and the view from the summit (at over 4,000 feet nose level with Mt Washington’s 6,000’ summit) is consistently voted among the most scenic in all North American ski resorts by readers of Ski magazine. Many NFS areas are like slopes in a time capsule—except for the fact that modern high speed lifts now bring skiers and boarders uphill.


The first ski trail at Wildcat was cut by the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) in the summer of 1933. With no lift at that time, skiers would hike up most of the day in order to ski down the mile and a half trail. It was 60 feet wide in places and dropped 2,000 vertical feet. In the winter of 1957-58 Wildcat introduced a top-to bottom gondola that provided access to a trail network that included the original CCC trail. It is still skiable today—and with a $10 trail pass one can skip the liftline and hike up the mountain to access it--just like they did in the old days.

Ski Songs

I was reminiscing with friends recently about singing songs around the campfire.  A long time ago.  In the summer.  Songs about mountains, rivers, skies.  Songs about canoeing, sailing, hiking. Our instruments of choice then were guitars and harmonicas.  There were lots of fun memories but talk soon shifted from the season that was over to the season that is here.  Which meant songs were irrelevant because—we could not think of one song about skiing!  Seriously!  Are there any?

Googling the phrase “songs about skiing” yields a list of websites that feature “Top 10 skiing songs.”  Or “Top 5.”  Or, “Best.”  Point being, these are songs that have been judged great to listen to while skiing.  They are not about skiing. (Though it's true that The Doors’ Riders on the Storm and Bowie’s Rebel, Rebel are pretty sweet powder tunes…)  I thought my research might be more successful if I searched for the lyrics themselves.  At the Lyrics.com database a truncated search strategy worked, sort of.  This technique involves putting an asterisk at the end of a root word that might have many different endings, in order to find various forms of the research term, ie ski*. In this case the letters s,k,i begin all of the words ski, skiing, skier, and skis.  Unfortunately, they also start the word skies, about which many songs have been sung! So, this librarian suggests that you use the truncation trick in research databases or library catalogs, where you can also include a “this, but not that” key word directive.

Some of the songs I did find?  How about Billie Holiday’s Moonlight in Vermont with the lyrics: 

Pennies in a stream/Falling leaves a sycamore/Moonlight in Vermont/Gentle finger waves/Ski trails down a mountain side/Snow light in Vermont.

Sara Vaughn and Count Basie did a pretty good job with it too…Just ask Alexa.

In To Be Given a Body Torres sings:

Where would I have been if/Not safe in the middle/Pressed between/His right shoulder/Your left shoulder/Drowsy on the ski lift/Drowsy on the ski lift…

Let’s just say, the song was not a hit.  Four Bitchin’ Babes sing:

Look at me I'm skiing/When I do not like skiing/But he loves skiing/And I love him/I rent the boots and poles/ I shiver in the cold I'm charging down the mountain/Risking life and limb/There's no exhilaration /I am only feeling terrified/Everyone everyone around me's having/Such a great time/I do not like skiing/But look at me I'm skiing/It's a good thing He can't read my mind.

Hmmm...a tune that is both a song about skiing and a ballad about a doomed relationship.

A number of raps about ski masks and guns can be found on the Amazon “ski-word” playlist but I’m pretty sure they have nothing to do with the actual sport.

I gave up on the web and the free pseudo-databases and went to Worldcat.org, a giant catalog of items held in libraries all over the globe, where I found what I was looking for.  An album by Bob Gibson, produced in 2008 called Ski Songs.  Perfect for a summer camp chorus-- vocals, banjo, guitars and surely a harmonica or two.  The song titles on the album are: Celebrated skier, In this white world, Super skier, Highlands Lassie, Bend in his knees, Talking skier, Ski patrol, Skiin' in the mornin', Super skier's last race, What'll we do, Skol the skier.  Now this is an album of ski songs!  You build a campfire in the snow while I look up the chords!

(Find the album in a library near you at http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/225876490)