Wind and visibility

I spent the past two days skiing in the mountains. Again, I am reminded of the lessons of nature and how varied our human response is. Snow had fallen in the mountains mid-week and skiers entered the gondola from the base of the village expecting great conditions. What they got - great snow - but also high winds and limited visibility. In the lodge as I was putting on my boots, I ran into an aquaintance who lives in a nearby mountain community. "Hey Barry, how's it going?" I asked. "It's @$#%& out there", he replied. "High winds and no visibility. It's brutal. I'm going home."

My daughter and I headed out. We have a routine at this ski area as we do at most. Warm up runs and then on to more challenging terrain. The groomed runs that we use to warm up our ski legs are among the most exposed on the mountain. The temperature was fine, just a few degrees below freezing, almost balmy for Alberta in January, but the wind was strong. As I felt it bite into my face, I used a tactic that sometimes works. I thought of dermabrasion and how roughing up skin with a light peel actually benefits my complexion. It didn't really help. Dermabrasion by wind stings a bit, but the distraction of visualizing something unrelated to skiing or wind, did make me smile. My daughter and I slid off the chair lift and agreed that we would decide what to do after we had skied the first pitch. The snow was glorious and I skied fast for my first run. We stopped and looked uphill to the continental divide. The wind was thrusting the new snow into swirls and grey snow clouds were moving in. We decided to go ski on terrain more protected from the wind. There was less vertical to ski but it would be warmer.

I enjoyed my day skiing. The two highest chairs did stop operating for a few hours because of the wind, but my choice of terrain was unaffected by the wind. The snow was great and rather than working on my carving, I worked on my mogul skiing. The sun emerged briefly for an hour and then snow squalls began in earnest. After every ride on the chair, I would shake off the white covering from my shoulders and legs. The visibility didn't matter. One of my goals was to stop checking out every bump and planning my line; instead I wanted to just ski it as it happened. Ski by feeling rather than seeing. The results were good. I had a lot of fun and pushed myself to turn in places I ordinarily wouldn't. There was the one mishap when I turned too close to a bamboo pole marking a rock and ending up sitting on the rock but other than that, I stayed on my feet. I felt a great deal of satisfaction.

The next day, my daughter and I went to another ski area in the same mountain park. It is not as large as the one we had visited the day before and attracts a different clientele. We had skied for about two hours and were about to head in for coffee when I heard my name. Two friends who live in the nearby town had called out. I had spoken to them the night before and they were planning to ski the larger resort. "What are you doing here?", I asked. " The wind was high and visibility was bad. We took one run down the Divide and decided to come here instead". Essentially, they taken a twenty minute car ride, a twenty minute gondola trip, a fifteen minute chair, skiied for about three minutes, taken another chair for ten minutes and skied for fifteen minutes before downloading into the gondola for a half hour trip to the other ski area. The skiing was fine at the smaller area but the snow was not nearly as good.

So, three sets of keen skiers all dealing with wind and visibility in different ways. Expectations clearly played a role in our varied reactions. My daughter and I were the only non-locals. We had invested more time and energy into getting to the ski hill than the others. The lesson to me is one of allowing and going with the flow. The conditions weren't conducive to carving on groomed runs so we adapted and had fun. The other set of friends chose an alternative adaptation by not worrying about sunk time but instead going to a ski area where the conditions would allow them to ski the way they wanted. And the third...well...he's like the little piggy who went whee, whee,whee, all the way home.