Day 39

It was day 39 on skis for me today. I’ve managed to get out there every day since the season opened with the exception of New Year’s Day (when it was raining and Sugar Bowl was closed due to a power outage…). Max and I have been logging 30+ days on the snow for the past couple of seasons, but I think otherwise the closest I’ve come to 39 days was when I spent my (Australian) summer break from university in Steamboat Springs at the age of 19.

Wild Man and I have settled into our routine up here on Donner Summit. On weekdays it’s up early for a 15 minute yoga session before leaving Powder Haus between 7:40AM and 7:50AM. Mondays it’s school all day, Tuesday-Friday it’s hot breakfast at Village Hall followed by on-the-snow training from 9:00AM until 1:00PM and then school until 4:45PM. Max was originally staying at school until 5:40PM each weekday to get all his homework done, but for the past couple of weeks he’s been having me grab him at 4:45PM and studying at home. There’s been a lot of homework, which was to be expected given he has to get through the curriculum in 60% of the time he’d have at a “normal” school… Once dinner and homework is done he’s usually ready to collapse into bed, ready to do it all over again the next day. Weekends are a little more relaxed, with breakfast at home, training from 9:00AM to 3:00PM, and lunch with me and whomever ends up visiting us for the weekend. Oh, and we can’t forget our Sunday evening outings to RMU down in Truckee for their weekly $12 smash burger and fries special. It would take an event of biblical proportions for us to miss a Sunday evening at RMU.

After the phenomenal storms over the Christmas/New Year break, fresh snow has been hard to come by since the seven inches we received on January 6-8 (which was without question the best conditions of the season thus far…). We had a bit of a sprinkle – four inches or so – overnight on January 27 but otherwise it’s been blue skies and very mild temps. Actually, more like spring temps: it’s been punching through 50°F/10°C on quite a few days, which is pretty warm for January. The Lake Run on January 6 and Rubicon Peak a few days later have definitely been highlights for me. The groomers have been great in the mornings, but there’s only so many groomer hot laps one can do so I’ve been doing a ton of touring, the bulk of it inbounds given my touring partner is in New Zealand for a few weeks. No complaints though: Sugar Bowl is one of the few resorts in the state that allows inbound uphilling when the chairs are spinning, and they allow uphillers on the slopes anytime between 7:00AM and dusk. Given I drop off Max at 8:00AM-ish, I’m typically at the peak of the resort before the chairlifts open at 9:00AM, and the first run from top to bottom on completely untracked corduroy is always a high speed and enjoyable undertaking. It’s actually very tranquil being on the mountain before the sun has risen over the Mount Judah ridge, the repetitive plod of my skins on the snow the only sound other than the occasional ski patroller schussing by on their morning rounds. I’ve been logging between 6,000 and 10,000 of uphill per week – most of it before the resort opens or after it closes – and can definitely feel the EPO-induced new blood in my system after adjusting to life at 6,200 feet. This last week I’ve noticed I can bang out a 1,500 foot climb to the peak of Lincoln without even really breaking a sweat, an undertaking that really took it out of me five or six weeks ago.

It took Maxie a couple/few weeks to adjust to things up here: the pressure of being amongst a group of some of the best U15 freeride skiers in the country, having to find his place in the cliquey social landscape of the academy, and the grueling academic schedule understandably took some getting used to. But I can tell he’s in his element now, with a group of homies I hear about a lot on the daily ride home and at dinnertime, coupled with stories of shenanigans I would have similarly enjoyed as a young teen. We even have a carpool buddy – Beaux – who lives around the corner for the winter and is a phenomenal racer (a different discipline to Max), consistently getting on the podium in regional comps against kids who are older and much heavier. I still need to figure out how Beaux breathes, because the kid talks so much and so fast on our rides home that I often wonder how he finds time to fill his lungs. There’s also Finn, one grade below Max but often in the same physical classroom at school, he lives in the Sugar Bowl village and is one hell of a snowboarder. Finn’s also up here for his first winter, his dad has been an uphill partner for me on some mornings when schedules allow. About the only part of the winter that Max really doesn’t enjoy thus far is tuning his own skis: scraping the wax down really works his little hands, I’m surprised he hasn’t hucked them off the deck in frustration once or twice! He hates scraping the wax so much that he’s managed to convince some of his classmates to wax his skis for him for $10. 4H sheep money put to good use, I guess…

It was great to have the girls visit for a long weekend mid-January, Ben and Kevin Taylor also joined us for a couple of weekends last month. Was nice for Max to have a familiar face around for a few nights, and always fun to host the Taylor boys at Powder Haus: hot tubbing, beers, good food and somehow the Fireball always finds its way out of the freezer at the end of the night… The sunny conditions were ideal for Ben to continue to get the hang of his snowboard, last weekend it was great to see him (finally) looking super comfortable on his toe edge. The raspberry on his pelvic bone below was the result of getting a little too confident in the park, but as he said to Kevin and I post-fall: no pain, no gain.

We could do with some snow, but thankfully the 10+ feet we received over the Christmas/New Year break coupled with Sugar Bowl’s (mostly) north-facing aspect has continued to provide plenty of great skiing. Looks like we could be in for half a foot-ish next week, which will be a very welcome change to the blue skies. More morning uphill laps for me and drills for Wild Man this week, though. We’ll continue to do snow dances whenever we find time…