First it was Loveland; second, Arapahoe Basin. Social media blew up, with companies like Teton Gravity Research and Unofficial Networks posting photos of the first cycle of chair lifts and blasts of snow guns. Skiers and boarders across Colorado rejoiced in the announcements, sharing TGR and Unofficial Network’s posts with captions like, “The Gods have heard us!” and “This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill.”
Yes, the Gods have heard us and answered our prayers: Loveland and A Basin have opened, the first two ski resorts in Colorado this year, and ski season has officially begun.
No longer will we have to stream Warren Miller and Sweetgrass films behind our notes in class, living vicariously through the featured skiers glistening in fields of powder. Nor will we have to stare nostalgically at our skis and boards, recreating in our heads the crisp glide that can result only from the perfect carve.
The snow is calling, and we must go.
The weekend cycle of waking up at 5 a.m. too hungover to fight about who has to drive this time is back. We will again groan as we wriggle into frozen ski boots; scheme over whose bindings we’ll unclip in the lift line next; and, of course, spend all afternoon indulging in the adrenaline of suffocating in fresh pow.
For me, its a silent adrenaline, the kind that is so powerful it can mute even the loudest person. No one exists around me, just the patch of evergreens or narrow chute in front of me. Even at Winterfest, when everyone is probably too intoxicated to ski and in telly tubby onesies, it’s all solitude until hoping back on the chairlift for another swig of Fireball.
If it is your first ski season in Colorado (or ever), you are only beginning to experience the hype. As the snow gets deeper, the thrill expressed for that next day out only increases and does so exponentially. And man, is it contagious.
If it is your 5th, 20th, or 50th season skiing, you know the drill. You know because after months of wishing it were sometime between November and May that every day out skiing is a blessing. And even though you know that, each ski season is more magical than the last.
With Breck Break soon upon us, the ski community can officially reunite in our rightful place where we are free to drop that cliff-drop, straightline past a yellow jack, “huck the gnar” everywhere and anywhere, and, of course, sip on a beer in the shower, knowing that post-ski shower beers are the best form of shower beers. Period.
Liz Forster