Skiing double

WEEK 40

For past 10 days, I’ve been living in Whistler, British Columbia. I say living because I’ve been comfortably domiciled along with my mom in a two-bedroom condo in the Benchlands area of Blackcomb Mountain, just a short walk to the slopes, followed by a few days alone in a smaller condo in Whistler Village. All necessary and important recon for my dream of being based here for longer stints…

Whistler is hands down the best place to be outdoors. (For nostalgia, though, nothing beats Bear Valley in the Sierra Nevada where I spent most summers as a child and nearly every winter weekend, learning to ski between my mom’s legs shortly after I could walk.) In Whistler Blackcomb, the skiing is so vast that despite my focused efforts to rip as much quality vertical as possible in nine back-to-back days on the mountain, I spotted from each chairlift ride many great lines still to explore. If that’s not enough, the surrounding snow-covered peaks and glaciers continually take my breath away. Given the drama and scale, it’s like a combined Alps / Himalayas everywhere you turn.

Being here I’ve realized an inherent challenge in my 52×52 project – balancing time for both the new and the familiar. As I remind myself, this project is a year-long gift to try something new each week, and I’ve had some amazing firsts. But I often feel tension to maximize those precious few days to do exactly what I already love – in this case, downhill skiing.

Skiing is me at my most selfish. I would ski every single day if life permitted. It’s the only sport I know that requires all of me. And I mean that, from my big toes to the imaginary string at the top of my head. To ski well and hard, I am intensely present in body and mind, constantly reading the terrain, engaging my core and muscles, making tiny adjustments as I move forward and over my skis, turning, flexing, extending, gaining speed, taking speed away. There is no noise; no room for outside thoughts. I look at it this way – skiing takes all of me but gives me all of me, plus nature, in return. It’s the most exhilarating feeling, and with an average of 15 ski days a season, I’m in no hurry to give up those moments.

Then my cousin Nancy, who was with me for a few days on the trip, hatched an ingenious plan. If any day on two sticks is a great day, what if I change up the sticks mid-day to try something new?

Nancy is not a downhill skier, but she finds plenty to do outside in winter, and on her short list, I find out, is learning to skate ski. We’ve both done our share of classic cross-country skiing but have never been on skate skis. Not surprisingly, Whistler has an exceptional Nordic program, including teaching skate technique, and we booked a late-afternoon lesson. Thus began my tale of two ski days in one.

I woke to bluebird skies, a rarity in this damp place, and went right to Blackcomb Peak. I spent the first few hours by myself lapping soft snow off Glacier Express chair, followed by an epic top-to-bottom 5000+ vertical-foot run starting with a hike to Blackcomb Glacier and ending at the base gondola. Full face grin the whole time.

After a quick pit stop in the condo for fuel and a costume change, I headed to the Nordic center to meet Nancy. Turns out she and I were the only takers for the 2:00 p.m. lesson, a blessing as we both fell almost instantly after putting on our skis.

Toshi, our lovely Japanese instructor, first explained the equipment. Classic is the traditional style of cross-country skiing that most of us imagine, using very long, narrow skis that flex in a bow-like shape. Classic skis have a grip zone or kick zone – completely absent on skate skis – and you typically ski classic in grooved tracks, finding a rhythm by pushing against the kick zone.

While skate skis also have that same bow-like construction, every inch of the base is waxed so the skis can glide continually. “Glide continually” is an understatement. Each time I tried to stand upright, I became a cartoon character slipping backwards on a banana peel.

Toshi demonstrated the basic technique, working the skis in a V-angle, like a duck walk. To move forward, we had to roll one ski at a time on its inside edge and push the ski out and to the side in a gliding motion. That V-angle varies from very wide on steep terrain to narrower as you get some speed.

Intellectually I got the action – even with Alpine skis I need to skate from time to time across flat surfaces on the mountain – but internalizing this motion, while balancing with a free heel on slick sticks and holding nose-height poles, was massively challenging.

Poor Toshi. We had waltzed into the lesson exuding confidence in our strong baseline fitness and athletic coordination, not to mention days of classic skiing. Thank goodness for his patience and love of the sport. He had switched from downhill to skate skiing many years ago to get a better workout and escape the growing crowds on the slopes. More recently, he began training in biathlon. Basically a complete fitness bad-ass with a big heart.

Our first 15 minutes on the skis were hysterical, but after many repetitive drills, Nancy and I got better at remaining upright, stopping without toppling over and doing some basic skating moves across the groomed corduroy trails.

I loved the poling techniques we learned, which Toshi described like different gears for power: Diagonal, where the right and left skis and poles alternate, was the lowest gear. Then came offset (v1), used primarily for climbing. Most versatile is the medium gear of one skate (v2), which felt like double polling, meaning I did a pole plant for each leg push/skate, getting great speed. I most enjoyed two-skate (v2 alt), which helped me cover the most ground in a trance-like hypnotic motion.

When the movements clicked, I felt bionic – legs extending into long, gliding sticks and arms morphing into skinny poles to power up a slope. Like anything worth doing, skate skiing will require a lot of practice to get to any level of efficiency, but I’m hooked. It’s a sexy cool alternative for blizzard days when the upper mountain is on wind-hold. And who knew, a double day on two different kinds of sticks is an even better day.

I’ll end with a beautiful quote I read in an article about ski explorers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson who just conquered the first ski descent of Lhotse Couloir in the Himalayas. When you ski in the mountains, says Morrison, “Mother Nature is your canvas. You make your painting on it and the next day it blows away.”