Tag Archives: winter

Home Turns

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evski1The first ski turns of the season trigger nervous tension. Regardless of how long I’ve skied, there is always a predictable self-doubt, “can I still even do this?”

The reason I bring this up, is because it’s been snowing a lot here lately. There has been a constant white cloud bank hanging over the Continental Divide. While it’s been dry and cool in Boulder and barely a flurry in Nederland, it’s been regularly snowing in Eldora village. Further west and higher up, it’s been storming even more.

After a long but fun work week helping eager customers pick out ski gear – the new snow and less-than-great 2017 winter has everybody excited for this season – it was time for Elaine and I to check out the local conditions. I went for a solo backyard skin yesterday morning before work, was surprised at how good the snow was, and made notes for today.

We decided to head up to the local backcountry haunt for today’s go around. We’ve skied many, many days at this locale, and when we were first married and lived in the caboose, it was our daily morning stop. We now live in a place where getting in a car to ski is unnecessary, so we go to the old haunt less. But we still love it as much as ever. There are so many amazing memories up there with Elaine and Stella, and it’s hard to go there for us and not miss the latter.

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Nice boot-top powder. For some reason Elaine is using a 210 cm pole!

After a lazy morning, we loaded up the truck and headed up the hill. I’m a lucky guy for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is having a father-in-law who is professional car mechanic. In addition to being an all around amazing human being, Steve is a darned good mechanic who comes across some amazing gems when it comes to all things car related. Let’s just say the “new for me, ever-so-slightly-used” set of studded snow tires we just got were a major step up from the bald beads we used last winter. Getting to the local ski hill just got a whole lot easier thanks to Elaine’s dad.

The bumpy dirt road climbed ever steeper and snowier. Wind was ripping over the hillside, the sky angry shards of snow pelting the land. This was no picture-perfect Vermont Robert Frost snow storm – this was more like Metallica belting out “Enter Sandman.” Those Christmas movies that always show snow falling straight down, everybody perfectly attired with scarves and such, looking radiant? Those images are lies. Snow almost never falls straight down here, scarves will more often than not act as a wind sock and the only look that is consistent is snot from a runny nose frozen to the cheek as the tempest blares.

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Injury put in the past, fit, motivated and beautiful.

We’ve been following a nordic training “program” this fall, complete with heart rate monitor charting and actual daily plans. It’s a definite change for us and honestly the only reason we did it was so Elaine wouldn’t go insane with boring roller ski workouts that her broken foot relegated her to this summer. Having a daily goal made the time pass more productively. And, coincidently, it has us feeling pretty good.

Despite the dork factor, the plan has taught us a lot. For optimal human performance in skiing, it’s important to train really hard, really easy, and not a lot in between. This is pretty much the opposite of what Elaine and I have done the past eight years…we’re always moving just fast enough to wear ourselves out, but probably not fast enough to get any better. And with that, we almost never rest, which in turn means the body can’t repair itself properly. After the extreme fatigue we both felt after the Expedition Amundsen-CDT-Greenland very extended adventure, this was an important lesson to learn, because we were in danger of burying ourselves for a long time to come had we not re-set and re-built.

Anyway, today called for two sets of 12.5 minute level 3 intervals, followed by three sets of 3 minute level 4 intervals. In layman terms, that’s hard followed by really fucking hard. We got through it, but let it be known that level 4 intervals while breaking trail thru a foot of snow at 11,000 feet are simply brutal. It worked out how it never works out…the last set somehow timed exactly, heroically, at the very top of the hill, like a Rocky film. That wouldn’t happen again if we tried.

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Looks like Sun Valley from a circa-1967 resort promo brochure. The double skin track is a result of the training plan and working to stay in the “zone.” Don’t worry, it’s a phase.

Work done on the up, it was time for unabashed fun back down. The shocker of the day – the skiing was good. It was deep, it was soft, and we almost didn’t hit anything. No doubt, we kept our weight back and our tips up to avoid hidden obstacles, but it was still splendid. The float, the freedom, the happiness of a powder turn rushed back after the long hiatus.

evski2It’s good to be home again.

First Day of the 2018-19 Ski Season

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Clouds from the storm linger over Eldora ski area.

Opening day. There are few things quite as magical as the first ski day of the season. The initial click of the boots and bindings, the first turn and glide, cold air blasting into the face and lungs. It’s a harsh, yet spectacular reminder that the lazy days of summer are over. The reign of winter begins.

Sliding devices on cold snow are likely the greatest human invention ever. Instead of snow being an obstacle to movement, getting from point A to point B becomes easier, more graceful and much more fun. The early Norseman and tribesman of central Asia used skis for practical reason: hunting, communication, migrations and such. For us, skiing is a recreational activity, because even difficult point-to-point endeavors like skiing across Greenland are done by choice, not for survival. Yet despite our difference in skiing objectives, I have to wonder if those early skiers from a distant, simpler time felt that similar pure joy the first time they strapped skis to feet each season? I find it hard to believe, even for the most pragmatic human, that there wouldn’t be some sense of elation felt from those first few strides in snow.

Before I got into backcountry skiing, opening day would be dictated by the ski resorts. The annual battle between Arapaho Basin and Loveland to open first is a well publicized and exciting kick-off to the Colorado alpine ski season. But more often than not, this opening is dictated by snowmaking capacities, not by winter weather. It feels less about mother nature and more about marketing departments and the skiing hype machine. It feels artificial, like the snow these early openings provide (by contrast the Colorado nordic season opens in a much more subdued fashion, volunteers grooming trails on the top of Rabbit Ears Pass. It’s a more natural and enjoyable occasion.)

Opening day should be dictated by snow and cold. When snow falls, go ski on it. For the past few years, however, that snow and cold seems to be less predictable and later in the year. During last year’s disaster we didn’t start skiing in earnest until after Christmas. It was the ski season that almost never started.

After a balmy September this year, it felt like we were scheduled for a repeat. It started snowing early this year in Canada, but Canada and the northern jet stream is a long way from Colorado. Storm systems brushed Glacier National Park and the Wind Rivers, but for the most part avoided Colorado. We’d wake up a few morning and see a dusting of snow on the highest of peaks, but it was oddly warm.

I subscribe to a website called Open Snow that forecasts snowfall for the winter season. After weeks of nothing, I was surprised to read a forecast calling for a sustained period of cold and snow in the Colorado high country in early October. It’s not that uncommon to get a blast of snow in late October, but this forecast was calling for a week to ten days of cold, snowy weather.  I can’t remember the last time that happened here in early October.

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Post snowy roller ski time trial stoke…

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…gave way to a cold, wet hike home.

At the end of last week a cool, grey settled over Boulder. Every morning we would go for a roller ski or hike in sunny conditions here in Eldora and then drive down into the cold fog for work. Finally though, the storm moved uphill. On Sunday night it began to snow at our cabin, and when we woke on Monday morning we found a couple inches covering the trees and ground. We roller skied a cold and wet time trial up Shelf Road and froze on the hike back down to the valley. Yesterday it flurried sporadically, so we put on more layers, took to the trails west of home and enjoyed a splendid, solitary hike, our only company being tracks of a bobcat.

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Better prepared and warmer for a long walk in the woods the 2nd day of the storm.

Last night it snowed more. There was a forcefulness to the 4-5 inches left on the ground that was lacking the previous two days, and it was colder too, in the low 20’s. The training plan called for some easy roller ski intervals, but the snow looked too good to pass up. And besides, the road would be a slushy mess to roller ski on. Skiing on October 10 seemed almost novel, possibly the earliest I’ve ever been on snow in a season. We decided to make today opening day of the 2018-19 ski season.

Elaine and I have a lot of skis. We have nordic racing skis, nordic training skis, backcountry nordic skis, spring couloir skis, powder skis, daily backcountry skis, resort skis and telemark skis. It’s a bit ridiculous. But without doubt, the most important skis are something we call “rock skis.” Our rock skis are designed for just that, heading out when the snow coverage is shallow and we don’t want to damage our good skis on rocks. Four to five inches in early October is impressive, but it’s nowhere near deep enough to avoid hitting objects in the appropriately named Rocky Mountains.

Our rock skis are almost silly: a pair of 2006 Icelantic Nomads in a 156 cm length. At the time Icelantic subscribed to the belief that shorter skis were better, and this was the only length they made. They were revolutionary when I got them, and I spent a winter coaching the Nederland Alpine Ski Team and skinning up and down the race course on those fledgling Icelantics. I believe they even won a DoJoe race from some bygone era before ultralight rando gear became all the rage.

The diminutive Nomads now have more than 1,200 days of skiing on them. The bases are almost worn to the core, the edges terribly thin and the bindings – an early era Dynafit – are starting to work less than optimally. But still, twelve years later, they serve an important function. More often than not, they bat lead-off for the coming ski season. Today was no exception.

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Shallow snowpack but a mid-winter feel thanks to copious amounts of snow of the trees.

We decided to head from our home to a popular local backcountry skiing destination. The storm grew in intensity as we moved along, gradually climbing at first, and then more steeply gaining altitude. While the snowpack was shallow, the snow clinging to the trees had the feel of mid-winter. That amazing quiet that snow provides, the insulation to sound it gives, soothed us along as we strided uphill.

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How can you not have a huge smile on the first ski day of the year?

A pleasant surprise: we felt physically good. The first backcountry ski of the year is usually a painful affair. It appears the training plan we’ve been following since we got back from Greenland is working. We tossed in our interval sets, moving not quite effortlessly, but easily enough up the mountain. It’s nice to see hard work paying off.

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Looking forward to the best winter yet with this gal.

Near the top, the wind started to blow, the snow pelted us, and the sky and clouds above opened for a second to let the red hew of evening alpenglow pass thru. This was no fluke storm. This had the feel of winter. I zipped up my collar, dipped my eyes towards the ground, and headed ever upward into the tempest, into these mountain that I love, to begin the winter cycle once again. We are skiers, and our time, after the long, hot summer, has finally arrived.

Dealing with Disappointment

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tracks

Random fox tracks day four on the ice sheet. Made us wonder where the little guy was going.

They say you learn more from misadventures than from the ones that are smooth sailing the whole way. And you know, they’re probably right.

But that doesn’t make it easy. Not by a long shot.

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Safe inside the Red House as a piteraq rages off the ice sheet.

It’s actually taken me until just yesterday to realize that both Dan and myself are grieving. At first, it sounded ridiculous, but as I thought about it, I realized that it actually makes a lot of sense. We put everything we had this past winter into this trip. Between working several jobs spanning 60-70 hours a week, living as cheaply as possible, training every second we got, and spending all the other free seconds we could scrape together planning and preparing for this trip, we really had invested everything we had into skiing across Greenland.

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Roped glacier travel on skis with a 175lb pulk…

If you’re going to do it, you have to, I suppose. It’s a serious undertaking, one that can’t be done lightly, and we needed to do everything we did. We’d planned longer trips before, but nothing quite like this one, and the amount of dedication needed to get everything done on time before we left was huge.

And when you put that much into getting something done, you really, really hope that you do get it done, in fact, you can hardly allow yourself to entertain the idea that you might not. I’m not really sure when the idea first entered my head that this was a doomed expedition.

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Three km of skiing across frozen bay ice was enough to send my heart thumping

As we ran into insane baggage fees again and again, it certainly did not occur to me then, I just handed over the credit card (rather reluctantly, I suppose, but really, what was I supposed to do?) to pay the fees.

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Camped outside the Kulusuk airport, watching the dog teams take people and gear into town.

As we met more and more incredulous people over our lack of a shot gun, culminating in our taking the quickest ever lesson from a native on how to shoot an ancient shot gun and our camping the first night along the sea ice with another expedition of two, it certainly didn’t occur to me.

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Standing polar bear watch that first night.

As we heaved our outrageously heavy pulks up, up, ever up, sometimes having to remove our skis and wallow in the snow when the going was too steep to get good traction with our thin skins, it did not occur to me.

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Sometimes, it was so steep and the pulks so heavy that we had to take off our skis and boot up.

Even when night-time temperatures plummeted to -60ºC, wind ripping across the frozen wasteland that so resembled what I can only imagine the moon looks like, and my body quite clearly and in no uncertain terms knew that this was weather in which my fragile little body could easily die, it did not occur to me.

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It’s a crazy frozen wasteland out there.

When Dan began exhibiting signs of frostbite on his fingers and toes, it was a concern, for sure, but he showed that he was dealing well with it, and being extremely mindful of his slightly damaged appendages.

Perhaps, it filtered into my thoughts on that first day that we could not move, the wind buffeting the tent so hard that a tiny tear started in one of the strongest tents on the market, while Dan and I took shifts heading out into the gale to dig out the snow that was continuously piling up between our tent and our snow wall, threatening to cover our tent completely.

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I tell people there was nothing out there. I’m not lying!

But as the day got worse, and that tiny tear turned into something not so tiny and more along the lines of gigantic (and proved to me that super glue does indeed not set when it’s friggin’-cold-degrees out and also that my skill set with a needle and dental floss leaves much to be desired), and the forecast for the next few days was updated to 130mph winds and heavy snow (a particularly unpleasant combination, to be sure), I had a taste of death. It wasn’t quite there, it wasn’t knocking right on my door. But death was sniffing around; it had picked up our scent and was following hot on our trail.

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One of the times we could actually see the horizon!

There was a point in my life when I would have welcomed death, when I would have flung my arms open and brought it to me. There was a time when I even sought it. So perhaps, my biggest realization when I felt death drawing near us, was that I did NOT want to greet death. I wasn’t ready, no way, no how – and certainly dying with Dan, frozen to death on that great lonely ice sheet was not something I wanted. I could clearly see what would happen: the tent would fail, inevitably. Any sort of snow shelter stood a high chance of being destroyed as well. And then – the cold, cold process of the body slowing down, freezing, freezing, until we were nothing but two frozen bodies. Some (Romeo and Juliet come to mind) might find the thought of perishing in a frozen wasteland romantic, but the thought of watching Dan freeze before me – I definitely have better circulation – was horrifying. I didn’t want to die, and I certainly didn’t want to watch my partner die. My own hot, blood-pumping body recoiled dramatically at this vision, as a viscously strong realization slammed into me: I wanted to live.

evportrait

You’re walking a line out there – you create your own bubble of an environment that the human body can survive in; all while surrounded by an environment that could easily kill the human body.

There followed an extremely circuitous communication slog, in which we called via satellite phone Arctic Command in Nuuk, Greenland, our insurance company, and Fran.

Rasmus, with Arctic Command, got back to us with a weather forecast for our location very similar to what we had received, but with slightly stronger winds, and said “I’d like to see you guys get out of there. You do have two choices though: you could dig down, it’s the only way you have a possibility of surviving, but the Greenlandic snowpack is difficult to manage, and there’s a very high chance that it will collapse and you will still die. Or you get out of there.”

A few hours later, we were greeted by a helicopter pilot as he landed next to our destroyed tent by the words, “It’s nice to pick up actual humans and not bodies!”

That cemented in my mind that it was the right decision. It didn’t make it any easier though. As we rose up in the air, I watched our tent get smaller and smaller below us, feeling a hurricane of emotion threatening to implode me from within. Hot tears coursed down my cheeks, burning on my wind- and sun-burned cheeks.

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Watching the ice flow below

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Dangerous and deadly, yet captivating and breathtaking

Now, Dan and I have been home for a little over a month. I’m still working on processing this whole trip, the decision, the failure. It doesn’t help that I finally went to the doctor a few days after getting back to have my foot checked out. Several months ago, I had had a crash while skiing that had left me unable to bear weight for a few days, and that seconds after it happened, I told Dan that I had broken my foot. A minute later I said it wasn’t and walked out. When, three months later, I finally went in, it was to discover that I had fractured my calcaneus. I was ordered into a boot and on crutches for a month, which left me with very few coping mechanisms. My typical form of self medication is to beat the crap out of my inner demons until they’re so tired they no longer rear their ugly heads – that and a gigantic helping of good old fashioned sunshine to top it off.

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Two full pulks, one winding pulk trail.

For a month, while I reeled in turmoil  from our Greenland trip, I couldn’t even deal with the craziness in my head. I was reduced to sitting on our porch, which I will grant is actually quite nice, but did very little to help me heal. I don’t think I even realized I needed to heal.

Iwhite

Every second is filled to bursting out there.

But now, as we’re settling back into being home, as the massive fight or flight response is finally winding down and my body’s chemistry goes back to normal, my X-Rays are coming back normal, and I’m allowed to walk without crutches, I’m realizing that it’s ok. We are grieving. It was a rather traumatic experience. We went through a lot in the space of a very small time frame.

But most importantly, I’m realizing that it’s ok.

moreshadows

The crazy thing is…we’re planning on going back

The Big Question

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D&Epulk

Training up high with the storm clouds rolling in.

More than any other adventure that Dan and I have embarked on, we’ve received that big question: Why?

So far, most of what we’ve done kind of makes sense to most people – even those who are not inclined towards launching themselves wholeheartedly at type-two kinds of adventures. Even if someone’s idea of a good time is not trekking across the United States for months-on-end along the spine of the Continental Divide, it seems like most can comprehend why somebody else might want to do that. The same thing goes for skiing across the Hardangervidda multiple times, or entering races, or really anything else that we’ve done. But with Greenland I’ve received the question of “Why?” astronomically more times than ever before.

SkiPulk2

Sometimes, we’re being generous when we say type two fun!

Let’s be honest: it’s actually a fair enough question. We want to go to one of two icecaps in the whole world. A place with no life. And to be honest – once you’re up on a the icecap, there’s really nothing much at all except me and Dan and a vast white horizon. I know: I’ve watched videos, seen pictures. It’s a vast, non-undulating mass of white. It’s what I imagine being at sea would be like. Just on-going, never-ending, flat horizon. There are no resupply points, so we have to have everything that we might need for a month – including all of our food and fuel. This means that I’m willingly volunteering to drag a sled behind me that most likely is going to end up weighing more than I do myself. According to what I’ve seen – temperatures at freezing are the highest we might expect. To that end, -28°C is definitely a possibility. Added to that is windchill, a very real thing, as it’s not uncommon to encounter quite intense windstorms – and even though we live in a place that we somewhat-lovingly dub “Windora”, the wind there is on a whole other level, if only because there is nothing, absolutely nothing to protect us out there from the wind.

My knee-jerk reaction when someone asks me why is the in-famous, and fully incomplete answer “because it is there”. It’s a cop-out answer, to be honest. So I’ve been thinking about it. What actually draws me to this particular adventure?

greenland Air

Can you fly over this and NOT want to go there?

I think maybe it might have started the first time I ever traveled to Europe – in 2010 I took a trip to England and Ireland, and as every plane does, we flew over Greenland. At that point, I don’t think I thought I’d ever see it up close. But something about it triggered a longing inside me. It might be impossible to look at that place out a plane window and nor wonder – what if? That feeling has not subsided the more I’ve flown over it – in fact, every time builds a stronger desire to be there, to experience it. Every adventure that Dan and I do – well, it makes me wonder…

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Enjoying the serenity of camp on the Hardangervidda.

This life is short, right? Honestly, we don’t get a whole heck of a lot of time. And maybe something I’ve learned in my short time so far is that I don’t want to let an experience slip away. I don’t want to give up on the chance to learn something else about myself. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to see what is possible. Greenland is like one of those magical lands of opportunities – and obviously I don’t mean that in the obvious sense. Since talking about Greenland, people always make the joke about how Greenland is not green and Iceland has no ice. Obviously not talking about those kinds of possibilities. I’m talking about more…

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Enjoy that cup of tea!

InCamp

Yes, you can be cozy when it’s howling wind, snowing, and freezing cold out!

Greenland is a place that has captured my imagination: the vast openness, the wildness, the starkness that is the icecap – all of it speaks to my soul. It’s an opportunity to see and feel and experience a place that so few humans have. And the opportunity to cross it is a chance to explore myself even further than I ever have before – a chance to explore my own personal human boundaries, both the physical and the mental ones. I’m under no delusions that it will be easy. But perhaps that lack of ease is partially what attracts me. Maybe this is truly at the heart of what we consider type-two adventures: there are those of us that are strongly, inexplicably drawn to what many would deem “suffer-fests”.

SkiPulk

Potentially genetically pre-disposed to love the suffer-fest?

I’ve read some articles that touch on the subject. Apparently there are some people that do not actually get rewarded for exercise – they for real do not get the “runner’s high”. Their bodies simply do not reward them. And then there are others – others whose bodies reward them higher than average. That’s right: some people’s bodies reward them very highly for doing things involving strenuous physical activities. My suspicion is that I fall in the later category. And so does Dan.

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The pulks after a cold night out.

That’s another part of this: I want to experience absolutely everything. I want to grab this life by the horns and really feel and experience whatever it is that is waiting out there and I want nothing more than to go through it all with Dan. I’m beyond lucky to find this in a partner, but it works so well. It’s true – that feeling of strength and power and all those little reward chemicals that pump through your body when you complete something challenging are incredible. But to get to share them with the love of my life? Well, that’s just plain special.

And as I think of it more, my only real response to the Big Question is: Why would I not?

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Also – I want to thank everyone who has been so supportive of us as we’ve trained and worked towards this goal! You all mean so much to us. And if you would like to support us monetarily (because, let’s face it, this expedition is hella expensive!) we have a Go Fund Me at https://www.gofundme.com/expedition-greenland-team-vardami. Also, under the Donations tab here, the link is at the bottom. We plan to really share this experience via words, photos, and video when we get back!

Once again, thank you so much!

How to Ski 100 Days this Winter (and Work Full-time)

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Morning light and cold smoke.

Elaine and I have spent a lot of time in the past seven years since our wedding day sliding around snow on skis. It’s our passion, and has led us to mountains and northern locales around the world. We’ve had the fortune to ski chest deep powder in British Columbia,  beautiful mountains that drop to the ocean in northern Norway and endless plateaus of white in that same country that resemble Greenland or Antarctica. Skiing has brought us much good.

Yet those trips are a major outlier to what actually happens on a daily basis. They are the exclamation point on seasons where honestly a lot of the skiing is mundane and sometimes downright terrible. Take a couple days ago, for example. A ridiculously warm November melted out the one slope decent for some tentative turns. We ended up walking down the hill, skins on skis, picking our way through rocks and tundra and dreaming of a better winter to come.

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It’s ain’t always pretty out there. On that note, a good pair of rock skis is a solid investment for aspiring 100-day-a-year skiers. 

A point of pride among skiers is the magical 100 day a year mark. In the Vermont mountain town where I grew up, under the shadow of Mad River Glen, it was a badge of honor with the generation of ski bums I admired and looked up to. The John Egan’s and Jeremy Nobis’ didn’t miss days because they didn’t feel like skiing. The credo was, get out there as often as you can, don trash bags when it’s raining, don’t be afraid of black ice and -30° F temps, and ski every damned day.

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Dawn patrol solo mission. Keep your footprint tight so the next person can enjoy it too.

Since being married in 2010, Elaine and I have never skied less that 125 days in a winter, and one year, the magical winter of 2010-11, we almost hit 200 days. Elaine and I also work full time, 40 hours a week, and right now, when our value in the ski industry is high, quite a bit more.

Of course, the easiest way to ski 100 days a year is to work at the resort. But that’s not an option for everybody. Don’t worry…there are other ways. This article is written for skiers who do not live in those lucky areas where there is night skiing available. Of course, night skiing with tracks and runs lit till 9 or 10 pm makes it much easier to rack up the days.

Skiing 100 days a year and working 40 hours a week requires dedication that borders on obsession. But if it’s something you want, and you live within a reasonable drive of accessible snow, it’s possible. Here are ten tips to ski 100 days a year:

  1. The early bird catches the snow – This isn’t really about getting first tracks, although that can be an added benefit. Simply put, if skiing 100 days a year is something you want, early rising is imperative. After a long hard day of work, it might not happen. The couch can be too appealing. Get your kit – your clothes, pack, skis, boots, essentially all your gear – organized the night before. That way when the alarm goes off at 4:30 am, all you have to do is stagger out of bed, get dressed and go. Early nights to bed and dark and cold mornings will be your reality for the next five months. Embrace it.

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    Early mornings can hurt. The rewards are plentiful.

  2. Backcountry is your friend – Unless you work as a night chef, waitress or late night E.R. surgeon (or work at the ski resort), it’s near impossible to work 40 hours a week and ski 100 days a year just relying on lift-accessed skiing. Invest in a backcountry set-up. A robust BC kit can work fine at the resort. But you need to be able to access snow on those Monday thru Friday mornings too. To ski 100 days a winter and work full-time, you need to earn your turns and ski outside the 9 am to 4 pm window. Your lungs and legs will thank you.

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    Pre-dawn backcountry laps are rarely confused with morning trips to Starbucks.

  3. Find a go-to route – Skiing 100 days requires consistency and repetition. It’s kind of like going to the gym (wait, it’s WAY better than going to the gym) in that a regular place to go and a routine is needed. I find 1,000 vertical feet is a magical number. I still get a good ski in but can usually make it happen in an hour or less. Us working stiffs don’t have all day. Pick a few spots and get efficient at them.

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    The local haunt. Pick a few this winter and learn them well.

  4. Lighten up – Lighter gear is faster. It’s not necessary to go full randonee racer, but I promise a good AT boot, a light pair of skis and a tech-style binding will be way faster than a heavy alpine boot with an Aprés ski mode and a big bulky frame binding. Speed is your friend. The less time you spend going up, the more realistic it is to get sleep and still get in a good ski before work.

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    Lightweight backcountry skis, tech style bindings and good snow tires make morning sessions more efficient.

  5. Go nordic skiing – Elaine and I embrace all types of skiing minus the 225 meter ski jump at Vikersund. We alpine, tele, backcountry, nordic tour and nordic track ski. When the backcountry gets crappy as it sometimes does here in the Front Range, nordic centers provide an outlet. Consistent grooming ensures good skiing during long dry spells. Also, there is no better way to build fitness quickly than nordic track skiing. The skin track will feel flat after a 6:30 am anaerobic threshold workout at 9,500 feet above sea level on nordic skis. Careful though, you might end up falling in love with the sport and make it your go-to.

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    Get your nordic on. Because really now, who doesn’t want abs like those?

  6. Embrace resort skinning – Resort skinning lacks the aplomb of the backcountry, but for many folks this is a necessity to daily skiing. Many resorts allow skinning before and after work. Gear choice is simple, you don’t need a partner and you can just pop on the headphones and jam out if you feel the need to escape. Summiting the top of Arapahoe Basin as the sun is setting at 13,000 feet on the Continental Divide listening to whatever music makes you feel good is one of the finest skiing experiences around in my book.

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    Sunset laps at A-Basin are a great way to end the work day.

  7. Give yourself a test – Self-motivation is awesome but sometimes we need a little extra push to get out the door. This is where a big race, goal or ski trip later in the season can provide powerful impetus to go ski. Every year we’ve signed up for something, or planned a much bigger trip that requires fitness and comfort in the backcountry. Go register for that Elk Mountain Grand Traverse or something similar. It will lead to a great winter because it will get you skiing regularly.

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    Our first ever BC race together was the Power of Four in Aspen. It was a test alright! We ended up spending the night in the guest bedroom of a Hedge Fund guy’s mansion because he was worried we’d crash our car driving home after a 15 hour ski race.

  8. Give yourself regular skiing rewards – Beyond an end of the year goal, dot your ski season with fun trips. Maybe this is the year to take that long backcountry skiing weekend to Teton Pass? Nelson, British Columbia is an easy, inexpensive trip and the skiing is out of this world. Or book a Colorado hut trip, ski powder all day and get tipsy with friends at 12,000 feet in the evening – easy to do at that elevation after exercising in the fresh mountain air all day. Plan some awesome (not expensive) trips to snazz up the season and keep it fun.

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    It’s hard to ski Rogers Pass, BC and not have a smile that gigantic afterwards.

  9. Go deep into the season – Resort-only skiers have a set season: Thanksgiving to mid-April, give or take a few weeks. That’s ridiculous, because some of the absolute best skiing is in May and June. If the goal is 100 days a year, it becomes much more achievable if you extend the season to 6-7 months instead of 4-5. Embrace the concept of the endless winter.

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    Short sleeves, corn snow and steep line. Three big reasons why the season should never end in April.

  10. Don’t be afraid to take a day off – Skiing 100 days a year and working full-time requires discipline and consistency, but it’s not a prison sentence. If you are exhausted, sick or just burnt out, take a day or two off. I find that usually cures whatever is causing the hang up, and after a few days off I’m psyched to get back out there. By averaging five days a week on snow, 100 days a year will happen. That leaves two days a week to sleep in, grab a greasy spoon breakfast and just chill.

Once you commit to skiing 100 days this winter, start strong. Bank days early in the year. Make it a habit. After 30-40 days, it will feel automatic and you’ll begin to question why anybody wouldn’t want to ski as much as possible. There is a satisfaction to heading into work well exercised, awoken by the cold, soul filled by a gorgeous sunrise and smiling huge because that’s what snow – whatever condition it might be in – does to human beings.

Have a great winter and think snow.

If you like this article and want more content like it, we ask for your vote!: So Elaine (featured in all these photos) has signed up for Fjallraven Polar Expedition, a dogsled trip with Fjallraven in northern Sweden this winter. She’s quite well qualified I think but it’s a social media, popularity contest based entirely on votes, and despite what our boss Larry says, we’re little pions in the social media world. So, if you are so inclined, cast your vote her way! We promise, there will be an amazing story on here when it’s all said and done. D&E

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Sub-zero sunrise skin rip.