When I saw last week that Lindsey Vonn, the most famous American skier around, had suffered a devastating knee injury after hurling herself off a downhill jump, I was disappointed but not surprised. Caution is a quality that the best skiers don’t even know how to define. I suspect Vonn regrets her inability to stick the landing, but not the jump itself: she pushed herself to the edge, and if you don’t know any other way to act, what are you supposed to do?
Top-level skiing involves the crossing of ever-escalating thresholds of speed, pain, and fear. For those of us in the amateur ranks, the thresholds are downgraded several notches, but the sport remains one of risk management, which begins well before the mountain is even in view.
The first time I got stuck in a blizzard in pursuit of fresh snow was a few years back, in Kansas, fifty miles short of the Colorado border. I was slogging westward on slippery roads, hoping to take advantage of a snowstorm that had engulfed the Rockies. The snow was so deep and the state of Kansas so unprepared that the Department of Transportation finally gave up trying to clear a path and closed Interstate 70 altogether. It didn’t open for three days. The message was clear: there can’t possibly be a reason good enough for you to be on the road right now.
It’s a curious urge that drives skiers to such lengths in search of conditions that others find an annoyance at best and life-threatening at worst. I gave into that urge again last Friday, when I accepted an invitation for skiing in New Hampshire that I’d declined several weeks earlier. My original thinking—too far, too cold, not enough snow—changed with Nemo’s appearance, and the thought of fresh powder, every skier’s dream. Driving through the blizzard was a concern, but any feelings of fear were no different than the pit that develops in a skier’s stomach when he or she is standing above an untouched run, looking down, not knowing exactly what’s below but itching to find out.
For a time, the chance of getting snowed-in—of becoming the subject of a New York Times multimedia package—seemed reasonably likely. When Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced that all drivers had to be off the road by 4 P.M.—it was 3:30—we remarked how sad it was that the government had to protect stupid people from themselves, until we realized that maybe we were the stupid ones.
Thankfully, a blizzard loses much of its menace on a mountain, where it achieves a purpose. Fresh powder is the skier’s ideal condition. For one, it’s easier on the knees, covering over ice and anything else that might make for a hazardous run. But more importantly, it makes each trail feel like a new one: on almost every trip I took down the mountain, there was a pile of snow that I went through before anyone else had touched it. Powder also opens up more dangerous paths, and fresh snow is what drives people to backcountry skiing, something they occasionally don’t come back from. At one point, a friend and I saw an opening in the trees and took a sharp left, not completely knowing where we would end up.
Many skiers are content with a perfectly executed run, complete with literal swooshes. For others, like Vonn, the point of skiing is to constantly push up against one edge or another—the danger of getting to the mountain, and the danger of getting down. It felt foolhardy to drive through a blizzard, and then to dive into a thicket of snow-filled trees, for a not-so-cheap thrill. But the rush becomes something of a drug, requiring greater doses each time. Ski free, fall hard, and, assuming you survive, you’ll drive through the next blizzard, too.
Photograph: UW Digital Collections.
