Our Winter Home – Counting Down the Days to Snowsports Season
A childhood friend recently pulled me aside at a party. “Can I tell you something?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said.
“I wish I had something in my life that matters as much to me as skiing matters to you,” he confessed.
It was a bit of a shock. He’s always been a particularly positive person, successful in business, with three happy children and an equally outgoing and successful spouse. For weeks I’ve been thinking, “What else could you want?”
Then the weather started to change, if only so slightly, with the still blue sky that feels like a fresh canvas. The trees waiting to turn in a festival of foliage. And in the last glimpse of dawn I could see the constellation Orion, “The Hunter,” my first and most reliable harbinger of winter glimmering to the east.
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It’s enough to make your heart start to race. The anticipation of speed, the possibility of powder, and all those new jokes you get to share with old friends on the chairlift. That once-a-year reunion of coming back home to the snowsports community is what my buddy doesn’t get.
He doesn’t get to have the late August flying dreams, where you’re back on snow in your sleep, rocketing through powder and soaring one or two hundred feet between every turn you make.
Or the Christmas catalog joy of researching the perfect pair of skis or one special snowboard that will help make this season the very best yet.
And more than anything, that collective sense of coming back to a place – to a time on the calendar – where you can just be your best self with other people being their best selves and celebrating and appreciating each other for that.
As we all know, there’s that certain set of friends, colleagues, and maybe even heroes who you think about all year, but don’t actually see in person again until the chairlifts start.
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What’s funny is that the season itself is relatively short and will become a nonstop marathon the second it kicks off. Every day will be filled with lessons and clinics and new snow forecasts. Student breakthroughs and personal insight.
As much anticipation as we put into each winter, it’s this literal calm before the storm that every snowsports instructor remembers the most. This time when we all get to play at being amateur meteorologists, predicting snowfall totals by the size of the woolly bear caterpillars, The Farmer’s Almanac, and the fat on the elk while waiting for the first white dusting on the slopes.
It’s the time to make plans for training and certification goals and schedule picnics. As PSIA-AASI Education Development Manager Angelo Ross said, “I love getting the band back together in the fall to talk about what breakthrough we’ll be chasing and learning about what others were thinking about and practicing over the summer.”
“I think the snowsports lifestyle has such a cool cadence,” he said. “It’s a pretty heavy crew that focuses year-round on something that’s only accessible for a few short months. These are the people who keep me motivated, and every year the pattern repeats.”
This is when we get to decide what a great season looks like. And plan to make it exactly that, with every resource you need available on this website. Here’s to this being a great winter. Welcome back!
PC: krblokhin
