Skiers need to stop moping and think of summer differently

Omni Mount Washington Resort. (Omni Mount Washington Resort)

One of the great life lessons I learned comes from an aphorism involving another winter sport. It goes like this: You learn to ice skate in the summer.

That does not mean that all of us skiers should rush to Ham Arena in Conway, N.H., this summer, though the cool air inside may provide some welcome relief from the heat. It simply means that leaving a sport — or a musical instrument — or any kind of diversion requiring skill — alone for a fallow time can actually serve to enhance the activity we love once we resume it in season.

So it is with our winter sport. For some reason, best left to philosophers and psychologists, summertime actually makes skiing more attractive. And for some reason — best left to physiologists — we oftentimes return to the slopes with renewed enthusiasm and athleticism after the summer interregnum.

So let’s think of the summer entirely differently. 

Sure, we will do what we always do: 

Scour the web for preseason bargains. (I just got an email offering an early registration season-pass offer from my home mountain. Of course I enrolled immediately. As they say on television: What a deal!). Make a list of must-buy items to pick up at low prices as ski shops clear out merchandise to make room for bike rentals and patio furniture sales. (I still haven’t found the right choice for a new boot bag. Plus I need some new ski socks.) Check every day for good air fares for next year’s trips. (Delta just dropped the rate for my date of choice but by only $15, so I’m still on the prowl). And one more, just to prove we are prudent shoppers: Enroll in bonus deals at iconic restaurants in ski towns. (I have at least $125 in “buy-$50-and-get-an-additional-$10 credit-for-free” bonus cards at my favorite pub-grub joint in the shadow of the White Mountains.)

But mostly we do what I call a “Carly Simon.” 

A Carly Simon? Listen to the first two lines of a song that includes the phrase “chasing after some finer day,” surely the leitmotif of the skier-in-waiting every summer:

We can never know about the days to come

But we think about them anyway.

How we think about them is what matters.

We can mope about how barren and forlorn Killington appears without snow or how incongruous the indoor water park at Jay Peak looks in full sunshine. We can dispute the ardent conviction of loved ones who say, of a brilliant afternoon that stretches into a long sweet-corn-and-watermelon evening, that summer really is the best time of year. We can sulk in our man-cave and worry about the mountain the Red Sox have to climb rather than the mountains we yearn to barrel down, once winter returns. We can bore our friends with stories about back bowls we have conquered, repeating the tall tales we have told so often that we now think they are truths.

And we can play endless tracks of the song by Quebec singer-songwriter Gilles Vigneault from 1964, the year Billy Kidd cadged a silver in the slalom, that includes the only phrase in French, besides la neige (snow), that the skier needs to know: Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver, which means “My country isn’t a country, it’s winter.”

Or:

We can quit the pining and head to King Pine and, in the shadow of perhaps the prettiest small ski area in all of creation, enjoy what for five generations the Hoyt family of Madison, N.H., has provided: “classic lakelife summer vacation traditions.” 

We can file away our funk and ride the zipline at Gunstock and inspect the well-loved trails from way above them. We can retreat to Mount Abram with our mountain bikes and discover that the trails aren’t rolled up in summer. We can go to Loon Mountain and enjoy mountaintop yoga. We can play disc golf at Stowe and realize that those mountain vistas still exist after the middle of April. 

We can head to Cannon and discover that the aerial tram actually operates in July. We can drive to Pinkham Notch, take the Wildcat Ridge Trail and linger at the commanding vista that we were too cold to enjoy in February. We can play a round at the Mount Snow Golf Course and thrill our friends with the summertime lies almost as believable as the wintertime lies we tell. 

We can go birding at Saddleback and discover that there actually are creatures besides skiers who inhabit the mountains. We can have lunch at Bretton Woods and learn that great views of Mount Washington are available not only beside the black-diamond sign at the mouth of Dave’s Drop trail. We can bounce on the bungee trampoline the base area of Sugarbush’s Lincoln Peak and realize that it isn’t only moguls that make our hearts race. 

We can peer out the window of the gondola at Stratton and reassure ourselves, on a clear day, that the Adirondacks (Lake Placid!) and Berkshires (Jiminy Peak!) have not gone away for the summer. We can hike the trails at Waterville Valley and discover, on the Mount Tecumseh Trail, that there are mountain challenges that can be enjoyed in a T-shirt.

We can do any, or all, of those things in the mountains we love. Or we can always go skating.

David Shirbman can be reached at [email protected].