Zoomer Lift Line

During the past dozen years, I’ve become rather selective about ski days. Quality over quantity was an absolute, a guiding principle, the raison d’etre of my ski seasons. Sometimes I wasn’t even excited for a few inches of new snow. Meh, maybe I would think about going skiing. Maybe.

Even if I went skiing, I wasn’t excited about it. Sometimes I felt like I had to go because I am a skier and that is what skiers do. And I’d be damned if I was going to lose the one last thing holding my identity together. I went for self defense rather than joy. Skiing was a bulwark to my identity. I kept skiing because I had to.

My ski days dwindled to twenty days a season, less than half as much as in years past. But it wasn’t just the quantity that suffered but also the quality. I was missing good days because I didn’t feel like skiing. When I did ski, I couldn’t ski as well because quantity of days helps build conditioning and endurance. The tough hard pack days make you a better skier. My skills began to atrophy. Things were going in the wrong direction.

Despite Cannon being my second most skied mountain, I have never been a season pass holder at Cannon. Much as I love the mountain, it gets less than half the annual snowfall of my northern Vermont favorites. Early season can be lean and glades are often slow to open when snowfall is not favorable.

But quality be damned, I desperately need quantity. Cannon is only forty minutes from home. With a pass, I have no excuse not to be at Cannon at least once a week. If not for a full day than at least for a few hours. Having the freedom to ski during the holiday breaks further adds a significant amount of days.

Today’s lesson about quantity over quality is that sometimes I can have both. I wouldn’t have had either today without the excuse of a season pass. After saying goodbye to family visiting for Thanksgiving, I went up to Cannon for an afternoon session. I found two to four inches new, enough for Cannon to open the entire front five complex (minus glades). The coverage was thin and the turns were fabulous.

Here is to a shit ton of both quantity and quality this season.