Category: Cannon Mountain

2019-2020 Season, Cannon Mountain, January

Setback (Part 1)

Just as the season has setbacks, so does my recovery. I knew it was going to happen. The seasonal setback happened going into this weekend. My personal setback would happen during the following weeks. Grinding out 12 work days in a row, half of them 13+ hour days, left me totally depleted. My routines were shot, my progress stalled. I accepted that it was going to happen and mentally prepared myself in advanced. Get through it and then get back on track.

My personal setback has been far less jarring than the seasonal set back. January suffered from winter’s multiple personality disorder in the worst possible way. Small snow accumulations, wash outs, rain/freeze events, cold blasts, a record breaking warm day. Some small snows but no big storms. We’ve had far worse January’s but it is still significantly worse than average. It is amazing we have as much open terrain as we have given the weather pattern.

2019-2020 Season, Cannon Mountain, January, Powder Day

2019 Retrospective

Cannonball

Ski Days & Blog Posts

During the first half of 2019, I gave up blogging. It wasn’t a deliberate choice per se, but the omission of an act is functionally the same as making a definitive decision. I ended the 2018 season with a write up about the State of TheSnowWay. That post might as well have been called “The State of my Life: Externalizing.”

TSW went radio silent from January-July of 2019. My first post of this year was in August, an externalized photography postmortem called Ubiquity & Bewilderment. The post ends “I’ve never posted less during a single season. Yet, I’ve never had more to say.” I knew something had gone horribly wrong. The thread was there. I just needed to summon the will to pull it.

In the State of TheSnowWay, I wrote that “Part of writing a blog is process. I love process. But I am no longer inspired by the blogging process.” By November 2019, I found my love of process again. Writing reinforces identity. What did my lack of blogging say about my identity? I wrote about recasting my tale in Narrative, the first TSW “trip report” written before the trip. Since then, every ski day of the current season has been accompanied by a blog post.

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2019-2020 Season, Cannon Mountain, December

So Bad It’s Good

Upper Ravine

Hysterical laughter and a huge grin — an odd reaction to the lunar landscape. Someone listening nearby might think I had gone mad. But there was nobody on the nearby trails. Despite the holiday weekend, only a few regulars lined up for the 8:15am first tracks tram. I had Upper Ravine all to myself; and I was loving it.

The skiing was like watching a really bad movie: the more cringe worthy the conditions, the funnier it was. I was unironically enjoying objectively awful conditions. I kept thinking “one more run and then pack it in”. But I kept finding the desire for yet another heinous lap.

Had I experienced these conditions last year, I would have been rather salty. Actually, I wouldn’t have even gone to the mountain despite having a season pass and nothing better to do. But instead, I found a way to enjoy myself despite experiencing one of the worst days of the season.

That said, I lasted less than two hours and I did not go back on Sunday. I may be feeling more like my old self again, but I am not a masochist.

2019-2020 Season, Cannon Mountain, December

Day Eight

Eight ski days in less than four weeks. That is almost half as many days as some of my recent season totals.

I had every excuse not to head up to Cannon today. The day started with temperatures barely in double digits paired with a stiff breeze. Without any new snow during the past few days, conditions would likely be firm and fast. Natural snow trails would almost certainly be lack luster.

In fact, natural snow trails were worse than lack luster. High winds and Saturday skier traffic had decimated most of the natural snow trails. Many trails were brutal hard pack “one and done’s”. But Vista Way skied nicely. And a it felt great to rail some arcs down Taft, Tramway, and Middle Cannon.

It was a good day. Even if conditions were lack luster, it was not a lack luster day of skiing.