I love sitting on a chairlift and having it haul my ass to the top of a mountain. It’s particularly awesome when that chair hauls me to the top and there’s fresh snow waiting for me all the way down.
But even the best day riding the lift can’t compare to a good day of hiking for turns. As cliché as it sounds, earning it make things that much better. You don’t take a single turn for granted when you’ve had to huff and puff your own way up.
I remembered all this last weekend when a bud and I climbed Ski Santa Fe in New Mexico. It’s still early season so only the bottom half of the resort is open, which meant that as we skinned up we had the top half mostly to ourselves (minus a few other hikers).
To be honest, I don’t remember suffering much on the climb because it was a chat fest the whole way. We talked about how Bode Miller is an asshole but exciting to watch. We talked about wool versus synthetics as base layers. And we talked about the stupid kid who fell off the chairlift last year and landed on his face.
The ski area only reported three inches of new snow, but up top on the north-facing slopes where the wind had been blowing, there were easily eight inches of untracked white goodness. It’s been warm lately throughout the state, but luckily the elevation up top had kept temps cold enough that the snow was still light and lovely.
I know I’m having a really good time when I can’t help but holler as I ski. For the eight or so minutes it took us to shred what we’d spent most of the morning climbing, I screamed like a little kid.
We’ve had a couple awful snow seasons lately in New Mexico, so skiing powder, especially this early, felt like a special gift. I bet the snow’s junk by now since it’s been in the 50s all week, but that’s fine. A new storm is supposedly on the way.
