I can’t ski. I mean I can slide down many white stuff mountain slopes, more often than not without getting snow down my front, or back, as the case may sometimes be. But, I don’t seem to have the fluidity, grace or compactness of those that zip down in beautifully sculpted art. When I ski, I look more like a wounded seagull flapping away, or at least that’s what I have been told. However, that has never stopped me from heading off to a ski resort, nor has the fact that my ski pants from the previous millennium draw what seem like disapproving glances from the Gore-Tex set. What has given me cause to pause are the crowds and the recklessness that they can bring.
This is why this week, at the behest of a friend, I borrowed her touring skis and went off on a new pursuit – ski touring.
Ski touring is walking uphill on skis, and then skiing back down with no ski lifts involved. While the recent advances in technology have made the gear lighter and easier to use, it is still physically demanding. Additionally, it requires some level of proficiency off the groomed trails of the resorts. Unsurprisingly, then, it is still a fringe sport.
Part of the allure of ski touring is the workout for those so inclined, but what seems to me to be its foremost joy is heading into terrain where no other human tracks exist.
This doesn’t mean one has to venture far from the groomed slopes, In fact, on my first venture into this sport today, I started, pre dawn, by following the verge of long, groomed “home” trail. Hours later, I tentatively turned, legs and lungs afire, up a slope of a pristine valley.
It really was a wonderful new experience.
There, accompanied by a delicious mug of Jagertee, I tried to imagine what it might be like to truly venture, gear laden, into the real back country. I’d like to say that I might find out, and soon, if I find out experienced company to do so with.
Regardless of what may come, the view really was moving, even moreso because I got there by myself, without any machinery to assist in the endeavour. It’s strange how I feel this way, how a place gains something altogether different when I have to work hard to get to it. A lesson in life, no?
And then the next lesson.
Once you wander off the path not trodden, you have to be open to falling. And once you fall, you pick yourself up and keep going.
Waggle and all.
Musings of an Educator 