Life Change Time?

I was reading an article in a Mountain Biking magazine (can’t remember which), and it was going over ways that you could turn your passion (biking, in this case) into your career. It listed the various options (professional, industry insider, writer, photographer, guide, etc.) and the pros and cons of each choice. None of them seemed particularly appealing. Or, I guess the better way to say it is: the cons seemed to outweigh the pros in every case (with the possible exception of “professional”, which is a very time limited career with a lot of things that can go wrong). I've said before that the problem with working in an industry is an intricate knowledge of its ugly side. Well, another problem with working in an industry with an enormous potential labor pool is the really, really, really crappy pay. Any job that is desirable can afford to pay their employees poorly. But the ski industry is particularly bad. And it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

With that in mind, I was thinking of the possible ways that one could go about establishing a life in a mountain town. Obviously, one way to do it is to just do it. Now. Sell the house, sell the stuff (besides the skis and mountain bikes – you’ll need those), cash in the 401k, get in your car (containing only gear and clothes), and start driving in October. Find a cheap apartment, a low end job (preferably night hours), get a dog, grow a beard, and live the laid back life of a ski bum. “Laid back” is a relative term here, because this option seems to lend itself to money problems and health insurance difficulties for the rest of your life (or at least until you turn 65 when the dystopian, socialist hell of Medicare kicks in; thank GOD we don’t have that for everybody [/sarcasm]).

The second option is to wait until retirement. Save up a ton of money, pay off your mortgage, and just buy a small little house or condo in Telluride or Park City with that cash. This idea is not entirely unreasonable – many years of diligent saving can get you some good coin, selling a paid off house in 30 years can net you some more cash, and you can piece together a pretty decent retirement income between social security, a pension (if you have one), and a retirement job (ski instructor or hotel work or whatever). Or, do what some people (people that are richer than I) are doing and buy a 2^nd home that can double as a ski house while you work, and a retirement house when you get older. The downside of this option is that you miss the best years of your life because you’re working some crappy job all day when you could be skiing. Then, when you finally get some free time after retirement, you’re so old that “getting rad” mostly involves cruising the groomers.

There’s got to be a better option. If only there was some happy medium - some way to work long enough so that you could save enough money to just enjoy life and not have to worry about a soul sucking corporate job or injury related bankruptcy. Some way to own a house in a ski town, but not have to leave it every Sunday night to drive back to suburbia, dreading the following day at the office.

I’m trying to think of ways to accomplish this. So far, I’ve come up with two ideas: going back to school for my Master’s degree (at some place near mountains – Northern Arizona, Montana State, University of Utah, etc.), and hypersaving (plowing tons of money into savings and retirements accounts for the next few years by living on beans & rice, depriving myself of luxuries, and driving my car well after I’m done paying it off). The Master’s degree would probably entail taking out student loans (ugh), but the hypersaving idea could be financially smart. If I can save enough money in the next few years, I could move out west with the money from home equity, some pretty good money in retirement accounts, and enough savings to cover a year or two of living while ski instructing and looking for a job in my field. Unfortunately, hypersaving would involve cutting down my spending on frivolous crap (which I don’t really do), and cutting down my spending on going out, drinking and socializing (which I definitely do). Damn.

I guess it’s one of those times in life when you have to decide what is most important; one of those times in life when you have to identify what you want, and formulate a plan for how you want to get it. When I started this blog almost 4 years ago, I wrote a post about how as people get older, they trade security for freedom (buying a house is the financially responsible, secure thing to do, but you lose the freedom to just up and leave whenever you want, etc.). I mentioned that I wanted the blog to reflect a life well lived, not a boring life where I go to work every day and come home every night and watch TV. Well, after 4 years of going to work every day and coming home every night to watch TV, I’m getting pretty freaking sick of it. Not that I haven’t had some good times and some awesome trips, but this sandbox is getting boring and I need a new playground.

Warren Miller says that if you don’t quit your job and move to ski country this year, you’ll be one year older when you do. Every year, his voice gets louder in my head, and I can’t seem to shake it. The other voice in my head is Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption: “Get busy living, or get busy dying”.

Well, I’m not dying anytime soon. There are many years of getting rad to come.

Telluride, CO - 3/18/13

Yesterday, I did nothing. I sat on my couch and watched movies. I didn't do laundry, I didn't do dishes, I just sat on my lazy ass and ate leftover pizza in front of a glowing rectangle. It was the first day I've been able to do that since November, and it was fantastic. But, since I was a lazy sack yesterday, I feel like I have to actually do something today, my day off from my real job. Since nobody was in for Backcountry Monday (too bad, too . . . probably the last chance of the season around here), I put in some laundry and decided to finish up my report on the whirlwind SW Colorado trip.

We left Silverton right after skiing. We had wanted to stop in town and have a drink, maybe sample the distillery, but we wanted to get to Telluride at a reasonable time. It's only 11.5 miles to Telluride from Silverton as the crow flies, but the drive is 73 miles and takes two hours in good weather. It's important to have good weather because the road has 500-3,000 foot drops off the side and not a lot of guard rails to speak of:

We reached the town of Ouray, which is a more frustrating 9 miles away from Telluride, but still an hour drive. There is, apparently, a backcountry hut system that would be really fun to try if/when I get back to the area.

There was a little bit more sweaty palm driving:

And a cool waterfall that actually had a guard rail over top:

And after that, we left the mountains and drove into the high desert again. Strange.

I see no reason to stay in Ridgeway. It seemed like a sad, depressed town, pretty rednecky, pretty flat, and just barely not close enough to skiing. The town was 1 hour from Telluride, but it might as well have been a different planet. I looked at hotels here when I was researching places to stay. They have amazing deals on Telluride lift tickets if you stay in Ridgway or Ouray, but the drive and the ambiance of Telluride make the extra money worth it. We pressed on:

We got a room, walking distance to the lifts, at the Mountainside Inn for $99 - pretty good by Telluride Standards. After dinner in town, we went back to the room and crashed. We said we wanted to do at least one car bomb in honor of St. Patrick's day, but after hiking and skiing all day, we were pretty beat. What was the point?

The next morning, we had more energy:

Telluride is a really cool town. Stuck in a box canyon, only one road in during the winter, and tons of old miner town kitsch. Which is a completely crazy juxtaposition with the art galleries, high end ski stores, and insanely rich people who seem to love the place. There's a free Gondola that comes up right from town and allows access to the mountain and Mountain Village - the newly constructed "town" that has multimillion dollar homes lining the slopes (sort of like Deer Valley). Telluride proper seems to have more "soul" - Mountain Village is like one of those Stratton-type, thoroughly planned, generic ski village-in-a-box sort of things. Although, to be fair, Telluride itself is a pretty ritzy place. If you don't like the sight of rich people loading their Porsche SUVs with brand new, seemingly unused ski gear at the end of the day, go to Monarch or something. I don't care about that as long as the skiing is awesome.

On this day, the skiing was pretty good. We tried to stay in the shadows as best we could. As at Silverton the previous day, the stuff out of the sun didn't have the really-hard-icy-death-crust, and was definitely skiable:

It would have been a great day to rip groomers, but I hadn't really come to Colorado for that. After a few runs of alternating good and horrible conditions in the trees, we got a little antsy. We asked a ski patroller where we could find some good snow and he pointed us up towards Palmyra Peak.

We hiked up from the lift in the lower right corner of that map, and we skied the "Mountain Quail" line. It definitely looks bigger in real life:

Zoom in and see the size of the people. The snow was a million times better up there:

But we still stuck to the shadows:

Until we opened it up a little at the bottom:

We even found some fun little rocks to play on on the lower part of the run. Best snow on the mountain that day, for sure, and it was cool to have to earn it a little bit. Here's a little Instagram collage I put together of my brother's run:

After that, it was time for lunch. Here's my brother feasting on a burger down in Mountain Village:

We skied lazily in the afternoon, touring around, ripping groomers, occasionally venturing into the bumps (which had just barely started to soften up), and just generally having a good time:

That last trail was called "See Forever" - pretty good name. Around 3:00, we went to one of the on mountain lodges for some relaxation. There's definitely a lot of options for this sort of thing at Telluride. We passed an on mountain wine bar, a few restaurants that ranged from cafeteria to classy, and this place, Gorrano Ranch:

Not a bad view of the band shell, the "beach" volleyball setup, and the surrounding mountains. We got our beers from a bar in what looked and smelled (old wood and dirt) like an old outbuilding from a gold mine. It was probably just a tenderly reconstructed replica, but it was really cool. 

Overall, we were pretty psyched on Telluride. If I won the lottery, this would be a pretty phenomenal place to live. The houses are spectacularly out of my price range, the condos are mildly out of my price range, and there's not a lot of "real" jobs in the area. It is impressive the way people out there make it work for themselves. We rode the lift with a guy from Green Bay, Wisconsin who has 4 weeks of a time share (two in the summer, two in the winter), and can't get enough of the place. We also rode the Gondola with a girl who commutes to her job as a court clerk from an hour away. I suppose that when your town is in the middle of nowhere, you're always going to hear stories about people coming from great distances for a taste of awesome. I guess everybody just needs more awesome in their lives.

Anyway, there's a bike path on one side of town, and a XC skiing/MTB/walking path on the other side of town, right next to the river. Since we left the Ranch too late and the trails were closed, we had to take the Gondy down into town and take that river trail back to the hotel. No problem:

It was, again, one of the best days of skiing in my life. So fun to be in such a cool place ripping really sweet lines. And I'm psyched that my brother was there, too. Hope he had as good of a time as I did. 

That was about it for the Colorado Trip. We skied Durango Mountain Resort the next day, but there really wasn't too much to report about it. It was rock hard, the snow never really softened up, and the mountain was kind of a pain to get around on. It was a big letdown after the two phenomenal days we had in Silverton and Telluride. And we locked the keys in the Jeep. We did a couple of park laps in the afternoon, and at least we got a good picture out of it:

No, it wasn't photoshopped:

Okay, that's it for now. Video, and more posts coming soon.

Complacency or True Happiness?

I think a lot of things depend on one's frame of reference.  Whenever a skier from out west comes to the east, everything is icy.  When someone switches to shaped skis (or fat skis, or rockered skis), they wonder how they could have gone so long without trying the new technology.  And the 60 or so days a year that I get are pittance to a 120 day skier, but enviable to a 20 day skier.  But really, is the guy who skis the east, on straight skinny skis, about 20 days a year that bad off?  He still has a pretty big smile on his face.

In that vein, I wonder if I am asking for too much.  I mean, shouldn’t I be happy with what I have going?  I have a house.  I have a great job, with plenty of vacation time, a decent salary, and great benefits.  I have a great wife who loves skiing (and biking) as much as I do.  We live in a great area.  Gore is an hour away, Whiteface is 2:15.  My parents’ lakehouse is 2:45 away, with a boat and a jet ski. Ace’s parents’ condo is 45 minutes away and 20 minutes from Gore.  Mountain Biking at SMBA is about 25 minutes away, at Luther Forest about 15 minutes away.  Any number of Road Bike Rides are available right out my front door.  We have a lot of friends in the area for the summer, and we have a lot of friends at the mountain for the winter.  Our families live close.  And I love Gore.  It’s definitely top 5 in the East for trees (Stowe, Smuggs, Jay, MRG), which is what I like to ski most.

Really, if I was to pick up and move west, it would be for the following reasons:

1. Change of Scenery – I’ve lived in this area for (pretty much) my entire life.  I took 3.5 years off to go to school in Maine, and half a year to do a semester in New Zealand.  Other than that, I’ve lived in Upstate NY.
2. Snow – As much as I like Gore (and most of the East), the lack of natural snowfall is a killer.  It’s great when we have it, but sometimes we seem to spend weeks waiting for it.  I don’t really know how much snow I want (I don’t necessarily need Alta’s 500 inches, but Crested Butte’s 240 inches doesn’t sound like enough)
3. Terrain – As much as I like Gore, there’s no doubt that the terrain of a western resort is far superior in both acreage and variety.
4. Ski Town Vibe – I hate to dis where I grew up (because it worked out well for me), but Clifton Park, NY is a suburban wasteland.  The town is overcome with raised ranches (one of which is mine) and contains every single fast food restaurant, Friday’s/Chili’s type joint, and big box store known to man.  A proper ski town isn’t like that.  I picture Victorian houses and quaint streets.  And for me, there’s a certain feel to a ski town, where everyone is on vacation, and you can’t help but have your mood lifted.

 And that’s about it.  Let’s look at the list, and see what would be different. 

#1 is a weak reason.  It doesn’t take too long to adapt to a new place, and once I settle in and find my favorite spots, would I move again just for a “change of scenery?” 

#2 is big, but how big?  We get about 3 to 5 Powder Days at Gore per year.  By driving around a little bit, I might be able to squeeze another 3 to 5 out of other parts of the East Coast.   That’s 6 to 10 pretty good (5-7” +) powder days.  Granted, we hardly ever get the 12-24 inches that pile up overnight at western resorts.  I’m thinking the average western resort gets more like 18-30 awesome powder days a year . . . 3 times as much.  But the other thing is that, with all the natural snow, even the “droughts” are really good.  20 day old natural snow is a lot better than 20 day old manmade snow (that’s why I like “natural” trails in the east – no ice pellets to screw up the consistency).  Finally, we almost never see the rare and fantastic blue sky powder day that you always see in ski pictures.  So that’s a really big driver.

#3 is pretty important, because even when we do get a big power day (Valentine’s Day storm a couple of years ago), you need a mountain that can deliver the goods.  Let’s face it, some of the runs on the lower mountain don’t have enough pitch to keep you going on a really deep day.  They’re great cruisers in a snow drought, but just not cutting it when there’s 36” of fresh on the ground.  The top of the mountain, however, rocked on that day (and the day after . . . and the day after that . . . and the following weekend).  A lot of mountains out west have serious vertical right down to the base (I would just have to be careful when I choose).

#4 is really more of an image, I think, than a want.  Life in a ski town, while it looks glamorous, is not as cool as I’m making it out to be.  Great Jobs are few and far between, and there’s probably not going to be any health insurance.  There’s not even any guarantee that I will get to ski on those epic blue sky powder days.  Everything is expensive, the paycheck probably won’t be consistent, and I’d have to hustle to make things happen for myself (which may cut into my ski time).

So, I have to decide if the good (all that stuff in #2 and #3) outweighs the bad (all that stuff I mentioned in #4).  And right now, I just don’t see it.  Better Snow and Better Terrain seem like a reason to vacation there, but the negatives I listed in #4 prevent me from moving there (at this point in my life).  Things will happen, though, over the next few years.  People will move away, global warming might destroy eastern snowfall totals, and I might win the lottery.  For now, I’m just going to keep on keepin’ on.  And hopefully, I’ll learn to appreciate the things that I do have . . . Right after I buy myself some sweet rockered skis.    

Skiing like you live Your Life/Aspen Extreme

I stumbled across this old column somewhere in the depths of the internet.  Basically, it says that you can tell a lot about a person just by watching their skiing:

“I’ve come to the conclusion,” she said, “that people ski the way they live their lives.”
…
“Look at the people around you. Take Amy, for example,” Pat said, mentioning a friend who’s a student and part-time ski model. “She skis beautifully: smooth, in control, with purpose. That’s exactly the way her life is. Her sister, Val, on the other hand, skis just a little out of control, just a little wild…the same way she lives her life.”

I started thinking about this, and I’m pretty sure there’s an element of truth to it.  People I know who live their lives conservatively have a very conservative ski style - Slow, methodical turns; focused on making each turn perfect, completely content with getting to the bottom and seeing a Farmer Dave –type track that affirms their consistency.  People who live a little more towards the edge ski more aggressively, taking a few risks, trying a new line, or catching a little air.  But I feel like the concept breaks down when it comes to me.

My skiing style stems from the final scene in Aspen Extreme.   

Breaking the standard orthodoxy of the “Powder 8” competition, TJ Burke and his young partner go off course, off the judge’s monitors, and out of bounds for some sweet, sweet cliff jumping action.  I loved that scene when I was a younger, so I immediately tried to copy their moves.  I didn’t really care about falling because TJ didn’t land everything perfectly, and the hip checks and butt drags that he did have probably helped him control his speed on the steeper terrain (RIP Doug Coombs - best ski stunt double ever).  I had some spectacular crashes, some brutal injuries, and some embarrassing moments, but then I started having some success.  I felt really good when I began to nail some of the tricks in the movie – the 720 and Iron Cross 360 were definite highlights.  And I always took the mindset of exploration, rather than orthodoxy, in line selection.  To this day, every time I go skiing, I continue to try to explore new areas and take new risks.  Three years ago, I added the 360 to the top of the Rumor headwall not because I had a death wish, but because I wanted to TJ Burke the trail – ski it in a way that nobody had ever done before.

Which is what makes my career path so different.  On skis, I look at a line, question whether something can be done, and say “I’ll give it a try”.  In life, I look at my position, determine where I want to go and say “Ehhh, I’ll get there eventually.”  I think for me, it’s a question of consequence.  The worst thing that could happen on a failed Rumor Headwall 360 is a fall and an injury.  The worst thing that could happen with a failed career decision is poverty, desperation and despair. So I choose a life of security – secure job, secure income, secure house – instead.  I’ve written about this before, and these types of thoughts always seem to creep into my mind at the start of ski season.  So the question becomes, should I make my skiing decisions as conservative as my life decisions?  Or should I take a few more risks with my life decisions, as I do with skiing?

For TJ Burke, the answer was easy.  A promotion at the Auto Plant wasn’t a great way to get some security (even in a highly paid union job), it was bad news.  It meant that he’d continue to live in Detroit, slave away in a factory, and ski at Mount Brighton for the foreseeable future.  That alone was enough to spur him to make a drastic change in his life.  And so, every year I watch the movie.  And every year, when TJ asks the question “Wanna get out of here?” I get closer and closer to saying “Yes.”

Snow Drought and Other Stuff . . .

According to Harvey Road, the last time the National Weather Service in Albany posted a Winter Storm for the Adirondacks was December 9th.  His Gore Snowfall total is down more than 5 feet from last year.  According to the NWS, Albany has had only 6 days with more than an inch of snow this winter and is down about 20 inches from last winter.

Depressing, yes, but fear not.  I will always remember the sign at Sugarloaf on one of the lift towers that says that its snowiest months are March, April, and February (in that order).  I'd assume that Gore is similar.  Here's hoping that this winter will be redeemed with a monster Spring.

I would like to call to your attention, though, the difference in "snow droughts" from East to West.  Talking with people in Utah, you would think that it's the end of the world out there.  When I posted the Tahawus Glade Video on my facebook page, a guy I went to college with said that there's more snow in the trees here than there was out there.  Granted, they've gotten a little more snow since then - I thought PowderQueen's TR (also on Harvey Road) looked pretty damn good to me (even she, however, put in a mild complaint - "We didn't get too much deep powder, but we made the best of what we had").  Then I checked the Statistics.  Alta had gotten 162 inches of snow before I posted my video (they're up around 250 now).

Amazing!!!  In my wildest dreams, I could only hope that we'd get 162 inches of snow this year.  Imagine someone complaining!  I know, I know, mountains out there need more snow to operate because they don't have the manicured runs that we have here, but come on!!  If I lived out west, would I become a snow snob too?  Would I look out the window, see a base depth of only 84 inches and go back to sleep?  If the answer is yes (and I think it might be), that just speaks volumes about the difference in skiing from East to West.  We ski here because it's enjoyable, fun to do with friends, and great excercise.  Out there, though, people ski because they SKI.

And that's the difference.  I had a blast on Sagamore last week.  It was great: fresh gun-pow, soft bumps, and good people.  But I stayed on Sagamore for pretty much the entire day.  That was the only place where I could SKI.  I guess it's obvious that I believe that SKIING is different than skiing.  And it seems like this year, I've had a lot more skiing than SKIING.  Don't get me wrong, I've had some great runs, but there hasn't been a day where I've been completely gung ho about pushing myself, exploring, and taking charge of a ski day.  I've mostly been taking it as it comes, finding the good snow, and lapping it until I'm tired.

Come to think of it, I always do a lot of that at the beginning of a season.  When the mountain isn't fully open, the best bet is to find the trail that they've been hammering with guns, and ski it until your legs give out.  The problem is, this year has been like an extended early season.  There's not too much separating skiing now from skiing in December or Early January.  Yeah, there are more trails open, but none that really excite me (especially since they keep grooming the trails that have character).  How many times can I ski groomed frozen granular before I get bored?  Pretty soon, I'm going to want to SKI.  I want to rip bump lines and tree lines, I want to adventure, I want to explore, I want to find a stash that no one has skied for weeks, I want to stare at big mountains, and plan tomorrow's day over a beer (because it will be different than today).  These are the things I love about skiing.  And they're the things that I can't do in an Eastern Powder Drought, but can do in a Western Powder "Drought".       

Other miscellaneous notes . . .

Getting fired did cause me to rethink what I want with my life (in terms of my skiing life).  These last couple of days freeskiing have been so relaxing, I question why I would ever want to return to a life of mountain employment.  Surely, even if we move out west, I can find a job doing something other than ski instructing.  If I can't find a geologist, park ranger, or environmental science job, I could be a bartender, shop tech, or cook.  Ski instructing was great for a few years because it allowed me to meet many of the people who are my friends today.  But I might be past that point in my life (at least at this mountain).  I know everyone now, and I still hang out with the same people, but skiing now is just so much . . . better (see the post below).  I'm more relaxed, I have more fun, and I don't feel burdened by anything.

If Ace and I do decide to move out west, we'll look for jobs in our fields and we'll probably ski instruct for the first couple of years.  It's the best way to meet new people, you immediately get immersed in the culture of the mountain, and you learn all the best places that locals go.  But I'm sure there will come a point when I just don't want to do it anymore.  And, judging by how I feel after these last two days, I'm fine with that.

Plans for the future . . .

I go through a struggle in my mind every once in a while and it goes like this:  Every time I think about moving out west [to a ski town (Jackson, Breck, Truckee),or a pseudo-ski town (Bend, Bozeman, Santa Fe) or a ski city (Boulder, Denver, or SLC)], I always say something like, "Well, I'll move out west eventually, but right now, I just refinanced my house, and I should wait a couple of years to rebuild some equity before I make any moves".  Or, "I only have to work for 2 more years until I'm vested in the retirement system at work, so I'll wait until then to move."  I'm okay with this now (those seem to be good reasons), but will it keep going like this?  I mean, will there always be something trying to keep me here?  My parents are retiring in 2011 and moving down to Carolina, so at that point, I really won't have anything keeping me in the area (besides my job and house, that is).  And my job is good.  Will I be able to find a comparable job out west?  I don't know.

I just hope that I don't keep saying to myself "Two more years", "Three more years", "Five more years", then find myself still kicking around this area when I'm 50 wondering why I never moved out west.  So, hopefully I can develop a plan soon and stick to it.