Notes from a Ski Town: Can the Snow Just Melt Already?
Yeah, I’m over it.
While the rest of the country settles into their perhaps rainy, sunny, or hot spring time routines, life in a small Montana ski town has consisted of me melting ice cubes with a hair dryer to get the satisfaction of personally melting a frozen object under my own power.
After yet another consecutive record-breaking winter snowfall that propelled our mountain’s snow pack to one of the deepest in the nation at over 150″, my back porch (and skin) is finally receiving the vitamin D it has been craving since November. It’s tough work living in a snow globe.
Snowboarder Rob Conte finding that God forsaken powder stash
Over 120″ of fresh fell in the month of February.
To put things in perspective, 7 of the 28 days were not powder days. Breathing became tough (the many dive shops in town sold out of snorkels), burning legs became a more predictable staple in my life than well-rounded meals, and I even developed a new bone growth on the back of my heel from too many days in ski boots.
Some days I stared longingly out the window. The pancake-sized snowflakes falling from the sky made me miss the traffic jam aphrodisiac of car exhaust on a Colorado bluebird powder day, but who has time for day dreaming? Outside a driveway needed shoveling so I could drive to wait tables and collect tips from tourists to put fuel in my 4WD truck that burned enough gas to expedite global warming.
But that was last month.
Today is the end of March and the tourists are retreating to their homes across the country after a strong spring break. Finally the streets are clear, the end of the lifts’ operating season nears, and the sun is shining revealing a mountain rarely visible from town.
With great clarity comes a time to reflect on the season and give proper congratulations to people like the snow gods, who delivered, and Montana endurance skier Mike Foote who set the 24-hour world record for most vertical. God bless ya kid.
The novel caress of sunshine. Snowboarder : CJ Krager
As for now…
I’m standing in my kitchen nursing a succulent back to life while, yes, still melting ice cubes with a hair dryer, but in five months I will be placing my face over a high-powered blender with the top off to mimic the feeling of face shots in the dead of winter.
Until then, I’m over it.
