Après ski

Even a short descent on skis is exhilarating. I would never describe it as fun. Besides the sport mostly evoking in me a blabbering panicked terror that never seems to pause, skiing also collects unpleasantries and tedium from other sports. It borrows the uncomfortably stiff footwear that are never quite your size from the bowling alley and skating rink. A hike’s constant balancing act across river rock gets recreated in snow. Skiing outright steals the physicality and form of surfing, if not its climate. The numbing agony of waiting for the surf to come in is more or less the same as a lift ride up. Powdery graupel is one of snow’s many textures. It scrapes, kicks up behind you like a wake on the water and gives way to the heavier stuff underneath. Wind pulls at all the loose flesh on your face with a grip that brings ziplining to mind, both the speed of skidding along the line and the worse consideration that if you stop and have to go hand-over-hand or taking footsteps, regaining speed, you will be on the descent even longer. The general expectation both here and on the football field is that you will eat the ground at least once on the way down unless you have the skill and experience to stay upright, which I do not. The snow moves my body, not the other way around. I try my best to keep my poles up and just go. It fights every instinct I have. In short, skiing is fun and easy until you have to ski. But no other sport has quite the same celebration, half surprise that you got down the hill alive and half sudden desperate rediscovery of the need to get warm again, as the alpine après ski.

The lodge is full of a few serious athletes and many other posers like me who just want to get out of the cold. I have no illusion that I am good at skiing. I was immediately prone after shoving off on the smoothest bunny hill on the mountain. And then again at least a half-dozen more times. I can’t keep my legs under me. Adrenaline powered through many of my misgivings until I floundered to a stop. I don’t have the spirit for a second trip up on the lifts. My sore back and sorer rear are ready for a rest.

I am bundled up in a warm jacket and a dry pair of mittens, tapping loose snow from my clothes and pulling on the goggles suctioned to my face. I half-stretch half-crouch on bent knees to unclasp my boots from the rental skis so I stop walking like a penguin. The mountain is the real equipment, and much of the other physical infrastructure is more or less for safe recovery, to my eye, in much the same way all the apparatus of self-contained underwater diving are not the sport but make the sport of being underwater for an extended time possible.

If I could slide down a mountain standing upright in slippers, it would still be skiing. I would have just as much of a chance of staying upright with the lodge’s old, amateurish but adequate skis as the state-of-the-art custom performance et cetera the professionals endorse each winter. Pristine white clothes and mangled equipment could melt their way right onto a tennis court.

I step on crunchy snow past a cloud of tobacco through to the lodge. I sit down gingerly. Hot toddy gives some feeling back into my fingers. Compliments of the resort for amateurs who crash and freeze. I shiver. I am not used to winter weather, much less direct contact that turns my supposedly snow-proof clothes into a wetsuit.

So I pull my beanie down over my ears with one hand. I sip from the mason jar of hot toddy to settle my stomach, which thinks it is still dropping down the mountainside even as I swallow the cold wind caught in my teeth. My eyes blink again, stinging and covered in ice like the rest of my face. There’s a big fireplace in the corner of the lobby that keeps the room warm. Some people après ski by dancing along to the music and snacking on bombardinos, soups, cheeses and other mountain fare. Not all of which is local to this lodge. But some tourists who don’t really know or care the difference for the weekend hide in a hot toddy after going down the slope exactly once.

My back starts to relax into a sore dull pain instead of the sharp pain from a tumble. At least my heart stops beating so fast. Time and the drink are starting to settle me down. My shirt is drying out. I’m no chatterbox, but I do start talking to the skiers next to me about my aches as a point of pride, that I conquered the mountain, when that is the farthest thing from what happened. They know it. Their eyes are sympathetic instead of impressed. I blabber, still full of adrenaline, about the thin slushy snow and the thick fluffy snow underneath and something about bowling.

My legs start to cramp painfully from the fast strain and then the total stop in the chair. I meander (limp) around the room looking for something to soothe my back. The real pain is bruising somewhere below my ribs. Part of me wants to just go back out into the snow for a cold compress. I was not graceful, but I was not broken or even sprained, either. A mountain full of excuses when you embarrass yourself outside. Adrenaline to keep focus tight on your body, your too-long too-tight skis, the length in front of you. No adrenaline here. Just another ski bum.