After the quiet quitting of my nutrition program for a summer and fall’s worth of Aperol spritzes, homemade pizza, Pretty Bird chicken sandwiches and Red Bicycle crack bread, all in the name of “Don’t worry, you’ll burn it off mountain biking,” it’s that time of year again.
The opening of the ski closet. The regarding of the stack, neatly folded since last season.
The trying on of the ski pants.
There were the fitted aubergine pants I bought at a long-gone ski shop when I lived in Rochester, New York — the ones my friends Sue and Barb said I had to get because they made my butt look good. Even my husband, who had fallen out of love with skiing, and also, eventually, me, agreed.
There were the faux denim pants I bought in 2005 after seeing one of the coaches wearing them at a women’s ski clinic at Grand Targhee. The clinic was headed by the legendary ski mountaineer Kit Des Lauriers. It was my first time skiing in real powder and I was doing it alongside the first human to ski the highest peak on every continent.
It was nuking and I was nearly puking when the snowcat dropped us off at the top of our backcountry line. Five turns in, I dropped a ski in the nearly waist-deep snow. Everyone else floated past. I dug but my ski was nowhere to be found. I was on the brink of tears when Kit swooped down, found the ski and clicked my boot back into the binding. I felt like a 6-year-old, standing on my skis for the first time.
Back home, there were the pants. Hell, if I couldn’t ski pow as cool as that cat, I could at least look the part.
Also in the closet were the Dopesnow camouflage ski pants I bought in 2018. That was when I was living in Paris, trying to reinvent my life after divorce. A boyfriend was coming to visit so we could make a dream trip to Chamonix. We hired a guide to take us on the classic descent down the Vallee Blanche on the Mer de Glace. There were crampons and ropes and crevasses. And those pants. I snapped a selfie as I slipped my Petzl harness over them. I later used it in my Tinder profile, after the boyfriend and I broke up.
Then there were the baggy blue Norrona pants I wore for my first backcountry tour after I moved to Park City in 2020. My cousin’s husband, a veteran of ski touring, volunteered to take me to Grizzly Gulch. “It’s pretty flat; piece of cake,” he said as we started up the skin-track, the snow falling lightly.
I was about 400 yards into the hike and 800 yards behind Adam when, gasping for air, a mental reel of every Park City mountain bike climb I’d ever done flashed through my mind. It had cameos by a wooly-bear caterpillar and an old woman on a Schwinn cruiser whom I’d once found myself lapped by. The accompanying audio loop: “It’s pretty flat.” I thought, if I can just get to the top, I’ll reclaim my self respect on the way down.
By the time we reached the summit, it was dumping. Adam announced that we had two options. Just ski down the way we came or drop into a short pitch of fresh, deep fluffiness. The second option meant we’d have to hike out before we could ski back to the car. But, he assured me, “It’s pretty short.”
I ripped the skins off my skis and felt a quick rush as I looked over the edge at untracked snow. I might suck at ascending, but I kick ass on the descent. I smiled.
“Ok,” Adam said, flicking his pole toward the line, “It’s all yours.”
I dropped in and made two of the most glorious turns of my life before catching an edge and losing my right ski. Flashback to Targhee — but this was worse. All the potential consequences of being in the backcountry, miles from the car, in the middle of a snowstorm, suddenly made me wish I was anywhere but there.
I will never do this again, I swore to myself.
“What should I do?” I shouted to Adam, who was watching me from the top of the line.
“Look for it!” he called back.
I started frantically digging in the snow. “I can’t find it,” I yelled back.
Adam skied down about 200 yards below and started fishing around before pulling it out like a rabbit from a hat. I slid down on those blue ski pants and met up with him at the bottom of the pitch. He was crouched under a small grove of pines, looking at a huge paper map he’d taken out of his pack and eating a peanut butter sandwich. “Want some?” he asked.
Last season, I bought myself a pair of screaming neon yellow Helly Hansen pants. They were part of my inspiration to participate in Summit Sisters, a four-month holistic coaching program for women backcountry skiers and splitboarders. I might lose a ski in a snowdrift, but in my neon yellow pants, no way was anyone going to lose me.
Standing in my gear room, I unfolded the Helly Hansens and slowly stepped into them. Those memories, this place, these pants — it was a perfect fit.