So many tears I’ve cried, so much pain inside.
So many years we’ve tried to keep our love alive, but baby it ain’t over till its over.
Is that an entry about love and loss?? No of course not. Its an entry about ski season, but hey, that is a story of love and loss this season. It was a total story of love and loss this season, where there have been a few ski trips where I’ve sweat for most of the trip and one ski trip where I got frost bite or as I like to call it, a little kiss from the mountain….
Either way, I chose the title “It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over” because this week’s ski trip was a perfect illustration of that. Every weekend I trudge over to Back Bay station to meet my ski bus. Every week this season I’ve had to check if the trip was even on because of the crappy skiing conditions that have taken hold, given mother nature’s refusal to produce even a drop of natural snow.
As luck would have it, this weekend I visited a place called Jay Peak, which I also like to call the crazy bitch of mountains. Actually, the bitch was less crazy than she has been on previous trips. I’ve visited Jay Peak a total of three times. The first time I stayed strictly on flat land because I was learning to ski and it was my first season. I didn’t even go to the summit of the mountain for that first trip because the tram said it was for intermediate and advanced skiers and I didn’t belong to either of those categories.
The second time I visited was much more interested. Prior to my frost bitten experience in Stowe earlier this season, the January 2015 trip to Jay Peak took the record as the coldest I have ever been in my life skiing. It was an insane trip where I thought I was going to die on many a passage down the mountain. I also realized that people mostly ski the glades up there, which was assuredly something I was never going to do.
The third trip was yet more interesting. The skiing bus was virtually empty so I had two seats to myself and got some really good sleep on the way there. Yet once I got there, I didn’t want to get off the bus and just wanted to sleep. Once though I got a look at the gleaming slope, off I went. I sped down the intermediates and for the first time in my life, ducked into mogul filled semi glade. Rocks and rocks of ice and tree branches and other such detritus that made me realize immediately that it was the first time I was going to duck into a glade. And the last time. Otherwise, the trails were a lot of fun and the conditions were quite nice. It wasn’t too cold and I wasn’t sweating either so ski season isn’t over just yet.
It ain’t over till its over:
wrong side of the camera 