Ski trip

notes from Sugar Mountain

Growing up, winter was not my favorite season, but looking back it may have been the most memorable. In King William County, Virginia, where my family lived in a little farm cabin, then a log cabin, it snowed every year. I remember snowfalls measurable in feet, which had to be traversed by walking behind my dad and stepping into his footsteps. Snow deep enough and weather cold enough to cancel school for two weeks. Lake ice thick enough to skate on; river ice that went all the way across the wide, tidal Mattaponi. Breaking apart, when it finally warmed, it made an eerie shrieking sound. Icicles so fat and sharp you had to be careful when they fell.

This is the winter of children’s books, of Little House in the Big Woods and Owl Moon and The Snowy Day, but it’s not the kind of winter Bea and Harriet will remember. They’ll remember daffodils popping up in January, aqua-colored lichen on rocks and trees, a dusting of snow or a few snowflakes caught on their tongues. The “backwards adventure walk,” which is a walk that starts at the kayak put-in and goes along the Haw River, across dry creek-beds and over fallen logs and past deer and beaver and bobcat tracks, to the easement shared by our community. It’s backwards because you can’t walk that way in other seasons—the paths in spring, summer, and much of fall are overgrown. So there is a specialness to winter. A difference.

Still, they feel it should snow some. “It hasn’t really snowed in two years,” Bea complained recently. So we made a plan to come to the mountains for our first-ever ski trip, which is where we are this weekend: Sugar Mountain, North Carolina, near a ski resort that seems popular, given the different languages we’ve heard on the slopes, with people from all over the world.

We missed the good window, locals have told us. Last week it snowed twenty inches! You could see the melting piles on the way up the mountain, and the girls made a game in the car of who could spot them first. “We don’t like how warm it is,” a group of year-round residents told us in the lobby of the condo building where we’re staying, which is so high up it’s been fogged in every morning. They meant, they didn’t like it for skiing, but they also meant: it’s not right, this warm weather.

Sixty-one degrees on Friday, which was our ski day. It’s no problem, a man working at the ski resort explained when I called ahead, because they make snow whenever it’s cold enough, so there’s a thick, durable snow pack, which melts very slowly. The snow machines look like giant hair dryers; they were stilled when we were there because it was too warm for them to function. But ski lessons were happening; the lifts were full, carrying people to the top of impossibly high slopes.

Bea and I took a lesson, and Bea did great. They were right—the snow was fine for skiing, and we did pizza, french fries, and turns. Nearby, Richard taught Harriet, too young for lessons, on the bunniest of bunny slopes. Then Harriet decided that she’d really, really like to ride the chair lift, but not actually ski down. I asked if this was possible, and a skeptical info desk guy said, “well, I guess if you got really scared, they’d let you ride the lift down again.”

So we made a plan to do that, hopping a lift for a slope called “Easy Street.” Beneath our dangling skis, we could see the edge of the resort, where the snow stopped and meltwater coursed down a rocky creek. Harriet found the lift scary, and said she’d prefer to try skiing down. But that was scary too, so she and I took our skis off and walked down, very slowly, while Bea skied down effortlessly and Richard snowboarded (with somewhat more effort).

Yesterday, we decided to ice skate in a complex that includes a big outdoor rink, encircled by mountains, and a snow tubing park that always has long lines. I told the girls we could also snow tube—we tubed at the farm when I was a kid, and it was a blast—but even though they both like going fast they said no, they’d rather skate for longer. (I was glad; something about the tubing park, with its lines and mechanical moving walkway, depressed me.)

It was colder, in the mid forties, but not so cold that you needed gloves or even a coat. Some people wore t-shirts and hockey jerseys. We were among the first people on the rink, which had some slushy edges but was overall frozen. As we skated, more people arrived, some good at skating, like Bea, and some who stuck to the edges, like me and Harriet. It was never crowded, but as we all skated a thin film of water began to form over the ice. Eventually it was enough of a puddle that each skater made small splashes with her skates, and Harriet noticed that under the ice, you could see leaves and polka dots of dirt. Resting, the girls peered over the sides and noticed the ice-bound tubing that refrigerates the rink. I didn’t point out that the massive machinery necessary to keep the rink frozen is contributing, in its small way, to the warm air that melts the ice. I don’t want to ruin their fun.

And we did have fun! Even on a splashy ice rink, which is nothing at all like skating on a lake so frozen you could drive a car onto its surface. Even in manmade snow, slowly melting beneath big machines.

This morning we’re going gem mining, then back home where it’s sixty degrees and sunny. A good day for a backwards adventure walk. It will snow here tonight, and they will also make snow.

What are your best winter memories, Frog Troublers? What do you miss?