Race Mom Jitters

It is a rare occasion that I get to devote an entire day to watching my kids ski race. Based on my physical reaction to being Race Day Mom last weekend, that’s probably a good thing.

I’d taken the day off from coaching the littlest racers at Cannon to spend the day rooting for my son and his friends at the U12 State Finals at Cranmore. Most of the day, all was just peachy. The sun was out. The snow was soft. I chatted with other parents at the finish area, cheering as kids we knew came down the course and through the finish.

(Photo cred: Josh Lawton)

About two racers before my son’s bib number, though, my heart rate quickened. My shoulders tensed. I had to focus on taking even breaths. By the time I saw Owen push out of the start at the top of the hill, I felt like I was going to vomit. Or cry. Possibly both.

For the 49 seconds it took him to get through the course, I was a disaster. And then he pushed through the finish, and everything returned to normal.

This is how it is for me every time one of my children is in a race course and I am at the finish.

I can’t explain why the mere act of watching my children do something they love causes such acute angst. There is no logic behind it. I am not overly concerned with how well or poorly they will do compared to the field. Nor am I particularly worried about them being injured.

And this is not a new sport to me. I grew up ski racing. I’ve coached young racers and soon-to-be racers for several years. I’m familiar with race day nerves from a competitor’s perspective, but I was never the kid puking off the side of the trail before first run. Likewise, I never felt overly nervous for the kids I coach as I doled out pep talks at the start or high fives at the finish.

Although I’ve coached and watched my kids play other sports – soccer, baseball, basketball – those competitions don’t inspire anything like the anxiety I experience during ski races. The one exception there, perhaps, is the few times my kids have been involved in penalty kick shootouts during soccer games.

Maybe, then, it is that sense that my child is up there alone.

Perhaps at its core this nearly paralyzing, and thankfully only momentary, anxiety I feel on race days is simply motherly instinct. My son is facing a challenge on his own, and there’s nothing I can do to help him. My daughter, who wakes up full of nerves every race day, has to overcome her own anxiety to push off from the start and charge hard through a course, and there’s nothing I can do but stand idly by and watch.

There are no timeouts, no teammates to rely on mid-race, no direct opponent to deke around or win the ball from. During that short race run, it is just the racer and the course – and the potential for both heartbreak and triumph.

I know I’m am not the only frazzled parent standing at the finish line. I’ve watched friends stare at the course stone-faced as their children come through, or bouncing with nervous excitement, or muttering some encouraging phrase repeatedly for their child’s entire run. Normally reasonable people, we get a little wonky during races.

My kids are just at the start of their ski racing experience. Maybe the more races they’re in, the more times I stand at the bottom and watch, the easier it will get. For now, though, I remind myself to breathe, cheer as loudly as I can, and know that this feeling, too, shall pass – as soon as my kid crosses the finish.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the March 9, 2018 issue of the Littleton Record.

Under the Guns

If I concentrate, I can almost block out the roar of the snow guns, which are spewing manmade snow beneath an uncharacteristically bluebird New Hampshire winter sky. Soft as silk, the snow sifts to the ground, building cover on the snow whales, which rise like cresting waves in a perfect line down the hill: swelling white whoop-de-dos that offer up continued freshies, last run’s tracks filled in again in the time it takes to ride up the chairlift.

The bottom layer of manmade is incredibly grippy underneath the top layer of fluff, the combination of firm base and fake pow like some other version of hero snow. I push off down the steep trail, chairlift to the left, tree line to the right, goggles down, zipper up against the subzero chill, the bliss of sleek turns bigger than the blaring of the guns.

Western skiers would scoff at this zest for manmade snow. I know; I lived and skied among them for five long, lovely winters. I moved west after college with a lifelong ski buddy. We’d grown up together as ski racers on the blue ice and manmade granular of a New Hampshire mountain, in an era when ski racers weren’t encouraged to ski anything other than hard pack. Early in our first Colorado winter, we hiked out to Crested Butte’s Third Bowl. The snow was waist-high, and we hadn’t a clue what to do with all that powder. We flailed. Then laughed. Then floated as we figured it out.

She’s still out there, skiing the deep stuff, while I’m in my 15^th winter back East. Turns out you can take the girl out of New England, but she just might come back to the mountains of home, despite the discrepancy in annual snowfall between there and here.

Manmade snow is an Eastern skier’s lifeblood, a necessity that allows us to carry on down the ski slopes, even if the grass is still poking through the shallow layer of white on the front lawn. Even in a season like we had last winter, where it snowed lots before Christmas, we relied on the manufactured stuff to keep skiing through a late-December rain, holding on until winter returned with a welcome and persistent vengeance.

Thankfully, manmade snow has come a long way since ski areas started lining the slopes with snow guns a half-century ago. This is not your grandma’s manmade snow. It’s soft and creamy and carve-able. I know it’s not the real stuff, the deep powder of a skier’s dreams. But with a start to winter like we’ve had this season, I’ll take manmade bliss over the alternative of no skiing at all. And while this is no powder bonanza, the skiing is good. With the super cold temperatures early this week, ski areas all over the region fired up the guns, blowing their own version of cold smoke.

My last powder day was Easter, the flakes falling fat and fast on the kids as they hunted Easter eggs. That April storm was a surprise, and we took advantage by heading out for a post-egg-hunt family ski day, introducing our third-generation Cannon kids to a favorite, slightly off-piste, not-entirely-secret stash. The kids whooped as much in delight of the new snow as in discovering an old trail through the woods, an adventure that is a local skiing rite of passage.

True to their New England roots, my kids love a good snowfall. Even a dusting of new white has them rushing out the door to sled or shovel or brush snow angels into the fluff. A mere couple of inches, in their minds, constitutes a powder day and has them clamoring to get out on the hill. And true to their New England roots, my kids are not thrown by having spent the first month of this ski season on purely manmade snow. Any day skiing is better than a day not skiing, whether powder or frozen granular, come rain or wind or snow or ice or, sometimes, cold sunshine.

I don’t know when the next powder day will be. Until then, I’m taking what I can get: a man-made blizzard, and the occasional face shot under the guns. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 8, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

The Other Side of the Saddle

In honor of this week's publication of my book, A History of Cannon Mountain: Trails, Tales and Skiing Legends… I’m posting an essay I wrote several years ago, before Mittersill was officially reopened as part of Cannon Mountain.

   The swath of gray clouds pours over and around Cannon Mountain, exposing glimpses of winter sunshine, bursts of warmth onto the snowy ribbons of ski trails, as we look back at the summit from the top of the saddle between Cannon and Mount Jackson, catching our breath after a short climb.

   Fifteen minutes earlier we’d been in the fog at the top of Cannon, contemplating the hike over the saddle. Now, standing in an island of light, a donut hole of blue sky above us, it seems we made a good choice. 

   Unlike many ski areas in North America, Cannon has not been bastardized by a glut of humongous second homes and row upon row of condos built at its base and encroaching its slopes. The view from here includes more houses than it did when I was a child, but that is true of many places, and here they still only dot the landscape, without ruin. The climb seemed longer then, the skis heavier for my small body to carry. But standing on the saddle, that bridge between familiarity and adventure, groomed and ungroomed, has always inspired in me anticipation of the sweet turns to come.

   Behind us lies the boot-packed trail we just climbed, leading gradually up from Cannon, whose ski trails reach like icy appendages toward the valley. Most of the trails from the summit are nearly as old as skiing in America. The one we just descended, Taft Slalom, is part of the oldest mountain trail cut specifically for skiing in this part of the world, back in 1932 and ’33. The others were added beginning in 1938, when Cannon Mountain became home to the continent’s first passenger aerial tramway – and Cannon became one of America’s first ski areas.

   On the saddle’s other side, through spruce trees stunted to midget form by decades of ice storms and wicked wind, lies the promise of an adventure down trails forgotten by many, but still revered by Cannon old timers and more recent locals. There are runs nearly overgrown in places, where legends were once made of daredevilish racers who were willing to launch their bodies down steep, icy, narrow passages through forests logged then regrown. And there are newer, hidden runs, cut clandestinely by more modern thrill seekers.

   On days when there is new snow, a thin, steady line of hikers winds up the saddle, and visitors to Cannon wonder where the line leads. Little do they know the joy on the other side, the exhilaration of the turns earned with a short hike, a few beads of sweat. But on this day of weird weather and no new snow, we are the only two here.

   On the saddle, skiers pause to ponder the view and their imminent run. A tangle of runs – some well-traveled, many tucked secretly into the forest – winds down from the saddle. Skiers might head down the Tucker Brook Trail, built by Civilian Conservation Corps workers in 1934. The trail’s entrance is hidden now in the brush, and its series of 13 quick, steep turns has been legendary among area skiers for generations. Or they may choose the less intimidating Baron’s Run, named after the charismatic Austrian Baron who established the now defunct Mittersill ski area on the opposite side of the saddle from Cannon. The Baron’s village of chalets remains nestled into the nooks of the mountain, below the old ski trails and rusting chair lift towers.

   Today we head through the first narrow trail with no specific route in mind. A few turns down the concave path of uneven moguls is all it takes to get breathing hard again, and we stop to catch our breath and look through the woods, wondering if we should bushwhack in search of a clearing we’ve seen hidden somewhere along that ledge.

   We decide to keep on the way we were headed and soon funnel out at the top of the expired chairlift, where a labyrinth of overgrown runs waits for us. We point our skis down the old lift line, dodging poplar shoots and small fir trees. At junctions we change direction with little conversation, creeping lower and lower, as the trees grow taller and the rooftops of the Baron’s village come into sight. The snow is not deep, but it is smooth, and we glide turn to turn, finding a rhythm, then losing it, and finding it again.

   Eventually we turn sharply to the right, on a narrow path through a forest of white birch that leads to Cannon’s base area. The trail rolls from slight mound to small divot, and we push with our poles, projecting our bodies between the trees. Soon we can hear the steady electric hum of a chairlift bullwheel and the voices of skiers calling to each other.

   We pop out onto one of the lower trails, a wide, flat beginner run so opposite of the pitch we just skied. We glide to the lift line, smile, and join the sparse crowd of skiers who remain oblivious to the secrets of the saddle’s other side.