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.

Frightful Weather

Oh, the weather outside is … hardly frightful. Unless you’re trying to operate a cold weather-dependent business, or you actually like snow in winter. In that case, the spring-like weather this December is downright scary. We had a short-lived snowfall last week, which set my kids scrambling to get outside. But the first snowmen of the season have melted into crusty lumps of dirty snow, soggy hats, and wilted carrots. It’s safe to say Jack Frost isn’t nipping any noses lately.

Poor Frosty.

I know there are plenty of people enjoying the balminess, but it’s a major headache for ski areas and other businesses – and their employees – who rely on cold and snow to function. Springtime weather in December means fewer people are skiing, which means fewer ski area employees are receiving paychecks. And if you’re a Nordic ski area or snowmobile-related business, well, you’re plain out of luck.

I know I’m not the only one suffering the no-snow December blues. We East Coast skiers are a hardy bunch. We are eager to ski a strip of manmade snow in the early season, if that’s what our option is. We add as many layers as it takes to combat well-below-zero temperatures, and we learn young to lean into icy gusts of wind, lest we lose our grip on the snow. We are not put off by the hard stuff – blue ice, boiler plate, death cookies; call it what you will, we’ll ski it. Many of us have even resorted to donning refurbished Hefty bags to make skiing in the rain of a January thaw less, well, wet.

But when it’s 34 degrees and pouring rain the first week of December, or when the forecast calls for temperatures pushing 50 two weeks before Christmas, or when all that hard-earned snow-making effort is melting right back into the snow making lake – well, it’s hard on a skier’s psyche.

Each morning, as I sit down with my first cup of coffee and my keyboard, I peer out the window, seeking the distant lights of groomers shining through the darkness of pre-dawn: tiny beacons of hope. When the morning sky brightens, I look for the upward plumes of white along the ski trails at Cannon Mountain, signs that it is cold enough, at least, to make snow.

Most Decembers those manmade snow clouds rise in a steady march up the mountain, as the white stuff is pumped skyward to sift down onto the trails, the lifeblood of early season skiing in the Northeast. This year the snow guns have been shutting down by mid-morning most days, if they are fired up at all. It has been too warm to do much beyond laying down a narrow ribbon of white, building it up on cold nights so that it can survive the persistent onslaught of too-warm weather.

Still, my kids were beyond excited to get on the hill last weekend for their first ski outing of the season. They went to bed with visions of snowflakes pirouetting through their little skier dreams and woke Saturday morning raring to hit the slopes, limited as those slopes are at the moment. Instead of worrying about frozen toes and frostbitten noses, we shed layers as the temperatures climbed, and got a preposterously early start on our goggle tans.

It felt good to be skiing again after a long hiatus, and we’re ready for more: more snow, more skiing, more winter. Alas, the forecast remains more suited to April than December. The snow guns are idle until cooler weather returns. And I might have to dig out a Hefty bag for skiing before I don the down jacket.

Yes, the weather outside is frightful, indeed. 

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 December 11, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.

March Madness

In the American sports world these days there’s lots of talk about brackets and Cinderella teams and number 2 seeds getting taken out by number 16 seeds. But the only seeds I’m thinking of during March Madness this year are the ones that will grow into vegetables.

March crocuses

It’s been 70 degrees or warmer the better part of the last week. In mid-March. In northern New England. Where last year at this time the snow banks along the driveway were still dwarfing the lilac bushes, this week the lilacs are budding. There is no snow on the ground anywhere in sight, except for a wee bit in the deepest rocky crevices of Mount Lafayette and on the high slopes of Cannon Mountain, where a couple months ago they stockpiled manmade snow to last the season.

Well, a week of summer weather means ski season ends this weekend. And I feel as if I should be planting the garden rather than making the final turns of the winter.

March Madness? I’m surrounded by it. In a matter, literally, of minutes we went from ski boots to flip flops, turtlenecks to tank tops, chilly air to freakin’ mosquitoes! There are dandelion greens peeking at us from the yard. The tulips are up six inches and look to be blooming in another week. Continuous warm temperatures mean maple sugaring season was abruptly abbreviated this year, so get ready for the price of maple syrup to skyrocket.

The birds are chirping incessantly. The peepers are singing already. The bears are up. While we haven’t actually seen any bruins, yet, the paths through our yard and fields are littered with their scat. It’s a good reminder to keep the muck boots on when we wander around outside, even though our winter weary toes long for flip flops.

Our mudroom, whose scattered piles are normally indicative of the season, is now a schizophrenic hodgepodge of chaos. (OK, with three small kids, two adults, a long-haired dog who likes to roll around in the mucky field, and two cats thrown in for good measure, our mudroom is normally chaos, just not quite to this extent.) There are snow boots and mud boots, ski pants and sandals, neck gaiters and sunglasses all mixed together in a confusing jumble.

“Mom, do we need mittens?” my kids shout as we head out the door. “Should I wear my snow boots or my rain boots? Or my flip flops?” My smallest one, age 3, went out the other morning in shorts, rain boots, a spring weight fleece jacket, winter hat, mittens, and sunglasses. March Madness, indeed.

The last two afternoons the kids have stripped down to play in a makeshift kiddie pool. Last night they revived one of their favorite pre-bedtime summer rituals: running around the front yard in circles as fast as they can, giggling in a slap-happily the whole time. They came in covered in mud and dirt, got cleaned off, and fell into bed exhausted.

Next week we return to cooler temperatures. Normal March weather, requiring long sleeves and socks. It might even snow a little bit. It won’t surprise me one bit if it snows – a lot – before summer really sets in. Really, we had a taste of winter in October, lots of fall-ish mud season-esque weather through much of the winter, and now summer in March. Why not winter in April? Or May? It’s a good reminder to all those North Country folks who lament snow in winter (hello, it’s WINTER in NEW ENGLAND!) that we don’t get to choose when it happens, but snow is a fact of life here. It’s easy to embrace snow in winter. Snow in late spring, after a taste of summer, not so much.

So, for a while, our mudroom will remain confused, as will the tulips. We’ll leave the bikes on the porch, but the snowshoes are still there, too. And while I’m tempted to sow seeds in my veggie garden, which is completely melted out and warmed by the sun, I think for now I’ll stick to planting seedlings inside, leaving them in the warm, south-facing window of the living room.

It’s a good place for looking out at the March Madness around us.

What a Difference a (Powder) Day Makes

What a difference a (powder) day makes.

All winter we skier types have been lamenting the lack of snow, which has been compounded by the rain that has seemed to follow every scant snowfall of an inch or two, and by the numerous dashed hopes of promised storms that amount to, well, not much.

Skiers tend to be grumpy during low snow seasons, oozing sarcasm when the forecast of 6-12 inches becomes a reality of a trace-1 inch, becoming bitter when we can still see the grass in our yards in February, lamenting past winters of deeper snow.

But this morning dawned a powder day on Cannon Mountain. An unanticipated, delightful drop of 7-10 inches that fell in the night.

This morning there were only happy faces on the first Tram. No grumps. Just fat skis and smiles from the regulars, most of us playing hooky from work or whatever else it is we should have been doing on a Monday morning. Two weeks of February vacation and the associated uptick in skiers on the slopes ended yesterday, so we locals had the mountain all to ourselves – with plenty of first tracks to go around.

It was a hero snow day, with a perfectly grippy base buried under fluffy, knee-deep snow. The turns came easy, and everyone looked like a pro.

True to the zany weather pattern we’ve had this winter, the temperature is supposed to rise to the 50s on Thursday. And as we enter the first full week of March, spring is likely on its way. But last night Ullr decided to show up, at least fleetingly, giving us one sweet, smooth, wonderful powder day.

For that, we skier types are thankful.

Have you hugged a snowmaker lately?

Photo: Greg Keeler/Cannon Mountain - Guns a-blazin' on Cannon.

When Alpine skiing first became popular in this country nearly 100 years ago, there were no lifts to carry folks to mountain tops, no grooming equipment to smooth trails, nor (gulp) snowmaking guns blasting layers of white onto mountainsides. If Ma Nature complied with lots of the white stuff, early schussers were lucky. If she didn’t, they found something else to do in the bare days of winter.

The snow lovers among us should be thankful, in an early winter as lean as this one has been, for the modern marvel of manmade snow. Snowmaking crews have been working day and night – wrestling heavy hoses, frozen metal snow guns, icy water, and subzero temperatures – to create snow-covered slopes amid a landscape of muted brown.

“It’d be tough to imagine any ski area in New England being open right now without snowmaking,” said Cannon Mountain General Manager John DeVivo early this week. As it is, local areas from Bretton Woods and Cannon to Vermont’s Burke Mountain are operating on about half their trails following a disappointing rotation of teasing snow showers and pouring rain through December.

Other normally snowy areas, from the European Alps to the Rockies and Sierras, have also had a slow start to winter. Ski areas in Colorado and California, which normally see hundreds of inches of natural snowfall each year, are operating solely on manmade. Powder hounds have nowhere to go for a fix.

On the heels of a seasonal snowfall as epic as last winter’s, this year is certainly a bit bleaker. But local ski areas are in as good a shape as just about anywhere else. “There’s a fair amount of skiing out there, and the bigger trails are all open,” noted Craig Clemmer of the Omni Mount Washington Resort, which includes Bretton Woods.

The local manmade has been surprisingly silky, the terrain varied, the corduroy replenished into neat, grippy rows each morning. For that, we have the snowmakers and groomers to thank. We’re not so far removed from the days when so little natural snow would have meant no skiing at all.

A complete lack of skiing would be devastating both to the local economy and the local psyche. Not only would the skiers and snowboarders among us be moping around, but the thousands of folks who work at ski areas or other businesses directly affected by the ski industry – hotels, restaurants, shops – would be without a paycheck.

The Bretton Woods Ski Area employs about 380 people. More than 400 folks work at Cannon Mountain. Countless others area residents rely on spending by skiers and snowboarders to make a living through the winter.

We snow lovers are hoping this week’s forecasted storm drops a load of snow on the mountains. And if it does, we’ll have our ski legs ready, thanks to the turns we’ve been able to make on manmade. So, keep on doing your snow dance, strap on your boards, and get out to your favorite ski area. While you’re there, you just might want to hug a snowmaker.

Original content written and copyrighted by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted on her blog: Writings from a full life.

Ribbon of White

(Wrote this earlier this week for the Record Littleton -- before it snowed! But with warm weather on the way, we're sure to be back to a ribbon of white soon, hopefully just for a while...)

It’s the third full week of November, which for most people means traveling to be with family, watching lots of football, enjoying and recovering from a huge Thanksgiving feast, and preparing for crazy holiday shopping sales. But if you’re a skier in the East, the third week of November probably means there’s more than turkey on the menu… that’s right, ski season officially began this week!

I’m not sure when Thanksgiving week became the traditional start to season for so many ski areas. The timing of “ski season” is something of an unnatural phenomenon, really, beginning before there’s usually much natural snow on the ground, and ending in early April, when some of the best skiing is still to come. I suppose by April, all but the most diehard of skiers have moved on to baseball and gardening.

So, with the relatively modern benefit of manmade snow, instead of skiing the longer, warmer, sunnier days of spring, we New Englanders strap on the boards for the first runs amid the colder, darker, somewhat dreary days of November. Locally, Loon Mountain opened last Sunday, Bretton Woods spun the lifts Tuesday for some pre-Turkey Day turns, and Cannon Mountain hosted its first skiers of the season today (Friday).

I’ve always been a Cannon girl, and I have a pretty good view of the mountain from my dining room table, where I do most of my work these days. Although I don’t normally ski until December, I found myself this week peering out the window each morning in the dim, pre-dawn hour, looking for plumes of snow shooting from snowguns to create their own weather system in Franconia Notch, anticipating the official start of ski season.

Whether I get out there in the first week or two or not, it’s comforting to see that one long, winding strip of white, unnaturally bright amid the dull grey-brown of a mountainside of denuded trees. The first days on the hill are generally not the best, with few trail options, minimal snow cover, and slopes crowded by eager skiers. But they lay the foundation for the good days to come. The days of soft snow, smooth corduroy, and – nature willing – sweet powder.

And so we fill up with turkey, grudgingly accept November’s darkness, and look toward the mountain, hoping to see that ribbon of white that means ski season has begun.