Becoming a ski dad. Riding a sleepless fall into winter expedited an inevitable evolution in my availability, ambition, and risk tolerance. It’s an adjustment.
As it turns out, the pull of the mountains can strengthen with familiarity when the family expands by two to three.
I didn’t really ski this year.
Okay, I mean, sure I skied every week of the winter, and yeah, I slid down plenty of vert on skis, and of course, I set my share of skin tracks, enjoyed plenty of ridge top time, and sucked cold air through a buff with snow flying in my face…Fine, maybe I have to concede I skied a lot this year, but it was different. I didn’t get any big days in the backcountry. I didn’t venture off into the big mountains. My summits were all familiar. I never slept in a tent in the snow. I skied no dawn-to-dusk ‘full days.’
My daughter was born last fall. Along with a myriad of major and wonderful life changes, I am becoming a ski dad.
Riding a sleepless fall into winter expedited an inevitable evolution in my availability, ambition, and risk tolerance. It’s an adjustment. I dashed to the mountains in between. In between work and picking up my daughter from daycare. In between bottle feeding and making dinner. In between peek-a-boo, and diapers, and crying, and laughing, and watching what my wife and I have come to call baby TV. Dawn patrol, dusk patrol, night patrol, whatever I could eek out to scratch that itch added up, but I feel like for the first winter in a long time, I was a bit of an indoor cat.
I have always sought out new corners of the mountains a bit further, higher, bigger, or weirder than whatever came before. I worried that the immense gravity of the mountains would somehow drain, should I return too often to the same slope. The antidote always seemed to be to embrace an ever-expanding universe, moving outward with the wandering constant of a good map and a bit of gumption.
As it turns out, the pull of the mountains can strengthen with familiarity.
The Chugach Front Range marks the eastern skyline above my hometown, Anchorage, Alaska. I have evangelized the virtues of skiing the Front Range for years but must admit I also often thought of it as a ‘training ground’ for ‘bigger’ adventures. This year, I dug deeper into the close to home. La Nina was an apt weather pattern given my life position and brought the best snow I have seen in the Front Range. Usually, we eek out windboard jump turns, surf below-zero facets, or scratch up bases on half-filled in rock piles. This year, the snow was perfect.
When the snow falls, most of town heads to Peak Three, the standard ‘in town’ lap above Anchorage. Drive up Canyon Rd to a non-existent parking lot, squeeze your truck on the side of the road after work and get about 2,000ft of turns. The run has a great summit feel on top, a short approach, consistent snow cover, and good west facing aspect. But it’s also trash. There is a subtle off fall line most of the way down, the most interesting terrain up top is either wind blasted or skied off, and you have about 30 minutes after a storm before you’re skiing a tracked up dirty canvas. I tried my best to avoid Peak Three as much as possible this year.
This peak sits on a ridge connecting Flattop Mountain to Ptarmigan Peak. The whole ridge is just as accessible and many of the gullies and highpoints have better runs that sat untouched for days after dumps of cold stable pow this last winter – I hate Peak Three and I love the rest. Powder is my therapist, and this ridge is my therapist’s office.
This spring, I got an invite to hop in a friend’s plane and day-trip a big mountain that’s been high on my list for years. We took off from town after breakfast, donned glacier gear from our landing, toured up on skis to 1000 feet from the summit. Here things turned to harpack and glacier ice on a narrow ridge. First we stashed skis, then the pilot turned to me and said, “that just doesn’t look that fun, plus I don’t really want to fly home in the dark….wanna just be a couple of dad’s and flip it?”
I didn’t hesitate to turn around, even though a few other friends continued and stood on top later that evening…The two of us had a killer time skiing 7k down the glacier, flew back in a beautiful sunset, and I got to play with my baby at a dinner party while the second crew flew home in the dark. I guess we coulda left town before 9am or pushed just a bit further in the evening, but honestly no regrets – it was a beautiful day on skis with great company in the mountains, sans summit and all.
A big dad smile and the joys of the binky: becoming a ski dad.
Thinking back on my early days on skis, I remember skiing with my dad. We skied bell-to-bell in bounds. If I was hungry, I got a Snickers bar. This gives me some hope that my days will stretch as the kiddo comes along.
Priorities are dynamic, and that’s okay. I’ll leave the risk tolerance discussion for a post of its own, but I am now terrified of everything. I put stickers of my kid on my skis, and maybe it’s because I skied alone a ton this year;but I was happily a wimp. I turned back with AK daylight to spare on pow days. I turned around on objectives. I came to really love the skin track dash, the short day, and the hot lap. I still suffered a bit of FOMO here and there, but I just wanted to be home more than I wanted that next run. I started calling the early turn the ‘dad bail.’
I am not sure what will stick and what will change this season – but who cares. Skiing is fun, I’ll keep doing it. One day, the kid will break trail.
