Tony Crocker":10pfyfew said:
When Geoff has skiing out his front door at zero marginal cost, of course it makes sense to do it nearly every day, regardless of conditions. It beats working or going to the gym, no argument there.
That seems to be the case for Geoff, but it may not be the case for everyone. There are days when I would much rather be doing something like catching up on work, doing another outdoor activity, or simply relaxing indoors rather than skiing. An extreme example of this would be after a thaw-freeze when the trails are glare ice, the temperature is -10 F, there’s a 30 MPH wind, and all the terrain I’d like to ski is closed anyway because it’s too dangerous to be on it. In reality there’s a gradient of conditions that come together to make the skiing less than optimal, but of the list above, the only one that is a real deal breaker for me is the condition of the snow. The cold, wind, or even closed trails (for whatever reason) can easily be avoided to a large degree by simply popping on ones skins and heading off into the local backcountry. You stay nice and warm as you skin, a properly chosen aspect with trees will take care of any wind issues, and the status of the lifts is about as irrelevant as it can get. But, there’s no getting around snow conditions if there has been an extensive thaw-freeze without additional snow.
I get it that some people are into skiing ice and enjoy the thrill of carving on a really hard surface, but that has very little appeal to me. I suspect that relative to most of the folks that frequent this forum, I’m really not all that into “skiing” in general. I like getting out in the winter, exploring the off-piste areas, the sidecountry, the backcountry, skiing some powder, some steeps, carving some turns in packed powder or corn etc. I’m not sure how much of a JFSer I ever was, aside from when I was a kid and hardly had a concept of one surface condition from another, but I’m certainly not a JFSer at this point, and I think I’m becoming less of a JFSer every day. I have no problem simply staying off the skis for a week or so if the conditions don’t interest me.
If I can get dozens and dozens of ski outings each season on great to fantastic conditions, it seems pointless to simply drag myself out on the slopes to ski those additional few days (especially at the expense of getting other constructive things done) on what to me are horrible conditions, just because I’m supposedly a skier and therefore I have to be skiing. I realize that many of the skiers on this forum are fanatics, and for them the concept of not skiing when there’s any kind of snow on the ground is probably sacrilegious, so here are a few analogies to explain what it’s like for some of the rest of us. It's like choosing to go swimming when it's 60 F outside and the water is in the 50s F, or voluntarily going hiking or camping when it’s going to pour rain for three days, or playing basketball outside on a cold day in the middle of a northern winter. Sure one CAN do these things under these conditions, but why are they doing it? As far as voluntarily skiing when the conditions are “poor”, there can be various reasoning… “I enjoy these conditions” (maybe that’s true), “I’m not a fair weather skier – REAL skiers ski regardless of the conditions”, “These conditions make me appreciate the good days”, “I don’t have anything else to do”, “I’ve got a streak going”, or “I ski every day” etc. etc. None of these things really relate to me at this point.
Now we’re not talking about people on a destination trip that are locked into a specific time and location, or somebody who showed up at the mountain thinking the conditions would be good and ended up with crap, this is about voluntarily JFSing on what most people would consider horrible conditions. There’s a very long list of things I’d rather do. I think JFSing is great to support the spirit of skiing, but even at zero additional monetary cost and essentially zero additional time cost beyond the actual skiing, there are still those of us that aren’t into it.
-J
