6 – Investigating Boston's Triple Crown of Skiing

I’m a big snow skier – no smart remarks about waist size, please.  My first experience was in 1976 at Sugar Mountain, NC; the first and only time I’ve ever skied east of the Mississippi River.

A fellow scholar at Erskine College offered his family's condominium for the weekend.  He convinced three of us to put up the food and alcohol in return for a place to stay and the use of ski equipment and season passes.  I can’t recall precisely, but it probably took us a matter of ten seconds to agree.

We left Erskine early enough on Friday to arrive before dark, but navigation seemed to be difficult, we made an inordinate number of stops, it started snowing, and before you know it, 10 pm had come and gone before we pulled into the development.  There was a thin layer of snow on the condo driveway making the roadway slippery.  Even with three guys pushing, the car wouldn’t go up the hill.  No big deal; we just unloaded the car where it had come to rest, and slip-slide-skidded our stuff up the hill and into the condo.

The next morning, we assigned gear and passes.  Back then, a ski pass just had a name on it – no photo – so I became the little sister.  I also got to wear her ski jacket, boots, and skis.  They fit well, and I was skiing for free, so who cares?  Our host gave us a two-minute explanation of ski technique, spent an additional 30 seconds to explain lift operations, and we were out the door.

What can I remember about that day?  Three things, and sadly, only three things.

1)   My favorite run was named after a squirrel, or something like that.  It was narrow, varying between ten to twenty feet or so, and wound its way through the woods like a hiking trail might.  There was no way to see fallen skiers until you were on top of them – and that happened a fair number of times, with me being the fallen skier at least half of those times.

There was a hump that flung you skyward, and after the second trip through the run, I realized a likely place to see a down skier was immediately below that hump.  It was frightfully exciting to be sliding down this hill, barely in control of your trajectory, anticipating this leap and praying very hard there wouldn’t be somebody (especially me) lying sprawled in the middle of the landing zone.  Don’t remember any pain, so I must have avoided crashing.

2)   An adult stranger in the lift line started chatting with me, which I have come to understand is a gross violation of lift line etiquette.  (My long-time ski buddy, Jimmy D, violates this rule in every lift line.)  The stranger started asking questions about Crested Butte, because a Crested Butte patch was sewed on my left shoulder, so it was implied that I had been there.  Well, I wasn’t going to reveal any ignorance, because he was obviously undercover ski patrol, trying to catch me skiing on someone else’s pass.  I ain’t no goober; there’s no way he was going to find out I’m not Susan Anne Kibler!  So I started talking all this trash about how I liked the steeps, especially moguls (didn't even know what they were), but I live for the powder -- which I really didn't know about, either.

3)   As the morning warmed into the afternoon, I started to realize that the lift line took about 35 minutes while the actual skiing experience took about 3 minutes.  (Travel time, for those of you who are not physics students, is directly – and inversely – proportional to travel speed.  If you go fast, you get there quickly, and in skiing that means you're back in the lift line again.)

Since then, I have been especially judgmental about lift lines at a ski area, and heavily weight that criterion when selecting destinations.  That explains why our Florida family was in Montana during a January week where it never warmed above freezing.  But they will tell you there were NO lift lines and we skied nonstop.

I’ve since visited lots of Rocky Mountain ski areas, having spent a winter in Idaho Falls and mooching off the aforementioned Jimmy D, who conveniently lives in suburban Denver.  Jimmy D is a very skilled snowboarder who can find a line through trees so thick you have to inhale to squeeze through.  He and his powder board can’t keep up with me on the groomed runs, however; but in all fairness, I’ve yet to meet anyone who can.

And now I find myself in New England, having considerable ski experience, but only that one visit to an Eastern resort.  What does a hard-core skier do?

“Pallas,” I announced to my dog-buddy, “we’re going to check out the three Boston ski areas.”

Being a dog, she didn’t ask how we’re doing that in late September with no snow.  She didn’t ask anything, because she saw me reach for my hiking boots.  She always gets excited when I make announcements while pulling on my hiking boots.  She figured “OUTSIDE!” and was dancing and whimpering in anticipation.

First stop: Blue Hills Ski area, which is owned and operated by the state of Massachusetts as a park, and transforms itself in winter to become a “ski park.”  It’s only 30 minutes from the house, so it might be a good choice for spontaneous moments or after-work-anti-stress sessions.  It's open to 10 pm.

Blue Hills was easy to find, and, on the day we visited, had a lot of people doing exactly what I had planned: hiking up and down the ski runs.  Well over half these people were running up and jogging down; a seriously turbo-charged cardio regimen for folks who crave that pain-in-my-unfilled-lungs feeling.

Even with our tortoise pace, Pallas Athena and I managed to see the whole area in about an hour, which meant we had time to hit the hiking trail upward for another 5 minutes to the park’s lookout point.  Nice view of Boston from the top of the stone tower.

I suspect you've already identified this as the trail map for Blue Hills

Second stop: Nashoba Valley.  This is a privately owned ski area, and has the requisite three restaurants, two bars, ski shop, and et cetera at the base.  I was especially interested in Nashoba because it has a weekday evening adult ski racing league.  Your team of four skiers registers for a specific weeknight.  You get a season-long evening lift ticket for your specific weeknight, digital video of your two timed runs each race night, and a post-season party/award ceremony.  Perhaps there might people who can keep up with me in that crowd; or perhaps it will be just another pack of second-place-to-Hud folks.

The décor at Nashoba was heavily weighted towards teenage snowboarders, but the entire "snow riding" industry has that bias these days, so it probably doesn’t signify that the place is overrun by  spoiled teenaged snowboarders with loud iPods and bad attitudes.  Lord knows I don't want want to have to bow up against some snowboard punk and apply the beat-down he would be deserving.  I've had to do that with Jimmy D the snowboarder every winter and it’s gotten sooooooo boring.

Guess what this is?  No, it's not to scale; Nashoba Valley is actually larger than 3 inches by 5 inches.

Last stop in the Mass Triple Crown is Wachusett Mountain.  By comparison, this place is HUGE.  It has twice the vertical drop (meaning you ski about 2 minutes to get down) and a few runs that look challenging.  Wachusett is also a Massachusetts state park, but it appeared that a private concessionaire ran the ski operation -- lots of obvious commercialism, especially those promoting fashionable skiwear.  Décor ran a little towards punk snowboarders, but those posters and signs shared equal space with wholesome family themes.

(I assume, but do not know and will not research, that "Wachusett" and "Massachusetts" are related words stemming from the same Indian origin.  I'm content to assume it and live my life as if it were so.)

Pallas and I hiked all the way to the top of Wachusett Mountain before we saw signs that said “PLEASE DO NOT HIKE ON SKI TRAILS.”  Being ultra-obedient citizens, and aware that somewhere ski patrol was spying, waiting to bust us and revoke our lift ticket before the first snow fell, we stayed on hiking trails for the trip down.

See how much bigger this picture is than the others?  The ski area's that much bigger, too

Since Wachusett’s about an hour’s drive from the house, it will have to compete with New Hampshire locations for my ski time and the New Hampshire locations are, I think, in a much bigger league on a much bigger scale.  Won't know until I ski them all, because I don't want to spend an hour driving to New Hampshire and an hour driving back, just to investigate ski areas without snow.

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The reconnaissance mission, conducted over three separate weekends, was an eye-opener.  I know from personal experience that little areas can be lots of fun.  Turning laps on the same run allows you to discover little details -- like a quick dip into the trees that can be taken at speed, or a tiny "jump" where the snow groomer plowed one side a few inches lower than the other, allowing you to fly through the air like an Olympic Downhill competitor.

I value ski areas that provide a fun day filled with variety (speed, trees, technical challenges, memorable runs), general enjoyment (short lift lines, friendly staff, efficient parking and layout), and aesthetics (a pretty view, well-kept public areas, evidence of wildlife, a palpable skier vibe).  

On paper, all three Boston areas fail miserably -- on all three criteria.  Nashoba Valley has steep runs (the race courses, I expect) but they’re woefully short.  Even a newbie would go top-to-bottom in 90 seconds.  Blue Hills has even shorter runs, with only one that looked steep.  This throws the lift-line-to-ski-time ratio into a bad number.  That said, the lift tickets are cheap, the areas are really close, and they stay open until 10 pm – even on weeknights.  And, let's not forget, Nashoba has adult ski racing.  These two areas could provide an interesting evening of lap after lap after lap after lap after lap of repetitive practice time, polishing the techniques that will make skiing on big mountains in Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine all that much more fun.

Wachusett is small by western standards, but is about twice as big and three times as tall as the others.  It is also twice as far away.  My guess is it’s as crowded as you can imagine on weekends, especially since the Boston suburbs extend almost that far.

While I find it unusual that the state runs two of these three, it turns out that New Hampshire and Maine have several ski areas run by the state parks department or by local governments.  Don't know of any government-run Rocky Mountain locations.  Ownership has absolutely no bearing on terrain or snowfall, of course, but it will be interesting to see if public operation makes a difference in the overall experience.

Just for comparison, I’ll enclose statistics for these three Massachusetts ski areas, two other New Englanders I think will be great fun, and my three favorite ski areas in the Rockies.  For my non-skiing readers, "vertical" gives a measure of how long the ski runs are, and "acres" gives an idea of how many ski runs there are.

	Ski Area Comparison
		vertical	acres
Nashoba Valley, MA		240	59
Blue Hills, MA		309	60
Wachusett, MA		1,000	110
Mad River Glen, VT		2,037	915
Arapahoe Basin, CO		2,270	960
Sugarloaf, ME		2,820	1,670
Snowbird, UT		3,240	2,500
Big Sky, MT		3,666	3,832

I will absolutely ski all three of the Massachusetts Triple Crown; probably each of the three areas more than one time.  There’s a lot to be said for small ski areas, as long as the lift-line-to-ski-time ratio stays on the fun side.  And I’ve never lived this close to ski areas since the winter of 1978 and Idaho Falls, the last time I was able to ski more than 5 or 6 days a year.

Let’s see if my pair of skis, and my old knees, will last through this 2012/2013 ski season.