Any day now we’ll get a few inches and then a few more and it’ll be GAME ON!
Ski fever will strike!
Will you be ready?
That’s the trick!
What you DON’T want is to have the first good snow catch you unprepared.
It won’t take much. A bit of snow to fall then set up as a base, then a bit more on top and we’ll be good to go.
What you want then is TO BE ABLE TO SKI FROM THE WORD GO!
NOT a half hour of floundering around, getting sweaty and out of breath and feeling your arms give way and your legs turn to jelly. And in an hour you’re finished. NO WAY!
I hope that for the past couple months that you’ve been outside running around. At least a little every day! Hopefully you’ve been doing some POLE RUNNING. And HILL BOUNDING. …Find any hill and “ski” up and down it with your poles. Bounce up it a few times, stride up it a few times. Do your daily dips! If you have rollerskis, use ’em, man, for dear life! Tie some elastics or inner tubes up in a tree and yank on ’em — doublepole, singlestick, crunches. 20 each is much better than nothing! Pushup, crunches, dips. Deep kneebends, burpees, lunges. Box jumps once or twice a week!
Ya gotta be imitating skiing RIGHT NOW.
THEN YOU’LL BE READY TO *FLY* ONCE THE SNOW HITS!
…Also, don’t forget your skis. Scrape ’em, clean ’em, hot wax ’em a couple times. Get a blue base on and ready (coz the first good snow is often a COLD one). If you have nowaxers wipe the fishscales with silicone.
Where do you ski? Go run the trails. …And be SURE to kick aside any and all sticks, rocks, twigs even. If it’s grassy, mow it. Consider the leaves — any problem areas, clear ’em off.
A smooth, tidy trail only takes one inch for a base and an inch on top.
If your very first snow is modest, check the weather and see if more is on the way in the next day. If so, consider just packing the first dose with snowshoes or a roller then letting that set up as your base.
Often, if the first couple snowfalls are a bit thin your best bet for skiing will be a golf course. …HIT IT!
It goes without saying that an early light covering isn’t suitable for skating but is ideal for flat-ski wide-ski classic. However, if you do get a firm base, even a thin one, the skating might come on OK. Classic still tends to be best by far in light snow conditions without track-setting machinery — that is, for skiing-in your own trail. Popular trails may well get quickly skied-out and washed down to dirt in corners. Golf courses let you classic anywhere, searching out the best base and conditions. Secret trails, or out of the way trails, let you ski-in your own base and keep it nice.
Locally, we have a trail that everyone “knows” is the ski trail. It’s mostly a hiking trail, but if we get snow then dozens of people hit it on skis. Thankfully we have another dozen trails that get far less pressure.
Early season skiing requires a plan!
And the first step of the plan is to BE IN SHAPE FOR SKIING!
Step two is to make sure you have a nice place lined up and tidied up for early thin-base action.
