As the end of January approaches, we are entering what I think of as the “ski panic” phase of winter. You realize that you have a season pass and you haven’t used it enough to justify getting it in the first place. So you spend a lot of time on the Schweitzer Web site studying the photos from the web cams, trying to determine just how gray is too gray to see the other skiers sharing the mountain with you.
For a wimpy skier like me, skiing is a whole lot of fun when the conditions are good. It’s utterly miserable when the conditions are bad. There’s a reason why locals call the long run that goes down from the Quad to the backside of the mountain the Great Collide. When it’s foggy at the top of Schweitzer, it can be downright scary to encounter some 15-year old snowboarder with a death wish as he screams out of the fog right at you.
Realistically, many winters we do a lot of our skiing in February and it’s looking like this winter will be no different. Many years, December has little snow and by the time we recover from the holidays, January is half over. So we can rationalize our recent ski lethargy by saying we’re really only about a week behind schedule. Plus, all the rain we had this month was a definite a setback for recreational activities.
Unfortunately, because of various business commitments, we really only have two days per week that we can ski. Since the odds of me becoming a hard-core, ski-in-any-conditions type skier, all we can do is hope that February brings lots of those perfect blue-sky skiing days.