For the Love of the Sport!

Skiing, along with the resorts we frequent, present a lot of pride. You may come from a small mountain with a couple of rope tows, but damn it, if that’s your home hill, you better defend it! That’s the way it seems at least, and quite frankly, I am just as bad as anyone when it comes to sticking up for my home mountain, (Sunday River) the mountain I grew skiing and still love, (Sugarloaf) or indeed all the ski areas and resorts form my home state of Maine. I’d probably even raise an eyebrow is someone harped on Verbier or trash-talked Wengen. Why? Because it is human nature for us to be connected to these places that we love. To us, they are scared and represent a heck of a lot more than they do to others. Sadly, though, there are some that really take this a little too far. I mean far to the point of obsession. Yes, some friendly banter back and forth has always been good and will always be present in the industry. There are any number of online forums where you can go and talk about your favorite trails, mountains, and mountain regions. A couple great places to do so are Alpine Zone and SnowJournal, but in my personal opinion, which is just that, you cross the line when you go into someone’s home territory and pick this fight. For example, I would never go to the Killington Zone talk about how I thought that Sugarbush is a better resort or how Sugarloaf’s continuous vertical drop makes their piled-up vertical look silly. Not only would I not get any satisfaction out of it, but it’s flat out rude and disrespectful to that resort and the good folks that ski and ride it. It’s a matter of respect and respect is something one should learn from spending time in the mountains. Skiing is NOT about vertical drop, inches of snow received the third week of March, or how many trail names a resort can squeak out of the actual geographical confides of the resort’s boundaries. Skiing is about the freedom of the mountains, being outdoors, having fun with family and friends, pushing oneself past their boundaries, and discovery. Skiing is NOT about high-speed 6-packs or 120-person trams, it’s about letting your skis glide down that crystallized surface with a smile as wide as Montana and the feeling that you’re still 15-years-old and you never have to grow up. All of those things truly add to the experience, but will never define the sport. I feel bad for those who lose sight of these things and because clearly they are in the sport for the wrong reasons. I’m sure there is hope for them, the bug gets us all at one point or another; I guess it just got me a lot younger than some. Regardless, I can honestly say without any equivocation that as long as it has some pitch and a frozen surface, I’m into it. That hill or mountain may be in Alaska, Nevada, Vermont, Maine, or Scotland. You see it doesn’t matter where it exists, it only matters that it exists. When we get such a wonderful chance to spend so much of our lives playing, how dare we take advantage of such a blessing?