[With the ski season looming just over the time horizon, the communal anticipation of skiers everywhere begins its annual climb to fever pitch. To add to your stoke, I’m offering a chapter from Snowbird Secrets that addresses the sensation of anticipation as it applies to skiing.]
For two days we gorged on Wasatch powder as if we were shooting a documentary on the short, tragic life of new snow in this canyon. Even after a powder smorgasbord that would have sated any freshies gourmand, we still looked up at the vast, glistening, uncut snowfield that crowns Little Cloud and dreamt, like an addict in the swoon of an epic binge, of the next fix.
One cannot determine when the rope that embargoes the Road to Provo is about to drop by the arrival of the first contingent of patrol; nor by the size of the gathering throng, who stare at the untouched powder acreage ahead of them with the unflinching concentration of zombies; but by who is gathering at the edges of the ropes. One cannot fool cognoscenti schooled by decades of breathing the cadence of this powder paradise. They know when the patrol who matter are on the move, men and women who slide toward the rope with intention and a hint of foreboding. They take positions by gates they know better than members of their own families.
Feet stomp all around, impatient, like horses fidgeting before a race or a charge into battle, everyone aware that in the next instant we will all move like a tide of refugees dashing for safe harbor, each taking the calculus of the other, judging trajectory and intent, as we move to our secret Eden.
For a moment the rope doesn’t move. We do. We slither silently forward, stepping casually here and there, no rush, nothing to see here, we are not the droids you’re looking for. Then the rope is down and a churn like dropping chum in a shark tank commences and the first twenty souls surge as one. Perfect. They seek the solace of early goods where the pitch is steep and the obstacles entertaining. They will be gone as quickly as they bolted out of the gate, just a puff of smoke to mark where they cut skier’s right off the road. We glide on, stepping around citizens with other agendas, until, just twenty seconds after the frenzy, we are alone; ahead, the sinuous corridor of Mark Malu lies in our sights.
The sight of the uncut expanse of Mark Malu flares the fires of anticipation into a barely concealed frenzy.
Heightened anticipation opens the endorphin floodgates as our cross-hill flight closes the gap between us and the shimmering, opalescent skin of Mark Malu, as bright, uncut and alive as the belly of a freshly caught fish. In conditions like these, the snow provides a natural decelerant so there is no need to pump the brakes before plunging into Malu’s open slope. Gravity’s insistent allure invites speed at the expense of unwarranted turning, begging us to unfurl long tendrils of tracks that flow in harmony with the hill’s slowly twisting face.
Anticipation on the physical plane forges the connection between anticipation as a mental state and its reward in a positive outcome. In the heartbeat before your ski tips traverse the brink of the road and drop you on the trail, you set up for the transition in pitch and speed by shifting your body into the quiet center of the first turn, committing your core to the fall line and your attitude to riding gravity’s stream. Your upper body stays ahead of the activities going on underfoot, as though your head and shoulders were in a time machine that is forever stuck on transporting you a few milliseconds into the future. As mental anticipation morphs into the events that both end it and redeem it, physical anticipation allows for the happy confluence between the two states. Anticipation feels like a form of time travel for if you do it well, it shifts you into the future. You take care of business before it happens.
The skill that best informs the body how to anticipate the next turn is visualization. See yourself committing to the turn early, tilting into it as you roll your skis onto a complementary angle. Snow flies everywhere but you are calm in the center of a white room that moves with the beat of the hill. On the open slope of Mark Malu you gobble up turns in giant gulps, swigging the whole hill in a few thrilling arcs. You’re not sipping prissy nips of Champagne; you’re slamming powder shooters. You stretch your mind to the bottom of the hill, creating a tension between you and your destination that snaps you, not just through the next turn, but through every turn that you anticipate between now and the end of the trail.
To work at peak efficiency, anticipation loves a bit of sensory input. Vision is particularly nice and its absence particularly debilitating when you can’t read enough data from the tactile slap of ski against snow. It’s normal for visualization skills to go haywire when you can’t see squat; however, this is exactly when they can be most useful, those times when inner vision has to substitute for eyesight if for no other reason than the latter system is out of commission. The rules of anticipation do not change. The bones are stacked on the center of the energy underfoot as the upper body dives into the void. The feet feel the terrain and move over it, massaging its contours, not resisting it but yielding to it, drawing energy from it and moving on.
Imagine the ecstasy when every detail on the path ahead is illuminated by glorious sunlight! Now there is no wrinkle you cannot anticipate, no wall of snow you can’t transform into part of the dance. So what if there are bumps as tall as Mini Coopers? So what if there are trees every few feet? So what if there are both, on a pitch that seems to get steeper on every turn? You anticipate. Watch, adapt, let your feet make independent decisions about braking and line selection. Keep your upper body calm, centered, balanced. What is under you is behind you. What you see ahead is now. The moment you live in is anticipation of the next.
[If you enjoyed this piece, I encourage you to frequent my co-author’s web site, Guru Dave’s Snow Report. You won’t find a more entertaining compendium of daily snow reports from one of America’s iconic big mountains.]