5 April 2006, Truckee CA (still!)

Ruskin is right: there is something especially human about going slowly. The snow kept falling today, keeping me in town but not at home. At some point I formed the plan of using my last day at TDXC to ascend Hawk’s Peak, which I believe is close to 8000 ft, and 1200 to 1300 ft above the lodge. Sasha and I tooled around up there on backcountry skis about a month ago, but only after driving most of the way up, and I wanted one final challenge before leaving the mountains for good.

Skate skiing involves a motion similar to ice scaking, bu with poles that you use on every other step or so, and long skinny skis with no scales or kick wax. On flat or gently rolling terrain it is like nothing else, being able to power yourself over the landscape just by leaning (or so it seems, once you have the motion down) from side to side. The snow hisses softly under your feet and you feel like a young god. Going up hills is something altogether different. There is a certain minimum speed necessary to get any glide, and as the steepness increases you have to point your skis farther and farther out, so there is a critical grade at which gracefulness departs and I have to lunge my way up. This behavior is sustainable for only about a hundred yards or so, unless you really are a young god, and requires several minutes of totally ignoble panting between attempts; or else I swallow all my pride and walk the duck, which looks just like it sounds.

Skiing is the first sport I’ve taken up with any degree of success (tennis, alas, never stuck) that requires some attention to form, and at some point this year I hit a wall, consisting of both physical and mental limitations, and sort of burned out. Today I was so determined to make the climb I was willing to do any amount of waddling. In any case the trails at the top had been buried in drifts of two to three feet, which makes skating impossible. So I had to go rather slowly, and the result was something really wonderful. I slogged away through the drifts and some rather fierce winds. The trail vanished at some point, where Sunrise Bowl drops off into Euer Valley, so I didn’t make the summit, but something about my slow progress, the wind, and the light filtering through the snow falling across the valley, transformed my mental state into one that Ruskin and most of his contemporaries spent their aesthetic efforts trying to capture: utter sublimity. What is that sensation? It is unlike anything else; it is unlike any purely sensory percept. It conveys nothing about the external world except, perhaps, how precious it is.

So you see beeinng stubborn and a little foolhardy has its benefits.

(cdm, in ContinuingEastwards | 5April2006 )