Taking Steps
Why don’t more people cross country ski? Looking upward at the remaining climb, I might have an inkling as to the reason. I could have slid nice and easy up the three mile trail. The incline is slight enough that you can use the tracks, but it takes three times as long to reach the top. I want to reach the high country quick, so I decide on a steep black diamond trail.
The uphill separates the skiers. There’s no towrope or lift here, unless you count my determination. When hiking, I normally don’t look up the trail on a tough ascent. Head down and slow plodding is the key. Can’t be an ostrich here though. If someone is coming down this trail, God forbid, I have to see them and be out if the way toot-sweet.
The Herringbone method gets me three quarters of the way up the worst of it, but toward the top is an almost-vertical blind turn. The risk of a collision is too great. I step off the trail into the crunchy drifts on the side in case someone comes screaming downhill. Not enough room to splay my skis in a Herringbone and it would be too steep anyway, so I do the only thing I can...
NO! I do not take my skis off and walk. I have a weird rule about doing that. In fact, now that I think about it, why wouldn’t I take off my skis? It’s logical, fast and easy. If it were a little colder, getting my skis back on wouldn’t even be an issue You see, once I took my skis off to cross a creek and then I couldn’t get them to fasten again due to thaw and refreeze. I had to walk back down, a x-country skiers shameful nightmare. When you work for your summit, the ride down is the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.
Turning perpendicular to the task, I placed my skis parallel to each other and took steps one at a time; repetitive and monotonous, yes, but effective. Sometimes you have to ‘take steps’.