The economics of long-term survival

"Are there any alpine shops in town?" I've lost count of how many times I've answered that question. The answer is no.

For a few years in the 1990s, the answer was yes, because a sport shop from across the lake tried to open a branch here in town, and that shop spun off another tiny, independent shop that tried to do just about everything. The big competitor found that there wasn't as much money in town as they'd thought. The small, independent guy scraped by in several different locations before shutting down in the first decade of this century.

Meanwhile, our cross-country ski shop is still here. It opened in 1972. It has never sold alpine equipment. We don't do the high-ticket sales that alpine shops do, but we don't have the overhead or the money tied up in expensive inventory.

Cross-country skiing started thousands of years ago, yet I saw one article describe it as "an off-shoot of downhill skiing." That's some ignorant, uninformed bullcrap right there. The fact is, if the economy collapsed tomorrow, people would still be able to -- and perhaps need to -- cross-country ski.

Well short of total societal and economic collapse, cross-country skiing is much more affordable for the skier and the trail provider, accepting natural snow as your standard. Going back to the natural origins of skiing, it developed in snowy areas as a way to get around in them with the least human effort, long before motorized assistance. Wherever snow remains, skiers will be able to cross country, with or without grooming equipment to make it more convenient or allow for specialized techniques like ski skating.

In areas like New England, where the snow type always varied widely, and tended more to the heavy and dense or outright frozen solid, skiing without the benefit of grooming is less reliable, which may be why the native population in this part of the world came up with the snowshoe instead. As the variations get wider and wilder in the changing climate, snowshoes provide reliable traction at the expense of glide. Cross-country skis and snowshoes are kin. They're ancestral ways to address the same problem of winter travel under your own power. With access to both, you can decide on any given day which one fits the conditions. Either way, you have many more opportunities to use the equipment than you have with a heavy, expensive set of alpine skis.

Regardless of the heavy cost of equipment, lift tickets, transportation, accommodations, and the operating of ski areas themselves, downhill skiing remains far and away the more popular form -- so much so that it is referred to as "normal skiing," "real skiing," "actual skiing," or simply "skiing." But in spite of that, an alpine shop has never managed to hang on here. The people with the real money mostly don't spend winters here. The dedicated alpiners got in the habit of shopping out of town long ago. And most skiers don't seem to update their equipment often enough to keep a shop afloat in a marginal economy like semi-rural New Hampshire.

 The alpine shops that have survived nearby are in places like the Mount Washington Valley, or the Laconia-Gilford area near the Gunstock Ski Area, or near other major downhill areas. One outlier is Ski Works in West Ossipee, which used to be near a ski area (Whittier), and managed to hang on after the ski area went belly-up in the late 1980s. It's right on Route 16, the trade route to the ski areas of the eastern part of the state, and also serves the school teams nearby. It survives on its reputation and tradition, drawing from a wide enough area without viable competition. Most of the rest of downhill ski commerce takes place near population centers that may be far removed from actual ski country.

Less expensive doesn't mean free. Cross-country ski areas today depend on motorized grooming equipment that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as smaller machines for lower snow depths, that still cost tens of thousands. Machinery like that requires off-season trail construction and maintenance to keep the surface wide enough and smooth enough to provide skiing with minimal snow, and a corridor clear enough to let the big machine get through when the snow might be feet deep. But all that grew from trails that were hand cut to the width of one or two people, with a track set by the passage of actual skiers working together to make it neat.

Downhill in the American northeast evolved similarly, because the first downhillers were cross-country skiers already, but they soon realized that they needed a lot more elbow room to go bombing down the steeps in a dense New England forest. Alpine skiing as we know it began in the actual Alps, where dodging trees is not the primary challenge. Transplanting the schussing thrills to the mountains of New England took more than gravity and snow. The amount of terrain and forest alteration needed to make alpine skiing relatively carefree cost a lot more than trimming out basic, old-style cross-country trails, and it's a tiny fraction of the cost of providing dependable manufactured snow.

Snowmaking came along later, as the subtly shifting climate exacerbated New England's already variable snow conditions. Lots of small ski areas either made the change too late or didn't make it at all, and disappeared. The survivors are generally large, sprawling complexes that have to draw skiers from hundreds of miles away. Like prehistoric megafauna, eventually they will leave only their bones for explorers to contemplate. The small and nimble mammals will still roam the forest.

The Boom is Bust

 Last winter, our shop and ski area saw interest at levels we hadn't seen since the 1980s and '90s. And even in the 1990s the trend was downward. But lots of people had schedule flexibility, and strong incentives to find something fun to do outdoors. 

This winter has not seen anything close to the same level of interest. A fair number of people seem to be looking for new or used gear to purchase, but rental business has pulled back to a moderate level on weekends and holidays. I say holidays, but we've only had the one so far. Christmas Week saw some pretty heavy rental business at the start of the week, but nothing like the frenzies that formed when we had skiable conditions last year.

Weather is a minor factor. The snow has been thin when we have it at all. It's sufficient to keep a few kilometers going for anyone who is really interested, but it's not a big white canvas on which the prospective skier can paint fantasy landscapes of the tour they hope to have.

Last weekend, we laid on extra help to deal with anticipated crowds and let them head home by 11 a.m. because no one had showed up.

We could have sold more ski sets this season if we could have gotten more product. The same goes for snowshoes, although in both categories the inquiries have tapered off.

Just as weather is not climate, so we might get what looks like "normal" weather during an overall shifting trend, so might we have busy days in rental or retail. But the boom has busted, as we knew it would. At least I hope that whoever is in charge of production knows it, because otherwise they will pump out product two seasons too late. On the plus side, it will mean closeouts and discounts like we haven't seen since the last century. On the minus side, the suppliers can't afford to take a hit like that, and it will create in the public's mind the impression that we really could be selling our wares for far less all the time.

We'll cross that snow bridge when we come to it. But remember that I said it.

If you don't care about others, at least think of yourself

 In one significant way, the winter of 2020-2021 was much better than the one we're in now. We had stringent pandemic precautions in place, and people abided by them or they didn't get to come in. We had enough people on staff to deal with the huge volume of rental business. The snow cover wasn't great, which is a new trend in the changing climate, but it was good enough for us to operate. The main issue was crowd control, and we had that well organized.

Last winter, there was no vaccine yet. The consequences of infection could be severe enough that we could make a case and make it stick. No doubt we lost some business, and invited some ridicule, but we're all still here. 

Over the summer, we relaxed our protocols as everyone else did. For a few months we even went maskless, until the Delta surge. When I had a close call with exposure through my position on the zoning board I serve on, we all started covering up again. We didn't go to the full system of baffles we'd used during the uncontrolled phase of the illness. We did not re-institute our mask mandate for incoming customers. But I really appreciated any customers who wore one anyway, and I appreciate them vastly more now.

The omicron variant has created a new realm of anxiety, aggravated by the fact that we now have fewer employees to run the business. Ideally, the staff should be no less than three. Most days we only have two. Because of that, I can't do service work as efficiently during business hours, because I have to drop it to deal with direct customer service needs on the retail floor and in rental, as well as covering the front while the other guy tries to shove down some food.

The other guy -- who actually owns the place -- is also the groomer. Get him sick, and we not only have to close the shop, you also don't get any groomed trails until he's off the disabled list. So, even if you aren't afraid of the illness, think it's trivial, and believe that we should all just snuffle each other's snot and get it over with, remember that your good time at our ski area depends on us being there to serve you. If you get us sick, we may not be dead or dying, but we're not at work.

Mask up, keep your distance, and don't be a jerk. It's called enlightened self interest.

Origins

Our lesson area is not right next to the entry point for the easy end of our trail system. I don't know how the other instructors feel about this, but it has always seemed a little awkward to me that we had to teach total beginners how to get up a hill just to get the to the ski school. When we relocated the lesson area to a better field, the traditional approach became even longer, with more climbing. But the new area sits conveniently near a satellite parking area, which became my preferred approach.

Discussing a lesson scheduled for this morning, I suggested that the two beginners use this alternate entrance. The shop owner disagreed. He felt that the main entrance provides more of a focal point, offsetting the difficulty and inconvenience of the inescapable climb. 

"It's all part of learning to ski," he said. Silently I disagreed with the idea that we should throw them in at the deep end, but then I considered my own start, which not only launched a long-term interest in the activity, but has ended up providing the bulk of my meager income. Life is what happens when you think you're working on something else.

The very first time I put on any kind of ski was in 1984, when I was already 27. I'd bought waxing skis, because I'd read that the good skiers used them. I'd bought what passed for a wide ski at the time, because I knew I was interested in exploring on them. But wide in those days was 56mm, and the traditional fitting system put me on a 205cm ski. The boots were the basic EMS 75mm, three-pin bowling shoes with no lateral stiffness. The snow was old and transformed. I'd been handed a red "hard" wax that was like melted gum, because the clerks at EMS who brought me the ski set I had pre-ordered by phone knew by my stupid questions and rookie requests that I would never be able to handle klister.

The group I came with from the Baltimore area would traditionally take the first part of the week attempting a fully-loaded traverse of the Presidential Range, and then do a ski tour to a hut to close out the week before driving straight through back to Maryland in the same clothes. In 1984, there were seven of us as I recall. I was the only one who had never been on skis at all. Two other XC rookies had downhill experience.

I've written before about how it took me about half an hour to get my second ski fastened, as we stood beside the forest road on the approach to the trail to Zealand Falls Hut. Well, the other people stood. I fell over again and again as I tried to capture that second binding. The group wisely left me there. I left a melted out crater from the fireball of profanity that I had generated as I thrashed in frustration. But, once I had both skis on, something about the phrase "kick and glide" clicked in my mind. I rapidly caught up to the group and churned past them. The thing about marginal wax is that once you get moving, you want to keep moving, because the grip is tenuous. All I knew at the time was that I needed to keep stomping.

Once the trail entered the woods and narrowed, I needed to do other things that I'd read about: herringboning and side-stepping on the steeper bits where a firm stomp wouldn't set the kick zone enough. I started looking outside the trail for angling traverses I could use to let me climb without using the tiring techniques of direct assault. Doing a herringbone on traditional long skis, with floppy boots, really takes it out of you.

On the short downhill bits that interrupted the steady climb I tried to turn the skis and control my speed by snowplowing as much as the trail width would allow. So I hit a few trees. Nothing serious, but I had skinned knuckles and a lot of bark in my hair by the time we arrived at the hut.

I was hooked. No idea why. I was bruised, abraded, sweaty, sore. But I'd felt the possibilities.

Not every beginner will have the same unaccountable desire to master the skills of cross-country skiing in a wide range of conditions. Thus is makes some sense to baby the students until we have a better idea of their determination. There's nothing wrong with being a fair weather skier who only likes groomed terrain. It's better than the expensive and much more mechanized downhill-only skiing and riding, or any motorized recreation. Cross-country skiing provides freedom through its variety. You can ski on snow-covered frozen lakes and ponds. You can ski uphill and down with no trail at all. You can go around and around a course of your own devising, to set a track the way tracks were set for thousands of years before grooming machines were invented. You can take advantage of the modern advancements on machine-groomed trail systems designed for you. You can teach yourself or seek professional instruction.

If you want to get better, you will have to learn from others, who also learned from others. Techniques have been distilled over time, even if they are fairly new compared to the thousands of years that basic cross-country skiing has been around. Different skiers will have different ways of expressing a concept, so you can take in a lot of different versions until you find the one that suits you. It doesn't have to come through official formal lessons. It can even come from overheard conversation. Experienced instructors will collect different metaphors and comparisons to match different learning styles. You can also read, and watch videos.

Practical skiing

 

Early winter has brought an awkward amount of snow to this part of New Hampshire. The temperature has kept undulating above and below freezing. The ground is barely frozen where it is frozen at all. But in some areas, notably the ones I have to cross on routine errands around the house, it's deep enough to make skiing on it more appealing than trudging through it. Not that it would slow me down much if I just stomped through it, but there's plenty to support a ski track, and a ski track ages better than a bunch of boot prints. It takes barely longer to lace up the ski boots and snap into skis than to put on ordinary boots and go make a stompy mess.

Skis are also useful for gathering kindling and emergency or supplemental firewood from the dead saplings and dried lower branches of the pines. A little bit of well-dried pine gets a fire going quickly.

Down in Wolfe City, the meager amount of snow was still enough to provide some sort of sliding conditions for skiers who had the time during the recent holiday week, as well as the usual determined locals who get their daily dose in the mornings before work. Grooming and heavier traffic both damage the snow, so there's barely enough for passage now, even on the best substrate, but it managed to survive, even with some warm drizzle soaked into it by storm systems at the end of the week. It's too thin to till up now that the temperature has dropped. Perhaps we will get a refreshing few inches on Friday.

Crunchiness is the defining sound of New England snow. The ungroomed snow around my house absorbed enough free water to freeze into a breakable crust over a variable few inches of frozen base. It's not full concrete, but it's not cooperative. With no particular hope or expectation, I set out to patrol my borders and read the news in footprints.

The deer herd has settled into its winter routine, which brings them to the woods near the house. They work this whole southwest-facing mountain slope. The extensive logging on the upper middle slopes has given them places to bask as the sun grows stronger. The uncut forest on my land provides cover in a storm. They also scuffle up fallen acorns and beech nuts, and bed down in the leaves. I saw lots of tracks as I crunched and clattered my way around the perimeter.

I wasn't planning to gain much elevation, but curiosity led me to start picking my way up the steeper rise at the back of the lot. This brought me to a line of boot prints. I seldom see human tracks. I don't post the land, because I like the tradition of zero-impact, exploratory trespassing. Once in a great while I see that someone has tried to enter on a motorized vehicle. That's when I pile brush and small saplings across the trails at entry points, just to give the hint. And the hint has always been taken. But any tracks alarm me a little bit, in case they're the first entry by someone who might not have that zero-impact ethic.

 New people bought a property with road frontage two lots away, but a back section that abuts my land. They have hosted ATV parties on the main part of their land, but have -- so far -- ignored the piece that would really bother me if they added trails to it for noisy, stinky, gratuitously Earth-raping toys. Between our properties lies another homestead, on a lot only subdivided in the last ten years. Those people have played from time to time with both ATVs and explosives, so I'm a bit on edge.

  When I first moved here, the forest was all well-grown, from the road edge to the far summit of Green Mountain, several miles away at the far end of the range. All of the houses were close enough to the road that I could go less than a thousand feet straight into the woods and then start a casually climbing traverse to the left, to make a broad, meandering climb to the nearest summit without seeing or bothering anyone. Now there's a house at the back of one lot, and a large cleared area on the next lot over. And something alarmed the nearest neighbor so that he put "no trespassing" signs around his entire perimeter, which I respect because I would want similar deference if I ever felt the need to bar entry to my land.

I don't own any camo, but I do dress in drab colors and try to stay near cover when possible. That's very difficult on the wide-open shaved areas of the upper middle slopes. The forest is uncut on the uppermost slopes, but you have to get there. I'm pretty sure that the neighbors on the other side are sympathetic to exploration. They have not posted their frontage. But they did build an impressive chalet up high. One of the most impressive things about it is how invisible it is. It's almost like a magic castle in the way that you can almost walk right into the side of it before you realize it's there. That's really nice, because it doesn't dominate the view the way the vanity mansions of many ridge-dwellers tend to do. But it means that I have to be extra-careful to find a climbing line that takes advantage of their uncut forest cover without letting them see me.

I didn't get into any of that yesterday, on the treacherous snow. I even took my skis off to track the boot prints, stepping into their tracks to obscure my own. I determined that the hiker had come from the side that I consider the safer bet that they will come and go quietly. Then I continued to carry my skis as I bushwhacked up along the stream to take a peek at the clear cut. Up there I saw a lot more deer tracks, but also bobcat, weasel, and possibly coyote. The possible canid tracks were mixed in with the deer tracks of similar size, and everything was a bit melted out. Two wild turkeys kept a wary eye on me from a hundred yards up the slope.

For the descent, I made my way back to the stream and across it on foot before putting skis back on. I was tired of carrying my skis, because I'd forgotten the strap to fasten them together. Skiing down was delicate, but still smoother than just crunching along on foot. I did a lot of stemming and sideslipping, but those are important techniques for the New England back-country explorer, especially alone.

Skiing leaves tracks in the snow, but the natural deviations that a skier makes will help obscure the trail if anyone is trying to track me. And on yesterday's crust I didn't leave much of a mark in a lot of places. The deviations were very wide, because the snow was too hazardous to get anywhere close to the fall line. The part I came down through is still thick with saplings from earlier logging regrowth, so the track at best is quite serpentine.

If we ever get good snow, the clear cuts beg for a some turns, but the cover has to be very good to cover the rough ground churned by massive skidders, and the slash and stumps, sweet fern and brambles. Since I'm always alone, any injury would be serious. In addition, I can't miss work. So I ski like a wuss. It's a great excuse, since I would ski like a wuss anyway. I hate getting banged up.