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.