Nothing lasts forever, even warm December rain
As far as opening days go, last weekend was kind of a bummer. After half a year away from the hill - summer nights spent in sweltering tents dreaming of fresh powder hitting you in the face - you kind of want a little more. You know, like bitter cold, real snow, more than just a couple runs…
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be such a downer. It WAS nice to click into the bindings again - to link some turns and pop a couple of mini-airs. It was white, it was on the side of a hill, what more can you really ask for, right?
We even ran into some of the core Giants Ridge ski crew - and to tell the truth, that’s always one of the best parts of opening day - to see good friends you haven’t seen since the lifts shut down - people who you would never even recognize in the summer.
On
Saturday, Jackson and I rode the lift with Dennis, a person who I used
to ski with every single morning before work (In the pre-kid years). He
is a part of the Giants Ridge Freeskier fraternity - a very tight knit
brotherhood, yet one that never leaves the ski hill. Dennis and I have
skied together for nearly fifteen years and I have never seen him
without his goggles and helmet! I have no idea what his hair or eye
color are or even his last name for crying out loud! Our friendship is
based on one thing - skiing. We talk on the lift and maybe at a point
halfway down the hill, but that’s it. When the Freeskiers ski together
we don’t even go in to warm-up - we boot-up in the parking lot, ski,
then go home.
A few years ago I was bringing Jackson in the chalet to pee when I heard my name called from inside the bar. It was “Smiley” a kind of “renegade” member of our tribe. He actually DOES go inside to hang-out at the bar with another group of friends - especially when the weather is bad. But if the sun is out, powder is fresh or the moguls are perfectly-formed, Smiley can be as core as they come.
Anyway, after calling my name, Smiley came up and complimented me on my new jacket.
“Um, this is the same jacket I’ve had for the past ten years,” I told him.
“No way, Zach Attack! You’ve always had a blue jacket!”
“Nope, I’ve had this green one since college.”
Smiley stood there puzzled for a moment, then lowered the blue-tinted sunglasses from the top of his head. In ten years of skiing together, the man had never layed eyes on me without his sunglasses on!
So seeing old buddies is definitely a highlight of the first day of the year. But meeting new ones is also cool. Saturday was Nick’s first day of on-hill practice for the Hibbing High School Alpine Ski Team. So while Jackson and I were making our laps on Sarajevo and Placid, Nick was over on the race course with his teammates honing his skills and making new friends. It sounds like he had a blast.
There’s a whole winter in front of us. Let’s rip!
In : skiing
Tags: "giants ridge" minnesota skiing skis runs downhill
Zach Johns is an alpine skier, backpacker, paddler and all-around nature lover who lives on Minnesota‘s Iron Range. Originally from Osceola, Wis., Johns attended the University of Minnesota-Duluth so he could ski every day and be close to the trails of his beloved North Shore. There, he earned a degree in Communication and was editor of the student newspaper. However, the real education he gained at UMD was in honing his outdoor skills. He took courses in subjects such as backpacking, winter camping, rock climbing and canoe tripping. By the time he graduated, that was all he wanted to do. In January of 1997, he moved to the Range where he met a group of die-hard skiers dedicated to making turns at Giants Ridge every single day of the winter (when they weren’t out skiing the big mountains of the west.) Throughout the late nineties he built a very impressive ski resume, taking several trips to Utah, Montana, Wyoming, California, British Columbia and Alaska. During the off-season, he took to the hiking trails. In 1997, he hiked the entire Superior Hiking Trail during the single season (what had been completed until that time) and in following years, took trips to Yosemite, Glacier and the Grand Canyon. He also made two attempts to climb King’s Peak, the highest mountain in Utah, but failed to summit both times. In 1999, he attempted the infamous 43-mile Kekekabic Trail through the heart of the BWCA and limped out after only ten miles with a hernia. He did finally complete the Kek in 2005, during one of the hottest weeks on record. Besides hiking, he also continued dabbling with paddling, making several canoe trips to the BWCA and became an enthusiastic (yet very novice) whitewater kayaker. He is now a father of two sons, Nick and Jackson, who accompany their father on nearly all his adventures. Both were skiing fairly soon after they could stand and from 2006-2011, the three hiked in every state park in Minnesota, 195 miles of hiking in 65 parks. Since becoming a dad, Johns has suddenly realized that you can’t just be out there skiing, hiking, paddling, etc. without also working to protect the very things you love. With that in mind, he founded an adventure club at work to get co-workers outside who might not otherwise be inspired to go. The club has gone on hiking, paddling, winter camping and cycling trips and annually go on a trash pick-up hike to celebrate Earth Day. He believes that once you get people out into beautiful wild places, the more likely they will be to protect them. He has also done a lot of volunteer work for the Superior Hiking Trail Association including adopting a backcountry campsite which he and the boys maintain twice a year. It is of extreme importance, he believes, to introduce children to the outdoors early. Not only is it good for them, but they will be the ones protecting these places once we are gone. Future plans? There are a few local goals to check-off including hiking the Border Route Trail in the BWCA and Isle Royale. Mostly, it’s just to take the boys hiking and camping in more of our national parks, skiing the big western mountains, and more of their usual seasonal cycle: Giants Ridge in the winter, Superior’s North Shore in the spring, South Shore in the summer and back to the North Shore in the fall.
