The best/worst month of skiing in years
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Sunday, March 10 was one of the best ski days of the season. The snow was good, the jumps were perfect. We did a little bit of helping out at a ski team fundraiser, but the majority of the day was skiing for fun!
Ever since the high school ski racing season had ended, my oldest son Nick had been going crazy with his skiing. Nailing 360s, launching huge balled-up airs with his skis stylishly crossed and grabbed, going high off of spines and quarter pipes, shredding powder lines in the trees - his skiing was reaching new heights. Plus, with the weather holding up, we were set to enjoy a full month of great spring freeskiing!
The next evening I got the call. The boys had been out sledding with their mother and Nick went down an icy run on his knees. Hitting a bump, he flew off the sled, landed fist-first and broke his wrist.
Season over.
Nick was completely bummed. One day, he was soaring off of jumps at Giants Ridge. The next day, his arm was in a sling.
I think if he had hurt himself skiing he wouldn’t have felt so bad. He probably would have had a great story to tell the kids at school - the very kids who spent the next few days asking him, “What happened? Did you hurt yourself skiing?”
Of course, that’s what everyone expected. But to lose a whole month of skiing just because he was goofing around on a sledding hill was almost too much to bear.
Especially because it just kept snowing.
And I kept skiing.
Now, come on! I wasn’t doing it to be mean! It was March. There was snow on the side of a hill. Chairlifts were spinning. What did you expect me to do?
Actually, the first weekend that Nick was injured, we kind of struggled with finding a way to spend our time. We went to a movie. We went out to eat. We played video games. We cleaned the house a bit. Since we’re nearly always either skiing or hiking or off doing SOMETHING outdoors, staying home got us just plain fidgety!
A few days later I scored a half day off. I also scored a blue sky day after a snowstorm!
Now, I have been a season passholder at Giants Ridge since the 1996-97 season. And that season was the last time I remember having such a great powder day.
I found untracked line after untracked line. There were only about five other people on the hill and none of them knew about my secret stashes. The fresh snow was binding-deep almost everywhere, boot-deep in some places, and several times the powder even flew-up and hit me in the knees! The wind was howling from the north making it slightly chilly but worth it. The best part about the wind was that in some places I could make fresh powder turns and return an hour later to find it filled-in and untracked again!
Toward the end of the day I found a hidden gem on a run we call “Rock Face.” Nestled in an open area on top of the Helsinki headwall I made three blissful, thigh-deep turns! Sure, it was only three turns, but in my 16-year Giants Ridge career they were by far the deepest.
After that run, I sent a text message to Nick who just arrived home from school. “Rock Face was Powder Face - thigh deep!!!” I sent from the chairlift.
“I h8 u,” was all I got back.
Poor guy.
But that was nothing compared to last weekend. With four days off, the boys went to see relatives and I, of course, went skiing.
To make matters worse, I skied that weekend with pretty-much all of Nick’s favorite ski buddies. First, Nick’s cousin Conner and Uncle Dwight came over and skied with me twice. The boys always love skiing with Conner and after a busy hockey season, it was Conner’s first chance to hit the hill. Next, my college buddy Ryan came up for two days of skiing. Nick in particular always loves skiing with Ryan, and the two of them had been having a great time skiing together at Welch Village and Spirit Mountain earlier in the season. To round-out our skier posse was Nick’s teammate Blake. The two of them were notorious for getting as many free runs as possible on practice and race days. Among the Hibbing team, the two of them meshed very well as freeskiing fiends.
So with all of Nick’s favorite ski buddies in tow, we went somewhere I haven’t been in nearly a decade.
The North Face Backcountry.
You may recall how I wrote in this blog several weeks ago about “Smooth Rider” a friend of mine who hikes up Giants Ridge in the summer and clears secret runs for himself and his friends.
Well, the pinnacle of these runs are the North Face Backcountry. Not on any trail map, this is a series of trails on the north face of Giants Ridge that are laced with tight trees and cliff drops. There has to be a lot of snow for the north face to be skiable, thus the reason I hadn’t been back there in nearly ten years.
So we snuck beyond the ski area boundary making quick turns in the timber. That’s when we found it. A beautiful double cliff drop. A three-footer leading to a ten-footer with fluffy snow underfoot. A few of us skied over a smaller cliff to get to the bottom and watch Ryan do the drop.
It was rad. Super rad.
Then he said, “I think I can clear the whole thing.”
“You huck it, I’ll film it,” I told him and madly started skating back to the lift before he changed his mind (regained his sanity).
On the next run I skied to the bottom and got into position. Ryan pointed the way and Blake hit the double drop. “Man, Nick’s gonna be mad he wasn’t able to do this,” I thought. Hoots and high-fives for Blake.
Then it was Ryan’s turn. I couldn’t believe he was actually going to do it. But there he was standing on top of that ridiculously huge (by Midwestern standards) cliff.
“Ready?” he shouted.
“Ready!”
“Dropping!” With that he pushed off, helmet snapping tree branches. Suddenly, he was flying through the air with a strange “whoo-whoo-whoo” sound like a goose flying by. I later figured it was Ryan’s arms whipping frantically like he was rolling down the windows of his car. Half a second later he crashed to the ground in a hip check.
“Whooo!” We all cheered as he popped-up, poles raised triumphantly. What a great day! The boys hucked the cliffs a few more times and then had a fantastic terrain park session as well. It was by far one of the best days of the season.
Of course, with such amazing days of skiing, I couldn’t help but feel bad that my boys weren’t with.
Especially Nick.
Sure, I could have just told him the skiing was okay and left it at that. But it’s kind of hard to hold back after days like that, and over the phone that evening I told him all about the day.
I tried to be sensitive. So did Ryan. We both told him how much we would have loved it. How we wished he could have been there jumping off that cliff that hasn’t been skiable in ten years. How much we look forward to next season and how he’ll be back ripping it in no time.
As we were talking we were looking at photos and videos of the huckfest. “Woah!!!” “Dude!!!!” “Sick!!!!”
We tried to be sensitive.
He hung up on us.
In : Down Hill Skiing
Tags: hibbing minnesota
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.
