Do you have it?

Anyone who has ever ski-bummed, or even anyone who has lived in an area where skiing is the primary winter activity has heard this term. Towards the end of the season it creeps up on nearly everyone, slowly, naggingly, until it’s presence is as palpable as the stench emanating from the long underwear drawer. It shortens days on the mountain, prompting otherwise zealous skiers into calling it quits after only a few runs. It has nothing directly to do with the weather, the snow, or muscle fatigue but it is absolutely indirectly related to all those things. A different form of it can be seen in marathon runners who, having focused their energy for months and months on a specifics 26.2 mile goal suddenly find themselves burning their running shoes the day after the race and wondering what it would be like to take up shuffleboard instead.

It’s called ski-sickness and I might have it.

Ski-sickness is an awful condition because it puts you into a complicated situation, one that is difficult to explain to someone.

“Yeah,” you say, “I’m just tired of having fun skiing.”

Your friends look at you as if you had just sprouted another head. “Right,” they intone slowly, “you’re tired of an activity that consumes the thoughts of a good portion of the population during their working hours in the winter, an activity that spurs them to work extra hours to earn vacation time and extra money to buy lift passes, clothes, gear, rent condos, and travel all over the world. You’ve had enough? Must be rough.”

Surprisingly, it is. For the past five months it’s all I’ve done. I skinned up the barely snow covered trails at Stowe for the privilege of sliding down a fairly awful mixture of grass, rocks, and wind crust that left me wondering what the hell I was doing. But I knew that it was fun and, lacking the motivation to find what people in my peer group call a real job, I made it my purpose. I scratched my way down the early season snow at Stowe, one trail of man-made blue-and-icy snow on my telemark skis, dreaming of the day when it would be powdery instead of icy, dreaming of a time when I would be somewhat proficient in my turns instead of sliding awkwardly around with one ski weighted and the other doing a poor imitation of an injured bird’s wing dragging along behind. Through the frustration and pain that came with learning to telemark came a certain sense of satisfaction that I was learning something. February came and with it the move to the Italian Alps. Russ hadn’t had too many good reports about the snow here, but this all changed as soon as we arrived. Three feet of fresh snow and a total lack of motivated off-piste skiers was absolute heaven for weeks, it seemed. We were skiing powder almost every day with only a little effort. This, I told myself, was what I had been hoping and preparing for all winter, all through the fall when I ran and rode my bike everyday and did horrible ski-racer exercises that would make my powder turns just that more enjoyable. It seemed as if finally my goals were being achieved, limited as they were.

And then the snow stopped. It rained, blasphemy in the Alps. The Alps, for Chrissakes! It’s not supposed to rain there. On the East coast of the USA, fine, I’ll accept that as part and parcel of the deal, but the Alps? No way. But rain it did, and it stomped our skiing pretty hard. There was still plenty of snow, for the most part, but it wasn’t quite the same. Periodically we’d get little storms that would leave a few inches and we’d ski it for days, finding little powder pockets all throughout the mountains. But it seemed as if the denouement of the season was upon us, the climax reached and surpassed. Now instead of anticipating the next big storm we were grasping at the remnants of old ones come and gone.

With the skiing at the resort growing increasingly mediocre we took a trip up the valley to a hut at the foot of Petit Mont Blanc. On the way up to the hut from the top station at the resort we found great snow and no tracks. The hut itself was anything but basic. We arrived expecting to find a little winter room with some mattresses on the floor, dark and dirty, but out of the wind and weather and easier to carry than a tent. What we found instead was a spacious room with solar-lighting, three levels of bunk beds with mattresses, pillows, and blankets, and a large outdoor patio with benches where we could relax in the sun after skiing. Despite there being 24 beds we were the only ones there and were the only visitors since the beginning of March. To top it all off, the snow around the hut was completely untracked. We spent the next few days putting in skin tracks and reaping the rewards of powder perfect snow from ankle to knee deep on a good solid sun-crust base. Avalanche danger was low on northern aspects and we all felt really strong. Meanwhile we could look down the valley to the resort and the see the resort socked in with dense lead-gray clouds. The morning we left the clouds had moved up the valley to encircle us and the ski out was appropriately somber. We were heading to Sicily with Michela for an Easter vacation, something that all of us were looking forward to with mixed emotions. We knew on some level that this trip marked the end of the season in some way. Sure, we’d ski when we got back, but by that time the tram near our house would be closed so it would mean taking a bus to the main tram every morning. A chapter was definitely coming to a close.

A week in Sicily spent visiting ancient Greek temples and theaters, watching traditional Easter parades in which Sicilian men carry really heavy religious floats around on their shoulders for a full 24 hours, and lounging on the beach and swimming in Mediterranean left us all happy to have been there but equally happy to return to the mountains. In our absence, however, a lot had changed. The tram had closed. The free bus was finished for the season. There was more dirt than snow on the lower parts of the mountain and the snow that was left was like skiing through luke-warm instant mashed potatoes. It was…demoralizing. We tried the glacier the next day, finding that it too had suffered some abuse. The sun had baked it during the Easter vacation week when hordes of Milanese had descended its flanks, digging deep trenches in the sun-baked snow that hardened into deep ruts and ridges. Lower down where the temperatures remained high even at night the snow had become almost consolidated but oddly bottomless so that skis and boards sank deep into it as if the mountain was actively trying to pull you down with every turn.

The feeling of the season had changed. It was tired. It needed a rest. It wanted you to leave it alone.

Weeze and I decided to listen to it, at least for a day. Russ, bolstered by the recent purchase of a used pair of alpine skis, decided to go for it again, skiing the glacier with our Swedish friends, Pelle and Stian. But it left us all with a strange feeling of emptiness, this knowledge that the season was slowly closing in on us. There’s still plenty of snow higher up, there’s still plenty of climbing to do, and the thrill of this place still has us in its thrall. But for the moment we’ve got to get over a little bout of ski-sickness. It’ll probably just be a little 24 hour bug followed by a quick recovery. Skiing’s still fun, after all. But too much of a good thing is still too much.