And Then It Snowed

      When I woke up to a couple of inches of snow at my house on Monday, I immediately offered to lead a Grants Pass Nordic Club ski trip to Summit Sno-Park in the Cascades between Medford and Klamath Falls. At first it looked like no one was interested, but I was going to go, solo or accompanied, because I needed to ski. I hadn't skied since the first of the year, and I needed to know I was ready for a week of cross-country skiing, classic style, in Alaska next week.

    At the last minute, three other people joined me: Jesse, who has skied with the Club for many years; Monika, who is a hot-shot athlete and does a lot of downhill as well as backcountry skiing; and Monika's mother, Elsa, who is 82 years old and grew up on cross-country skis in Norway.

Monika, Elsa and me

    The snow doesn't come any smoother and more perfect than it was on Tuesday. Our skis slid along the trail with perfect ease.

I am in front, Jesse behind me

We skied a long way up the road, then turned into the forest and skied through the big firs to the shelter built by the Rogue Group Sierra Club, Grants Pass Nordic Club, and Southern Oregon Nordic Club in the 1960s, a good place to sit down and have a bite to eat—and a sip of the firewater Elsa had brought to share.

Jesse in front of the shelter

    We took a different trail on the way back to the sno-park, down the mountain through the trees, down hills with smooth loop-de-loops and up hills that required step-climbing.

Elsa skiing through the trees

We were following blue diamond signs tacked to trees to stay on the trail. At one point, the blue diamond had an arrow pointing to the left, so we turned there, alongside a tree plantation. I don't have a good sense of direction, but I didn't remember skiing past a tree plantation at Summit before. Monika said, "This doesn't feel right. This is entirely the wrong direction." So we turned back to the blue diamond with the arrow, which Elsa looked at more closely and discovered, as she had suspected, that the bottom of the sign had come unnailed and the wind had turned the arrow the wrong direction. Back on the trail, we skied easily and smoothly back to the car.

    Monika figured we had skied six and a half miles. I will have to ski nine miles the first day in Alaska. Did I feel like I could ski another two and a half miles? Well, yes, I thought I could do that. I would be tired, but I could do it. Monika pointed out that I had done those six and a half miles climbing hills up and down and that the classic cross-country skiing I'll be doing in Alaska will be flatter. Maybe six and a half miles in the Oregon backcountry equals nine miles skiing in tracks on flatter terrain. 

    I was going to ski again today, but I think I'm ready enough. Instead, I've spent a leisurely day packing my gear. I hope the snow in Alaska on Sunday, our first day of skiing, is as good as it was last Tuesday. When the snow is good in Oregon, the skiing couldn't be any better. The Alaska Range is sure to be spectacular, but the Oregon mountains are pretty beautiful in the snow, too.

Brown Mountain from our trail