Living the Dream

I pull my hood over my pompom and duck my head down as low as I can. My body is in the lowest squat I can manage with my ski boots on, and I can feel my tips rising off the snow as my weight drops back. Extending my pole grips out in front of…

“How much longer until we get to where you are taking me?” I hear the voice reach out from behind me. We’d been skinning (or climbing uphill with our skis on) for about an hour when my ski sister finally decided to ask where we were going. We had started with some work road and…

We came in early, which, if you know anything about Team PomPom, is a miracle within itself because we are usually about 15-20 minutes late. As much as I love coaching 5-and 6-year-olds, it is extremely difficult to move them about the mountain in a timely fashion. Bathroom breaks, emergency snacks, bloody noses…they all control…

I began this column five years ago, this past November. I started with an article about the Killington World Cup over Thanksgiving Weekend. I was supposed to write a special in-person local introspective on the race and call it a day.  But somehow, that one article evolved into one after the other, and until now,…

Stepping out of the gondola a little after 4:10 p.m., we can barely see anything with our goggles on. The sun is scheduled to set in about seven minutes, and you can feel the darkness. The lamps are on along all the wooden railings heading toward the peak lodge, and you can see the patrol…

We were skiing everything the weeks around World Cup. Over 5 feet of snow fell in Killington on top of no real base, and man, did we ski it all—Hot laps in the Canyon on 100% natural snow with no end to the greatness in sight. It was a glorious few weeks that will go…

I’ve been to World Series Games in Yankee Stadium during the 1990s, with Pettitte on the mound and 56,000 cheering, the entire structure shaking violently. But I’ve never experienced anything quite like the moment when 39,000 people felt our hearts drop into our stomachs as we went from cheering beyond ourselves, ready to burst into…

We floated along Upper Royal Flush, enjoying the fresh, all-natural snow beneath our feet. It feels so good, this marvelous gift of nature. Soft, rotary turns as we kept our skis flat on the snow. Using lateral ankle flexion, we can adjust our edge angle to the terrain, letting our bases float over the snow.…

We’ve been riding the same chairlift up the same trail looking at the same trees for weeks now. We all talk about whether or not to choose Trail A or Trail B and then our minds are blown when Trail C opens up!  It’s a snowmaking miracle, giving credit to the combination of Mother Nature and…

It feels like we waited forever, but now I can barely remember the time before the mountain opened. We stared at the weather report for weeks, trying to figure out when the wet bulb would match the requirements for the guns to turn on. It felt like Mother Nature had abandoned us, the Killington faithful,…

As the rain began, we chose to keep paddling. We were on the far side of the reservoir, so it would be at least another hour until we could make it back to the Leffert’s side of the reservoir anyway. The rain continued, leaving little pockmarks on the water and reminding us that maybe next time, we…

One slide of the big yellow shovel at a time. The metal-tipped edge slides smoothly across the artificial wood.  Slowly, deliberately, I work my way across the deck. It’s a deck that has hosted some pretty awesome musicians, but all I need for now is for it not to host this heavy snow. One shovelful at a time,…

Baseball has its Hall of Fame decorated with the green serpentine marble from the Rochester Quarry in Vermont. Football has a Hall of Fame. And the Basketball one is right down the way in Springfield, Massachusetts. But here in Vermont, our versions are a little different. We have the Vermont Ski & Snowboard Museum, which…

Waking up this morning, I wasn’t sure if we had lost power or not. The house was cold, almost frightfully so. There was no noise coming from our hot water heater, and I couldn’t hear the water rushing through the pipes. As I stepped onto the oak floor, my feet were still ice cold—the radiant pipes were…

A few weeks ago, I gave an interview for my boarding school magazine, after which I was sent only one follow up question: What is your favorite trail? Now the first thought out of my head was something snarky Lambonics phrase like, the one with the most snow on it. Or the one with the least…