I rip it hardcore, like porno flick bitches.
—Inspectah Deck, The Wu-Tang Clan
The gnar-gnar has been shredded. The pow-pow kaput. No more freshies to float on. No more phat cord to rip.
There is no joy in Aspen. The mighty 07-08 ski season has run out.
This was my first winter in the mountains, and I learned a lot.
My education-by-faceplant began in December on Buttermilk, tumbling my
way down Homestead Road during my first days on a snowboard.
One sunny Sunday when I'd first gotten my legs, I was finally linking
some wide, slow turns and heading for Lover's Lane. I had grown tired
of getting passed by snickering toddlers, so I pushed it a little and
got some speed.
It went well for a couple seconds, but then I caught an edge and fell. Hard.
I slammed down on my tailbone and slid, spinning down the middle of the
trail, snow spraying skyward. As I slid to a stop, concern came from
above.
“Oh my God!” shrieked a female voice from the overhead Summit Express.
“Is he moving?” asked another. “I don't think he's moving.”
I wiggled my toes and fingers thankfully, but I had hit my butt so hard
I was sure I had lost control of my bowels. I ran an ungloved hand
through my long underwear to check the situation, then raised a
triumphant fecal-free fist to the concerned schussers on the lift above.
They laughed. And I rode to the bottom at my gaper's pace, with toddlers again ripping past me, snickering.
But things got better. And soon enough I was walking from my office to take semi-daily laps on Ajax.
The first time I sailed past the Gent's Ridge lift and into the glades
under the “Experts Only” sign, a warm sense of accomplishment took hold
of me. Toddlers be damned.
But I learned more than snowboarding this winter.
They say that Inuits have more than a thousand words for snow because
they have so much of it. But I wonder if we'd beat them out if we
tallied our own wintertime idiom. From corn to crust to crud, from
mashed potatoes to champagne, Aspen's endless epithets for the white
stuff proved pretty daunting for this neophyte of the gnar.
The city ought to hand out pocket dictionaries or flash cards at the S-curves to educate innocents like me.
Yeah, confusion reigned for much of my first Aspen winter.
I blushed the first time a girl bragged to me about all the “face
shots” she was getting on the hill. And my heart sank a little when she
took my hand off of her knee and explained it was yet another piece of
ski jargon, not some kinky come-on.
Sometimes, it got even worse: “Osprey-ski? Should I bring binoculars?”
On one of my first powder day trips up the Silver Queen Gondola, I made
the mistake of asking my cabin mate which runs on the mountain were fun.
“Bingo is epic,” he said between tokes off his one-hitter. “And the dumps are sick (pronounced seeeck).”
I had heard each of these words before, but never strung together thusly. I simply nodded and stared off like a fool.
Someday, I hope an intrepid sociology grad student does a thesis on
gondola personal relations. Those little benches facing each other in
the six-seater make for some fascinatingly incongruous mash-ups.
It is Aspen's one great equalizer, a brilliant piece of SkiCo social engineering.
The CEO and the ski tuner, the supermodel and the store clerk — one
might curl up at night between satin sheets in a Red Mountain monster
home, and the other might shiver in a teepee by Conundrum Creek —
but for an 18-minute ride, packed into that little box suspended above
the mountain, they are forced to make small talk or wallow in
uncomfortable silence.
Sometimes that ride can be a torturous one, as some blowhard from L.A.
berates his assistant on his cell phone. But other times, it's a joy —
exchanging gossip with locals or gathering news from tourists about the
strange, tumultuous world beyond the roundabout.
Most often the topic of conversation, of course, is snow — the one
common intersection of all the divergent paths of gondy-riders: “Isn't
it good?” “So good.” “The best.” “Better than 83-84 season?” “Yes. The
bestest ever.”
People have indeed been happy on the gondola this extra-long and
super-deep winter. Aspen's powder junkies have been wearing wide smiles
below their goggle tans for months and skipping about town with the
sprightly bliss of a snowy smurf.
But the lifts are now silent. The skis are on the rack. And Aspen has the end-of-season blues.
After the cathartic pagan orgy at the bottom of Aspen Highlands on
“closing day” — with drunken costumed skiers flying across a skim pool
to rowdy cheers — town has emptied out and its holdout denizens have
grown sullen.
Skico might have thrown us all a bone and kept Highlands open for two
extra weekends. But, sick and phat and epic as it's been, the season is
over, bro.
I'd like to think we could all find something else to talk about until
next winter, but I'm guessing snow will remain Topic A for a long while.
Andrew Travers is heading for the warmer climes of the Gulf Coast this week. Bother him if you must at andrew@aspendailynews.com
