What a Lonely Wizard Hat Means to Me

    

After 16 incredible years in business Vermont Snow Wizards will not reopen for the 2012-13 season.  I’ve been wrestling with how to announce my decision to close Vermont Snow Wizards and how best to explain the circumstances that made that decision inevitable.  I think the most succinct explanation is to acknowledge that change is often as positive as it is inevitable, and it has become clear to me that the time for significant change has come.    

I began Vermont Snow Wizards in 1996 as an alternative to shiny, expensive “what, me service?” shops.  I wanted to create an atmosphere of competency and authenticity, like the mom & pop ski shops I knew growing up, a place where no ski was beyond repair and no boot beyond customizing.  My goal was to demystify skiing and riding and never treat them as elite sports.  I wanted our services, our lifestyle and our mountain heritage to be accessible to everyone, regardless of social status.  I wanted my business to reflect my passion for snow sports and my dedication to providing the best tunes, the most appropriate equipment and the best prices possible.  I’ve always felt that Magic Mountain, which I first rode on a jack jump in the early ‘80’s, and Vermont Snow Wizards were made for each other.  This mountain is where my ski shop dreams began.  Magic’s ownership, management and revolving marketing strategies were irrelevant when considering my connection to this steep hunk of Vermont granite.  There are many things that Magic is not.  It’s not slick and commercialized, bristling with infrastructure.  It was never trendy and sophisticated.  It will never again be the alpine themed “Switzerland in Vermont” destination resort it was in its youth.  But, what it was in the beginning, and remains today, is the soul of skiing.  How could I not tie my fortunes to such a place?   

It’s been a remarkable ride.  We expanded from our mountain home to Route 11 and a super store in Manchester.  We entered the Stratton market with a new twist to an old tale, exemplary service and inexpensive rentals.  I executed the brilliant idea to open a specialty ski shop in a city mall, a desperate reaction to losses sustained during tropical storm Irene.  I was the one who should have been executed.  The mall store was a self made disaster, reminding me of a truth I’d apparently forgotten:  home is where the heart is, and the heart beats safe and secure in the southern Greens.  Vermont Snow Wizards has allowed me the privilege to meet countless people who share my enthusiasm for snow sports.  Even if I couldn’t remember names as well as I would have liked, I loved seeing familiar faces, welcoming families back after long off seasons and watching their kids grow up on the mountain.  My Snow Wizards family has meant the world to me, sharing struggle and success.  It has been my enormous good fortune to share time and tune bench with some of the most incredible people and most amazing industry professionals I’ve ever met.  Their energy, talent and enthusiasm have allowed Vermont Snow Wizards to evolve in ways I couldn’t have imagined 16 years ago.

No business can be all things to all people.  A friend told me last year as we soldiered on following Irene that you couldn’t kill Snow Wizards with a stake to the heart.  Maybe so, but in recent years our customer numbers began to drop and I sensed we might not be servicing the needs of our base as well as we had in the past.  Without the resources to renovate Route 11 and with major change in store for our Magic operations, the time is clearly right to look forward and move on.

My sincere thanks to everyone who has been a member of my extended ski shop family, customer and employee, alike.  It was challenging, rewarding and more fun than anyone should be allowed to have.  If I could, I’d do it all again, in a heartbeat, with one exception.  A Vermont Snow Wizards mall store?  Not a chance.  

 

Once Upon A Blue Moon

I’m an unapologetic Vermont chauvinist.  I have a big deep love for this state. 

How do you describe something as visceral as love?  There’s the clinical explanation; the dumping of adrenalin into the bloodstream, ramping up respiration and heightening senses to animal intensity.   More genteel and esoteric ways of describing love have been examined in songs, poems and books celebrating amour, countless perspectives that illustrate a simple truth:  love is best described by the feelings it evokes.  Like now.

I’m sitting alone on a high lonely place, watching an enormous orange moon rise behind the Greens.   The Sturgeon Moon, the Full Red Moon, the Green Corn Moon and tonight a very special blue moon, the second full moon of the month.  August absolutely rocked.  It’s the best month of weather I can ever remember experiencing and tonight it’s coming to a spectacular firework finish.  It’s after 8PM and it’s nearly 80 degrees.   A sirocco wind gathers the sparks of my campfire into sinuous braids, twisting them out into the darkness.   I’m unaware of anyone else’s existence.  No traffic noise, no house lights.  There’s just my fire, the night sounds that surround me, the silhouette of a distant mountain ridge and an indescribably beautiful orange blue moon.   I admit it, I’m smitten, I’m a goner.  Please, don’t let it end.     

I love Vermont with all my senses.  I treasure the taste of native trout cooked over a wood fire, the smell of fresh mown hay in a high meadow, the feel of sparkling new powder under a snowboard, viewing the sweep of autumn wilderness from the fire tower on the summit of Glastenbury Mountain.  I love it with everything I am, stretching seven generations long from a hazy, distant past to now, this time, this place.  Fortunately, there’s room on my ledge for everyone.

Life’s currents have carried me away from these mountains at various times in my life.  The occasional eddy has allowed me to drift back home.  Now, once again I feel a quickening in the water, the need to push out midstream to navigate towards an unknown future.   But, that’s tomorrow’s business.  Right now, at this moment I feel extraordinary. 

I’m comfortable knowing that it won’t matter where I go, I’ll always have tonight.  I watch the moon climb.  My blood races, my senses alive, my thoughts sublime.  It must be love.

The Real Deal

                

Beginning this year, the Maple Leaf Half Marathon has amended its name to honor the man most responsible for resurrecting this Manchester road race.  In the beginning, if memory serves, the Thomas family began the yearly tradition of the Maple Leaf back in the 1970’s as a humble celebration of running and of this region’s spectacular fall foliage.   It didn’t take long for the race to become wildly successful.  I participated in several Maple Leafs during the 80’s, along with hundreds of others, including some truly elite runners.  The course was magnificent, looping through Manchester and the valley of the Battenkill, shadowed by the frontrange of the Green Mountains to the east and the Taconics, anchored by imposing Mt. Equinox to the west.  The hardwood leaves were in autumn transition, providing an inspiring backdrop for runners from California to Kenya, places where Vermont’s seasonal progression must have appeared something akin to magic.  I’ve run many races in many places, but, for me, nothing touched running’s essential soul like the Maple Leaf.

Despite the race’s many strengths, the number of entrants steadily decreased, ultimately abandoned by world class runners for events offering greater rewards.  For several years the Maple Leaf went on hiatus, before resuming as a race primarily for locals, nurtured by the love of area runners.  Enter the passion and promotional skill of Jay Hathaway.

Jay was a recidivistic entrepreneur.  Like all such, he knew failure as well as great success, but was never deterred or openly discouraged.  His crowning glory may have been Peltier’s Market in Dorset, which, under his creative ownership, became the quintessential country store, a reference from which to judge all others.  Jay was his own best point person, a brilliant one man marketing campaign, greeting resident customer and distant traveler, alike, with joyous enthusiasm.  If he couldn’t make you feel better and put a smile on your face, your heart and your face were Dorset marble.

The intersection of man and road race occurred when he became the director of the Manchester and the Mountains Chamber of Commerce.  Jay participated in all manner of outdoor activities including rollerblading, biking, water sports, snowboarding and running.  He always understood that our region may be fueled by tourism and retail, but at heart we are a community that lives and plays outdoors.   He remembered the glory days of the Maple Leaf Half Marathon and spent considerable energy rebranding the event, finding sponsorship and promoting it as a premier race, worthy of elite participants, without ever losing sight of its local popularity.  Under his leadership the race grew and prospered, recapturing the excitement of decades past. 

Jay passed away three years ago, shortly following the Maple Leaf, which by all accounts, had been another smashing success.  His death touched virtually everyone in the area who knew him as family, friend, mentor, colleague, shopkeeper or just as a friendly familiar face.  I’ve never meet anyone more comfortable in the presence of others, more devoted to his community, more giving of person and spirit.  Whether you liked him or not, and there were those who questioned his sincerity, he remained a man supremely confident in who he was.  How many people like that have you ever met?  I would often refer to him as the Mayor of Dorset, a man known and truly respected by all, which in the final accounting, is a much more important legacy than popularity.  It didn’t surprise me when I learned at his funeral I was only one of many who considered him mayoral material.

I had many dealings with Jay over the years, but one rises above all the rest.  Following one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, the extremely hostile takeover of my first business by my partners, Jay took the time to care for my bruised ego, restore my battered psyche and provide wise counsel as I emerged from the wreckage.  He was never too busy or preoccupied to offer his support which ultimately got me back onto my own entrepreneurial arc.

It is appropriate that the Maple Leaf Half Marathon is now and forever connected to the memory of Jay Hathaway.  Both transcended the ordinary and the expected, both overcame adversity to emerge even stronger and both are, and always were, absolutely and emphatically the real deal.

             

   

How Running Saves the Human Race

I’m a runner. It’s one of the ways I define myself. I love to run. I suspect at the dawn of our species I had an ancestor who decided that running would be a better survival technique than strolling leisurely across the savannah. As the old Paleolithic saying goes:
“You don’t have to be faster than the leopard, you just have to be faster than the hairy guy next to you who would prefer to stroll.”

I’ve never found myself in a situation where I had to outrun a predator. Good thing, because I’m a decidedly average and non-competitive runner. I do not, however, jog. Anyone who would describe me as a “jogger” is either, A) a non runner who doesn’t know better, or B) an elite runner who needs to boost his own fragile ego by critiquing my admittedly slow pace. As long as he does it out of earshot, no harm done. Though, it might be better if he were eaten by a leopard. It’s good to stay humble, because you’re never the fastest runner on the savannah.

Staying humble is just one of the life lessons I’ve learned from running. Here are some others.
What doesn’t kill you makes you a better person. I love hills. Okay, maybe it’s more a love/hate thing, but hill climbs personify the running life, to persevere and overcome. There is a direct relationship between the level of pain endured and the sense of accomplishment in enduring it.

No amount of training and preparation can remove all variables. Some runs will be more difficult than others. Regardless of length and terrain, there will be runs of agony when ecstasy was expected. This will occur for no particular reason or with any advanced warning. Sometimes you get the leopard and sometimes the leopard gets you. Not to be taken literally.

Be proud of who you are. I don’t care how my running looks to others. I already know I’m not an elite athlete, so I’m not trying to impress anyone. But, hey, I’m the one out here, body and soul, on the shoulder of the road in faded and mismatched running togs. Running. What are you doing?

An important and meaningful life is built from small triumphs. Running is representative of a well lived life, personal and properly prioritized. I run because it makes me feel good about myself. My running goals are invisible to everyone else. There are no microphones or sportswriters waiting at the end of my runs. My reward is the satisfaction of accomplishment, taken together to provide some of the great achievements of a lifetime.

I’m a runner, and I will always be grateful for the legs, the heart and the will that allow me to run, because running has and will continue to improve my life. Average, I may be, but my distant forebears would be proud to know I’m still outdistancing the leopard.

Oh, oh, oh, it's Magic!

If anyone ever wondered why they call it Magic Mountain, consider last Saturday. BACKGROUND: The Ski the East Freeride Tour event scheduled for March 3rd was in serious jeopardy as the result of insufficient snowfall which had already wiped out our own Black Magic Challenge. DPS skis had agreed to hold a customer demo of their new product on Saturday, as well, bringing a sales rep all the way from Utah for the event. It looked like the world's most advanced skis could only be tested on a few snowmaking trails, providing little sense of their true capabilities. Meathead Films, no strangers to making world class movies from less than world class conditions would be at Magic facing another professional challenge. Then on Thursday the 1st an 18" dump arrives, as if by...well, you know. The forecast for Saturday? Warm rain. Saturday arrives with only a bit of rain and temps not as warm as expected. Low clouds and fog that wreathed the summit when the lifts started turning at 9AM were totally gone by late morning, well before the start of the contest. 70 competitors tore through the perfectly consistent snow-covered hits on Red Line that a few days earlier and a day later would have been impossible to safely negotiate. The DPS demo was a huge success as skiers unleashed these exquisite tools in snow stashes everywhere on the hill. The Meathead guys were stoked (an eternal condition, I believe, when taping at Magic) about their Saturday footage. The vibe was amazing as first timers, including the DPS guys and competitors from great mountains around the state, ripped fresh (and admittedly not so fresh) in brilliant sunshine on the steepest terrain and sweetest woods in southern Vermont. It makes any Magic lover proud to hear ripping skiers from Jay, Stowe, the Bush and especially Mad River (those big things that look like so much fun are called snowboards) praising our mountain. Magic may be 50, but it never gets old. It must be...well, you know.

Pleistocene Dreams

I have recurring dreams about skiing. It’s strange because I wasn’t born into a skiing family. My mother never skied and my sister never in my memory. My dad used skis like other Vermonters of his generation, for free thrills on winter days. However, given the realities of the 1930s I don’t think he had much leisure time for even free thrills. Despite this, I feel a strong inherent connection to the sport that has helped define our state. When I was very small I remember taking rides that ended in the parking lots of ski areas, places we called ski tows. The mountains were large, the activity perplexing. They remain some of my earliest memories, and in the twisted way of dreams, have been retooled in my subconscious.

The time is always early evening. Alpenglow reflects off the deep pillows of stark white snow, but also the powder blues, bright yellows and lime greens of painted infrastructure. Long, sharply creased shadows stretch away from the graceful lift towers and an assortment of ski conveyance. I see familiar pomas, t-bars and ancient wooden chairs, but also funiculars not to be found this side of Dr. Seuss, all evoking a sense of time past. The snow cats, too, in all their art-decoed glory, as though designed to surpass the sound barrier, recall a scene from the 1950’s that never was. Every building, whether lodge, lift shack or maintenance shed is decorated in faux-Tyrol. Wooden gingerbread frosted with snow and hung with icicles.

The peak, perhaps a bit reminiscent of Bromley Mt. as it may have appeared in prehistoric times, sits at the highest point of a mountain pass. Terrain falls away on every side. The air is absolutely still and crystal clear. I sense a cold that promises to grow much deeper. There’s never another soul in sight, and I feel vulnerable and exposed. I rarely ever actually ski in these dreams, but my tools are always with me: long wooden, hand carved skis with no metal edges, beaten winter boots held in place by ancient bear trap bindings, coiled metal clamped around my heel, a leather strap for a toe piece. In actuality, this equipment from an earlier generation is what I used when first learning how to ski.

My love for skiing began when I slapped ash (and often the similarly spelled body part) to snow. As a native Vermonter, it is my birthright. My family didn’t ski, but the rides to exotic ski tows and using my Dad’s old skis did more than introduce me to the sport. Skiing remains a passion that has taken me from the back hills of my hometown to ski areas and backcountry all over North America. And sometimes, when I’m lucky, to a ski area that exists only in my dreams.

Ferd Thoma and His Enchanted Ski Shop

Once upon a time in Peru, VT there was an enchanted ski shop owned by a European immigrant named Ferdinand Thoma. Perhaps you have an image of Austrian alpine architecture and efficiency, maintained by a stately Tyrolean gentleman. Well, the reality was quite different, at least by the time I became acquainted with Ferd. He was a wizened old curmudgeon from Hungary, not Austria, and the Hillside Ski Shop was more the workshop of a mad scientist than an enclave of old world ambiance. Hillside was perhaps the area's first specialty ski shop, appropriately named as it clung to the steep hill beside Little and Big Bromley ski tows. The shop is long gone, but the building still stands, forlorn and forgotten, just west of the Sun Lodge on Route 11. Sixty years ago, however, the Hillside Ski Shop was a mecca for people seeking equipment, service and advice about the nascent sport of recreational skiing. Ferd was a brilliant purveyor of all three.

He was a friend and confidant of Fred Pabst, founder of Bromley and the man most responsible for developing the ski industry in southern Vermont. Fred and Ferd were, in many respects, Bromley's yin and yang, cut from very different cloth, but both necessary for creating the whole. In the decades of the 40's and 50's Bromley was one of eastern North America's signature resorts. Ferdinand Thoma represented alpine retail's cutting edge, offering the best equipment and fashion and the very latest in service technology, much of it of his own design. In a time when Bromley attracted a largely urban crowd, Ferd was dedicated to making the sport accessible to locals, as well, providing the necessary gear at generous discounts, or at no charge, to those most in need. This tradition continued to the very end. The Hillside Ski Shop enjoyed a business bonanza that only the select few, fortunate and insightful enough to ride the crest of a successful trend, can experience.

By the time I met Ferd in 1989 the shop was nearing the end of a long decline. I worked at the Hillside Ski Shop for two seasons. It was like being a curator at a skiing Smithsonian. Ancient Henke leather boots in boxes were stacked next to hand-made wooden skis from Austria in original plastic wrappers, while clothing styles from the early '70's hung on display racks, effectively marking the date of his last order. All of it waited for consumers who stopped coming to the shop a generation earlier. During my tenure our specialty was service. Ferd would work on anything. No ski was beyond repair, no binding spring beyond replacement, no boot beyond rebuilding. The tools we used would be more familiar to Dr. Frankenstein then they would be to Walter Wintersteiger, but they worked. I'd never seen anything like them before and never will again, but they were the extension of a man who wasted nothing (every wax scraping was reused until it evaporated) and fixed everything.

Stories about Ferdinand's incredible life created the undercurrent of my time at Hillside, punctuated by wild arguments between Ferd and family members in bombastic Hungarian, regardless of any innocent non combatants (re: customers) who may have wandered in. As his one constant companion, tethered by a paycheck, I heard them all, and all of them many times. The tales of his later life were colored with anti-communist paranoia which led me to question their veracity: Soviet agents desperately trying to locate and silence this staunch enemy of the Kremlin, for example. However, his personal trials during World War II are documented. As an executive for Standard Oil in Budapest he was confronted by none other than Adolph Eichmann, demanding the names of Jewish employees. Ferd replied he could have the names or he could have the oil, but he couldn't have both, because Standard's decimated infrastructure would be unable to supply the goods. The Nazi thirst for petroleum saved the day for scores of Hungarian Jews. When the Soviets invaded Hungary during the War's final stages, Ferd organized armed resistance, finally fleeing for his life by swimming the freezing waters of the Danube, trailed by Russian bullets. His dramatic escape on foot through hostile eastern Europe in the winter of 1944 is the stuff of legend.

The Hillside Ski Shop closed in 1992, followed by Ferd's passing three years later. Virtually nothing of Ferd Thoma and decades of Hillside history remains in Peru, only a headstone shared with his wife. I run into few people who remember the man or the business. My feelings for Ferdinand are conflicted. I certainly learned from him, though some of what I learned is filed in a HOW NOT TO folder. Undoubtedly, others have created such a folder after working for me. There is value in such lessons. My time with Ferd was fleeting and entirely framed within a working relationship, so there is much on which I don't feel qualified to comment. I can tell you Ferdinand Thoma was a man who deserved to be remembered. He was a successful businessman, a pioneer in the truest sense of the word, certainly a survivor and in many respects, a hero. He could also tell an amazing story.

50 Years of Magic

This weekend faithful skiers, riders, shoers, sliders and other alpine enthusiasts will celebrate Magic Mountain's 50th anniversary. Folks will be costumed in early 1960's ski garb. A note here: any style five decades old must be considered a costume, even when rocked as everyday-wear. We see it all at Magic. Additionally, leather boots, bamboo poles and 210cm Head Standards will be the norm, as skiers dust off their Stem Christies. Don't knock the Stem Christie until you've tried to turn a 210cm Head Standard.

Saturday night a party to raise the ghosts of apres' skis past, will rage in the Magic base lodge, featuring a remarkable video, transferred from 8mm movie film, depicting the placement of lift towers by helicopter in 1961. I've heard, but haven't verified, this is one of the earliest uses of a helicopter crane in the ski industry. If true, another footnote to the remarkably innovative list of accomplishments of Magic's founder, Hans Thorner. These towers still march their way up Black Line, an enduring example of how the Thorner family continues to effect everyday life at Magic Mountain. For those of you who were alive and skiing 50 years ago the video is a time machine providing a peek at how we looked, skied and raced in the days before ski brakes and snowboards.

As the birthplace of lift served skiing Vermont has a host of resorts old enough to qualify for AARP benefits. In 2011 Bromley celebrated its 75th birthday. Stratton hit the big five-oh earlier this season. There are few places in North America where the roots of skiing are set deeper and alpine history more venerable and accessible than in the southern Greens. Like lift towers scaling Magic's cliffs, the best ideas of 50 years ago still work today. As for 210cm Head Standards, not so much.

Woeful Weather

Everyone who has ever made a living in winter sports has been trussed and tied to the vagaries of weather. Now, with the reality of global climate change, we are faced with unprecedented climatic challenge. The ski industry has suffered through mild winters with minimal snowfall in the past, but what happens when a season like the one we're experiencing now becomes the norm? Or worse, it becomes a legendary 'old fashioned winter' that today's gromms will reminisce about to their grand kids. "I remember the winter of aught-12 with two inch blizzards every other week for a month! We didn't see bare ground until the end of January!"

The recent 75th anniversary edition of Ski Magazine explored such a future, in which lower elevations of the West and Europe become unskiable. What happens to more elevation challenged areas like ours should be obvious. What's a passionate skier, rider or snowshoer to do? The future outlined in Ski contained solutions like skiing in giant snow globes, a la Dubai, or pursuing winter sports on synthetic surfaces that don't melt or get icy. Like Utah, except there's never a powder day on white astroturf. For myself, I look forward to charging down the Martian slopes of Olympic Mons, the tallest mountain in our solar system. Unlimited year round pow (red dust, actually, that's probably snorkel deep in spots), a third less gravity providing free style possibilities that would humble the best Earth-bound slopestylers ("Bro, I just killed that last 360,000!") and 80,000 feet of vert (think twenty Jackson Holes stacked on top of each other)! Pack your gear and some oxygen, 'cause there isn't much on Mars, and start saving now. I expect it might be a bit pricey.

That's what I thinking about now during an extended January thaw in the middle of a woeful winter. A couple of good powder dumps, however, and bare ground, Mars and Global Climate Change will be temporarily forgotten.