1995: My Village of Breckenridge

I knew the winter of 1994/1995 was going to be my last skiing on the World Cup. I had been on the team for six years and I was ready for a change.  I had been competing since I was 5, but in the last few years it had become a more intense game.  My sport, Freestyle Mogul Skiing, had recently become an Olympic sport. When I was younger, making Nationals was the goal…but now The Olympics were on the line. Albertville, France was going to be the 1^st Olympics for Freestyle Mogul skiing.    My focus became making the Olympic team. I was 22 and my teammates and I were all gunning for the games.  I spent summers at Mt. Hood and falls training in Breckenridge, Co, preparing for the World Cup selection events that would decide the Team. The announcement was made in Lake Placid, NY after the final qualifying event earlier in the day.  I was left off the team.  1^st alternate they said.  I remember feeling very left out, a pit in my stomach and incredibly sad.  There were six of us who were in the final selection group and now four of my teammates were chosen and going to the Olympics, but not me. I was so close, though I would not be allowed to travel to Albertville in case someone got injured.  These were the four, no one else…an elite group that did not include me.

Two years later there was Lillehammer.  The Winter Olympic Games were moved up so that it would be staggered with the Summer Games…two years apart.  This was the perfect opportunity I was told, “You are in the prime of your career.”  But, the field was narrowed and we were told, “Only three athletes will be going to Lillehammer...there is not much room in the small Norwegian village.”  I made the podium (3^rd) in the Blackcomb World Cup (a qualifier) that year, but my teammate had beaten me in two out of the three qualifying competitions that had pitted us head to head. They took her instead. 

The gravity of being 1^st alternate twice had set in.  I knew the next year (1995) I was ready to be done. I was tired of training all summer and all fall and travelling all winter long. I was tired of living out of a duffle bag.  I was tired of the focus, the head games and the loneliness on tour. I wasn’t great friends with any of the other women on the US Team. Why would we be?  We were pitted against eachother...for spots on the US Olympic Team. It was my reality every day on tour. So, I spent most of my time with the US men and with friends on other national teams:  Maz from Australia and Marianne from Norway.  They were great friends, great comrads as we traveled around Europe...

I trained one last fall in Breckenridge, where my brother ran the local freestyle program.  I had been coming here for the past few seasons to get ready for the winter and the World Cup Tour.  In addition, every season we had a World Cup in Breckenridge.  And I loved it there. It was quaint and Victorian and reminded me of the ski villages in Europe.  There was a cozy coffee shop with outrageous muffins! And another with a view of the mountain where laid back, locals hung out pondering their next adventure.  Some seemed to be there all day, just watching the snow fall out the snow glazed window and content to stay warm inside. It had a bookshelf too…overflowing with used/interesting books and big comfortable chairs. There were high-end restaurants and wonderful shops with beautiful clothes. It felt like home. And it was where I wanted to be.  I had made friends there and I had a serious boyfriend. There was this real life I could live there… yet it was just out of grasp. I knew I no longer wanted to spend my life on Tour, but I had one more season to compete.  My boyfriend and I drove up to Yellowstone. And though this aggravated my brother, I didn’t care.  This was my new life.  I was going to return to this new chapter at the end of the season.  This was going to be my new home in the West.  I wanted to check it out and I was eager to start to live it. I felt connected to a place and a life worth living there.

I made the World Championships in La Clusaz, France that last season.  There were four spots and I finally had one.  My parents and friends pointed out that if it was an Olympic year…I would be going.  That didn’t ring true to me. It wasn’t an Olympic year and I wasn’t going to the Olympics…it wasn’t the same.  I knew it and I felt it. Nonetheless I had never been to a World Championships either.  It was an exclusive group… we all had made it!  We got new uniforms, a bag of paraphernalia from the town and my parents flew over to see me compete. I called a payphone in LaVita, Colorado and waited for my boyfriend (who was really into his new logging profession in the middle of nowhere, Colorado) to pick up.  “I am here.”  I told him, “Yes, I am here.  I miss you though, I wish you were here. My parents are here...we sat outside and had a pizza and a glass of wine. I’m not feeling great…the place is cool...there’s lots of snow and a beautiful little French ski town.  I love you.  See you soon.”  Unfortunately, it turned out to be a really weird course.  We had a ton of snow before the event and in traditional French style, the course was skier made.  It was old school.  On top of that I wasn’t feeling great…my stomach was upset and I was not on top of my game.  My performance was less than spectacular and before I knew it, it was over. 

There were more competitions that season on the World Cup Tour…we went to Japan, to Norway and to Germany.  I made sure to walk through each village and enter as many beautiful buildings and churches as possible. Maz and I went to dinner and enjoyed the local foods and we checked out the shops.  This, I knew, was my last season and I didn’t know if, or when, I’d be back to Europe. I’d been coming to these idyllic villages for six years.  Now I envied the people who lived there…the people who had a life there.  “What would it be like if I lived there?”  I would imagine, “What would I do for a living? What house would I live in? Would my children be skiers?“  I was ready for my own village…my own home back in Breckenridge.

I finished out the 1995 season with the best results of my career. I made finals at most of the competitions and was ranked 11^th in the World for the 1995 season.  At Nationals, I qualified to ski on the US World Cup Team for the next year.   I told them I was done, I was moving on.

My brother had offered me a job…to help coach his team.  I agreed to do it…enthusiastic for my profession and my new life ahead.  Upon return my boyfriend dumped me.  I was heartbroken, crushed, confused and lost.  But, working for my brother, I found, was totally encompassing. I am not sure I envisioned what it would be…but I knew I was qualified.  I jumped in full force and helped train the athletes on his team. They had come to him with the goal of making the US Team.  My brother had built what was known as the mecca for mogul skiers: “Come train with me. Give me your undivided attention and time…and I will get you far… as far as you can go.”    It was intense and a total immersion into skiing. And it was probably what I needed.

My brother’s philosophy of coaching was to lead by example most of the time: come up with a tactic, show them how to do it and then help them perfect it. I skied with the athletes all over the mountain, every day.  I built the course with my brother and I skied the run 500 times with the athletes I was coaching.  When I was the athlete there had been “rest days” and “travel days.”  Now there was the token Monday off.   The patrollers knew me, the alpine coaches knew me.  I was part of the Breckenridge Mountain Team.  But, beyond that I was skiing better than ever.

By the time the World Cup stop was in Breckenridge, Co I had already skied more than I ever had in previous seasons.   I was at the top of my game.  I took runs down the course with my athletes…and my former World Cup coaches muttered that I should still be on the World Cup Team.  They said I was skiing better than ever. Though I quietly knew it, I also knew that being on Tour wasn’t working for me.  This was my new home. 

The Pro Mogul Tour came to Breckenridge about a month later and with my brother’s urging , I entered.  To me, The Pro Mogul Tour didn’t have the best athletes…but there was money and egos involved. The competition was held in a different format than the World Cup too.  No longer was I skiing on a course all to myself….with just me and the judges at the bottom critiquing my form.  This was duels. Two skiers race down side by side on the same course. It is a race, but it is also judged…for technique in your turns and in the quality and magnitude of the tricks you do off the two jumps.  I was ready to go.

A few people mentioned to me that Patty K would be coming…and while her skills were not as good as mine, they said, she was intensely competitive. Her husband put on the Pro Tour and she had won the overall for the past few seasons. There were others to contend with too…but that was all I needed to know.  I had been coaching my athletes and had been telling them to keep things simple and focus on their own game.  This was my game now.  And I was chomping at the bit to put it into action: “Don’t ski too much on the two days before the competition.   Make sure you are well rested.  Make sure you have inspected the course.  Know the turns, know the jumps. Keep it fresh. Be the first one out of the gate. It is your competition to win. Have confidence in your skills. Your quick feet and fluid style can’t be matched.  You have done the homework.  Now just let it rip. Hands up in the frame of your vision, keep your pole plants simple and quick…flicking forward. Be early on the absorbtion on the face of mogul and ready to extend on its backside. Get squared up for the top air, lift your chest on the take-off and focus your eyes down the hill. Throw a crisp, clean move.  Land with four points at the same time…your feet solidly below you, plant both poles out in front.  Keep it clean through the middle section and carry your speed. Get ready for the bottom air. Throw it big and race to the finish. Fake the turns if you need to…just get there first.  Put your hands in the air. You’re the Champion.  It works every time. “

And it did.  I won. And I won the two other Pro events that season. Patty and her husband insisted that my friend and I go out to California to the last Pro Mogul event of the season.  They said it would help secure the competitions for the women on the Pro Tour the following year.  So we left Colorado in the late spring and headed further West to Tahoe. We drove for 20 hours or more…excited to just get on the road. When we arrived we were told that the women’s event had been cancelled and they asked us if we wanted to stay and cheer on the men. We took off for the Napa Valley instead.

I fell in love. Not as much with the wine…but with the lifestyle… the seemingly mellow, effortless tempo and the beautiful California days. This is how I want to live!  The winter had been cold and snowy.  Some days we were on the mountain from 7am til 6pm…building courses and critiquing athletes.  This was relaxed and the food was delicious. We went to San Francisco, to Santa Cruz, to Big Sur and down the coast to L.A.  When I got back to Breckenridge a few weeks later, I was ready to embark on my new career.  Within a week I landed my first job as a waitress. I read everything I could about wine. 

Beaucoup de Neige in Chamonix!

Chamonix 2012

 

It is like a second home...the Alps of France. And there comes a calling every now and then that compels me to return to the place that I adore. I arrive in the village and the shops and the shopkeepers...the restaurants and the innkeepers, fill me with warmth and comfort. Here is that simplicity of life that I long for, or maybe it's just what I have grown to appreciate. I buy a crepe with creme de marron and bananas and taste its happy sweetness. This simple transaction (the fact that I placed the order in French, got what I wanted and paid in Euros with ease) is pure wonderment to me. It is the art of the everyday...in France. This is the moment I have been dreaming of for months...years. The crepe is just as I had envisioned and for a moment I am a kid again...back to simple pleasures...and wandering thoughts. I head back to my apartment...just a left hand turn and a few doors down from the heart of the village.

When I wake up and open the French doors and step out to the balcony into the crisp, cold mountain air, it feels feel clean, sharp and pure. My face and hands tingle. The cold air travels down my back...and to my toes. French press coffee is much stronger and in my mug, as it warms my palms, it looks dark and murky. It is still dark in town but the sun is making its way up over the mountains. It is almost 8am. I look up at the cloudless sky...it is simply, breathtakingly, gorgeous with its pink/blue morning hue. The moon is still lingering. The village is fresh with snow. Behind the old, sturdy buildings the mountain rockfaces climb. These mountains stand as bold architecture defining and framing the town. It is then that I realize I am living an alpine morning in Chamonix...certainly life lived at its most beautiful. The ski day is ahead...

 

I tell myself I cannot know this place if I just see the lower level of town. I am a skier and this is what I came here for....to ski the Alps and ride the daunting trams. They are intense, engineering miracles, regal into the rock. I am here to ski in this amazing place...to master my turns on the foreign snow. There are compatriots around me and it's easy to make a friend to ski with...because, though I do not speak the same language, I come from a common thread...a love of the mountains and the stunning, glorious sky...the snow and the perfected, high speed turn. I ride the lifts in the sunshine and feel warmed...look around. The tram goes by in the distance. It looks cool against the unblemished, deep blue sky. I know I am lucky to return to this place and I do not take this for granted. I remind myself to think about where I am....how lucky I am. It has been years since I was last here, so much has happened in my life since then, and so many times I have thought about my return to Chamonix.

 

I ski down...feel electric with my energy...feel the precision of my turns and the thrill of the undulating terrain under my feet. I am ready to ride the tram into the rock...though my breath shortens and I become more aware. I am arriving at the top of a jagged rock that pierces the sky and there is no turning back. Suddenly there is no friend at my side...just me and the mountain and the legendary steep terrain. This is no elevator. I peer over the edge to see the village below...the seemingly tiny village. I cannot see the people down there, but I know they are there. They are shopping for milk and drinking a cafe au laits. The sky is now a deep Azure blue and it rises from the top of the mountain range that surrounds me. It is the same blue sky I know so well in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado...where I am from. But the mountains here take up more of the sky, they are sharper, more rugged, a mountaineer's dream. They are softened slightly buy the pure white now that rest on them and they are contrasted by the intense blue sky that heightens their beauty. Edna St. Vincent Millay comes to mind as I take in the panoramic view of where I now stand. She stood atop Mt. Battie above Camden, Maine…saw mountains, islands in the bay, the thin line of the horizon and the vastness of the sky.(*Renascence 1917) I grew up in Maine and this poem has always resonated with me. Now it is clear to me why. There is nothing like standing at the top of a peak, looking around and taking in all that is around you. The sheer power of that is overwhelming. Across the vallee I focus in on the massive Mont Blanc. Its rolling light blue/green glaciers vaguely come into view...then, the sharp needle rock of the Aiguille du Midi. This is my chance. Soak it in.

While I love this place, I do not live here...and I do not know when I'll be back. I click into my bindings, make sure they are secure and push off...down the piste., each turn perfectly laid. My skis, like slippers, are comfortable beneath me. Today they are extensions of me. I make several laps. Each run my legs become more fluid, more in tune with the slope and I don't want to stop. I take one last run...gliding down the trail, arching my skis and feeling the dynamic rhythm of my spontaneous turns. I am no longer a competitor, there are no coaches critiquing my style, I can do what I want. Years of training and discipline have given me the skills...and now I am free to play.  I started skiing when I was was three and started competing in freestyle skiing when I was five.  When I was fourteen I won the Junior World Championships in Orcierres Merlette, France.  By the time I was 15 I made the US Ski Team and started traveling around the globe. We'd leave for France in November, have Thanksgiving dinner at Pizzaria 2000 in Tignes, and our first competition of the season a few days later. Throughout the season we'd compete in Austria, Germany, Finland, Sweden and Italy. Somehow I always felt more at home in the resorts of France...Tignes...and La Clusaz, La Plagne and Morzine. You could say that the French Alps have been instilled in my soul. Nonetheless, I have done the homework that has translated into an ability to ski any mountain aggressively and artfully. Now I define what is good...where I will ski, how I will define my day. This sense of freedom gives me an uplifting jolt of energy. I make a quick turn, then lift my skis over a tuft of powder with confidence and ease and make a mellow sideways hockey stop finish. This is an awesome day.

Skis on my shoulder, ski boots on my feet, I walk into the village. My body is contained by this inner balance...tired muscles and an uncluttered mind. The people are still there in the village...and most likely have all had lunch. I notice that I am hungry. to my right there is a cafe, a perfect spot in the apres-midi sun. No one is sitting outside. I however, think it is the perfect temperature. I am warm from my day on the mountain and my walk down to town from the tram. The wicker chairs have a gentile shape to them...my legs are thankful. I order a pizza and a demi bottle of Vin de Savoie. The waiter looks at me with what seems like a hint of respect, though I can't be sure he has ever skied. He brings my wine and pizza and I relax enjoying this moment in town. Wine in my hand...and a thin crust, French mountain pizza...I revel in how everything tastes so good.  Food always tastes better when you earn it. And somehow this all connects me to this place...Chamonix, my second home.

My thoughts shift back to the waiter...maybe he has a kid the same age as mine? I don't know. My son is four with an unbridled zest for life. He is everything I dreamed he would be and more. I picture him now, sitting there, across the table, looking at me...eating a crepe. He turns and talks to my husband, his father, and giggles. His smile lights up everything around him. I pull out my tiny French cell phone. With the time change I know it is too early to call...but I do anyway.  I hear my voice and my son's on the answering machine and I can picture them, my husband and son, on the other side of our house, peacefully sleeping in bed.  Next time, I think, when my son is older, they will join me. They will love it here.