Winter is a mindset. Stan Plewak manifests ski season at Stowe, VT. Photo: Adam Kruszyna

Crux

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Objectively, it was a terrible day to go skiing. A transitional spring snowpack in the Cascades, trapdoor death crust, sunny skies and gloppy snow. No hero corn. Hours of bushwhacking through the trees. But the fire inside me was raging, and I was determined to force my way into the mountains. I have a hard time letting go.

There’s always a day, usually in mid-May, when my grasp on ski season becomes the strongest. I never love skiing more than I do in late spring, when the flowers bloom down low and the thinning snowpack threatens to vanish altogether. Closing day is always my favorite day of resort skiing.

The feeling usually strikes on a particularly uncomfortable adventure—one that might involve miles on dirt, basketball-sized sun cups and a 4 a.m. alarm. Maybe core-shotting my favorite skis on a slushy April day. One year it was a march through thigh-high penitentes of snow in the Tetons, another it was a rugged downhill bushwack on the lower flanks of Mount Shuksan. The more scarce skiing becomes, the tighter I hold on. 


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