All Aboard the Crazy Train

It's Perfectly Normal to Lose Your Mind Over Skiing

By Ian Greenwood

Trucks roared up I-90 past us, cutting through the whiteout conditions, their lesser-equipped cousins—commuter cars kitted out with chained tires—nipping at their tailpipes. Bright orange provisional speed limits adorned highway signs that hung above, which were largely being ignored. I anticipated an imminent multi-car pileup. Or, at the very least, spotting a rental head-first in a ditch.

Yet, there was good cause for the recklessness. The slew of storms that would eventually deliver historic skiing conditions across the West Coast were beginning to make their presence known. Over 24 hours, Snoqualmie Pass, Washington, had received multiple feet of snow. By the time we began our journey to the slopes in the morning, the battering hadn’t stopped.

As for me, I’m a cautious… er… anxious driver, semi-content to stay in my lane. Call me a wimp, but since I survived a 360 spin-out on an interior British Columbia highway, speeding in the snow isn’t my thing. So, I plugged away at a reasonable 30 mph.

I’d like to tell you that my tendency toward slow winter driving engenders a hard-won inner peace—a mastery of Roadway Zen. I’m supposed to be getting older and wiser, right? But that would be a lie. I’m still anticipating the day I find myself crawling toward a sure-to-be-epic day on the hill without feeling like I’m missing something.

I know I’m not alone. We skiers are an obsessive bunch. By the time we graduate from the bunny hill, we know what a big powder day means: frantically driving to the hill in the dark, leaving your skis out to hold a place in line, and jostling with fellow revelers to inch closer toward an impending rope drop. You don’t want to be the person that doesn’t get the goods; FOMO courses through every aspect of our shared sport, a fact that permits otherwise comically unacceptable behavior during powder days, like using your ski pole to joust with someone who cut you off in line. En garde!

Thus, I felt conflicted when my not-unfounded fears of spinning off the highway collided with my increasingly unhinged desire to enjoy every inch of powder possible. Trying to balance two states of mind isn’t particularly comfortable. Or in more blunt terms, cognitive dissonance is a bitch.

This internal boxing match continued as the storm enveloped us. The road had disappeared entirely, supplanted by a featureless white sheet. Howling gusts mixed with snow battered the windshield, and my grip on the steering wheel tightened. My present reality—doing everything I could to avoid becoming bedfellows with that rental on the side of the road—ate at the thought of missed skiing opportunities. I might’ve found it for a moment: a brief glimpse of peace, a sighting of Roadway Zen.

But that isn’t right. I wasn’t feeling serene. Instead, I was in a state of stress-ridden highway hypnosis. The excited chattering of my friends, like a posse of monkeys in the backseat, couldn’t pull me from my trance. And, even as my eyes honed in on the road, my mind still occasionally wandered to the impending clamor over first tracks. Images of a Gore-Tex-clad snake shotgunning a beer before poaching my line crept into my vision. I shuddered and thought, “Not today, Joe Gnarly. Not today.”

I’ve since wondered if excising this fraught, borderline feral mental state would benefit my brain. Living frantically, whether stressing over arriving at the slopes on time or an upcoming job interview, is no longer in vogue. Or, at least, that’s what prevailing cultural norms tell us. An entire industry has been built on encouraging the denizens of late-stage capitalism to just chill out. In perhaps the greatest irony of the century, advertisements for meditation apps populate Instagram ad space. Biohackers who promise to optimize your stress levels and circadian rhythms dominate the airwaves.

Although, when it comes to skiing, I don’t know that I want to learn to relax. While I’m hardly old, life has lost a bit of its buzz with time, which is natural and healthy. If we approached the world with the excitement of a 9-year-old, it’d be pretty difficult to function as an adult. Try telling your pre-teen child to do your taxes without getting distracted, and you’ll see what I mean.

Still, I miss some of the little novelties. I wish falling asleep the night before Christmas remained difficult. I’ll never get to eat that butter ramen I had in Hawaii again for the first time. I’m sad to admit I wouldn’t risk losing control of my bladder if my dad walked through the door with a brand-new Lego set.

Skiing is special because it resists this temporal weariness. To trot out a tired saying: Sliding down snow doesn’t get old. Regardless of age, the prospect of fresh turns reduces even the most stoic among us to puddles of laughter. And I wouldn’t have it any other way, even if powder fever notches up my anxiety levels.

That notion now settles alongside me whenever I feel like a pot about to explode as I navigate the logistics of a storm day; I’ve decided that pursuing Roadway Zen is a waste of time. To the aggressive line hustlers, the 60-year-olds hauling ass up the boulevard in whiteout conditions like they haven’t spent the past five decades skiing pow, and the first tracks guy who won’t stop making coyote noises under the chair: I see you. I feel you. We’re supposed to be losing our minds over this shit.

—Ian Greenwood is a writer and lifelong skier living in Missoula, Montana. 

The above article runs as the Intro page in the current '23/'24 print issue of POWDER. Purchase your copy HERE!