Opening Day
For the last couple of hundred days or so, many of us have been waiting for opening day at Elk Mountain. This year our wait ended on the 4th of December.
The compressor technicians, snow making crew, grooming tractor operators, and the rest of the mountain staff made the most of the recent weather, and worked up a deep base of snow with a beautiful man-made surface. Mother nature cooperated with a bright blue sky, and moderate temperatures for the first day of skiing.
It’s uncertain if this is the earliest opening ever, but according to The Ski King, it’s the earliest opening he can remember.
He and me and the rest of the crew started just after dawn, spending the morning hiking up and down the slopes, adjusting orange ribbons on fence poles, padding sign posts, ferrying supplies to the top of the mountain, and accomplishing final preparations so that The Big and Friendly would look her best to greet the first guests of the season – most of whom we recognized and knew by name.
Even before all of the chores were done, we could wait no longer; it was time. Sliding off the top of the lift, we glided over to the steepest pitch, pointed ’em down, and let ’em rip – wind rushing past us, the familiar, cherished pull of gravity forcing big smiles on our faces.
Though impossible, it would be interesting to compare our smiles from yesterday with the smiles that we undoubtedly wore nearly half a century ago when The Ski King’s father took him and me to the top of the mountain for the very first time. That day, we took our first run from the top of the mountain together down the Delaware trail, only weeks after the cows that had pastured there all Summer were led down to their Winter meadows.
We rode the lift to the top of the mountain as kids; when we got back to the bottom of the mountain, we were skiers.
Yup, one would think that after seeing nearly fifty opening days, one’s anticipation and subsequent enthusiasm for the ski season would be tempered by maturity, and diminish with age.
Yup, one would think that….
