home..........untitled..........east..........treeplant..........skiography



Hooliganism

I appeared on the other side with a gospel to preach. From the soaring heights of the Swiss Alps, to the modest undulations of the Niagara escarpment, my enthusiasm was not tempered.

I credit three things with keeping the ski fuels burning bright in the Ontario southlands: friends, junior high school electives, and Greg Stump.

The first two are somewhat interlinked. Heading into the winter session of Grade 7 we were blessed with the concept of Friday afternoon electives. For two months the last day of the school week was turned upside down as kids headed off to their pre-chosen activity, throwing books by the wayside and putting their hyperactivity to use. Choices ranged from the mundane like cooking and sewing, to the physical like indoor basketball and soccer. Also thrown into the mix were a handful of offsite endeavours. Ice-skating. Bird watching. And downhill skiing.

The choice was clear and for two years a core group of us were the first to hand in our forms and spend a winter's worth of Fridays on a bus bound for Glen Eden.

Skis, poles and boots were haphazardly thrown in the back of big yellow and energy ran high all the way to the slopes. Once there, the one-hour mandatory lesson was tolerated before we were unleashed to run rampant on our new playground. Boomerang, Sunset, Scimitar and Twister occupied most of our time as we milked each lap for all it was worth. When feelings were running particularly bold, Suicide made its way on to the list.

The trail map today lists it as Challenger and denotes it with one diamond, but back in the day, I swear to you it sported two. Not for the faint of heart, this run dropped from the top at a break-neck angle of 30+ degrees for a distance of at least 50-feet. Replete with moguls, this truly was a proving ground. I remember fondly surviving the thrill one day and turning around to view my friend's decent. With so many dots littering the slope it was hard to make him out. The large cloud of snow that accompanied his falling made it a little easier and I smiled smugly at the knowledge that, finally, I had one-upped him.



Snowballs thrown from the chairlift, constant collisions, endless showing off, and perpetual games of cat and mouse with the ski patrol kept our days lively. These were the days well before terrain parks and smack dab - to paraphrase Mr. Stump - in the times of lawyers and lawsuits. The no jumping rule was strictly enforced and even ski lessons were not a safe haven. When our lively old ski instructor encouraged us to "grab a little air" on a small bump ahead (prompting my sarcastic buddy to ponder where we should put said air), a large women in red with a thick accent was there to whistle us down. I'll never forget the anger on her face as she instructed us all to repeat after her: "Zee skis stay on zee ground!"



Regardless we sought out any feature that could propel us into the air and grant us that feeling of flight. Scouts were put in place, 2-foot rocks were dropped, and sides of runs were flirted with in a constant effort to add thrills to our runs. In short: we were hooligans.

And we were loving it.

Not long after these beginnings, a member of our posse stumbled upon a strange ski video with a pink border and an odd title. In a world of "Snow Country" and "Ski Time," we did not know how to react to something called "Maltese Flamingo." We popped it into the top-loading VCR and our ski lives kicked into high gear.


Idols

We now had idols. We now had role models. We now saw the potential behind this thing called skiing. The air, the rocks, the speed, and the snow; but also the humour, the craziness, the absurdity, and the life. We were not alone. This was not a phase. Here were grown men jumping off cliffs and skiing moguls at a pace we could only dream of. Here were grown men falling in deep snow and wandering through casinos in sleeping bags. And here was a hairy caveman pontificating on the various shortcomings of the movie we were viewing.

Somehow it all made sense and solidified in us the feeling that we were skiers. We adopted the names of the Flamingo crew and soon had the film memorized (for the record, I was Chris "The Hatchetman" Haslock). We now had our own language and a window into another world.

After summers spent skateboarding and building ramps with wood pilfered from local construction sites (our parents graciously accepting our explanations that it all came from the scrap pile), autumn would bring to us the misery of school but also the anticipation of the coming ski season. The Ski Show was always the first indication that snow was imminent and, in brave feats of independence, our band of 12 year olds would get on the train to Toronto to partake in the swag-fest that these shows used to be.

Armed with plastic bags and an innocent ignorance we methodically walked the aisles grabbing anything on the counters that we deemed to be free. Brochures, magazines, stickers and posters all made their way into our loot bags and, eventually, onto our walls and schoolbooks. Excitement was clearly rising.

Compounding this state of impatience for the snow to fall was the fact that my parents had recently bought me my first pair of brand new skis. No hand me downs from my brother, no garage sale specials. These were new and shiny and mine would be first feet to click into them. Bright red Fischer RC4 Competition SLs. I still remember them well. Look step-in bindings and Nordica rear entry boots. I was in the big leagues now.

"Maltese Flamingo" made way for "Blizzard of Aaahhs" and "License to Thrill" and our minds continued to expand. Perhaps a little too much.

Though Friday's at Glen Eden were being complemented with weekend trips to Mount St. Louis, Caledon, Horseshoe Valley, and, if we were lucky, Blue Mountain and Holiday Valley, it was becoming evident that our hills were not up to snuff. Though the latter introduced us to sanctioned tree skiing and further upped the ante on steepness with its infamous "Wall," a feeling of restriction was setting in.

Further contributing to this confinement was the continuing hard-line stance on jumping and "reckless" skiing. Though adding a certain commando flair to our natural inclinations to take to the air, the lack of open jumping put a crimp in our style and, no doubt, slowed our progression. I have to smile at how far things have come and how tiny molehills have finally figured out one area where they can strive for equality. At the same time I grow a little wistful wondering what could have been had we had these same terrain parks to play in.

Instead we were left to find our own. Intersecting runs proved to be ideal locations to display the moves of the day.

Other solutions involved taking our mad skills off the hills and bringing them back to the home where, surprisingly, the parents proved more liberal than the patrol.



Camaraderie and hooliganism go a long way and it's mostly in hindsight that I project yearnings for bigger and better things. At the time skiing was still primarily about friends and laughs, and those were still in abundance on the slopes of Ontario. When word came down that the family would soon be uprooted to Montreal, I confess that my reaction was one of anger that I would be separated from my friends. At age thirteen is there anything more important in a boy's life than his gang? It would be months later before skiing had the chance to be my silver lining.




New Ground

Thirteen years old and thrown into a new social environment. A daunting situation. The school I would be attending was small and cliques were already well formed. A launch ramp in front of our home soon had us part of the local skateboarding gang, but I didn't quite fit in with their school persona. Being able to hold my own in most gym activities granted me moderate respect from the jocks and, hence, the popular girls, but it never went further than that. Consistently scoring in the upper 80's on all tests and assignments gave me an in with the "smart kids", but I was far from a keener so that never quite gelled.

No, I pretty much slipped through the cracks and fell in with a handful of fellow drifters. Rejects if you will. I ate lunch with them, played football with them during breaks, talked with them in the halls. Some were the school losers, some popular in their own way, others just were.

Me? I was the skier. It didn't take long for a few pictures in my agenda and a License to Thrill t-shirt to give me an identity. And I latched onto it. In the wolf pack it is essential to know who you are - or, in the high school equivalent, at least put on a good show. So partly as a front and partly for real, I quietly encouraged my peers to think of me as skiing obsessed. When a student's drawing of the class had me sporting a ski t-shirt, I couldn't help swelling with pride.

But whatever amount of exaggeration I may have put into my persona, it soon fulfilled itself. The next step up in ski terrain had me falling in love all over again.

The skiing was different here. It was bigger. There was more of it. It was - odious comparisons be damned - better. This was not Europe or Western North America, but with the Laurentians, Eastern Townships, and Northern New England all within day trip distance, it was the perfect progression for an Ontario raised teenage skier.

The Saint-Sauveur Valley with its handful of 1,000 foot ski hills all within spitting distance garnered some favour for being a mere 45minutes from downtown Montreal. With two ski partners established and the mighty driver's license now in our possession, it's where we'd head during our class-less Friday afternoons. I remember crashing into a friend twice on our first day skiing together (a trend that would continue throughout the season). I remember mini-manning down ridiculous pitches. I remember more moguls than my legs could dream of handling today. I remember perfecting the daffy. I remember exploring different hills every week, sampling the goods in all directions and discovering the gems of each.

Three destinations soon came to the forefront: Tremblant to the north, Sutton to the east, and Jay Peak to the southeast.

The sheer size of Tremblant was reason to be impressed. With two sides and over 2000 feet of vertical it literally doubled everything I was used to (Swiss introduction expected). And, in the pre-IntraWest days, it had charm. The north side was the place to start and two creaky doubles would take you up the famed Expo. Up over the steepest field of moguls I had ever seen with an unavoidable ribbon of ice across the middle and numerous rocks and cliffs on the side.

What was this shit? Watching people spazz their way down it soon gave me my answer. It was the proving ground. It was, in fact, the shit.

Yes, the Tremblant of years gone by had a rustic-ness that suited its climate. A round warming hut up top with fire constantly blazing pretty much summed up the experience. Dark and cozy with mitts hanging everywhere. The smell of winter drying.

We mined this hill hard. Finding the off-piste glades, knowing which lips we could air off, dropping all rocks in sight. The jumping rules were more liberal here - or maybe the place was just too big for the boys in red to keep an eye on us.

Regardless, the only thing that required stealth was the newly formed halfpipe. Snowboarding brought us many things, but it also brought a bit of reverse discrimination in the early years as skiers were banned from taking to the pipe. But, as they rightly did before us, we rebelled.

As is well known, Tremblant changed a lot in the last ten years. And regardless of what good came from it or how the soul still lives in quiet corners of the beast, I cannot look at it the same way. The Tremblant of my youth died with the removal of those doubles and the taming of Expo, and I have little interest in a resurrection.


Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8


email