A Need for Speed

Cold wind and a hunchback aren’t enough to keep this adrenaline junkie from shredding
By Dawn Dennison

Dorothy is a small woman, bent at the waist and leaning on the arm of a much younger man as they make their way to the office of the crosscountry ski area where I work. When he’d called earlier to make an appointment for his 81-year-old mother-in-law, we wondered what kind of person would torture an old lady by bringing her out on such a day: It’s 19 degrees, and so windy that the lifts on the alpine side of the resort are closed. Because the afternoon instructor is busy with a group, I’ll be giving her a private lesson, and I’ve never had a student her age. I’m dreading the two hours she’s booked, afraid it will drag on forever, and I secretly hope the weather scares her off.

It doesn’t. She enters the lodge stooped, the lump on her back a telltale sign of her deteriorating body. The humpback makes walking difficult, even on a non-windy day. She’s wearing an old down coat that is bright red under the arms and inside the collar, but has faded to rusty orange in the places that see the sun. Except for her nose, there’s not a single smooth place on her face—it’s a topographic map of the weathered hillsides and mountain ranges of old age. To look at me, she tilts her head to peer from the corner of her eye. She introduces herself and says she doesn’t really need a lesson, she’s skied all her life.

My job title will be “guide,” not “instructor.” I will keep her company and take care of logistics and mechanics so that she can concentrate on the business of skiing.

Dorothy lives in Chicago, but visits Colorado each winter to visit her grandkids—always with skis in tow. Bob, her son-in-law, doesn’t know how to ski, and her daughter and grandkids don’t like to. So Bob brings her to a ski area every day she’s in town and reads his book while she takes a “lesson.”

I carry her ski bag outside and pull out a pair of backcountry touring skis with clunky three-pin bindings and a set of antique bamboo poles topped with big, round baskets and leather straps. Dorothy and Bob watch me from the window, and when I wave that I’m ready, he walks her outside.

She puts her hands on the top of my head to balance herself while I’m on my knees, clicking her boots into her skis. The wind picks up, and I wonder how we’re going to get through these next two hours of bitter cold. We are just blobs of winter clothing with eyes, and we communicate by nodding and pointing toward our first trail.

We turn our backs to the wind, and as soon as we’re moving, the joy of gliding on skis takes over. Rounding the first bend puts us into the trees, where the wind is blocked and the world quiets. “Nothing hurts now,” Dorothy says through heavy breaths as we continue up.

Our goal is the top of a long hill that locals call 17th Avenue. Because she lives at sea level, and this Nordic center sits at 9,000 feet, we stop a lot. I learn that she still works part-time as a court stenographer, holds classic piano concerts in her living room, and has a thing for speed. Because she’s headed home tomorrow, she wants this to be a good day—i.e., a fast one. She can’t wait to turn around and ski downhill—she wants to stay in the track the whole way.

“Track,” at Nordic centers, is set by grooming machines. It consists of two grooves, each the width of a ski, and about an inch deep. The track makes the kick and glide of classic cross-country skiing more efficient than skiing on flat snow. On a downhill, though, skiing in the track can quickly go from thrilling to scary depending on conditions and slope angle. It’s possible to pick up a fair amount of speed when your skis are pointed straight down and locked in a groove. Slowing down requires stepping out of the track onto the flat snow and working your legs into a kind of triangular brake which skiers call a snowplow.

When we finally make it to the top, she hardly stops to rest before she puts her skis into the grooves and asks if I think she can make it all the way to the bottom. Even ablebodied, I can’t stay in the track all the way down. But as I look at this crinkled woman—who spends summers in Wyoming riding pack horses, who just explained to me the nuances of Chopin, and who has never once mentioned the wind or the cold—I tell her she can.

And just like that: We’re off. I remind her that if she gets going too fast, she just needs to lift one ski at a time out of the track. As she picks up speed, she yells back that her legs don’t lift like that anymore—ever since she’s had both her hips replaced.

On the flat snow next to her, I can easily wedge my skis and slow down, but there’s no need. Dorothy is flying, knees bent and eyes forward, she’s completely in the moment. I am mesmerized by her face. It’s as if she’s been transported to another time. How must it feel to go so fast so effortlessly, when just walking across a room can seem to take all day? It’s not until I see the look of shock on another instructor’s face as we whiz past that I realize we’re going too fast to make it around the next turn. The only way to stop before we miss the corner and head into the trees is to fall.

As a visual cue, I fall first, and cringe as her stocking-capped head jerks back when she hits the ground. I hesitate before asking if she’s okay. She smiles at me with her whole face. “We almost made it, didn’t we?” she says.

We return to the lodge, and I help her out of her skis and she holds my arm as I hand her off to Bob. He tucks his book under one arm, Dorothy takes the other, and they slowly head back to the car.