Meet Bennett Stenger, the newest member of the Jay Peak family.  Son to Andrew & Kaki Stenger and grandson to Jay Peak co-owner Bill Stenger, there is little doubt that Bennett (like his older brother Chase) will be Raised Jay.

I went back to my roots this weekend, chasing 8 weekers around their playground;  lapping the Metro Quad, Village Chair and T-Bar – trying to catch these kids is no simple task.  The youngest are easy – the S formation of tiny skiers playing follow the leader and red light, green light is unmistakable.  The older ones, though, the more experienced skiers and riders, are tricky.  Here and there, you’ll see the telltale flash of an instructor jacket – and with it, the kids in the class. 

I managed to snap this pic of a girl, no higher than my knee, whip into and out of the woods on what the kids refer to as a “shortcut” (the same ones exist now as they did 20 years ago when I was ducking in and out of the “trees”) and I caught a class dropping one of the “cliffs” off of Lower Quai.  I thought to myself, “I wonder if their parents know what they’re up to.” I subsequently laughed at myself. 

It’s not easy these days to disconnect and look back, when we’re constantly rushing ahead, at what got you to where you are.  We chase first tracks and fresh powder, and sometimes forget what we valued most in those early days.  It would do us all some good to revisit our roots, when life was simpler, and relearn some of those life lessons built into the days we learned how to become skiers and riders.  The 8 weekers are taught patience and perseverance, self-dependence and self-motivation.  They are given freedom.  They are encouraged and they are pushed, but not in any aggressive sense; they can try, fail or succeed, and try again.  And of course they “learn” from some of the best skiers and riders in the industry, the people who do this for a living, who spend their lives on the hill.  Why would we, as parents, think we could do it any better?

And while I was tooling around on the Lower Mountain, reminiscing about my own tour as a mountain rat, I didn’t run into Hannah’s group.  It was nearing the end time for the morning program, so I headed down to the meeting area, and met her group heading back up to the lifts. “We’re going up on the Flyer again!” Gracie, a girl in her group exclaimed when she saw me. “Hannah already went up once, y’know.”  And when Hannah saw me, her face was beaming.  I rode along as they ascended just a few hundred feet from the summit, and realized why it’s not a great idea for parents to tag along with these groups – and why handing them off to another to teach them what they need to know is a good idea if you ever want them to become a skier or a rider. 

As of today, we’ll be offering any deployed Vermont National Guard member (roughly 1500 soldiers)   complimentary Jay Peak Season Passes for their families-spouses and kids-while they’re away focusing on much more important things than storm systems and skier visits.   The families will also receive 50% off rental equipment and free afternoon lessons every day, based on availability, all season long.   Originally we had planned on just including the counties surrounding the resort (Orleans, Franklin, Caledonia, Essex and Lamoille) but decided to open it up to the entire State of Vermont.  Families should bring along a copy of deployment orders to our Customer Service office on the Tramside of the resort and we’ll issue spouses and kids passes valid through the rest of the season.  For more information, click here.

Hannah was out of commission this weekend (fever trumps hard core-edness) so here’s an update from another Ski & Ride School enthusiast, Maeve (words are all hers, I just did the typing):

“I like skiing on the T-bar because the ride up is fun.  The ride down is funner though.  I can go fast.  And sometimes I turn.  I get to ski every Saturday with my instructor, then every Sunday with my Mom.  I usually go with my Daddy too but he’s not as good as my Mom-even when he feels good.   It was nice and sunny this weekend so it was warm.  It’s supposed to be sunny again on Saturday so I will ski with Lea again, on the t-bar, and probably go faster.  I like the Jay Peak commercials but you shouldn’t put babies in freezers.  I think most kids wouldn’t put babies in freezers.  They would to be pretty crazy to do that.”

Check in next week for more gems like these.

When I wrote my first story about my son Luke’s experience learning to ski at Jay, I sent a copy to my friend Plum, one of my college roommates from Boulder.  His response?

“Nice work. Amazing how times (and focus) change. It would have been all about
the freshies and gnarl a few years ago. You’s a family man now, hoss.”

I was thinking about this little exchange, and the greater Raise ‘Em Jay campaign, over Christmas. Family man. Isn’t that a euphemism for middle-aged? Didn’t there used to be an SNL skit called Middle-Aged Man back when we shared that place in Colorado? The thought took me back to nights barnacled around the keg, when we would vow to wake up early for the morning drive up to A-Basin or Vail. One of my chief regrets in life is that more often than not I failed to make good on my promise, opting instead to sleep off the swill for another few hours. I squandered what could have been the prime of my skiing career.

Back at Jay, years later, I grew up as a skier. I focused on skiing. I left the nights to those better equipped to handle them. I skied the face for the first time at age twenty-eight. I began to feel redeemed.

So it seemed fitting to be suiting Luke up last week in the old Golden Eagle, a metaphor, man, for how we’re all grown up, how I’m a family man now. Just as it seems appropriate that rather than its psychedelic homonym, I’m eating mesclun for lunch. And as I eat and meditate on aging, I realize that, in fact, prickly pear fruit is the only cactus product I’ve ingested in over ten years. When I was in college, I’m sure I’d have looked at someone like myself and seen an old man.

Ironically or not, in terms of actual skiing, I feel younger than ever. Though I still have ample room for improvement, never in my life have I been more skilled, more confident, or more spry on the mountain. As I push forty, I’m way better in bumps than I ever was in college. I never skied trees at age twenty the way K do now. So yeah, I’m giving Jay to my son and wife, but the gnar definitely remains a—if not the—focus. And we found it aplenty over our Christmas vacation.

But first, the kid. Luke, age seven-and-five-sixths, is now officially into his third season as a Jay Peak skier. Day 1, with Instructor Phil Graziano, and he’s fairly mastered his stance; tossed the moldy ole pizza for fresh, sizzling French fries. Up until Luke’s ski school, I had never heard either of these new-fangled terms. To me, it was the snowplow and parallel turns. What’s frightening is that I know these little metaphors, just like the fact that I know the lyrics to half the Billboard Top 40; they remind me of my position in life, my Dadness, my impending middle age. I should be driving a frigging Odyssey or a Sienna. But I digress. Phil’s report is great. We’re off to a booming start here, the day after Christmas.

On Day 2, we wake in Dad’s condo near the golf course in Newport to RAIN. Not showers. Not drizzle. Pounding, gushing rain. Like an August monsoon in my wife’s native Thailand. At 6:00 a.m., it’s pitch black out, but through the sickening feeling in my heart, I swear I can actually see the snow melting, green hay poking up from the deer field down below. It’s Easter, not the day after Boxing Day. It’s a crime is what it is, a four-letter word that should carry far more profanity than any word for sex or sex parts or defecation. It’s wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap bad.

Luke looks out the window at lines of the four-letter-word streaming down like the Matrix and goes, “I don’t want to go skiing today.”

By now, a dull light of morning has warmed the sky to slate. We can see the city and the massive woolen cloud clinging to the mountains.

“Don’t worry, it’s probably snowing up at Jay,” I lie.

“Humph,” he grunts, turning to the kids’ program on CBC.

When, by the time we pass the Jay Country Store, the rain still has not let up, I thumb around on my iPhone and say, “It’s supposed to change over to snow soon. Like around 10:00.”

In lieu of a real answer, Luke makes a sound that seems more a response to the Mario character eating mushrooms on his Nintendo DS. I think the day, if not our entire ski season, is headed for certain, soggy doom.

Happily, my gloomy forecast could not be any farther off target. By lunchtime, when I run into Phil in the cafeteria, Luke has already shredded a black diamond run – the first of his budding career. And this is the primary reason that I love ski school: rather than protesting the crummy weather from the couch, Luke’s out there opening up new levels. “Snow’s actually some of the best I’ve seen all year, at least for teaching,” says Phil. “Nice and soft.”

It’s true. And it’s the buzz around the resort. Spring skiing in December. What could be better? Except that it’s wet. My Gore-Tex jacket should be called Sieve-Tex. I need those hip 80’s windshield wipers for my goggles. Worse, much worse, is the sight of snow melting to mud, to rock, to stump and root. “Just packing down our base is all,” jokes instructor John Witherspoon. What can you do, right? Might as well ski.

Then, at about two in the afternoon, I emerge from the State Side base and notice a single flake of snow blowing down the mountain at me. I point, speechless, my soaking plastic jacket dripping from my damp flesh. Within a minute, the entire world transforms into the most gorgeous winterscape I can ever remember. A cheer rises up amongst the handful of hearty folk still braving the storm; the mood’s as joyous as Christmas morning. Giant flakes of ecstasy drifting down to my outstretched tongue. Only after a rain such as the one we’ve endured can one truly appreciate the shear beauty of snow.

On the way home, Luke is so fired up about skiing that he doesn’t even turn on his brand new, Santa-delivered DS game. He just wants to tell us about skiing a black diamond run. In a slight variation of Phil’s story, he describes his group’s arrival at the fork in the trail where Phil points out the trail sign. Then, “The first time, I fell, and it was AWESOME! The second time, I didn’t even fall.”

“What about the rain?” Yupin asks. “Did that bother you guys?”

“No! We just got out there and went. I like the rain. And, oh, Dad? Are we going to be here on Thursday? Because Phil says we’re going to have another ski school race. I really want to win a gold pin this time.”

I tell him for sure. We’ll be here.

“And this time I want to go to the party after,” he says.

“You like those guys in ski school,” I say. Last March, when he won a silver pin in the weekly ski school slalom, he was too shy to go to the party. Phil brought him the prize the next morning, as we were snapping into our boots.

“Yeah, they’re nice,” he says, going on to talk about not only the other kids, but also Phil.

The snow stops in the evening, but the next day it dumps from our first run through the end of the day. The temperature is still fairly warm, the wind is insignificant, the flakes big and fluffy. It’s not deep yet, but it’s coming down hard enough to refresh the trails. The browns and grays and patches of green we saw yesterday have mostly disappeared under this spell of soft white. It’s like a second honeymoon, so pretty and perfect that Yupin’s “one last run” at the end of the day, when I pick Luke up from ski school, turns into four or five. Later, I chide her—“How could you just leave us there, waiting?”

She gives me one of those looks and goes, “What? Do you blame me?”

No, I admit. It’s impossible to stay jealous over being dumped for an extra half-hour of skiing in fresh snow. And you know that cliché about no friends on powder days? Well, it goes for spouses as well. Only next time, Luke and I will know better than to take our boots off so early.

In three days, we had skied under partly cloudy skies, torrential rain, and enough snow to make our drive home treacherous to the point where we skidded off the road but were lucky enough to carom off a bank back onto the pavement. We were feeling pretty versatile, I must say, but our pride led, as it inevitably will, to a fall. Tuesday simply blew. We drove up anyway on the slim chance that a miraculous calm would fall and allow us to play in the fresh foot of powder. No dice. The wind chill registered somewhere around liquid-nitrogen-cold. When we informed Phil of our decision to play hooky, he said it’s good to put safety first. “We’ll be drinking a lot of hot chocolate today,” he said. Yeah. Frostbite’s no fun.

It snowed and snowed and blew all day. At night the wind howled and buffeted the condo. It was hard to sleep, not only from the noise but from the gnawing dread that tomorrow would bring more of this harshness.

Wednesday dawned in relative stillness and balmy above-zero temperature. In the trees, I found powder to my thighs. You still had to be careful because the wind had moved it all around and left bare spots and stumps to keep you honest, but the bumps on Kitzbuehel, at least some of them, were plumped up like a big fluffy pillow fight. In Timbuktu, I saw an ermine scamper from tree to tree, entirely white but for a tiny swath of black on his paintbrush tail. I had never seen one before, and I was so excited that I spoke with him. Out loud. He ran out to another snow-draped spruce and disappeared.

Or was this Thursday? I can’t recall exactly because, at my age, a family man and all, these moments of epiphany, to quote Robert Hunter, “they melt into a dream.” What I do know it that the ski school race got changed to Wednesday because of New Year’s. They didn’t want the party to compete with amateur night.

In the afternoon, I spy Luke and his ski school troop off in the woods of Moonwalk. He zips down the first drop, waits, then blasts off again. Because they have to wait for another kid, I’m able to catch up. Luke’s orange ski jacket is already pretty bright, but he simply glows as Phil tells me that he won their race. “By seven seconds,” he said. “That’s a lot for a ski race, you know.”

I congratulate him and talk a bit about the party and the award ceremony—though I don’t actually mention how his goal for the week had been to win the gold pin. Phil pays him another compliment and says, “That’s my man.” Then—bang!—back to shredding the gnar.

By the end of the week, my leg’s are like Phat Thai—flat and lifeless and bent—but I’m still sad that we have to leave and drive back down to Sealevel, MA. Grown up, responsible, Dad—I just want to play. Just one more. Please. Please? It’s just so hard to see the meaning in work, in school, in the flatland, in anything but skiing. Especially when there’s a real mother of a storm aswirlin. There’s another two feet on the way, but we’re running out before it hits like the sensible people of Florida before a hurricane—only our flight makes no sense. I wrestle with my inner child, the voice that says, “Just get fired. Collect unemployment. You can’t miss these powder days, bra. Ski!”

Still, I know it’s time. While the snow in the woods is prime fluff, the blue runs to which Yupin is mostly confined are windswept and icy. There are lots of scrapers slip-sliding down those dips in Ullr’s Dream and Goat Run. Best to bail before she gets scraped off by someone who lost his edges. And as all the new diets suggest, it’s wise to stop feasting before you’re completely stuffed. Calorie reduction is the key to longevity, they say.

That we’ll be back over MLK and then as many Saturdays as we can for Luke’s highly-anticipated eight-week ski program provides some consolation, too. On the drive back down, he talks about how he wants to put his gold pin on his blue jacket next to the silver pin from last year. When I tell him we’ll be up for another full week in March, so he’ll have another chance to race, he says, “I’ll have to come in third this time. I’ll go really slow so I can get a bronze pin.”

“Don’t you want to win?” Yupin asks.

“I just want one of each,” he says.

His favorite day this week? He surprises me by answering not race day, but rain day. See, it’s funny how four-letter words can seem so positive some of the time. “I liked going down Green Mountain Boys the best.”

“Is that the black diamond?” Yupin asks.

“Yeah. It was awesome! And the first time I went down? I lost my balance, and I was skiing just on one ski half way down, but then I caught myself.”

We drive on in silent, sated satisfaction for a few miles, watching the snowscape pass. Despite the annoying grown-up reality of having to return to work, it really feels great to be a husband and a dad, to build these bonds through the shared experience of skiing, of Jay Peak. As if to complete my thought, Luke validates our decision to give him the gift of ski school, saying, “And I like skiing with Phil. He’s my man.”

So there’s a lot of talk and buzz—mostly positive, mostly hopeful, some apprehensive—about the changes afoot up to Jay Peak. And I guess the biggest question is this: when the face of Jay raises up in the form of two nice hotels, an ice rink, contemporary themed restaurants and bars, will we still want to raise our kids, our spouses, and ourselves here? Me, I’m banking on yes. I could go on at length about how I don’t feel threatened by progress or how the remoteness of the NEK will protect the mountain from silly “resortness” or how the terrain and weather will continue to keep the gumbies looping around their green circle runs down to the south of us. Yet, I’ve seen development go horribly awry—beach areas in Thailand that seemed immune from mass tourism are now overrun by the flabby lobsters of the West; don’t get me started on Cape Cod. I don’t claim to know any answers, but obviously there are right ways and wrong ways to expand.

I happen to like the changes I’ve seen at Jay Peak over the past few years: I’m pleased that we don’t have to T-Bar surf up the Jet any longer, the Flyer (despite being freezing cold and “wind-challenged”) beats the crap out of that old double that used to drop us off at the top of Exhibition, and I dig the new red chair with access to the CanAm “Supertrail.” It’s also pretty damned sweet to have a real restaurant, bar, and café that look out upon the mountain. I’m sure the rooms upstairs are quite charming and well-appointed, as well. Still, most of these changes are largely superficial, which brings me to my point. The wrong way to develop is to march in and fire everyone and piss everyone off by growling, like a sailing program director I once worked for, “There’s gonna be some changes around here.” The right way, it seems to me, is what we’re seeing right now—involve the local community, sell local products in the shops, and keep the staff that we’ve all come to know and love.

While I was happy to find the Golden Eagle transformed into the new ski school base, what’s really cool is seeing so many familiar faces among the instructional staff. Luke’s favorite instructors from last year, Phil and Billy, are back. Phil Graziano, with his long white beard, has this Father Jay look about him, accentuated by his gentle rumbling voice. By lunchtime of day one, he had taken Luke into their group again, and he kept molding him for the week. He remembers him from last March as a “little ripper.” Consistency is key in any instructional program, and it feels so much more comfortable, both for kid and for parent, to see lessons pick up right where they left off. When I came in at the end of the day one, Phil and Billy took turns updating me on my son’s progress, talking about how his stance is already much more stable than it was nine long months ago, how he’s doing great, working on pole plants, and having a ball.

I’ve noticed this consistency not only with Luke, but also with my wife, Yupin. Last year, she took lessons all season and steadily rose from beginner runs to the blue squares. This year, most of the instructors already know her. They remember her strengths and areas where she most needs to work. On her third day of this season, as she rode the lift with Scott, he told her that five hands had shot up at the question, “Who’s taught Yupin before?” Then he flattered her by saying that he had won by getting to ski with her all morning. Despite fairly icy conditions, he then guided her down Haynes, her first black diamond run. It’s enough to make me go all warm and fuzzy, this level of personal attention and tangible results.

Before I had a family of my own, I never felt this type of connection to the mountain. My skiing experience was largely solitary. I liked it that way, and I still enjoy skiing by myself in the mornings while Yupin and Luke are in lessons, but this new, human, dimension is pretty cool. It makes me feel a part of a larger family, and it makes the mountain feel even more like home. I’m pretty confident that so long as Jay Peak keeps this at the forefront of their development plans, all will be well.

Last year was the first season that my oldest daughter, Hannah (then 4), was enrolled in the Jay Peak 8 Week Program, the Kids’ Ski and Ride weekend program for young skiers and riders to learn and expand on their skills.  Since the first day in November when Hannah caught a glimpse of snow on the trails she has been asking when she can get out on the hill with her ski group.  I’ve taken her since, but it’s just not the same - there is a bond that exists between instructor and child that just can’t be replicated.  Hannah’s biggest thrill is showing me what she learns each week when we go out together after her lesson – where her instructor took her and what new trails she discovered.
The start of the 8 week program in 2009 was the start of my daughter’s love affair with the mountain.  Come hell or high water, blowing wind or freezing rain, she was ready.  Her first lesson this year included 10 degrees temperatures but there’s no way she was going to miss out - not because I insisted that she goes, but because she wants to be out there no matter what.  It’s not something that I force upon her, or even encourage – it’s just something that she wants to do.  She’s taking an active part in raising herself Jay, and I couldn’t be more proud.
This season, I thought it would be interesting to follow the 8 Week Program and get the kids’ point of view on skiing and riding at Jay, and what being raised Jay means to them.  So for the next 8 weeks I’ll be posting my findings – stay tuned, as I’m sure they’ll have plenty to say.

Canadian singer/songwriter and Juno winner Serena Ryder will be at Jay Peak this week, performing in the new Tower Bar on Friday, January 8th from 4-6pm.  You can read Serena’s bio here.  Serena will be here with The Point radio station who will be kicking off their “Ski & Ride w/ The Point” series.