Deferred Gratification: Celebrate February

It’s the day after Thanksgiving. The sun is out, and the local ski areas are open for business today. And I’m in my office, cleaning up.

Sigh.

Writing in the Boston Globe, Tony Chamberlain makes the case for avoiding early season skiing and snowboarding, and instead putting the emphasis on the end of the season:

“Not that I mind the battle of press releases that goes on this season — hey, it looks good to have your lifts running first — but it seems an awful lot of expense and psychic energy gets wasted to market snowsports in the thinnest of seasons. Skiers and riders would do better to stay interested through March and into April, when the cover is still usually deep and the climate most genial.”

As I noticed last season, the best days of riding may be in mid-to-late February and March, not early December and certainly not November–unless you live in the high mountains, at least. I figure that I’ve got only a limited number of days that I can leave my work behind for a day on the snow and in the sun; I’m simply swapping a marginal day today for one, much better is my hope, later on.