A Different Winter:  Trekking and Snowshoeing Through Caretaking

Mom and I on One of our Better Days After I Finally Let Her Out of the House to Have Her Hair Done

As the freshness of spring shines upon us, I am hopeful for brighter days. I think we all are!

Life has been quite interrupted for me and I’m writing this from upstate New York where I have been taking care of my my 87-year-old mother. I arrived here the first part of January, quarantined for a good week in the Adirondacks and then settled in with my mom at her house in Troy, New York.

ADK Frozen Lake Fun

I wrote the below story quite a while ago but wasn’t able to post it to my blog due to mysterious technical happenings. Those problems still have not been resolved but I found a backdoor way of finally posting this story. It’s a little out of date at this point, however, I hope you’ll still find it of interest. 

This blog SNAFU is illustrative of the issues I have been dealing with and how I find my way around them as I figure out how to best help my mom and take care of the family home. (Built by my grandfather, Mom’s father, it is sixty-plus years old and in need of attention as well. But my mom wants to live out her days here, which I totally understand and I will do everything I can to make that possible.) 

Yet I’ve been so overwhelmed! I call it living in the blender. Holy smokes!

Out of respect to my mom, I will not reveal all that I have had to deal with but I can tell you it has been a full-time job. Anyone that has found themselves in this role knows what I mean by that. I’ve looked back at the freedom of my life in Colorado–the joy of waking up at 5:30am in order to head off to the mountain long before the lifts start to turn–with a combination of longing, awe and gratitude. I’ve never taken my job as a Telluride ski instructor for granted and I certainly never will in the future. It is a true pleasure even though that, too, can be exhausting.

Troy Country Club Road: A Great Place to Trek Next to Our House in Upstate New York

Not being in Colorado has been rough at times; just different at others. I have been very much needed here. And as hard as it is, I am grateful that I am able to be here to help my mom. As the old adage goes, “getting old is not for the feint of heart.” I just wish we would have had more snow–boy, have I been envious of the March storms out West.

Troy Country Club Golf Course/Snowfield

ADK Trek

Interspersed with all of the doings for Mom and her house, I still was able to recreate some in the snow. By the third week of February, I was even able to go skiing. (I hope to post a story on that at a later date–maybe for spring skiing?) I feel so fortunate about those few forays!

Since I moved to Colorado twenty years ago (from upstate New York), I have morphed into someone who embraces snowsports more than I ever would have imagined. Skiing has become my life in winter. So since I didn’t have much time for skiing, I found other ways to feel the calm of surrounding myself with snow, beautiful snow. I found other ways to work my body in the cold, crisp air. I delighted in the sweet and toasty sensation of coming inside and sipping a hot drink after playing outside in a winter wonderland, even if I was only able to escape for an hour or so.

Yes, I found ways to enjoy the beauty of winter. And most of all, I have found better ways to cope with all that I have to manage here. Spring has sprung and with it comes the prospect of dealing with all with more serenity and calm and also hopefully, the possibility of doing some nice hikes and walkabouts in the fresh air as the flowers begin to bloom. The upsets and breakdowns over all that I need to respond to here have lessened. I am fully assuming this role and I will see it through.

Wheelchair and Snowshoes: This Winter’s Equipment

I hope you like the below story!

Snowshoeing and Snowtrekking:  A Different Kind of Winter Fun

Me Near Telluride After My First Big Snowshoe Outing

Have you ever heard of Snowshoe Magazine? I just checked it out online. It’s pretty cool in a laidback, crunchy granola sort of way. Kind of like snowshoeing itself. 

Coming from a very ski-oriented family, I grew up with Ski Magazine. As a twenty-year resident of Colorado, skiing became my way of life. And since I’m a ski instructor, it’s included in my annual membership to PSIA (Professional Ski Instructors of America). But Snowshoe Magazine, well, such a publication never crossed my mind.

I’ve thought very little about snowshoeing–or anything other than skiing–all these winters. And yet to my delight, I’m finally giving it a go and enjoying it.

I knew this winter was going to be different from the ones I had experienced in Colorado. COVID has made everything different for everyone. But little did I know that it would shake up my ski world. Yet when I was given the option by the director at the Telluride Ski & Snowboard School early fall to sit out the season without it effecting my priority, I eventually realized that that was the sensible thing to do. This was to be my eighteenth season and skiing has become an essential part of who I am in winter; it was hard to imagine not being out on the mountain with the rest of my “ski family.” 

View from a Bridge: Frozen Creek

But family matters back east and an inherent fear of catching the virus made me think twice about it all.  I felt grateful–I still in fact feel very grateful–to the resort for granting this opportunity. Normally, if you sit out a season the counter is reset at zero and that would have been a real bummer for me, since at year twenty I will receive my lifetime pass, a brass ring of sorts for Telluride Ski Resort employees. 

So I pulled out a pair of Tubbs snowshoes that I had purchased long before I moved to Colorado to see what fun I could have with them. I had only used them once during my time in Telluride and that was to do a full-moon jaunt to an igloo that’s built annually up at Lizard Head Pass. (I remember the hike downhill left me with agonizing hip pain the next day and lo and behold didn’t I have to have a hip replacement a handful of years later.)

This year I was in T-ride just past the new year and then flew back east to help out at home. Early season was not blessed with an abundance of snow and I was recovering from surgery (this time for a hysterectomy!), so I was in no rush to head out to the slopes. By the time I started to ponder how I’d feel going out for some turns without wearing my big red uniform, the holiday season was upon us and I knew I didn’t want to have to deal with any lines. (When teaching, we have our own line, which is rarely long at all.) Plus, the thought of not hanging in the lodge for a hot chocolate, a bowl of chili or a cold and frosty (out of uniform of course) made the idea of a ski outing seem rather daunting no matter how sweet the turns. This is especially the case in December and January.

Priest Lake View

So I decided to strap on my snowshoes and head out the door and venture into the San Juans on my own steam. My guy lives in San Bernardo, a little residential neighborhood about twenty minutes from Telluride. You can find The Priest Lake Trails, a wonderful nordic skiing trail system, right across the road. It’s one of the best outdoor circuits in the region all year long and much appreciated for its natural beauty and the fact that it has so far remained sparsely used. 

As I clunked onto the trail, I was first shocked about how different snowshoeing is from skiing. As I say when I’m teaching, skiing–as well as snowboarding–is all about the glide. We encourage people to embrace the slide, something that is often a foreign concept for folks that haven’t been into snowsports much and work hard not to slip on ice or snow when padding about in winter. Indeed, I felt like a robot as I mechanically stepped forward in my snowshoes. So much for the delicious feeling of cruising down the slopes and setting your skis on edge, tipping and turning as you create your own perfect buttercream swirls as you head down the slopes. No, this stilted method of moving left me feeling like a multijointed superhero setting out to survey the land. 

Rocky Mountain Outing

Yet as I dipped into the woods, something magical began to happen. My stiff robotic movements eased into a rhythmic walkabout and suddenly I discovered the bliss of being out in nature amid the quiet of the trees and the thick blanket of snow without having a soul around, let alone a skier or boarder zooming by me. (Or me blowing by someone else for that matter.) I discovered the supreme solitude of the forest and it was at that moment that I realized that that was exactly what I needed at that moment, it is exactly what I need this winter. 

Life has been extremely chaotic. Between COVID and other crises, I have retreated into a more insular life. Yet I love the outdoors and desperately need it in the winter. (Seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, is what drove me to Colorado.) I love bundling up and braving the cold–even on a grey day. And then to head back inside and settle in to a nice hot cinnamon-laced mocha is one of the greatest joys of the season for me. 

My Yaktraks

Since I’ve been back east in upstate New York, I’ve done that many times. I’ve snowshoed some and trekked even more. To me, trekking is going for an energetic walk on snow-covered trails or roads (or even lakes!) with my Yaktraks. For others, trekking is about venturing into the Himalayas. Either way, the joy of being outside surrounded by the illuminating effects of snow is a universal theme, even if it means just bopping out for a tour in your neighborhood.

One of the benefits of COVID is that more people have discovered the amazing benefits of recreating out of doors. I read a while back that many snowshoe suppliers sold out for the season–go figure! It is a great way to enjoy a blast of nature and have an aerobic workout in a short amount of time. I’ve become better at it and although it will never (EVER!) replace my love for skiing, it does provide a nice hit of winter fun. 

Hudson Pointe Nature Preserve

Stockpiling in the Adirondacks Where Winter is Most Grey

So far I’ve mostly snowshoed on rather groomed trails and plodded along on some crusty snow in the northeast where normally I would have punched threw. They say that snowshoeing is primo on a powder day. Wow, coming from Telluride, I can tell you that people there live for powder days; people will ditch their nearest and dearest to find some freshies. (Ever hear of the expression “There are no friends on powder days?”) Somehow, I can’t imagine the same frenzy about heading out to find fresh tracks on snowshoes. But that, too, is likely part of the beauty of it all. Snowshoeing and trekking are so much about quietly communing with nature. Yes, now I can feel and hear it–fluff, fluff, fluff, ploufff. 

I hope you will enjoy these pictures from my snowshoe and trekking jaunts in the Rockies, the Adirondacks and in Troy, New York. I quarantined for a week at Lake Luzerne (in the Adirondacks) and was once again able to experience the thrill of walking on frozen water. (The last time was decades ago.) Here in Troy, I’m delighted to have the Troy Country Club right outside my door, which provides a variety of terrain for treks and snowshoeing.

All this helps to make the challenges of COVID and caring for an elderly parent (my mom) much more manageable. I hope you find your fix this winter, too. It also makes the chocolate, cheese, wine and hearty meals such as stew with dumplings feel less self indulgent. If I keep this up, I just might become a regular subscriber to Snowshoe Magazine. And hopefully burn off a bunch more calories while breathing in the great outdoors.

Vintage ADK

Note that with all the snow in Colorado this year, there will likely be snowsport fun up through May.