Plattekill: Riley Season

Saturday wasn’t my first time driving south to ski Plattekill, but it was the first time “leaving home” to do it. I’m now 30 minutes closer to one of my favorite ski areas and the drive is much more relaxed than traveling north out of New Jersey.

No matter how much Google Maps insists I take the shortest route, I’m sticking to the interstates as much as I can: 87, 90 and 88. Once you are off I-88, it’s a scenic and comfortable drive down Route 30 through Grand Gorge.

When it comes to skiing Plattekill, especially early in the season, you can’t overestimate the value of having a friend like Sean Riley.

He’s a local, with a “tools not jewels” approach to skiing, and he’s willing to give almost any amount of new snow a try. Late last week, after maybe a foot of snow, he reached out with surprising news.

The natural base, which had fallen as blower powder, was supportive enough to stay off the bottom. Honestly I found it hard to believe, but I’ve been through this before with Riley and I figured it was probably worth the drive.

In other news, I learned Friday that the pain I’ve been experiencing in my right foot isn’t an injury, it’s arthritis. The doc I saw wasn’t optimistic about my future as a nordic skier. The worst of it is in the ball of my foot and flexing my forefoot hurts. I’d never heard this kind of end-of-the-line news from a doctor and it hit me hard Friday night.

Roman and Riley had planned to meet in the lodge at 10am. That had me setting an alarm for 5:30, and leaving home at civilized 6:45 am. Google maps had my ETA at 9:45.

All along the drive the question ran through my head “will uphilling hurt?” I’d been skiing Gore all week, sticking to parallel turns, and skiing comfortably.  My tele binding has an uphill mode that allows it to pivot freely at the toe, the same way an AT binding pivots. I was hoping that I could keep my foot relatively flat, and move uphill without pain. I convinced myself that the next few hours would answer some of the questions I have about how I’ll be skiing in the future.

I parked in the upper lot, an old habit that is kind of pointless on a day when there were likely to be ten cars in total. From there, I walked down to the main entrance and headed inside.  The only sounds I heard were coming from the ski shop, and I stuck my head in. Roman, Riley, Joe the Yeti and Wayne were booting up.

We took our sweet time, and eventually made our way down to the skin track that had been established on Overlook. My first few strides weren’t really painful, but I was spending a lot of mental energy trying to remember to keep my foot flat.

I made it up without much discomfort. If I hadn’t seen those nasty xrays the day before, I probably wouldn’t have thought too much of it.

At the top we got our first view of Twist. It had definitely been skied, and ski tracks were filled with windblown snow. The tracks looked skiable, but I wondered how it might hold up below, where the snow was likely to be thinner. We discussed our options while we made our skin transition. Riley was all about Northface, he jumped right in making short radius turns, down skier’s left.

Roman and I decided on Twist. Twist is a good thin cover choice, as it lacks a distinct headwall. We dropped in and found the snow surprisingly supportive. While I’m sure my bases weren’t 100% unscathed, I never heard or felt any rock all day, even at lower elevations. The skiing was really good.

We got some excellent turns down the best parts of Twist, in disbelief, even as we did our quasi-jump turns. The snow was windblown, but somehow it wasn’t hard to get your tips free to change direction.

In a now-traditional thin cover maneuver, we jumped from Twist onto Northface when we were two-thirds of the way down. Northface is the grassiest of all the Plattekill steeps and if you’ve been lucky enough to get down to that point without doing serious damage, skiers right is a great option. Watch out for waterbars!

After the first lap, we discussed the possibility of a second run. To some extent my anxiety about my foot was relieved and I was thinking “why push your luck? Today has already been a huge success.” Still, I wasn’t hard to convince and off we went.

We’d done the uphill part of that first lap in about 45 minutes.  My experience at Plattekill, or anywhere, is that the second lap takes longer. We headed up at 2pm and an hour an 15 minutes later we were at the top again. Tired.

Somehow my foot felt even better on this lap. I decided to try climbing without using my heel risers and it made a big difference. My quads were burning but my foot was actually comfortable.

We’d already done Twist, so Ridge it was. At least for Roman and I.  Riley went off Overlook on the out-of-bounds side, into what I call Rileyland.  Riley, brilliance with a splash of insanity.

Still, after another exuberant lap on Ridge, when we bailed to Northface at the traditional spot, there was Riley, slashing and burning, no worse for the wear.

Saturday was everything I love about skiing packed into one day, exercise, good snow and friendship.