Falling in Love With Skiing, Cross-Country Style

The rush and the sudden swoop as he dropped down a steep undulation in the mountain side plucked Nick’s mind out and left him only the wonderful flying, dropping sensation in his body. . . . He knew the pace was too much. But he held it. He would not let go and spill. . . .

Whoompfh!

Despite his bravado, Nick Adams took a beauty of a spill in Hemingway’s “Cross Country Snow.”

Last month, you got a chance to do the same.

You’d been meaning to add cross-country skiing to your list of weekend diversions since you read that story in high school. So, proclaiming yourself a surrogate for all Southern California back-country aficionados and disgruntled downhill skiers swept up in the snowballing cross-country skiing movement, you committed yourself to learning the sport and learning it right: by persuading a fabulously wealthy media conglomerate to pick up the tab.

Numerous Spills

Out-of-body experiences proved elusive your first time on the trails, though. Instead, you emulated Nick by tumbling “over and over in a clashing of skis, feeling like a shot rabbit.” Like Nick, you landed, “legs crossed . . . skis sticking straight up . . . nose and ears jammed full of snow.”

And you did so often.

“If you can walk, you can cross-country ski” is the cliche mouthed by promoters of this activity. But as you lay there, a living contradiction to Papa’s grace-under-pressure ideal, your traumatized brain transformed that truism.

“If you can walk, why ski?” you wondered.

You began your quest as universal beginner with a flurry of phone calls to cross-country ski aficionados and entrepreneurs. With their help, you pieced together a mental map of the four areas suitable for beginners within a two-hour drive from downtown Los Angeles: the Angeles Crest area in L.A.’s own backyard; Mt. Pinos, to the north; Green Valley Lake and Big Bear in the mountains east of San Bernardino; and San Jacinto at the top of the Palm Springs Aerial tramway. Mammoth and Yosemite would come later.

Your next step was to pick up some books on the sport: “Cross-Country Skiing Right--the Official Book of the Professional Ski Instructors of America” by Horst Abraham and Sven Wiik; “Backcountry Skiing--The Sierra Club Guide to Skiing off the Beaten Track” by Lito Tejada-Flores; “Ski Touring in California” by David Beck, among them.

You thumbed through the books--then plunged in.

Stopping at a rental shop in snow-powdered Lake of the Woods, just west of Gorman, you forked out $6 to rent skis, boots and poles. Twenty minutes up the road and almost 4,000 feet up the mountain, you were in the nearly deserted parking lot of the Mt. Pinos cross-country ski area. Stepping into the skis, you shoved off on an allegedly well-marked trail.

Various sources and common sense suggest that cross-country (or nordic) skiing is considerably safer than the downhill (alpine) variety. Conceding that his statistics are “awfully sketchy,” Johnathan Wiesel of National Nordic Consultants in Jackson Hole, Wyo., said that in 1985 commercial cross-country resorts reported a total of only 1,600 injuries out of 3.8 million skier visits. “Far, far less than at alpine resorts.”

The biggest danger, it turns out, is not falling, but rather falling prey to hypothermia or frostbite, Wiesel and others said. And the best defense against those life and limb threatening problems is simply to keep warm.

Which explains why expensive, high-tech one-piece suits or the layered look are de rigeur with cross-country skiers. To achieve the later, skiers start with polypropylene long underwear to wick away perspiration; add wool socks, shirts, sweaters, scarfs, pants, gloves or mittens (wool stays warm even when wet); add a down jacket or similar insulating garment on top as necessary; and finally add lightweight wind- and waterproof outer wear.

Although you had no plans to stray from the 35 to 40 miles of marked trails maintained around Mt. Pinos, you cautiously stuffed your fanny pack with what mountaineering instructors call the “10 essentials”: good sunglasses to fend off snow blindness, sunscreen to fend off a burn, extra food, extra water, extra clothing, a flashlight, waterproof matches and firestarter, a compass, a topographical map of the area, and a small first-aid kit.

According to National Nordic Consultants, 30% of alpine skiers also ski cross-country. To an extent, your own downhill skills served you well. With the “three pin” cross-country bindings--which are lighter than the alpine version and allow heel movement--climbing hills with the herringbone technique or the side step was no problem. Swooshing the easy downhills was a breeze.

‘Kick and Glide’

You weren’t particularly graceful at cross-country’s basic “kick and glide” diagonal stride. Your kick turn didn’t look like the diagrams in the books. But you still felt superior to the couple huffing up a hillside with their orange plastic saucer sleds.

Then your over-confidence led to a trail marked “more difficult.” The slush had turned to ice. Your wide-legged, V-shaped “snow plow” stance didn’t slow you. Nor did step turning. Your skis chattered like a dull knife on bullet-proof glass then twanged like a bluegrass saw each time you slammed to the ground.

Finally you kicked loose the bindings and stood, prepared to hike back up the concrete-hard trail without the nuisance of 205-centimeter protrusions.

When the grunting, flailing clamor you’d been making ceased, however, an astonishing peace and quiet rushed in. Was that a siren in the distance? No, it was the wind whining in the Jeffrey pines. A far-off jackhammer? No, woodpeckers chipping through bark.

Peace and Quiet

There you were. No adolescents from Hermosa Beach grumbled about “flatlanders” as they punched $25 lift tickets in lines reminiscent of the 405 at rush hour. No yahoos yodeled heavy-metal tunes while rampaging down some resort’s clear-cut slopes.

Perhaps your education should continue, after all.

The following Saturday you pressed into a crowded gondola and rode the Palm Springs aerial tramway 5,873 vertical feet up from the desert to a snow-covered outcropping below the summit of Mt. San Jacinto. You hiked a quarter-mile or so down a winding concrete path and along a trail to the Palm Springs Nordic Ski Center, where you rented skis, boots, and poles.

Around you, whole families of tourists careened down the slopes on sleds, trash can lids, and the seats of their pants, while whole families of cross-country skiers kicked and glided along the area’s marked trail loop.

Off the beaten track, away from the aroma of manure that wafts up from the area where mule rides run all winter, people thinned out. Amid hidden glens and boulder piles, skiers followed each other’s tracks or blazed new trails through a few inches of crusty but untouched powder. And here and there, small groups of skiers--strangers caught up in the instant camaraderie of the sport--converged to catch their breath, talk about snow and places to ski and the minutiae of equipment.

An Array of Choices

According to the National Sporting Goods Assn., Americans spent $55.2 million on 460,000 pairs of cross-country skis in 1985 (compared to $186 million on 948,000 pairs of alpine skis). Without doubt, many were befuddled by their choices.

The main debate in nordic skiing centers on the relative merits of skis which need to be waxed and the newer “waxless,” versions. Purists still tend to favor the earlier style, and ski books and magazines delight in publishing intricate charts advising myriad waxes and wax combinations for specific snow conditions.

But most experts agree that beginners--especially those who will ski in the ever-changing conditions of Southern California--are better off with waxless skis, whose fish scale-like bottoms allow forward glide but prevent backsliding during the kick.

There are several types of nordic skis, ski shop owners told you. The most popular is the basic touring ski; a lighter version, called “light touring” or “performance,” is generally used for skiing in pre-cut tracks; a racing ski is lighter still; and the mountaineering or randonnee ski is wider and heavier, with the metal edges favored by folks who climb mountains and crank telemark turns on the way down. Then there’s the “skating ski” designed with the current “skating stride” trend in mind.

Tips From Veterans

As a beginner, though, you ignored the distinctions and threw yourself on the mercy of the folks behind the rental shop counters.

On the trails, more experienced skiers passed on equipment tips and added to your education and aspirations with tales of groomed trails with pre-cut tracks at cross-country resorts in Mammoth, Yosemite, and Lake Tahoe.

Even as a beginner, though, you had no trouble making your own tracks to inspiring vistas right at San Jacinto. Cutting through unskied snow, you climbed a hill and slid through enormous piles of sunlit boulders. One thousand square miles of brown desert spread out 8,500 or so feet below. Gulping down clear, cold air, you took it all in.

By evening, you were moving pretty well. It didn’t take long at all to pass a Japanese tourist who was trudging up the trail towing two plastic sleds and five giggling kids.

That night, you soaked in a friend’s Jacuzzi at the base of the mountain, drinking cold beer, watching the tram lights through wisps of steam and savoring the sensation as your muscles relived the motions of the day.

Lessons had seemed premature. But now the time had come. After a day’s recuperation, you drove to Green Valley Lake Cross Country Ski Center near Running Springs to get some professional advice.

Great Form of Exercise

You were in luck. Ingrid Wicken (she swears it’s her real name) was behind the counter. Casual place that Green Valley is, she agreed to close shop for a while and take you out.

Along a winding fire road that leads 15 miles to the town of Fawnskin, you paused in a clearing to gasp for oxygen. Wicken confirmed your suspicions: Cross-country skiing is arguably the single best form of aerobic exercise.

If you’re doing it right, you can burn 800 calories an hour while touring and up to 1,200 in a full-out race. You exercise all the upper and lower body’s big muscle groups, and you do so without any of the jarring that running causes, Wicken said.

And she should know. She has a master’s degree in physical education, she explained. Her thesis was on “the biomechanics of the diagonal stride.”

“With the diagonal slide, it’s real important to bend your knees,” Wicken advised. “The more power you get into the kick, the more you’re going to glide--and these aren’t snowshoes, they’re meant to glide.

“Keep your hips forward and up and gravity will help pull you up the trail,” she continued. “You want your hips right over your feet.”

If she makes skiing sound easy, it’s because it is, she said, pointing out that on any good weekend people in their 80s and people under 5 can be seen scooting along Green Valley Lake’s trails.

Solo Return Trip

Wicken said you were doing very well. But on the return trip she chugged off like a runaway locomotive, leaving you dead in her tracks.

So there you were. Kick, glide.

In the west, the light of the sinking sun hit a stand of trees, and sun rays splintered like icicles across the blue sky. Kick, glide.

Your cadence eventually crumbled. Kick, glide. You took another spill later on. Kick, glide.

But for a few perfect minutes, your movement on the snow mesmerized. Your mind left your body, and you imagined yourself in the Swiss Alps with old friends. Kick, glide.

“There’s nothing really can touch skiing, is there?” Nick said . . . .

“Huh,” said George. “It’s too swell to talk about.”