Good morning MNC members,
We realize that many of our members made big commitments to ski and train at Bolton this winter. We’re psyched to have helped put in lights and do some work to maintain the trails there…we’re frankly not sure what we would be doing without this resource and facility behind us!
That said, there have been reports of some MNC folk being less-than-friendly regarding the grooming and/or staff responsible for maintaining the trails.
Please know that as a ski coach who spends nearly every day outside on trails, I am keenly aware of conditions and grooming impacts. Have I been frustrated at times with how the grooming at Bolton has been handled this year? Yes. It has been a very snowy January and February, so I’ve had days of grumbling myself upon arriving to fluffy ungroomed powder, narrow trails that only received one pass with the machine, or snow that was tilled deep enough to bring up chunks of dirt when such deep work with the machine was not needed.
However, I’ve also been putting in some work grooming the trails too (particularly earlier in the season when the large machine could not be used due to low base) and nothing makes you appreciate and understand good grooming like trying to do it yourself.
Bolton is not Craftsbury right now, nor are they Sleepy Hollow. But prior to this year the trails at Bolton seemed to be groomed very little, if more than a handful of times in a season. What has happened this year is a massive step up, and it is just that: a step, with more steps to come.
In coaching athletes, I’ve come to learn that it’s usually not worth letting anger or judgement be directed at any single skier…often, I have learned too late that what was frustrating to me regarding an athlete(s) was often something completely unrelated to the skiing situation at hand. As some say, “everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” and so kindness often goes a lot further toward solving situations of anger, as opposed to aggression.
As a grooming example related to this, on two separate occasions this winter when I was angry about the grooming (or lack thereof) that I saw at Bolton, I went inside or emailed ready to pound on a table (metaphorically). I started out with a polite inquiry about grooming and in both cases learned that the machine had broken down. Thankfully, we were in a position to use our sled to help out and create some more skiable terrain. In another instance, I again went inside ready to have “guns blazing” only to find that it had been a new groomer’s first day running the big machine on their own. Because our biggest group skis on Tuesday and Thursday, it wasn’t such a dealbreaker after all that this Wednesday was the day that this staff member was practicing on the machine.
I have a lot of suggestions for Bolton regarding how the grooming can be improved, and I am looking forward to putting these suggestions and thoughts down more concretely and sharing them with the folks at the mountain. These suggestions also still involve MNC contributing to the improvements, as a club, because we appreciate this partnership and want to see it continue and grow. This year we can be thankful to be skiing at all and although pandemic stress may have us a little more quick on the trigger, we all need to respect the work everyone is doing to make the sport something we can enjoy.
-Adam
Comments are closed.