DECEMBER 29, 2025 – As we close in on the end of the year, Mother Nature reminds us that she is still very much in control. Witness yesterday’s weather—a veritable blizzard that interfered with countless post-holiday travel plans. I was ever so grateful that I’d dashed to and back from the Red Cabin the day before, thus avoiding the treacherous driving conditions that prevailed yesterday—especially on the 9% grade on U.S. Highway 8 leading from St. Croix Falls down to the Minnesota border—the St. Croix River—at the base of the long hill. Reportedly, that stretch was a banana peel yesterday, causing vehicles to slip and slide like bobsleds piloted by born-and-bred south Floridians, for whom ice, snow, and hills are alien concepts.
I ventured outside three times yesterday: twice to get ahead of snow removal from our driveway and sidewalks and once to go skiing in nearby “Little Switzerland.” I say “skiing,” but it was hardly that, given the unusual mix of snow, which stuck to my skis like molasses on saltine crackers. In (classic) x-c skiing parlance, I was “all kick and no glide.” In truth, I wasn’t even “all kick”: I was “all hike-no-matter-what-the-pitch-of-the-incline-up-or-down.”
Since at that hour—before temps plummeted, transforming the “molasses effect”—I was the lone x-c skier or, perhaps, the lone fool. This status allowed me to laugh out loud, as I imagined my appearance as a human Snowcat, caterpillar treads enabling me to ascend and descend at any pitch regardless of grade and at a uniform speed.
Certain purists on the Rules Committee of the Ski Tally Association[1] grumbled that in the total absence of glide, my outing shouldn’t qualify for a tally mark. I protested vociferously. Well, maybe not vociferously, since even with no one around to hear me, I didn’t want to start down the path of talking to myself, at least out loud. In another 10, 12 years, okay, maybe; but I’m too young to be exhibiting outward signs of losing my mind. Accordingly, I kept the “push back” to a closed-door session with the rigid, rules-bound members of the . . . Rules . . . Committee. I’ve long known the chairperson of the committee. We’re friends and frequent ski buddies. He knows that I’m no rogue when it comes to the integrity of my self-reporting tally system. And to the point here, he has clout over committee proceedings and decisions. On my way back to the car, his voice inside my head was clear and self-assured: “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got you covered.” And he did. By the time I was hanging up my gear, the purists had backed down, allowing me to mark the 14th tally mark of the season—eight ahead of last year’s total for all of December (out of a total of 67 for the 2024-25 ski season; 16 shy of my annual average over 30 years of record-keeping).
Today I returned to “Little Switzerland” under radically altered conditions. The mercury had tumbled from the mid-30s (F) yesterday afternoon down into the low teens, and the icy breath of Borealis produced a wind chill well into “minus” territory across the high plateau I call the “Aletsch Glacier” (in the shadow of the Jungfrau at the center of the Bernese Oberland, but in reality, the second fairway of the Como Park Golf Course), as well as the northwest slope of St. Moritz.
At the summit of St. Moritz I encountered another old codger skier, back to the wind, bundled up like an arctic explorer and wearing shades against the onslaught of sunbeams bouncing off the bright white snow. When I approached, he asked—in Swedish—if I was Swedish. It was a logical question given my blue and yellow striped ski cap with a small Swedish flag on the front. I humored him with the bit of Swedish I know, and when I asked if he too was Swedish, he replied—in Norwegian—that he was proudly not. After getting past the laughter, we “talked Minnesota.”
“Dern cold out her tooday,” he said from behind the icicles clinging to his gray mustache.
“Ya ’specially in that wind.”
“What kinda wax ya usin?” he asked.
“No wax,” I said. I couldn’t match the strength of his Minnesota accent, so I didn’t try.
“Ya got scales on those skis?”
“No. They’re unadulterated skate skis.” Looking down, I noticed that he was wearing Telemark skis and bindings. “So you’re a Telemarker,” I said.
“Ya, with skins, so I can march up these hills without any trouble.” With that he lifted one of his skis to show me the foot-long pad (attached to the ski bottom) with synthetic fibers that lie flat for gliding downhill and grab the snow for easy walking uphill.
As I pointed my skis downhill, he said, “Yer gonna go fer it?”
“Ya, why not?”
“Wuhl, because on those skinny skis yer gonna go real fast!”
“Ya, but I’ll make a few turns on the way down.”
“I’ll watch.”
“Good,” I said, “in case I need to be rescued.” With that, I pushed off down the backside of St. Moritz. In contrast to yesterday’s molasses, today’s snow had a much lower moisture content. A snowcat had been up and down the slope a few times, packing the snow somewhat—deceptively, actually. As I entered my first turn, I hit subsurface crud. Heading straight for a lift stanchion, I took immediate evasive action that let’s say, “didn’t look pretty.” Instead of executing a (pretty) textbook christie, I stepped (unprettily) quickly to my right, then made another step before gliding down “off piste” through undisturbed powder to the nicely groomed x-c skating track at the base of the “Eiger.” As I turned to skate back to the bottom of St. Moritz, I saw the old Norwegian make his last couple of Telemark turns on his way to the base.
When I caught up to him on the ascent, I said breathlessly, “I chickened out.”
“Nooo. Ya made the right move.”
I made two more trips down and back up the “mountain” and two trips around the top of the Aletsch Glacier before the wicked wind chill chased me back to the car. The Norwegian Telemarker disappeared into the cloud of artificial snow blowing out of the snowmakers facing the front side of St. Moritz. After yesterday’s blizzard, I thought, it was a case of “makin’ hay while the sun shines.”
A few minutes later, I made another graphite tally mark on the basement wall. The purists on the Rules Committee, I thought, would have no grounds for contesting the hard-fought 15th mark of the season.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] The imaginary organization that operates inside my head and exercises jurisdiction over my annual count of ski days—as officially recorded by tally marks penciled on our basement wall next to where I stash my equipment.
