Say “cross-country” or “Nordic skiing” to an enthusiast, and you haven’t said enough.
What nonskiers lump into a single sport is actually three, with people seeking different pleasures on different types of terrain.
Touring can mean going practically anywhere on snow, with or without trails. Tourers include people searching for solitude, for whom skis provide a passage to winter’s deep silence.
Ski mountaineers take the sport to its adventuresome limits. Going uphill, they’re mountain climbers with boards on their feet. Coming down, the most daring are called extreme skiers.
The sleek, go-fast branch of the sport is track skiing on lovingly groomed, up-and-down, racing-grade trails, which allow for traditional kick-and-glide technique or the newer, faster “skating” style.
There’s room for quibbling about terminology and where, exactly, the lines ought to be drawn. But the important point is that people of widely different tastes, abilities and temperaments can find their own joys cross-country skiing.
I’ve enjoyed touring and mountaineering, but my preference now is track skiing, which can be every bit as thrilling, challenging and–if you’re bent that way–terrifying as downhill.
My favorite destinations contravene cross-country’s wilderness image, which implies the sport is best done in some hushed, deep woods, out of a backcountry yurt, say, or a tiny, remote lodge.
Tiny and remote are great. But to me, the height of excitement is going to one of the major winter sport complexes. They cater mainly to alpine skiers, but some also have superb systems of Nordic trails.
A prime example is the Banff-Lake Louise area in Alberta’s Canadian Rockies. Skiing is as fast and steep as you can stand it on the racers’ trails at Canmore near Banff, site of the cross-country events at the 1988 Winter Olympics. You can’t begin to wear out Canmore in a week, but this is only part of the much larger and more gratifying experience of the mountains.
Those seeking wilderness can ski backcountry trails deep into Banff National Park. They can buy a half-day or full-day lift ticket at one of three superb alpine areas and do the downhill runs on cross-country skis to work on steep-country control and turns.
One of the soft sides of heading for a downhill area is the comforts and delights of fine mountain resorts.
My lifetime peak gustatory experience, for example, was dinner at Lake Louise’s Post Hotel after a day of skiing at Canmore. The restaurant is just down a foothill road from Canadian Pacific Railroad’s Chateau Lake Louise, where my ski-buddy and I slept in old-line luxury.
I’ve found the same kind of deluxe Nordic experience at Stowe in Vermont’s Green Mountains, in Colorado, British Columbia and the Bavarian Alps.
I look forward to skiing Jackson, N.H., and Olympics veteran Lake Placid, N.Y., both of which have excellent Nordic trail systems and downhill runs nearby.
I’m eager, too, to get back to Mont Ste. Anne, Quebec, where a time crunch two years ago restricted me to a frenetic two hours of downhill skiing.
The most unexpected dividend of Nordic skiing at a major winter resort is a sense of privacy and freedom.
The rhythms of alpine skiing are so different that Nordic skiers can feel like they’re the only ones on vacation.
At 8 a.m., in a thunder of plastic boots, the downhillers hie off to the slopes, where most will stay until the lift lines close. Cross-country skiers, who can get a whole day’s exercise in a few hours, needn’t feel so pressed.
They can loll over coffee in the morning, hit the trail, then, in the afternoon, beat the crowds to the whirlpools before drinks and supper.
Mountains steep and snowy enough for downhill are in gorgeous and once-wild places. A bit of effort, and distance, gets you into the quiet of the Nordic system.
But then, civilization is there to come back to. You can have your Nordic and comforts, too.
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For a list of Nordic centers and resorts, contact Cross Country Ski Areas Association, 259 Bolton Rd., Winchester, N.H. 03470; 603-239-4341; or contact the Web site at www.xcski.org.
