25 Years on DCSki by Jim Kenney

25 Years on DCSki by Jim Kenney

Wow.  That was fast.  I first stumbled onto DCSki while surfing the web in the fall of 1999.  I was age 45.  Now as I write this in the fall of 2024 I'm 70.  In those 25 years much has changed in my life and my skiing, but through it all DCSki has been there as a source of information and inspiration. I'd like to extend a big thanks to Scott Smith the founder, owner, and editor of DCSki.  It's been a virtual winter time water cooler, the go-to-place for friendly discussions on all things skiing. But it’s meant more than that to me and many others.

I take pride in being a forum member and content contributor to DCSki.  It's a high quality online fixture for all things skiing in the Mid-Atlantic and beyond. It's noteworthy as one of the oldest continually operated online ski forums in existence. But DCSki is also a community consisting of countless virtual "ski buddies" where the tribulations of the real world are set aside to discuss and celebrate a common love of winter sports. And if you're lucky like me, it can lead to numerous real life ski buddies.

I'd already skied for 30+ years including visits to numerous resorts in the Mid-Atlantic, New England, and the Rockies, but when I started engaging with DCSki in 1999 it significantly increased my involvement, knowledge, and love of the sport.  It's fair to say that my nearly 60 year recreational ski career consists of two phases; before DCSki and after DCSki. 

Pre-internet, skinny skis, and no helmets; in March of 1995 I was goofing off with friends at Cannon Mountain, NH while Scott Smith was busy rolling out DCSki:

A quarter of a century is a significant passage of time in one's life, even for a geezer like moi.  It's worth reflecting on memories and milestones. Skiing has always had a very big family component for me. I take great individual pleasure in skiing, but when it brings friends and family together for exercise and good times it takes on a deeper and even more rewarding quality.

In the period from 1999 to 2014 I was very much into the "ski vacation dad" mode.  That is, most of my skiing involved facilitating the participation of my wife and four children so that we could enjoy the sport as a family on weekends in the Mid-Atlantic and on vacations to New England and the US West. I chronicled this 15 year phase of my skiing on DCSki here.
Having already given those years a detailed treatment, I'm going to mark my silver anniversary on DCSki by focusing on my personal ski evolution during the period from 2015 to 2024.

2015: This is the year I began a new chapter in life - as a skiing retiree. By this time my four children had finished their undergraduate college educations and in January I retired from full time employment with the Federal Government.  I immediately began a big, nine week road trip - my geezer ski bum tour. This was the first winter I had a mega pass (Vail's Epic Pass).  I took full advantage of it and had a great time traveling all the way to California and back. 

Free at last in February 2015; there's nothing quite like the back bowls of Vail, CO: 

The list of ski days during that big road trip included: 6 Beaver Creek, 5 Vail, 7 Breckenridge, 4 Kirkwood, 3 Jackson Hole, 2 The Canyons, 1 each Heavenly and Park City, 9 Keystone, and 5 Arapahoe Basin. I wandered far and wide for the first month in solo mode, and then my wife joined me for the second month based in Summit County, CO.  We also cross country skied one day on a prepared track at the Raven Golf Course in Silverthorne, CO and one day at Beaver Creek's McCoy Park Nordic Center.  2015 was a modest snow year across the western US, but I enjoyed myself and caught some memorably good conditions at Breckenridge and Keystone.

With my three daughters at Keystone, CO during my "Epic" ski trip of 2015:

2016: This was another year of major geographic changes in my skiing patterns.  My son Vince, now an adult, moved to Utah in the fall of 2015.  He has lived in the Salt Lake City suburbs ever since.  He's always been my best home grown ski buddy and I began to ski as much in Utah as I did in the Mid-Atlantic.  Vince picked Snowbird and Alta as his primary ski venues and I followed suit. 

Initially, Vince rented a one bedroom apartment in Salt Lake City.  I bought a cheap mattress to sleep on the floor of his living room and usually made three visits each winter during his early years in Utah.

April 2016, my son Vince heading straight down the barrel of Gunsight chute at Alta, UT: 

In 2016 we also spent a memorable week skiing in Aspen with a bunch of friends.  I've loved Aspen Highlands since my first visit in 1976. During the 2016 visit I rode the snow cat into Highlands Bowl and skied the uber-scenic Olympic Bowl.

View of my friend John W. in Olympic Bowl at Aspen Highlands with 14,000-footers Pyramid Peak and the Maroon Bells in the background:

2017: After my initial retirement from the USG I worked half-time as a contractor for the USAF from 2015 to 2019.  This kept me anchored in the Washington DC area where I continued to ski locally, but also allowed more visits to Utah and elsewhere.  In late January of 2017 I arrived in Utah on a Saturday for a ski week with Vince.  I didn't see the sun for six days.  It snowed almost every day, a lot!  By the end of my snowiest week ever the tally was 70".

Vince at Snowbird, UT in January 2017:

Locally, I'll remember 2017 for the return of Laurel Mountain ski area in western Pennsylvania. The resurrection of Laurel Mountain in the growth-challenged climate of the modern ski business was an amazing accomplishment and truly a labor of love by all involved. Laurel Mountain's origins date back to the late 1930s. After being shuttered for 11 years it was totally awesome to see this historic and beautiful ski area returned from the list of the lost.  A $6.5 million revitalization was orchestrated by a teaming of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and Seven Springs Resort.

A Gang of DCSkiers at the revitalized Laurel Mountain Ski Area:

2018: Even as I branched out and skied more western resorts I continued to visit Mid-Atlantic ski mountains and in late January 2018 I hit the jackpot with Winter Storm Jonas at Canaan Valley, WV.   While I'd skied a number of 6-12 inch local storms, in all my years I never had the good fortune to be onsite at a Mid-Atlantic ski area for a once-in-a-decade type BIG dump. And believe me, Winter Storm Jonas was big. Snow accumulations in the range of 30 inches were observed in seven Eastern states.  I got to ski both Canaan Valley and Timberline ski areas over three consecutive days in extraordinarily deep conditions.

Ski Patroller Paul at Canaan Valley ski area in January 2018:

I've driven across the US more than 25 times to go skiing!  But in 2018, fueled with a Mountain Collective Pass, I did the ultimate crazy-long ski road trip, 7000 miles over 26 days from DC to SLC to BC and back again. My lovely wife Kathy endured every mile with me.  Son Vince was along for much of the trip as well.  We had a great time skiing Alta, Snowbird, Snowbasin, Jackson Hole and four Canadian ski areas I'd never been to before:  Revelstoke, Lake Louise, Banff-Sunshine, and Mt. Norquay.  We also experienced some sketchy western winter driving and learned a lesson to perhaps not pack quite so much road mileage into one trip.

Vince again, this time dropping into Corbet's Couloir at Jackson Hole, March 2018:

2019: I got in four fun ski days in the mid-Atlantic and then in February I finally, fully retired. My coworkers treated me to a farewell lunch in a restaurant at National Harbor, MD and by 2:30PM the same day Kathy and I were on the road to Salt Lake City, UT.  We spent the next three months staying at the house Vince had recently purchased.  It was my first extended winter skiing Utah with my first full season pass at Snowbird. I skied 50 days. The mountain kicked my butt while I tried to adapt to steeps and powder.  It took me forever to learn to dress comfortably for the West with lighter, more breathable clothing than Eastern skiing.

Besides Snowbird, I visited nine other major resorts in the Rockies in 2019. My exploits included skiing three great mountains that were new-to-me: Big Sky, Telluride, and Crested Butte. Perhaps Crested Butte was my favorite discovery of 2019. It has a unique mix of terrain from mellow to extreme and a very high energy clientele including students from nearby Western Colorado University.

I was at Crested Butte in April 2019 when UVA won the NCAA Basketball Championship (one of my kids went to UVA and I got the sweatshirt):

2020:  This was a momentous year for obvious reasons.  On a macro level, the pandemic was a tragic event that turned the ski world and everything else upside down in March.  On a micro level, a couple of notable developments happened with respect to Mid-Atlantic skiing.  A few months before the ski season started Vail Resorts purchased Whitetail, Liberty, and Roundtop ski areas in southern Pennsylvania and the Perfect family from the state of Indiana purchased Timberline Mountain, WV. 

The Pennsylvania ski areas had been linchpins for DCSkiers since the 1960s (since 1991 for Whitetail) and ably run by Snow Time Inc. for decades. Now they entered into the ever expanding fold of one of the mega-pass behemoths.  Timberline always had great skiing, but its infrastructure had fallen into disrepair.  The Perfect family proved to be the perfect new owners to restore the ski area as detailed in one of Scott Smith's best articles for DCSki here.

Timberline Mountain's new six passenger chairlift:

My personal ski season in 2020 was fun while it lasted, but I only got about 25 days of lift served skiing, mostly in Utah.  I did three more days of the "skinning" variety at Alta after the pandemic shut down the formal season on March 15. My wife and I decided to stay in Utah to social distance with our son Vince until late July.  The most infectious stage of Covid-19 was late to arrive there.

I sneaked in a visit to beautiful Grand Targhee ski area in WY a couple weeks before the pandemic cut short the 2020 ski season: 

Between March and July 2020 we biked and hiked and visited some spectacular Utah state and national parks.  When we finally returned to our primary residence in the Washington DC suburbs it was the weirdest car trip!  To avoid exposure to the virus we dry camped three nights in primitive tent sites and carried all our food and drink supplies with us in our vehicle. Our only retail purchases were at gas pumps about every 500 miles.  The interstates were largely devoid of civilian motorists, but packed with truckers and I felt a deep sense of appreciation for their role in keeping our nation's supply chain open.

Primitive campsite at Sutherland Reservoir, NE, July 2020. Shortly after this photo was taken a three hour rain and wind storm passed over the area:

2021:  This was the masked ski season. I did not ski in the Mid-Atlantic for the first time in 54 years.  I delayed my ski season and my annual migration to Utah while waiting to get vaccinated. I finally lost patience and drove to Salt Lake City without it in mid-February.  A week later I was able to get a shot in a suburban grocery store with one other person in line.  This made me feel safer and I skied frequently at Snowbird through May, but things certainly weren't fully back to normal.  I rarely rode Snowbird's aerial tram and mostly stuck to open-air chairlifts. Masks were mandatory everywhere.

Even Yetis from Utah wore masks in the winter of 2021: 

Aside from Kathy and Vince, chairlift conversations were my primary form of social contact since the pandemic started one year before.  And I heard some amazing chairlift stories.  It seemed like everyone under the age of 40 was having the time of their lives, traveling the country while enjoying the freedom of working remotely.  Those over 40 were more fearful of the virus and living significantly restricted lifestyles. The importance of the sport for my physical and mental well being had never been greater. I wrote about the exhilarating freedom of skiing here.

Snowbird, UT March 2021, a friend caught me in photog mode on Great Scott trail:

2022: This year was a return to normalcy, well almost.  Just as the season got underway the news broke that Vail Resorts made another major play in the Mid-Atlantic by purchasing Seven Springs, Hidden Valley, and Laurel Mountain ski areas in western PA.  It was part of a continuing strategy within Vail's Epic Pass network to unite large and small resorts across the country under a single ski pass to increase ski area visits and grow corporate revenue. Mega ski passes like Epic, Ikon, Mountain Collective, and Indy were now a firmly entrenched fact of the skiing lifestyle.

I was becoming a regular Utah winter resident and logged over 60 ski days in the winter of 2022, a personal record.  I bought a Snowbird senior season pass again and for the first time I also purchased an Ikon Base pass when Snowbird offered it as an inexpensive add-on product. This gave me multiple great options to ski in Utah where I spent most of my time, but also throughout the rest of the US.  On my migratory drive west in January I skied Steamboat for three fun days with the Ikon Pass.  Steamboat's relatively low elevation is an advantage for flatlanders seeking an easier Rocky Mountain altitude adjustment.

Four Points Lodge at Steamboat, CO, January 2022:

In April I took a 550 mile drive from Salt Lake City through desolate, but beautiful central Nevada to ski Mammoth Mountain, CA for the first time ever.  It's famous for good spring skiing and I caught some fine conditions.  I also caught Covid-19 for the first time.  Fortunately, it didn't affect me until I returned to my son's house in Utah.  My wife and son got it first, but we all recovered within a week or so.

View from the Paranoids Chutes at Mammoth Mountain, CA:

2023:  What a year!  Utah set all kinds of records for snowfall in 2023.  Alta ski area saw a record 903” of snow, topping its previous high by more than 150”.  Snowbird issued 838" commemorative lapel pins.  Pretty much all other ski areas in the region shattered seasonal snow records as well.  I skied through it all and wrote about my experiences during the snowiest winter here.

The skiing was great, but with big snow came big crowds, tight parking, snarled traffic, and exhaustive avalanche mitigation work. I logged a total of 62 ski days in Utah in 2023 while enjoying a dozen or more legitimate powder days, but at times the Wasatch Mountains were a madhouse. I heard from a Snowbird employee that the access road up to the resort in Little Cottonwood Canyon was closed for all or part of 39 different days during the 2022-23 ski season.

Solitude, UT ski area "only" experienced 768" of snow in the winter of 2023:

In the middle of the 2023 insanity I got a chance to ski Sundance ski area near Provo, UT for the first time.  It was on a real fine powder day and I found the area to be a refreshing change of pace compared to frenetic storm days spent at the bigger name resorts closer to Salt Lake City.  The mountain is a little smaller, but so are the crowds, prices, and stress levels, making for a fine tradeoff.

Sundance ski area (2150' vertical, 500 acres),has the goods: 

When weighing the pros and cons of Utah's monster snow year, I’m obviously glad to have been a part of it, but maybe I don’t want it every year. In 2023 the crowds didn’t die down until nearly the end of April.  But in the end, it is the snow that I will remember. Ski Utah, the state’s winter promotional organization, issued 44 powder alerts signaling at least 12” of new snow in a 24-hour time span. The average number of powder alerts in a season is 19.

Avalanches frequently threatened the Alta/Snowbird access road, even as late as mid-April 2023:

2024: 70-70, I matched my age in ski days in 2024 and in the process enjoyed skiing for free (or nearly free) for being a full fledged geezer.  I played the senior card at Massanutten, VA (four times) and at Monarch, CO (two times). My first ski day of the winter was December 8, 2023 at Massanutten Resort, VA. My last day was May 11, 2024 at Snowbird, UT. 70 ski days in one season was a personal record.

Dec 21, 2023 at Massanutten, VA, was the first day of ski operations for the new Peak Express quad chairlift:

Doing the math, I skied ~45% of all days during that five month period. Although I had a few skiing-induced aches and pains, I was fortunate that no ailments kept me off the slopes for extended periods. I didn't set out to ski 70 days, but I had skied 60+ the previous two seasons, so reaching 70 was not too big of a stretch. I just let things unfold organically and was super grateful for every day I got on the slopes.

Besides the 70/70 thing and a lot of fine skiing in Utah, another highlight for me this season was an early March trip to the Lake Tahoe region. Vince accompanied me and we had a lot of fun visiting and skiing with friends at Palisades-Tahoe and Diamond Peak ski areas.  It was shortly after a massive 4-5' dump and conditions were terrific.  We had two days of guided skiing by a friend at the Olympic Valley side of the layout that were superb.  I've got to revise my Top 20 Ski Areas and make room for Palisades-Tahoe because that place has a quality and quantity of advanced-expert terrain that will stack up with any mountain in North America!

Vince skiing Main Chute at Palisades-Tahoe:

Conclusion:

There is a person in my life that is the ultimate skier-enabler.  It's my wife Kathy.  She's a retired skier now, but Kathy skied for 40 years and I never would have got our four children into the sport without her love and support, much less continued my own avid ski pursuits. She's been a great sport in traveling throughout the western US in our retirement years.  None of this would mean much without being able to share the good times with her.  I salute Kathy and all ski wives and mothers!

Kathy and Jim Kenney at Canyon Overlook at Zion National Park, UT:

Finally, I want to give kudos to Scott Smith.  In the “About” section of DCSki Scott  talks about launching the website in 1994.  I feel like a laggard for landing on DCSki in 1999, five years late :-)  Scott's been building on his never ending ski website project for 30 years!  That kind of constancy in the online world involves exceptional effort, commitment, and passion. I want to sincerely thank him for creating not just a website, but also a community. DCSki was an online thing for me at first, but then it evolved into a lifestyle thing. I’ve skied with dozens and dozens of friends, some for decades, whom I first met through DCSki.

Here’s a closing anecdote about the impact of DCSki on me and my family. I was at Palisades-Tahoe ski area in March of 2024 when I met Dave "pagamony" in-person for the first time. Dave is someone I’ve known as an online friend via DCSki for about 20 years. He’s a fellow ski-dad who inspired me to write an article back in 2008 on how to pull off a successful family ski trip. My son Vince was with me and when I introduced him to Dave at Palisades-Tahoe there were some funny smiles. Dave said: “I know you Vince. I’ve watched you grow up for much of your life through your Dad’s articles on DCSki.”

May 6, 2024, Snowbird, UT.  Thanks for reading and happy trails to all my friends on DCSki.

Awesome article Jim!

I’m also a ski dad and hope to do a lot of what you’ve done, visiting resorts all over the country, when I retire. I love skiing out west, but also want to ski many of the mountains in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine too. 

Great Read!

Congrats on a life well lived!

Hoorah!

Nice read, Jim. I've enjoyed reading your articles for 20 years now. I've also enjoyed meeting and skiing with the members of this community, especially at the Mid-A Gatherings and house shares you often organized. Those days are among the best ski days I've experienced. Thank you Scott for keeping the light on here. This site has enriched the lives of many of us in ways you could not have imagined.

                                        The Crazie Family at Snowbird. Photo by Jim Kenney.

Thank you Jim for sharing your passion with us for all these years.

Denis 

Jim - you have been blessed with a great ski and family life. I always enjoy your articles. A few questions:

- Have you ever had a serious ski injury?

- How did you get your writing skills? 

Thanks for the positive comments folks.

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Snowsmith, No one in my family has ever had a serious ski injury. I don't like to talk about this for fear of invoking a jinx.  It's been a combination of luck and luck :-)  Vince has broken both thumbs at different times in last decade, but skied through recovery both times.  In April of 2023 I caught an edge and went down hard on left shoulder.  Thought I might have a partial separation.  Got x-rayed and it was just a mild sprain.  Returned to skiing (gingerly) after one week rest.  I ski a variety of terrain including double black diamonds, but I generally ski fairly slow and ever more so as I get older.

Writing:  for 30 years as a federal civil service employee and a few more as a Defense contractor I did a lot of writing while interpreting and applying USG regulations/policies relating to Defense Trade Controls.  On a daily basis I wrote recommendations requiring identification of a specific issue, analysis of the pros and cons of that issue, and a conclusion on how to deal with the issue.  It was a pretty straight jump from that to writing recommendations on what I thought about various ski areas or ski activities :-) 

I believe I have very typical interests as a skier, so anything I find useful, important, or enjoyable is likely to be the same for many other skiers/boarders.  It helps to really love what you are writing about and I am also motivated by positive feedback.  My trick with photos is that I just take a lot and there are bound to be occasional good ones.  There is a trademark of mine in LHC's nice family photo above.  Whenever I take a ski photo with people in it, especially a static one, I try to include all or nearly all of folks ski equipment, so people know they are skiers, not just random people standing in the snow.

snowsmith wrote:

Jim - you have been blessed with a great ski and family life. I always enjoy your articles. A few questions:

- Have you ever had a serious ski injury?

- How did you get your writing skills? 

Thanks for sharing!

When is the coffee table book coming out? :-)

Jim for president !  oh wait, too late.  

Thanks much for all those articles, comments, and messages. At the risk of sentiment, it does indeed become like family. TBH, the ski community is surprisingly welcoming, unlike some other expensive sports I could mention! 'Till we meet again !  

edit.  I just re-read that article on family ski trips and saw that old photo of my son Walker.  Now I'm getting sentimental thinking all those trips and details.  Oatmeal cookies forever!