When I ski someplace I'm less familiar with I look for a local or mountain employee to interrogate. So I was happy when I looked over and the third passenger on A lift at Windham was wearing a name tag. "Hey you work here right?" She affirmed that she did. "Where should we be skiing today?" She asked what level skiers we were. My son said intermediate. Damn, I thought, he's low balling. " he skis black diamonds at the little mountains" I added.
"Oh yeah. Don't worry. The black diamonds here are really more like blues" she said "they're pretty wide so you can make lots of turns back and forth if it gets too steep."
Not very specific and it fed into my preconceived notions. Amongst my crowd, Windham is thought of as a genteel, manicured playground for people willing to fork over big money for luxury condos, white tablecloth service and valet parking. Lots of wide, groomed blues and nothing too interesting. Then again, that's good some times. Bringing up a young skier is a delicate thing. Windham seemed like a good place for my son to challenge himself and build confidence. We started with a run called Wraparound. It was fun. The snow was a little hard but edgeable. I skied fast, checking to make sure my son was keeping up. He looked good.
On our second run we went right and poled/ skated across a flat area to a trail called Windfall. It was represented on the map by a diamond inside a blue square so I figured it was a good step up for my son. There was one steeper pitch near the top, the rest was a nice blue cruiser but it turned out to defy my prejudices about Windham. It was not so wide and followed a nice, twisting route that was almost New Englandy. The snow was better too. I found my way down to B lift, an old fixed double that brought us back to the top of Windfall, which was great because my son had fallen in love with the trail.
On our next run, we saw a guy skinning UP Windfall on AT gear. The Earn-Your-Turns ethic has spread even to Windham. I nodded to him in admiration, pointed it out to my son and kept moving, concentrating on my own bought-and-paid-for turns. We kept lapping B lift and Windfall for a while. Finally, I pulled junior away to go explore the east side of the resort.
The lines were building at the base area lifts. On the drive up I'd explained the singles line strategy to my son. We jumped on separate chairs and were back up top in a jiff, traversing left to a trail called Wolf's Prey. Turned out to be pretty cool, narrower, steeper with a hook to the right a third of the way down. I thought for a second I'd gotten my kid in over his head when he rocketed past me but he held it together and got himself to the bottom. We explored around G lift on that side of the mountain for the rest of the morning. My son wiped out pretty good on a trail called Wingin' It, a double ejection face plant. He bounced right back.
As we ate lunch, I asked my son what he thought about the place and what he wanted to do that afternoon. "I really liked Windfall." He answered, "Can we just ride B lift and do Windfall the rest of the day?" Okay with me. That's what we did; one more ride on the high speed quad and then we treated B lift like it belonged to us until it closed. Overall, conditions were pretty good. Temps were about forty. So on balance, if was a satisfying day. Windham surpassed my expectations and turned out to be a great place for an budding tween skier to spread his wings.
"You want your skis? Go get 'em!" -W. Miller
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