Cross Country Skiing

An Introduction to this wonderful winter pursuit

By Penny Trick

In the Winter of 1981-82 when I lived in Denver, I was dating a geologist/outdoorsman.  As the winter season approached he said, “You can either learn to cross country ski, or I’ll see you in the Spring.“

I said, “I think I’ll learn to cross country ski.”

While that relationship is long gone, my love for cross country skiing remains.

Now I live in CT where the conditions for cross country skiing are tenuous at best.  When it snows enough to make others want to stay off the roads, I put on my cross country skis and a backpack, and ski the neighborhood, often to the local grocery store.  My goal is to go out before everyone has plowed their driveway or used the snowblower on their side walks. Having to make a detour because someone is being conscientious about snow removal is very annoying.

I’ve always said, “If you can walk, you can cross country ski.”  In my mind, that’s how easy the sport really is.  Remember when your mother used to tell you to pick up your feet and stop shuffling?  Well, cross country skiing is just the opposite.  Once you are in your skis, you shuffle.  (To those of you who already know how to cross country ski, I know this is a bit inaccurate.)  The point I making here is that you don’t pick up your ski on each stride.  That is biggest mistake I see beginners making when they don’t take lessons.   It is also the reason I firmly believe that everyone should take lessons.

I’m an accomplished cross country skier, and I’m an ASIA certified Nordic instructor.  I’m certainly not the best in the world, but in downhill terms I ski the blue and black trails, and I can handle a black diamond.   In reality I don’t often do a black diamond Nordic skiing because I’m often skiing with companions who can’t quite handle it.   I got to be proficient very fast because of how I learned.   That geologist I was dating in Denver decided to teach a telemarking class.  He said I could come with his class as long as I didn’t get “wimplash.” 

“Wimplash” is best defined as any sort of whining or complaining while out cross country skiing.  So, I signed up and took a beginner’s cross country skiing class on Saturdays, and I went out with my boyfriend’s telemarking class on Sundays.  After a few weeks of doing this, I was the star pupil in the Saturday class and the one always bringing up the rear in the Sunday telemarking class.  Most of the Sunday students had been cross country skiing an average of three years and were as good as I am now.  And, most of them were men – I mean the outdoorsy jock-type men – you know, a Man’s man!  There were Sundays when I was just dying out there in the back country with these guys, but I knew I couldn’t complain because I would never get to go again – no wimplash for me!

So there I was cross country skiing every weekend.  I got up earlier on weekends then I did to go to work during the week.  I rented a different brand of telemark skis every weekend trying to find the perfect ones for me.  For those of you who don’t know the difference, telemark skis are cross country skis with metal edges and a side cut to help in turns. I tried to learn to telemark in the Sunday class along with all of those manly men, and I fell a lot.  In those days, we telemarked by dipping down so low that one knee was just inches off the ground next to the other foot. The result was that I usually landed on my metal edge. I wore more skirts than pants to work back then.  My co-workers would look at the bruises on the insides of my knees and beg me to give up that crazy sport. 

I knew I was growing to love the sport when we were skiing back to the car on one of my favorite trails – North Ten Mile in Frisco, CO.  It was a nice moderate downhill run with some snow flurries drifting through the trees. I was thinking how perfect the scenery was and how wonderful it was to just sit back and ride my skis, when I came up on another woman in the telemarking class.  She was tired and struggling and with an attack of wimplash she said, “Don’t you just hate skiing in these blizzard conditions?”

Unlike that woman, the bottom line is that I learned to cross country ski and telemark in the same year.  My Saturday instructor was so impressed that the following year he invited me to come back and help teach his beginner’s class. He said he had never met anyone else who learned to telemark in their first year of cross country skiing.  I was very flattered. I wasn’t out to prove anything; I just wanted to get some exercise and spend some time with my boyfriend.  (By the way, after we broke up, I dated another geologist I met in the telemarking class.) 

Perhaps because of the way I learned, I have developed a “stop and smell the roses” attitude toward cross country skiing.  I tell my students that you can go as fast or as slow as you want. The real goal is to enjoy the scenery and what you are doing. When downhill skiers tell me cross country skiing is too much work, I tell them it doesn’t have to be.  I consider myself a very lazy skier.  That’s why it drives me nuts to see beginners making it harder than it has to be. I know that I only need 7 degrees of downhill slope to not have to do a kick and glide.  I just sit back and ride with my knees slightly bent and my weight forward.  I don’t deal with crowded lift lines, expensive lunches (usually bringing my own in a daypack), dangerous out of control skiers, and all of the other problems at the downhill slopes.

Every year our ski club participates in a cross country race against the other ski clubs in the CT Ski Council.    I’ve only done that race once. Quite frankly, I just don’t understand the need to go fast on cross country skis.  But if others want to do it, I’ll support them.  So, I run the cross country race: getting a course laid out, manning the stop watch, and tallying the results (since we base the winner on the fastest man and woman’s times combined).

Turn off the remote, get off the couch, strap on some cross country skis and take a beginner’s lesson.  Enjoy yourself!  After you learn the basic techniques, it’s just a matter of practice.  

Penny Trick spent many years as a housing attorney and now counsels homeowners facing foreclosure.  She is a member of Mt. Laurel Skiers in New Britain, CT and is certified to teach Cross Country Skiing through  ASIA the Amateur Ski Instructors Association.