Finn Sisu
On that sunday morning I was spending some time reflecting on choices I had made. At that moment, I was just off the summit road at Allegheny State Park, dry and somewhat comfortable in a blue plastic rental toilet listening to the rain pounding on the roof. And in January, in the waning minutes before the Art Roscoe cross country ski race, that rain was not a welcome sound. But hanging around a public bathroom reflecting on choices has a short half life. As I gathered my things to leave, the sound on the roof changed as the rain turned to ice. A cold front had come up over the hill from Salamanca or Bradford or wherever those things are stored, and my exit, blinking in the light, was into a winter wonderland. Which was most unwelcome. Allow me to digress, just this once, please.
Cross country skis work by gaining purchase on the snow through application of kick wax under the skier’s foot. The sort of wax one uses depends on the temperature and structure of the snow. I have an old metal tool box with all sorts of waxes that I have been lugging around for decades, some seldom used like Swix Polar, and some that have never worked yet, but may yet work some future day like Rode Universal. Given it had been warm and raining all night, the wax choice was dead simple. I needed a very sticky wax to adhere to the rounded crystals of the wet, melted snow. I needed to reach for the nuclear option, red klister in a tube. Kilister is kind of nasty stuff, similar to tree sap in a metal toothpaste tube, it is applied with a blowtorch and later removed with solvent. It sticks to everything. But Klister has a dark side, and in addition to being a messy nuisance if a skier encounters fresh fluffy snow, the bottom of the ski will ice up and grind to a stop, becoming snowshoes. Not a great selling point. You can stop and scrape and maybe put some different wax over top of the klister, but invoking that saint of lost causes might be just as effective. And swearing a lot doesn’t work either. I hear.
So everyone made the obvious choice and gunked on some red klister and sat in the car and watched the rain and complained about another race with tough conditions. But we made a choice and in truth none would want to be home on the sofa or cleaning something or doing whatever it is people do on Sunday morning. And then the cold front came through and the tracks began to fill with great big lovely flakes. As the promoter called us to the line, we held our besotted skis up and shrugged to each other. The gods had won this round, we had made choices, and they were not the best choices.
Art Roscoe was a state ranger who was instrumental in developing the trail system in the park in the 1970’s. Before the park was established in the 1920’s, the southern tier and Pennsylvania area were a busy rail corridor with multiple lines running through the park. The first trail established in the system was an old narrow gauge track that ran from the Civilian Conservation Corps camp to the summit, creating a four mile bench cut up the hillside. The railroad was used for logging the forest, and a skier today will notice all the maples are the same diameter, sprouting from the smoking stumps of the clear cut hillsides of the late 1800’s. This trail was upgraded and named after the railroad’s operator, Otis Patterson. At the bottom of the trail, the Bova Ski Slopes were cleared in the 1930’s, with a long 1000 foot rope tow servicing three hills up until the early 1980’s. I can only imagine riding up an icy 1000 foot tow rope, sorry I missed my chance. A hiker can still find the old bull wheel and some towers in the woods as the trees and primary forest start to overtake what must have been a special place for multiple generations. So many memories, now filling in like footprints in a snowstorm.
In November of 1939, the Soviets dispatched troops to liberate Finland, telling the recruits they would be hailed as heroes and not to bother with a bunch of stuffy winter uniforms. The Finns thought otherwise and spent that bitter winter inflicting heavy casualties on the invaders, swooping down from the forest on their skis, flinging bottles of flaming gasoline into the air intakes of the Soviet tanks, the first use of the Molotov Cocktail. The soviets did finally prevail but the Finnish ski troops proved to be heroes, true nordic badasses. Funnily enough, the Finns were aligned with the Nazis for a time later in the war in an attempt to regain land lost to the Soviets. And just two months ago, Finland became the 31st. flag to fly in solidarity with NATO. What a ride
As the US entered the war, the success of the Finns brought interest in training our own elite ski troops. The 10th Mountain division was originally housed at Camp Hale in Colorado, where they trained at altitude, skiing up and down the mountains, blowing things up, and sleeping out in the cold. They saw little service in the early part of the war and were finally deployed to Italy where they proved to be true elite mountain fighters in the twilight of the war. But they never put those skis on
In the peace following the last war to end all wars, America fell in love with skiing. Northland army surplus skis in one shade of white flooded the market, with lace up leather boots and cable bindings
The skis had a cut out on the tip to allow climbing skins to attach for skiing up hills, they had metal edges to hold fast on the downhills and the heels of the boots could lift off the ski to allow for nordic striding, and for the bold, ski jumping
Best keep the orthopedic doctor on speed dial. The skis of the day were good for doing anything, badly. Daredevils dressed up in wool and used the cross country trails in the park, took to the downhill slopes and launched off the 30 meter jump down by the current Redhouse Lake. What a magic time that must have been, we survived a war and a depression and finally, as a nation, the wind was under our wings. I have some old pictures of my parents from that time, two southerners enjoying a taste of snow at Big Bear, what a priceless memory.
Back at the start, we made peace with our choices and set off on the course. Nobody wants to lead and risk icing up the klister, but one skier, my friend Dan, had these fancy no-wax racing skis that he had been droning on about, so off he went, protected from icing and happy to be at the pointy end. In time the track iced in and Dan was left for dead and the race sort of began in earnest, but the ice stripped the klister away and we were left to double pole the last 15 miles, up and down the hills Art Roscoe lovingly designed a generation before. And soon, it was done and the sodden plastic boots were off, and there were snacks, and excuses, and someone won a cup
And so, this weekend finds me back at the summit to do a mountain bike race around the same trails, probably my 25th time. My one heart chamber doesn’t work so great, so when I go hard it doesn’t deliver the goods very well, and I sit up and ease off and just try to have patience with myself.
I am trying to bend toward being at peace with being a participant, a mid pack finisher. I am trying to let the last bits of pride slip away and just embrace the experience. Finding gratitude in my 61st. year that I have so many gifts in this life, and that those gifts are fireflies in a jar. And I’m left to think of all those choices over all those years. And the gratitude for the love in my life makes me feel a few choices were, in fact, good ones. Sisu