Eastern skiers rule

So I've had this theory since I was like three years old. Most people call it crazy, but I call it right. I'm gonna let you in on it in a second, but I just have to warn you, this might ruffle a few feathers.

Eastern skiers are better than western skiers.

That's right kids. We up here in the land of ice, rock, and monstrously thin cover could teach all you pure powder skiers a thing or two.

You'll note, however, that I said eastern skiers are better, not eastern skiing. Important difference there. I love some pure eastern skiing as much as the next psychotic with a death wish, but there's no getting around the fact that it sucks.

The only problem that I have with my theory is that I've never been able to empirically test it. I've never actually been out west to the lands of nipple deep powder and eternal sunshine to see how well I stack up to skiers out there. But this will soon change, my friends, for I am headed to Jackson Hole over spring break, where I will put my finely tuned eastern abilities to the test. And I'm fairly confident that I'll come back vindicated, and will furiously laugh in the face of anybody who ever told me I was nuts.

But back to the theory. I suppose I should explain a little. I grew up skiing at Sugarloaf, that famous mother of a mountain in Maine that Amos Winter and the Bigelow Boys cut by hand back in 1951.

Now, when you cut a trail by hand in 1951, you couldn't really make it very wide. And since it took so damn long to cut a single trail, the trail you cut had better be fun. And fun means steep. And narrow. And windy. With big rocks.

And that first trail that they cut, Winter's Way, is still there today, and it's still as steep and narrow and windy as it ever was, just like the others that they cut shortly thereafter. And this is what we eastern skiers grew up on. Sure, modern technology has brought in some nice wide cruisers, but to be an eastern skier, you have to be able to ski the old classics.

But they have steep and narrow chutes out west. What makes the steep and narrows in the east so much different is the fact that there's hardly ever snow on them. Every now and then you get a pretty good dump, but for the most part, any classic eastern trail is going to be so hard packed and icy that it's essentially bulletproof. So you end up with about six to eight inches of rock solid cover, with rocks, sticks, and stumps poking out trying to get in your way.

Sound good to you westerners? Of course it doesn't. If you had conditions like that out west, you'd probably just spend the day inside, and wait for the sky to open up and pour about three more feet of delicious powder on your heads. We can't wait around for days like that here. If we do, we ski one, maybe two days a year. So we take what we've got. And we can't get enough of it.

Probably sounds crazy to a lot of people, but I love to navigate my way down a nauseatingly steep trail of what is essentially asphalt. And when you ski on this stuff your whole life, you get to be pretty good at it. There are eastern skiers who would gladly tear apart trails that a lot of people would consider unskiable. Not because of where it is, or how steep it is or anything like that, but because there's not really any snow on it.

Now, put that same eastern skier in three feet of fresh powder, and he probably falls flat on his face his first time down. But after adapting to skiing on a combination of rocks and ice for his entire life, don't you think he'd be able to get used to that powder pretty quick? My guess would be yes.

But on that same token, take a skier who has skied in nothing but fresh soft, luscious snow for his entire life -- no matter what kind of steeps he's skied or how filthy he is in the park -- and put him at the top of that shiny bulletproof lane of nonsense on some mountain in Maine, and how do you think things are going to turn out? Not so pretty. And my guess is that it would take a lot longer to get used to skiing on rocks than it would to get used to skiing in powder. Call me silly.

So there you have my theory. We can call it "Ethan's First Theory of the Universe." And keep in mind that it is just a theory, until I see some things for myself over spring break. Then it will be "Ethan's First Law of the Universe." I can't wait.