Humble Pie: How to Ruin Your Own Fun with Mindset Error

 It’s a Friday night in late March and I’m leaning against the kitchen counter, scrolling through OpenSnow, NOAA, and Windy. I groan.  

“A low vis weekend? Again?” 

I shake my head, kissing any hope of a steep or technical day goodbye. Looks like it’ll be mellow trees, take 25.  

If it’s not one thing, it’s been another. All season. The weather, the avalanche conditions, visitors, illness, work obligations, the at-the-drop-of-a-hat hustle required to try to buy a house, the constant FOMO of living in a new place and not having the go-to zones dialed yet… you name it. 

As I try to come up with a Plan B, I feel the stress and pressure that’s been plaguing me all season descending like low clouds in an alpine basin. You moved to Alaska, you’re supposed to be skiing rad stuff all the time. You work with ski brands, are you even doing anything worthy of those partnerships? You’re going to walk away from this winter with no writing material. All the new ski partners you’re trying to make will think you don’t really get after it. 

With an inner monologue like that, it’s shocking I’m not having a great time. I spend the rest of the night pouting and scrolling through pictures on the internet of people who can ski on sunny weekdays thinking it must be nice. 

* * *  

The next day we huff it up the few hundred feet of the same mellow tree zone on the Kenai Peninsula we’ve skied at least ten times this season, and I feel completely uninspired. I move more slowly through the switchbacks than usual, saddled with the weight of unmet expectations and other people’s opinions. I don’t pay attention to the adorable snow-laden hemlocks, to the pleasant breeze permeating my sun hoody, to the presence of my life and adventure partner in front of me–I’m in my head, and I’m mad. 

I sit in Girdwood Brewing afterward, sipping an IPA and hate-scrolling through Strava, unable to resist looking at everyone else’s superior activities and feeling bad about myself. My partner Andy, a much more well-adjusted human than I am when it comes to this, taps my leg with his foot and raises his eyebrows, willing me to snap out of it. 

“Are the conditions the problem, or is it you?” He asks me. 

I groan, knowing he’s right. “I think there’s a whole pop song about this.” 

On the car ride home, as I gaze out the window at the steely water in Turnagain arm, chunks of frozen mud jutting up from the shoreline as the tide comes back in. What do I need to do differently?

Spending less time paying attention to what other people are doing seems like an obvious first step, especially if I can’t rustle up the magnanimity to just be stoked for or inspired by them. And then there’s releasing the paralyzing fear of missing out–knowing that there are a million choices to make on a weekend day and I can’t be doing everything at once. 

Holding myself to unrealistic expectations probably isn’t helping either. I’m learning new mountains and have a full-time in-person job. I won’t be able to be at the right place at the right time every bluebird powder day. Wasting energy wishing things were different is another thing I’ll need to let go of. If it’s low vis, I can lean into other activities instead of bemoaning the techy skiing I can’t do. 

My eyes catch on the snowy peaks across the arm on the Kenai Peninsula, standing tall and steady. They’ll still be there, some other day. 

* * *

Another weekend rolls around and I have plans to ski with Andy and my cousin Joe. Nothing specific–as is typical in Southcentral Alaska, we’ll look at the weather and snowpack in the three main ski zones and decide where to go the night before. 

Chugach Front Range, AK  Photo: Joe Connolly (@chugachpeaksphotography)

We decide to give the Chugach Front Range a go–the mountains that watch over Anchorage but are so rarely in good condition to be skied because of the high winds that characterize the local weather pattern. Today, though, the forecast is partly cloudy with manageable winds of only a few miles per hour. We skin out from the Glen Alps trailhead with no particular plan–just the day open ahead of us and all the gear we need for whatever kind of spring mission we could get into. 

This approach has been something I’m testing out–going into the day with an open mind and a buffet of options rather than rigid objectives and narrow expectations. We skin up Little O’Malley gully and gain the ridge, looking toward False Peak, a prominence to the east. It’s something I’ve skied several times already, but today it looks tantalizingly filled in and untouched. 

The sun is poking through the clouds, I’m with two of my most trusted ski partners, and my body feels healthy and strong. When I focus on that, there’s less space to ruminate on what other people are out doing today, or feel bummed about the fact that I’ve already skied this line. It feels nice to thoughtfully navigate through the rocky outcroppings along the ridge and feel the sun on my cheeks and laugh with my people. 

We arrive at the notch beneath the summit block and start to transition. Before my brain can be flooded with how many miles I’ll upload to Strava, or the pictures I’ll post to Instagram, or what everyone else might be doing today, I simply take in the expanse of white below me, and feel excited to arc a few turns across the landscape. Stay here, I will myself, knowing that remaining in this mental place of the simple joy brought on by movement is the key to all of this. 

I click into my bindings, and quiet my mind. Sun glinting in the sky, rock walls towering up above me, soft snow beneath my skis, breeze on my face. I stay there, letting everything else fall away, and drop in.

Chugach Front Range, AK  Photo: Joe Connolly (@chugachpeaksphotography)