Life (and Daylight Savings Time!) got in the way of me completing my planned column on Sun Valley this week. So I’m recycling an old column that at least mentions Sun Valley, I’ll have a column dedicated to Sun Valley next week.
Have you ever suffered from chair-anoia? Chair-anoia is the fear of skiing under chairlifts because you think that people are watching you ski – no, make that judging your skiing! If you have ever experienced that fear, you were right: they were watching and judging your skiing ability. I believe chair-anoia is less prevalent today than in the Retro=Ski days. I don’t know if we have become a kinder, gentler skiing community or whether high speed lifts have somehow changed the dynamic. When I’m skiing Liftline under the FourRunner quad these days, I don’t sense the same peer pressure I felt when it was the old single and double chairs.
Liftline in the single chair days was a real test. There was no snowmaking or grooming so the upper pitch today gives you a flavor for what the whole trail was like. And over your head were some of the best skiers in the east watching your every turn. Certainly some of them were rooting for you to succeed, but there was that feeling that some were just waiting for you to screw up. If you did take a fall – particularly a spectacular fall – those suspicions were confirmed by the audible reaction from the chairs.
One of my favorite trails under a lift is Mall at Sugarbush which is under the Valley Quad chair. Mall doesn’t get the credit or traffic that its nearby neighbor Stein’s Run gets. That could be because it doesn’t have snowmaking and is narrower, but it could partly be because of chair-anoia. I always liked the moguls better on Mall than Stein’s. And when you had a good run, the audience overhead was a bonus!
Another of my favorites is the Chute at Mad River Glen. In keeping with Mad River’s Retro-Ski atmosphere, the upper Chute is a good old fashioned mogul run. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve skied it, but I’m betting those bumps are still tight. It was particularly fun in the Spring when you could take laps from the mid-station on the single chair. Since all Mad River skiers seem to prefer the woods, it’s hard to tell if chair-anoia is a factor for the reduced traffic on the Chute.
While we’re in the Mad River Valley, the Black Diamond Rush trail at Sugarbush’s Mount Ellen is a short, narrow, steep pitch under the summit chair. The last time I skied Mount Ellen, there weren’t enough people there for chair-anoia to be a factor. But back when that area was a separate ski area called Glen Ellen and the trail was called Scotch Mist, it could definitely cause chair-anoia . The old chairs were so low that you felt like you had to duck to avoid them.
Whenever I think of chair-anoia, I think of the Limelight run at Sun Valley. Those who have visited Sun Valley lately will say “Wait a minute, Limelight isn’t under a lift.” Oh, but it used to be. And unlike the Chute the bumps on Limelight were big! I was having an epic run down Limelight in eighteen inches of heavy powder and had forgotten completely that I was under a chair. In my euphoric state I launched a jump off a catwalk. When I landed, my skis sank into the powder and I pitched forward to plant my face in eighteen inches of heavy powder. I can still hear the roar from up-and-down the chair over my head.
By the way, in the late 1970s and early 80s, you didn’t want to be skiing on Limelight at about 2:30 in the afternoon, but you might have wanted to be riding up that chairlift. In those days Sun Valley was home to some of the best freestyle mogul skiers in the world and at about that time of day there was an informal gathering on Limelight which of course became an informal contest. It was an amazing show.
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