Photo from NELSAP.ORG
When we were in elementary school, even before then, my sister and I skied at Sky Hy. Officially the name was Sky Hy Ski Area but everyone just called it Sky Hy. The elevation at the base was 100 feet above sea level and the elevation at the top of the hill was 300 feet. Do the math, this was not a big hill. If there was anything in the name then it was tomfoolery as Sky Hy was clearly not reaching for any High Sky. We lived close to the ocean so it often rained at Sky Hy when it snowed farther inland at the big mountains. The trails all faced south. The season was short. But it was close to home and easy to get to so that is where we skied.
Sky Hy boasted ten trails, though I never knew all ten to be open at any one time. There was the obligatory Tote Road, that was nearly flat and meandered through the woods; Little Dipper, an intermediate trail with a ledge part way down that the cool kids jumped off; and Big Dipper, the one “expert” trail which fell in a straight line from the doorstep of the lodge to a pond at the bottom of the trail. In the spring when the pond thawed, high schoolers and guys from the air base would bomb down Big Dipper trying to gain enough speed to water-ski across the pond. Most attempts ended in spectacular crashes either before or within the pond but once in a while someone would glide gracefully all the way across to the other side to the cheers of anyone watching.
Mom taught skiing at Sky Hy on weekends and some school nights. We’d arrive in our Volvo station wagon; my mother, sister and I would lug our stuff to the lodge, put on our ski boots, hats, coats and mittens, and then stuff our shoes under one of the picnic tables before heading out. My mother’s classes lasted about an hour or so and while she did her lessons, my sister and I ventured off to ski on our own. We knew a lot of the regulars so we had no trouble finding friends to ski with and, importantly, to ride with back to the top on the T-bar. The T-bar, purchased second-hand from a mountain that upgraded to the new chairlifts, was a cruel instrument that regularly lifted lighter riders well into the air. If you were practiced you could stay on the bar if you kept the tips of your skis in the tracks of the snow. Sometimes, if you got lucky, right before getting dumped (and after being lifted off the ground), you might be able to hold on by wrapping your arms around the T. Of course the rest of your body would be kind of dragged up the hill. Whether you could make it to the top, being dragged through the snow while holding onto cold steel, depended where you were on the route and how strong you were. Sometimes you might manage to get the bar under your butt — those were lucky moments. More than once the bar lifted me up, spun me around, and threw me to the ground. If you fell off the bar you had to scramble out of the way quickly before the next rider caught up to you. It was not uncommon for a rider to fall and then take down the next two or three riders as skis got tangled. The big kids in junior high, who were heavy enough to stay on the ground, loved to make fun of the little kids who got dumped off the T-bar.
By the time we were in fourth or fifth grade Maddy and I were racing in a circuit that took us to ski areas across Maine. In the fever of regular competition and with an overwhelming desire to look the part I lobbied hard for ski gloves - not mittens. I’d point to a poster of Jean Claude Killy, four-time Olympic gold medalist. He wore gloves. Billy Kidd. He wore gloves. You cannot race in mittens. So my mother indulged me with gloves.
But at Sky Hy we always wore mittens, and always leather mittens, because at Sky Hy, in addition to the T-bar, there was a rope tow. Anyone who has ridden a rope tow knows that few things can trash a nice pair of fancy gloves like the friction caused by a rope sliding through your palms as you start the trip up the hill on a rope tow. My mother insisted on leather mittens. Our rope tow was powered by an old truck that sat on blocks at the top of the bunny slope. The truck faced down the hill so the guy driving the truck, and controlling the speed of the tow, could see people coming up the hill. He would wave through the windshield like he was driving past us.
In high school I did not ski as much as much but my mother bought me a pair of leather mittens in the fall when the weather started to cool regardless. “You’ll want these,” she said. With all the wisdom and vanity of an adolescent I never wore the mittens to school or places where people might see me. But when I had to stack wood, or shovel snow from the deck, or when I went sledding down the driveway, I wore the mittens. They were grey buckskin on the outside and some faux wool on the inside. They were called three-fingered gloves because there was a spot for the thumb, a spot for the index finger and a third spot for the middle, ring and pinky fingers. I think for a while L.L. Bean sold these as shooter’s gloves, the single index finger being available to pull a trigger, but I am not sure. What was obvious was that having the index finger available was extremely useful for lots of tasks. The L. L. Bean three-fingered buckskin glove combined the warmth of the mitten with the utility of the glove. It was perfect. Over forty years later I still have the three-fingered gloves - the same pair of gloves I had in high school. I can still read the “SW” mom wrote in black ink on the strap to distinguish my gloves from by father’s (SSB), my sister’s (MB) and her own (SKB).
I recently watched a newscast highlighting the delights of some local ski area run completely by volunteers. It was a tiny hill somewhere in New Hampshire where the one lift is a rope tow. I thought of my mother when the reporter said, “and make sure you wear leather mittens.”
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