100 Days in a Row of Skiing: Part 3, the How, Logistical Edition
Some days, everything was easy.
The reason I initially chose to attempt to ski 100 days in a row was that in the last few years, I had been making less time for skiing, so I wanted to give that back to myself. And the irony of that was that after committing to ski 100 days in a row, I needed to figure out how, actually, to make the time to go skiing every day.
Skiing is my job—you would think that would at least make part of it easy, like five days a week easy or something like that. However, as with any passion that becomes a job, as my job has evolved into a career, there are a lot more of the “professional” parts of being a professional skier that have crept in, and not in a bad way. It’s good for me that I take the job part of my job seriously even though it can take a bit of the skier part away. In addition, as I’ve gotten older and chosen more responsibilities, my life has been enriched and fulfilled in ways beyond skiing, which naturally has meant less time for simply skiing.
My logistical challenges for the 100 days can be grouped into three main categories: travel, work, and life. And my solutions—the way I was able to work around all of the challenges—also mainly fit into three categories that I can call: luck, help, and planning. The emphasis there is on the luck and the help, which came from others, because many times the planning, which was mostly on me, was poor.
It takes a lot of support! Here are my main supporters.
Part of my job consists of traveling—skiers need to follow the snow. I had a film project I was working on, and several events to be at throughout the winter as part of my sponsorship contracts. I made sure to schedule flights and trips where I could reasonably be expected to ski—for example, I got two separate invites to Japan (honestly, I haven’t been invited to Japan in years, and all of a sudden I planned to ski 100 days in a row and I got two invites?!), and I said no. It was for multiple reasons (long travel away from my family, scheduling, etc.), but also, there’s no way to do 30 hours of travel and not miss a day of skiing. Instead, I picked West coast spots (which, besides maybe Europe, are my favorite places to ski anyway). I went to Alaska twice, skiing at Alyeska with my family and filming, and again just for filming, and was able to get up super early at 3am and ski before we left, then make a flight on the way home where I could ski at Stevens Pass on the drive home. If for some reason the flight was delayed and we missed the lifts turning, I was planning to do a late-night ski tour. I had backup plans.
Once, when traveling to Haines, we were informed while in Juneau on a layover that the flight was delayed. I was absolutely sure we had time to go ski at Eaglecrest, the local ski area—plus I had heard good things and was excited to check it out. I dragged along Anne Cleary, filmmaker and willing friend, and we caught an Uber to the ski area, an hour away. We skied in the rain and I was having so much fun in the mushy skiing that I got greedy and made us do two more runs. Then, we discovered that there’s no service at the base to get an uber. We got the wifi, wasting precious minutes, and then realized that no uber was willing to come get us. The little wheel just kept spinning, looking for drivers. We called a taxi, the service cutting out multiple times before we connected, and then waited a half an hour for him to show up. At this point, our flight was supposed to leave in 50 minutes and we had an hour drive.
The dogs know; you just get on that trail every day and go!
Anne was trying to be nice but I had really messed things up at this point. Our friend Vasu called from the airport. “Where are you guys? They are calling your name and loading the bags!” Uh oh. My only hope for not totally blowing it had been that the flight would be further delayed or even cancelled due to weather—but the fact that they were loading the bags did not bode well. We explained the situation to our taxi driver and he hit the gas; I immediately regretted telling him we were late as his old mini-van bottomed out on the frost heaves in the road and we bounced along. He welcomed the speed challenge. We made it to the airport exactly one minute after the flight was due to leave, and raced in, sweaty and soaking wet in our ski gear. They grabbed our bags with annoyance and slight amusal, returning one minute later to announce that the flight was cancelled until tomorrow. “Ha ha!” I yelled, victoriously. This was not actually what we wanted—we wanted to be in Haines for the following day, which could potentially be a good weather filming day. But I had skied for day 80, and that meant a lot at that point.
The work challenges were on the days where I had an event that took up the whole day but didn’t actually involve skiing—mainly teaching and taking avalanche classes, working towards higher avalanche safety and instruction credentials. Every time, though, I managed to teach or work or study all day and then sneak in one or two runs—just enough vert—to make it count. Those were some of my most fun days—skiing in the dark, I felt like I was getting a bit of a connection back to my wild, younger times when I put skiing above everything, sleep, rest, eating, comfort. Being out with a headlamp on, solo in a storm, not in any real danger but still feeling wild, were some of my best moments, because it helped me see that that girl is still in me, the one who loves skiing and adventure, and also wants to be responsible. It helped me see that there can be room here for all of us.
Jessica Baker, our guide on one of the easier days, in Alaska.
The life stuff was the hardest: times when I wanted to be with my family but felt I had to prioritize skiing. That happens anyways, because skiing is a job that requires travel and long days, chasing the whims of the weather. That is often at odds with the stability and routine of family life. Various times of being sick, or missing out on family events, or missing bedtimes—this was hard on my psyche. But seeing how much everyone still thrived, it helped me realize that it’s okay and even important to make time for what I love, too. Just being me out in the world is a good thing, even though I’m also now part of a bigger, more important unit.
And the things that all made it happen were, in this order, help, luck, and planning.
The help was mostly my husband and my parents, but also my kids being game to ski with me, and countless friends who showed up and skied with me in heinous conditions—another of my favorite parts. I’ve skied a lot in Alaska, and it’s some of the best skiing on earth and certainly some of the best that I’ve ever experienced. However, I spent nine days there during the spring of my 100 days and we only got out in the helicopter to film on two of those days. That meant I had seven days of skiing from sea level in Haines. Luckily, it was a big snow year and there was snow on the ground. Unluckily, the snow was isothermal to the ground, basically 6-8 feet of wet mush, swallowing skis, legs, and humans with impunity. It was ridiculous to hike through and ridiculous to ski. Then, temperatures cooled off and all of that mush froze, into chunks and ridges and blocks and ice. Possibly even more ridiculous to ski! And scary. But hilarious and fun, and I had some awesome hikes and conversations and loud skiing down with friends and dogs through the bushes in the Alaskan forests.
Type two fun with friends!
Our youngest daughter was not yet in school, and we hadn’t found a good childcare solution for her (partly our fault for traveling in the fall and missing one chance on a waitlist, and mainly due to the demand for early childhood care and education where we live—we were on multiple waitlists and did not get in to any program), so we were running her to a short morning pre-school a few days a week, then at one point taking her between that school and another, although then finally a few miraculous teachers stepped up, a bus was arranged, and she had a solution three days a week to go from one preschool to the other. My husband could work! I could work! This was amazing. It didn’t happen until mid-March, though, so for the two and a half months prior, we relied on a mix of my folks and my husband and me, which meant my husband couldn’t work as much as he wanted, and he didn’t ski very much. Color me selfish, and guilty. He was a trooper, though, and a super-supporter.
The luck part was that we had a good snow year here and our local ski hill was open until mid-March, which was my real ace in the hole. I thought it was part of my good planning—”I’ll be able to do this because we have this awesome spot 8 minutes away that I can always ski at!”—but then this past winter we had a poor snow year and ski hill was only actually open and skiable for less than five weeks. That’s when I realized that I had truly lucked out that I chose 2023 as the year to do it.
I would absolutely encourage everyone to do their own quest-streak, for any passion or hobby—and I would recommend planning for something that is reasonable expected to succeed, with a 25% wild card factor. That means maybe 75% will come down to hard work and commitment, and the rest will be up to luck and asking for help. I think this ratio is truly what helped me—that and having amazing help!
Extra sunscreen helps!
