First tracks — ever

Fresh snow and bright winter mornings lure powder hounds to Vermont in numbers that allow us to mine a decent living out of the mountains.

But personally, I never felt the pull.

Yet, there I was on a Thursday morning, at Stowe Mountain Resort, putting on a pair of skis for the first time, and nervous.

I was there for a story on how resorts work to convert first-time skiers to return-trippers. If you didn’t grow up skiing — and I didn’t — it can look pretty intimidating. Not just the skiing, but the atmosphere — mammoth SUVs topped with Thule pods, pricey performance clothing, and all that jargon: ski bums, shredders, first chair.

But it’s crucial to get people like me on the mountain, said Mike Colbourn, Stowe Mountain Resort’s vice president of marketing, sales and communication.

“For the last 30 to 35 years, it’s been 49 million to 54 million skiers visiting New England resorts per year. It’s been a fairly flat market,” Colbourn said. “People come into the sport and people leave the sport. Are we gaining skiers? Are we losing skiers?”

It’s hard to say, but resorts believe it’s in their best interest to make it easy for people to give the sport a try.

“We have a responsibility to make sure that the skiing business stays viable and healthy,” he said.

So, there I was. I won’t lie: I was apprehensive.

It’s so easy to envision breaking a leg or getting lost on an icy mountain with nothing but a pair of rental skis with which to build a shelter, subsisting on pine needles and the occasional dropped mitten — humanity’s final calling card.

You have to try, right?

I grew up in St. Johnsbury, and we did have half-day winter sports programs at school on Fridays, but when the other kids were lugging their skis, I was begging my skating-instructor mother to join my classmates and me at the ice rink so I could show her off.

Skiing wasn’t foreign to me. Skis, poles, gravity. My brother used to ski and snowboard all winter long, but, timid, I stuck to my rink, first with my mother, later with friends and boyfriends.

And then I came to Stowe. Stowe is a place in Vermont, but it’s also an awe-inspiring global destination resort, the Ski Capital of the East, the god perching atop Mount Mansfield and raining down tourism, business and national acclaim.

If you’re in Stowe, how can you not ski? Or, at least try?

Dave Merriam, director of mountain experiences, had been assigned to shepherd me through my first ski lesson.

Merriam waved away my fears with a cheerful smile and I let his enthusiasm carry me out of the rental shop, laden with skis and poles, struggling to walk in clunky, stiff ski boots. I noticed as I clomped along that Merriam’s ski-boot walk was smoother and more chiropracticed than mine, but just as loud.

Merriam, a Hanover, N.H., native who grew up in Maine, told me he’s been skiing his whole life. In 1978, he started working at Sugarloaf Mountain, and a decade later, he came to Stowe as a ski instructor and never left. Now, he’s director of mountain recreation. Merriam says he’s taught only twice so far this season; I’m one of those lessons.

He told me these things as we lined up in a nearly flat, netted-in area that he called “Ground School.”

“This is where we’ll start,” Merriam said as toddlers zoomed past us on skis the size of piano keys, fearless. “What other sports do you do?”

His face lit up when I told him about ice skating.

“Excellent. So you already have experience with no traction,” Merriam said.

Most adults who try skiing get psyched out by the feeling of sliding, Merriam explained. Accepting the fact that, on skis, movement necessitates a certain amount of give to gravity and friction is the first mental hurdle new skiers face.

“Some people do more with eye-hand” coordination, Merriam said, which is great for sports like baseball, but to ski, the connection between your brain and your feet needs to be tight and responsive. “A lot of what a ski instructor does is show people how to move their bodies in certain ways.”

Overcoming the jitters

Merriam had me strap on one ski at a time and make Xs in the snow by crisscrossing the ski’s track, one foot at a time, before declaring my eye-foot coordination “strong,” thanks to my experience on skates.

I was happily making Xs when a girl, arms out at her sides, came crashing through the netting at ground school, her boyfriend following closely behind, trying to help her stay up. Merriam helped her up and the couple skied away.

After we glided around at ground school for about 20 minutes, Merriam took me up the Magic Carpet, a sort of moving uphill walkway, to a gentle slope where a pack of 9-year-olds and this intrepid reporter learned to turn our way downhill and to control our speed. A few runs later, Merriam slapped me a high five and said I was ready for the chairlift.

“What do you love about this? About skiing?” I asked Merriam as we rode up, skis weighing my ankles as we dangled them from the chair.

“About skiing?” He thought for a moment. “The solitude. There are times when it’s just you up there. ... I love the feeling of the G forces, like when you’re cornering in a car. It’s the sensation of it. It’s like you’re flying, gliding, you’re just kind of floating,” Merriam said.

It didn’t happen the first time we skied down the Adventure trail together, painstakingly turning as slowly as possible past the imposing Spruce Peak real estate, because I was holding onto my ski poles for dear life. But the second time, when I felt comfortable with the lift and I’d survived my first run, it happened.

I fell — in love.

It started with just a low laugh when Merriam asked if I was ready for my second run, but it bubbled into a whoop of joy. I got it! This is fun!

We kept going, turning less, boosting our speed, and after a while it did, it really did feel like flying.

A good start

Merriam pointed out back at the base lodge that, if we’d had a different experience, if I’d fallen or if I’d tried to learn on my own, I might not have wanted to get back out there.

That’s key to the resort’s approach when it comes to new adult skiers: Make sure they have a good time.

Colbourn remembered the busy December holiday weekend when he came across a father and his young son trooping toward a Mansfield lift.

“‘He’s going to learn to ski today,’” Colbourn remembered the father saying. “He was going to take him up the Fourrunner Quad. It was chilly. I said, ‘You should get on the Over Easy and get on back to the carpet lift and to Adventure,’ and that’s what they ended up doing. ... It could have been disastrous; that kid could have grown up to hate skiing for the rest of his life. That’s how fragile our business is.”

January is Learn to Ski Month, and so this month in particular caters to new skiers.

“We do a program with Vermont Ski Areas Association” that offers a package for first-time learners, including lessons and rentals, Merriam said, to encourage first-time skiers.

But the resort already lures quite a few. Of the group lessons booked through the resort’s Ski and Snowboard School, Merriam estimates 30 percent of the folks enrolled are first-timers.

Reactions, he says, “run the total spectrum, from ‘Omigosh, I’m so excited,’ to ‘This is my first time in winter.’”

One or two in a group of eight virgin skiers won’t even make it from ground school to the Magic Carpet, Merriam said. Half of them make it up the chairlift.

People who come to the resort as guests know that skiing is a big part of its offerings, Merriam said, but 40 to 50 percent of guests don’t ski at all.

The focus on new skiers is not just on getting them to try the sport; it’s getting them to love it.

“If we have a bunch of people try the sport, how many are going to be avid skiers, or at least come back once a year?” Merriam said. “The key isn’t so much getting people to discover the sport as retaining them. If your first experience is crashing into a building, you won’t want to come back. To mitigate those risks, it’s helpful to have coaching.”

“We have some phenomenal instructors up here at the resort,” Colbourn said.

Teaching adults

Learning to ski as an adult is different from being hauled to the slopes with your parents as a kid, and so coaching techniques will differ.

“Adults have had a lot of other experiences they can relate to,” Merriam said. “Kids aren’t fearless. They have different concerns. They’re afraid of falling, or of being left behind.”

But “they don’t fear failure like adults do. They’re willing to try something. ... Adults can be reluctant, since it’s an adventure sport.”

Ultimately, though, even adults who fear failure but who have the desire to give skiing or snowboarding a go will try it once.

“We don’t have a problem getting them to try,” Merriam said. “It’s about conversion. Rather than a bucket list thing, we want them to realize, ‘Wow, this is an unbelievably cool sensation.’”

Merriam refers to the girl who’d crashed through the netting back at ground school. “Get a coach, not your boyfriend or your husband or your girlfriend or your wife,” he advised first-time skiers.

It’s more than just the rush of navigating a steep and challenging slope. “It’s the connection to the environment. You’re reconnecting with nature,” Merriam said. “There’s the camaraderie. It’s fun to do together. It can be a real family sport, something everyone can do. It’s not like golf. You can take your 5-year-old, your 9-year-old, your uncle and your grandpa. There are very few sports that are like that.

“And at the end of the day, it’s a great feeling,” Merriam said. “That end-of-the-day glow is a natural high.”

Merriam’s parting note was a shot at the “clubby,” cliquey feeling some ski groups can have.

“You need someone to help break down those barriers, because it can feel like a sorority,” he said. “Once you’re in it, you become passionate, and before you know it, you have your own stuff in the corner.”

When I got home, I plugged “downhill beginner skis” into Craigslist. I’m planning to have my own stuff in the corner.