Here's to one more: The "Last Ski of the Season"

Here’s to one more: the “last ski of the season”

Back on March 20, I packed my bags in Sjusjøen, Norway. Guests on Lumi’s Norway Birken trip had finished the Birken a few days earlier. I stayed in Sjusjøen for a little skiing on my own and to develop a new private group trip for 2025. With bags packed, I stood at the bus stop in Sjusjøen thinking that this morning’s ski would be my last ski of the season. It’s March 20. Time for bike season, right? Not quite…

A memorial service brought me to northern Maine later that week. Many of my winters as a ski racer ended in Aroostook County for Spring Series. After a winter with very little snow in northern Maine, we drove north through a blizzard and were rewarded with bluebird skies and fresh powder the next day. A beautiful day for the last ski of the season.

By the time we returned to Innsbruck in early April, it felt like spring had arrived with warm, sunny days and dry roads for biking. Still, we couldn’t pass up an invitation for a weekend of skiing in Seiser Alm (site of Lumi’s most popular sight-skiing trip) with trip leaders Krissi and Raphi. A sunrise crust-cruise in front of the iconic Schlern formation in the Dolomites will go down as one of my most memorable ski experiences. All 80 km of trails were still groomed, but we didn’t ski on any of those trails, as you could crust cruise anywhere across the snowy landscape. A great last ski of the season.

…last day of the season in central Europe, at least. The next week I traveled to Iceland for the Lumi Experiences trip to the Fossavatn Ski Marathon – the last Worldloppet event and Lumi trip of the season. Skiing through the stunning, open landscape while overlooking the village of Isafjordur was a remarkable end to the season, especially finishing with a 50 km classic marathon on the last day. After the event, I cleaned the klister off my skis and applied a thick coat of storage wax to last me until November.

Later that week, I scraped off the storage wax. A big snowfall in the Alps dropped enough snow in Seefeld to get out for a ski on good skis. I hadn’t skied on the trails in Seefeld since mid-March during the Seefeld & Engadin trip. It was fun to get back outside and cruise around the trails in my backyard.

By now, I was ready for the Nordic season to be over. Perhaps a day of Alpine skiing? My wife Catherine still wasn’t ready to stop cross country skiing, so we took a day-trip to a secret trail on the Austrian-Swiss border to sneak in one last ski of the season. The fresh corduroy was an unexpected surprise. Time to storage wax our nordic skis for the summer?

I waited to write this post, just in case we made it out for one more ski this spring. Now that May is almost finished, I think it’s safe to say that our Alpine ski day on the Stubai Glacier on May 4 was our last ski day of the season. It’s been fun to extend this ski season, knowing a few of the special spots that hold great conditions late into the spring and to take advantage of late-season snow when it arrives. For now, I’m already looking forward to scraping off the summer storage wax and hitting the ski trail again in November. Or sooner?

It’s not too early to start thinking about skiing next winter. Many of Lumi’s 2025 ski trips are already full, but we still have space available on some of my favorites like the France Transju’ trip, Marcialonga & König Ludwig Lauf trip and Seefeld & Seiser Alm Sight-Skiing. Reach out by May 31 and get $100 off any 2025 Lumi trip.

See you on the trail,

Garrott

garrott@lumiexperiences.com