We exist in an almost infinitesimally small slice of all possible temperatures. On a scale that ranges from -949 degrees Fahrenheit at absolute zero to 27 million degrees at the core of the sun, we live within just 100 degrees, give or take. And yet, as skiers and snowboarders and winter hedonists, we are as attuned to the subtleties of heat and cold as the finest calibrated thermometer. And why not, when we spend our lives in pursuit of a sport that hangs its very existence on the one degree difference between snow and rain? Temperature governs our day, from what we wear to the wax we use and even how and when we ski.

Strictly speaking, scientists don’t have a definition of cold. They simply frame it as a spectrum of energy: More energy = heat. Less energy = cold. Some people like to say that cold is simply the absence of heat. How very zen of them. I would argue the opposite: Heat is the absence of cold. All summer I lament my missing friend. I bitch and moan and turn red in the face from trail running up hills in 95 degree heat. Then when I’m surfing and the water’s frigid from an upwelling of icy water and I have goosebumps because I left the wetsuit at home, my wife rather smugly says, “You’re the one that loves the cold. Don’t you love this?” Grrrr. Or should it be, brrrr?

But the cold comes back, eventually, maybe not as intensely and for not as long as it once did, but it does come back. And unlike snow, which just shows up on the doorstep one day unannounced, like a golden retriever that ran away from home and now is sitting on the porch with a bone in its mouth like nothing happened, cold drops hints. It calls first. It gives intimations, slipping in in the night and sliding away in the morning with the promise it will be back soon.

And it keeps its promise. It comes back, gradually throughout the fall, and then it’s back for good. And we stop thinking about whether the day is hot or the day is cold, because the day is always cold. And then we starting thinking of the degrees of it, as it were. Is it cold cold? Or just cold? Is it puffy cold? Softshell cold? Vest cold? Hand warmer cold?

Most of us, truth be told, think little more of the day’s temperature than as a guide to what we should wear. That’s not an insubstantial decision, when you consider the vagaries of mountain weather, the amount of time you’ll be outside, and the start-stop-start pattern of resort riding. Consider the difference between skiing on sub-zero morning in the Canadian Rockies and a spring afternoon at Squaw Valley, for example, the contrast between avoiding frostbite and basking in the warmth of the sun. Or top and bottom of the mountain on an inversion day.

But temperature infuses everything about our time on boards, whether we consider it or not. It affects how p-tex glides, how a chairlift feels on your bum, whether the speed tears from your eyes crystallize on your face or not. Most of all, it governs the snow, the most valuable of all our treasures, from the shape and size of the flakes as they fall to what happens once they land. Think of the storm that comes in cold but warms as it passes—light snow first, then heavier snow on top. Yuck. But when that’s reversed, when the dump lays down a thick frosting of wet snow that bonds to the old surface, then becomes progressively colder, well…each inch is lighter than the last until the top is the kind of eiderdown that takes flight at the merest puff.

Temperature, you realize, is the foundation for everything. Let it be cold, however you define it.

Photos: Jackson, Wyoming; June Mountain, California.

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Tagged as: environment, essay, skiing, weather