An Ode To The Cold, Icy, Depravity Of Nightskiing

Like everyone else, I forget most of my dreams as soon as they happen.

Among the few exceptions are the ecstatic flying dreams that I had as a child. These have lingered in the attic of my mind. Most indelibly: the time that I was airborne in an arctic landscape, gliding over islands of ice like a coastal seabird. If I had to guess, I’d say this particular vision was inspired by the Raymond Briggs illustrated book and animated short “The Snowman,” where a boy and his snow sculpture go soaring through the winter night.

I’m 43 now and haven’t had a flying dream in years—more evidence, I’m afraid, that our imagination becomes dulled with age. But I was able to rekindle some sense of shadowland euphoria during a recent night ski session in Quebec. Few feelings rival making big, greedy GS turns beneath a black sky, the lights of the Eastern Townships glimmering in the distance.

Dozens of mountains offer some form of night skiing, from large resorts like Schweitzer and Steamboat to small, local ski hills, like Mount Peter in New York, one of the state’s few remaining family-run operations. In some places, night skiing is a novelty reserved for weekends or holidays, while other spots make ripping under the stars central to their sales pitch. I was in Bromont, an hour or so east of Montreal, where you can ski past 9 p.m. every night during the season. The resort bills itself as the largest night ski area in North America, with roughly 100 trails available to ski after dark. On select dates, Bromont goes hard with its Nuits Blanches, when the lifts are open until 1 a.m.

To be clear: night skiing has some obvious caveats. It gets noticeably colder after dark–no warming your face in the sun when the chairlift craps out, which often means firmer, more unforgiving snow. Having sharp edges is a good idea, as is investing in a clear pair of goggles to help you navigate topography in muted light. The things that make skiing hard are often amplified at night.

But that’s precisely the appeal. Hitting the slopes after dark can distill the experience to its essence. There’s usually less going on on the mountain, which means shorter lift lines, more runs, and fewer things to distract from giving yourself over to the pure feeling of sliding down miles of snow.

Skiing is nothing if not visceral. Those of us who grew up doing it usually have a glut of sensory associations, for better or worse. I have a friend who learned under the harsh tutelage of a French instructor, Didier, who would whack her with a pole every time her form would lapse. (This was a different era.) To this day, she still senses a phantom sting in her thigh when steep moguls send her too far into the backseat. Less traumatically, I still get a childish glee every time I tuck into schuss mode a little too soon to carry me over the flats. It’s been decades since I first felt the thrill of committing to the fall line, but it’s what keeps me coming back, chasing the high.

It all feels more vivid after dark. And not just the pure rush of speed–even its opposite. One of my favorite parts of resort skiing is that moment after you’ve been whisked up by the chairlift, and the sounds of the slope gradually die away as it gets eerily quiet. That sense of stillness is more acute at night, especially when you’re riding solo above dark forests of spruce and fir. In Bromont, I did endless laps beneath a sliver of a moon on runs named after neighboring villages: Knowlton, Cowansville, Bedford. There was the faintest scent of firewood in the air.

The ski season always comes and goes too fast. When the magnolias start popping in late March, I always find myself becoming a little wistful that I didn’t get after it more. Haunted by the ghost of Warren Miller, I’ll tell myself that there’s always next year. But who am I kidding? As an East Coast city dweller, I’m lucky if I get more than ten days in a season; I have nothing but envy and resentment for those of you out West who hit that total before Thanksgiving.

Which is why, for the few days on the mountain that I do get, I want to make them count. Perhaps the answer is to do more skiing at night. So much of the sport is about the pursuit of something eternally elusive: the perfect line, or the perfect powder stash. Night skiing turns things on their head and brings it all back into sharper focus. Never mind those distant horizons. What if it’s all right here in front of you?