The Lodge
As Published in Skier Magazine:The Lodge
By Mitchell Scott
Brand new ski lodges blow. Cold, big, crowded, fancy, expensive, like some downtown food court that crashed into a forest. Today most resort lodges are less lodge and more some kind of whacked hybrid of urban sophistication and mountain chic plopped down in some totally remote location—like a peak. A troika of unlikelies. Monstrous, cold, bright-like-you’re-still-outside-in-the-maelstrom pyramids of modern excess. You can’t call that a lodge. It’s not a lodge! A wood-hewn, millionaire’s mansion mimic, poorly placed apparition that sells pad thai and cappuccinos. Could it be?
As far as I’m concerned, the word “lodge” and “new” shouldn’t be allowed to share any sort of proximity. You shouldn’t be able to walk into a “new” lodge. Because when you do, walk into a “new” lodge that is, you’re walking into bullshit. Metaphorical bullshit of course, but who wants shit on their boots? Not me.
Real lodges are all about old and weathered. Lodges are warm because they’ve been worked in, like a good pair of gloves. They’re comfortable because you don’t care: You don’t care if your ski boot puts a dent in the door, or your jacket leeches fast melting snow down the wall. Kids can spill fries, squirt ketchup and let hot chocolate spill and soak into their mitts. The lodge smells that real booty, tangy, chilly life smell. Not that new varnish, new carpet smell that hides everything in new and takes decades to stifle.
The true lodge is a dying breed here in Canada. Resorts think we want fancy pants. Big space age windows and giant beams. Steel and granite and everything else opulent and expensive in the world. With giant windows everywhere. Whole trees even. I remember being a kid and not even wanting to see outside because the weather was so bad. You wanted a nice dark cave of retreat. Reprieve from the elements. To scam fries and bits of pop and warm up like you were in the basement beside the woodstove. Of course, if it were nice, you’d just eat outside the lodge. Duh.
But real skiers—from little tykes to old bastards—want the old lodge. I know it’s so. The dark, dirty in the corners, poorly planned, wood worn, bent, uneven, beer stained, story saturated spaces of skiing’s true self. You don’t give five shits about the interior as long as it has food, drink and warmth. Heck, it doesn’t even have to have food because hard-core badass skiers who really care about skiing bring sandwiches they eat on the chairlift. A hot chocolate machine maybe, but that’s it.
Why? Because you’re having so much fun outside. Because loitering over lattes in turtlenecks lost in poorly scheduled conversation is just plain wrong. In and out. Right back to the action. Let the good times roll. You don’t go to a ski hill to spend time (or quite worse, admire) the inside of the lodge, nor the food or the gift shops or the art. It’s like going to an NHL playoff game and spending unnecessary minutes styling your hair in the bathroom. Well, maybe not quite that bad.
And don’t forget. Ski amenities are a tax. Imbedded within every lift ticket you’re paying for at least a board foot of that fancy Douglas-fir window frame that extends way into the sky. A season’s pass covers part of the stupid bear sculpture in the stupid lobby. No, the lodge should be paid off. Completo. The bank said congrats way back in ‘82. It gets the odd reno because it’ll fall apart if it doesn’t. Maybe new bar stools every 20 years or so. But that’s it. That’s all we really need and should ever want. Shelter from the storm, a place so average kids would rather submit to freezing rain than hangout. Where the only loiterers are beat-down backpacks and the smell of the slopes.
By Mitchell Scott
Brand new ski lodges blow. Cold, big, crowded, fancy, expensive, like some downtown food court that crashed into a forest. Today most resort lodges are less lodge and more some kind of whacked hybrid of urban sophistication and mountain chic plopped down in some totally remote location—like a peak. A troika of unlikelies. Monstrous, cold, bright-like-you’re-still-o
As far as I’m concerned, the word “lodge” and “new” shouldn’t be allowed to share any sort of proximity. You shouldn’t be able to walk into a “new” lodge. Because when you do, walk into a “new” lodge that is, you’re walking into bullshit. Metaphorical bullshit of course, but who wants shit on their boots? Not me.
Real lodges are all about old and weathered. Lodges are warm because they’ve been worked in, like a good pair of gloves. They’re comfortable because you don’t care: You don’t care if your ski boot puts a dent in the door, or your jacket leeches fast melting snow down the wall. Kids can spill fries, squirt ketchup and let hot chocolate spill and soak into their mitts. The lodge smells that real booty, tangy, chilly life smell. Not that new varnish, new carpet smell that hides everything in new and takes decades to stifle.
The true lodge is a dying breed here in Canada. Resorts think we want fancy pants. Big space age windows and giant beams. Steel and granite and everything else opulent and expensive in the world. With giant windows everywhere. Whole trees even. I remember being a kid and not even wanting to see outside because the weather was so bad. You wanted a nice dark cave of retreat. Reprieve from the elements. To scam fries and bits of pop and warm up like you were in the basement beside the woodstove. Of course, if it were nice, you’d just eat outside the lodge. Duh.
But real skiers—from little tykes to old bastards—want the old lodge. I know it’s so. The dark, dirty in the corners, poorly planned, wood worn, bent, uneven, beer stained, story saturated spaces of skiing’s true self. You don’t give five shits about the interior as long as it has food, drink and warmth. Heck, it doesn’t even have to have food because hard-core badass skiers who really care about skiing bring sandwiches they eat on the chairlift. A hot chocolate machine maybe, but that’s it.
Why? Because you’re having so much fun outside. Because loitering over lattes in turtlenecks lost in poorly scheduled conversation is just plain wrong. In and out. Right back to the action. Let the good times roll. You don’t go to a ski hill to spend time (or quite worse, admire) the inside of the lodge, nor the food or the gift shops or the art. It’s like going to an NHL playoff game and spending unnecessary minutes styling your hair in the bathroom. Well, maybe not quite that bad.
And don’t forget. Ski amenities are a tax. Imbedded within every lift ticket you’re paying for at least a board foot of that fancy Douglas-fir window frame that extends way into the sky. A season’s pass covers part of the stupid bear sculpture in the stupid lobby. No, the lodge should be paid off. Completo. The bank said congrats way back in ‘82. It gets the odd reno because it’ll fall apart if it doesn’t. Maybe new bar stools every 20 years or so. But that’s it. That’s all we really need and should ever want. Shelter from the storm, a place so average kids would rather submit to freezing rain than hangout. Where the only loiterers are beat-down backpacks and the smell of the slopes.
posted by KMC Magazine at 2:30 PM
2 Comments:
Ok, So this is the perfect lead into reviews, and pictures of reasonable lodges. I would like to visit some.
Also, I figure there are some old lodges that though extravagant, are probably paid off. My list of those would include:
1. The Ahwahnee
2. Crater Lake Lodge
3. Timberline
4. Glacier Park Lodge
5. El Tovar
But really I.m interested in the less well known lodges like Diamond Lake Lodge or the, now burned down, Santiam Lodge.
Gimme that wretched downstairs of the Grouse ski school "cave"... exposed rock, no ventilation, and a wet, flattened "jacket sandwich".
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