'I just saw there was some interest in this': South High teacher Craig Earley brings along unique ski club program

Skiing is a pretty exclusive sport, not only because it's expensive but also because it can be somewhat of an unapproachable culture for city and other kids from working families,

Last year, Craig Earley decided to do something about that by starting a new ski club program at South High Community School, an inner-city high school in Worcester.

South's is a different kind of school ski club.

Earley, 58, a math and statistics teacher and girls' tennis coach at the school, secured a couple of small grants, from the MassHire Central Region Workforce Board and Innovation Pathways, that enable the club to offer scholarships to some students to offset all or some of the $500 cost for six weeks of skiing or snowboarding at Wachusett Mountain and rentals and lessons for those who need them.

The grant money also pays for the bus. For paying participants in the program, the cost for the skiing session late afternoon into night at the Princeton ski area is a reasonable $30 per ticket.

Skiing and riding, and career skills

Importantly, the program includes an education component focused on career development. Before the yellow school bus loads up at around 3:15 p.m., there's a half-hour session led by Bruce Mendelsohn of MassHire and Earley on how to find, apply for, interview and follow up on job applications.

About 35 students have participated in the program's first two years, The high schoolers are accompanied to Wachusett by about seven adult chaperones including Earley and Mendelsohn, both avid skiers.

"I just saw there was some interest in this," Earley said, noting that he modeled the program somewhat on another public school ski program he was involved with years ago that coupled skiing and snowboarding with positive reinforcement.

It's a pretty diverse group of young people, including a couple of sisters recently arrived from Colombia.

"They'd never seen real snow before. And they get out there, and they had a ball, and they came back this year, and they're still having a great time," Earley said. "They just enjoy being outside and having the opportunity to do this, an opportunity they wouldn't have had before."

Before each trip, Earley gives a short talk about safety on the slopes. Ironically, in two years of the program, the only injury was a minor laceration suffered by one of the chaperones.

Killington and the cruel New England weather

"This was the worst day of skiing all season," my old skiing friend and host, John Bateman of Leominster, said after we spent a grueling morning with friends seeking out — with little success — soft snow across the vast terrain of the central Vermont ski colossus known as the "Beast."

Bateman, a season pass-holder who knows every inch of the resort, apologized to me a few times about the ultra-firm conditions, which I've dealt with the last few times I've been at Killington.

But it wasn't his fault, of course.

And it wasn't Killington's fault, either.

The culprit was the wild volatility of the New England weather.

We skied on an uncrowded Super Bowl Sunday. Saturday saw spring-like conditions with temperatures in the high 50s with some rain in late afternoon.

It turned winter cold overnight. The moisture content of the snow was so high that, essentially, the mountain froze.

When this kind of weather swing happens, ski area managers can do little but try to groom and break up the icy hardpack and hope another warmup will soften things up. But on this mostly overcast day, not too much softening was to be had. And in the areas where groomers had been able to break up the ice, "death cookies," or chunks of hard snow and ice, lay in wait.

In any event, among many other trails, we hit Highline and the famed race trail Superstar, two classic steeps, in search of a ski-able line. Instead, both were bowling lane-smooth, but as hard as concrete.

We found some softer stuff for a while on Bear Mountain, and it was fun lapping stage 2 of the Skyeship, Killington's No. 2 gondola, an able counterpart to the famous K-1 gondola (at whose base innovative escalator in the sparkling and commodious new lodge, rarely seems to be fully functional).

I'll be back for some great spring skiing at the Beast, where skiing on snow-stocked Superstar likely will last into June on the flanks of Vermont's second-highest mountain.

Mount Snow lift outage

This has been bugging me ever since I wrote earlier this season that Mount Snow is "a smoothly humming machine."

It certainly is a well-run operation with tremendous uphill lift capacity and a big swath of varied terrain, but the popular ski area in Dover, Vermont, still has a few trouble spots.

I've skied the southern Vermont mainstay four or five times this season on weekend days, and a few times the Grand Summit Express — one of the older detachable high-speed quad chairlifts in the industry — has been out of service. The lift was installed in 1987 by the now-defunct Yan lift company and has been overhauled several times over the years.

This issue also has been bothering some of the more rabid commenters on the Mount Snow season pass-holders Facebook page, which was roiled by indignation last Saturday when the Grand Summit lift was closed to start the busy spring-like day because of a technical problem. Before the ski area came up with the needed replacement part to get the quad spinning again, lift lines on the Bluebird Express summit sixpack and the Canyon high-speed quad appeared to merge into one gigantic, horrible line.

So I emailed the media people at corporate owner Vail Resorts, and this is the explanation I received.

The mountain had installed a new Sprague clutch last week, and when workers went to test it last Friday, they discovered a failed oil seal.

But Kevin Harrington, senior director of mountain operations at Mount Snow, found a replacement part from an industry contact at Sunday River in Maine (owned by Boyne Resorts, not Vail), and someone was dispatched to pick up the part, and the team worked overnight to install it.

That's admirable hustle, and it’s always the right move for ski areas to prioritize safety over expediency.

But you've got to wonder how much more life that long high-volume lift — which provides critical backup to the flagship Bluebird Express — can keep going given its spotty reliability in recent years. Replacement parts are in short supply, and manufacturing new parts isn't easy.

The problem is that Vail has invested in two great new lifts at Mount Snow over the last few years, and a replacement for one of the old triples on the North Face could be coming in the next few years. That makes it appear pretty unlikely that a Grand Summit Express replacement is coming anytime soon.

Harris Hill Nordic jump comes alive

Another southern Vermont institution is about to spring into action for its annual competition.

The majestic Harris Hill Nordic jump in Brattleboro, which is celebrating its 102nd year, will hold its annual international meet and other fun events starting on Friday, with gates opening at 5:30 p.m. for a free, pre-contest event.

The thrilling jumping competition on the 90-meter, Olympic-sized jump (the only one in New England) is on from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

I went last year. It was a total blast.

Buy tickets at HarrisHillSkiJump.com and at the gate. Local businesses are offering reduced-price tickets through Friday. Go to HarrisHillSkiJump.com for the list of businesses.

The weekend-long proceedings are a vibrant, super fun winter party.

It's a celebration of the great Nordic tradition of ski jumping, which is still alive in New England.

—Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at s_sutner@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: South High's program at Wachusett teaches more than about skiing