Pope on a Rope Tow (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine January 2002

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Pope on a Rope Tow (Cont.)


	These boots were made for schussing: ST2 unveils the pope's old leather waffle stompers.

Like a lot of post-Cold War Poland, Zakopane is a melange of communist-era concrete hotels and shops mixed in with traditional wooden buildings. Since the fall of communism, the culture seems to have grown more jumbled in appearance, if not in demeanor. Enterprising locals set up tables in the streets to sell football-shaped lumps of smoked sheep's cheese, which tastes surprisingly like rubber. But the main drag is also packed with restaurants, and a loud Internet cafe adjacent to a skateboard boutique—two sure signs that capitalist tomfoolery is on the rise—is crammed with malcontent punk rockers playing online killing games and kibbitzing in chat rooms. These kids, spiky-haired and fashion-conscious, are the closest thing to ski bums I see the whole time I'm in Poland.

From the center of town it's a short taxi ride to the burg of Kuznice, where you catch the cable car to the summit of Kasprowy Wierch, the most popular lift-served peak in the country. Crammed inside the cable car on our first morning in Zakopane, the "inner echo of the voice of God" is drowned out by the complex garbled consonants of tightly sandwiched Poles.

In photos, the Tatra Mountains are breathtakingly beautiful; in person, they're gray and fogbound, magically deep and hobbit-sultry. When we crack through the cloud layer and reach the ski station at the top, the sky is blue, and rocky, snowcapped peaks stretch in every direction.

We pile out of the cable car, 6,500 feet up. Skiers are everywhere, fashionably dressed in understated Eastern European style and carrying the latest equipment. Right out the doors of the station, a modern quad is dropping people off at the top of a gargantuan treeless bowl. The slope is wide-open and the icy terrain is crammed with skiers of all levels, though there are no snowboarders in sight. Being a powder-obsessed American, I traverse as far as possible along the ridge, which also happens to be the Poland-Slovakia border. Shuffling past gun-toting, camo-clad guards, I reach the far edge of the bowl, where last night's two centimeters of fresh hasn't been decimated. Then I shove off.

It's a tough crowd on Kasprowy; people take their skiing very seriously. There's no whooping or heckling, even when there's a total crashing yard sale. I've learned that wearing colors other than dark neutrals is a fashion faux pas, but I can't help feeling that people are looking at me suspiciously. Witold claims it's the scrap of pink lining on my navy blue Patagonia jacket—the bright color makes me look freakish and foreign. By the time I reach the bottom, my wave of paranoia has passed. Strange vibes and muted slope excitement are just something else to get used to in this reserved culture.

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