SALIDA — It’s been a long time coming, but I finally got some sole.
It was bound to happen at some point. After all, I took up telemark skiing nearly 20 years before any insecure alpiner got around to slapping a sticker on his bumper announcing that nobody cares. I suppose that qualifies me as old school, in a Birkenstocks with socks kind of way. But I prefer to think of myself as a soul, and now resoled, skier.
While I’ve never been one to tout my affinity for free-heeled ski turns, I’m not ashamed to admit my fondness for comfortable footwear. I simply prefer my boots with bellows. And I’d rather attempt to revive a pair of broken-down ski boots than go through the painstaking process of buying and breaking in new ones.
So it was with no lack of trepidation that I dropped my well-traveled Scarpa telemark boots in a dark alley on a cold December night with little more than a hand-scrawled note to an anonymous cobbler in small-town Salida.
The rubber had worn through on the duckbill toe pieces of both boots, causing me to lurch and occasionally launch face-first as my weight shifted abruptly from Vibram rubber bases to the bare metal plates beneath with every turn. A season after developing the new — and unabashedly funky — skiing style, I discovered Rocky Mountain Resole. Or at least the dark alley beside it.
I took photos of the battered boots as some sort of silly security precaution before carrying them to the side of the building. Through dingy garage-door windows, I spied a woman in a smock surrounded by boots, boxes and what appeared to be more than a dozen dogs, along with a few brave cats.
Ever the overprotective boot owner, I foolishly tapped the glass and held them up to the window for her to see. Instead, I was greeted by a cacophonous chorus of barks and howls accompanied by the rattle of paws against the shaky door as the woman shooed me back to the street.
“She will take good care of those boots,” I resolved as I slid into the seat of my truck, “if they don’t wind up as chew toys first.”
That was a little more than a month ago. And today I am giddy in anticipation of what I’m dubbing the Rocky Mountain Sole Revival. The boots arrived appropriately unceremoniously in a recycled brown box Tuesday, opened to reveal the heartfelt handiwork of a conscientious craftswoman.
Whether the shoes’ overused uppers will stand up to their new, sturdy foundation or instead I’ll find another excuse to fall back on it for future flailing remains to be seen. But for the moment, at least, it really doesn’t matter.
My sole has been rejuvenated in time to salvage another ski season.
Scott Willoughby: swilloughby@denverpost.com or
