242 Months And Counting

Talk about dedication: In September, Mike Scherer carried skis to a minuscule patch of hard snow in Colorado's Indian Peaks and carved a short series of telemark turns during a sleet storm. Why bother? Because Scherer skis at least once every month, and there aren't many choices in autumn. September was Scherer's 240th month of skiing in a row. That's 20 years. (My story about Scherer's streak is in the December issue of 5280 magazine.) To be sure, it hasn't all been untracked powder and bump runs. The skiing in Colorado often is wretched in late summer and early fall, and some of his outings have been pretty contrived. To keep the streak alive one autumn, Scherer had to tour along a dirt road on about an inch of new snow, with his car's headlights pointing the way. But Colorado has good skiing for eight or nine months of the year. And if nothing else, Scherer says, the streak gets him into the mountains at least once each month. Nothing wrong with that.