Well that time of year is here, the temperatures are rising
and the snow is getting soft and people are sure to fall victim to some nasty
sunburns. Spring skiing has arrived, one
the best and worst times of year to ski.
They are a mix of days with perfect snow from an overnight sprinkle and
bluebird skies with warmer temperatures to slushy snow, over-heating and
closing down of your favorite runs. As
April draws near, avid skiers are saying a sad farewell to the season and
already planning out their days for next season (me) or they are just going to
migrate with the snow to Chile or somewhere that they can keep that incessant
goggle tan going. Spring skiing seems to posses some the best
on-mountain stories. I am going to recap my personal favorite.
One of my
first memories of the sacred spring skiing season is when my friends and I all
got to be in a ski school class together (what were are parents thinking), it
met every Saturday for six weeks. Being
in 2nd grade at that time we thought we were the coolest kids the
mountain, grant it we were higher level than most kids our age but we needed a
reality check. At the end of the
six-week program every “team” would do a performance for parents at the bottom
of the hill. You did a synchro ski routine
to the song of you choice and you had a team name that they announced, we took
this very seriously. We practiced every single week, our poor instructor Pania,
who we idolized, with her skilled skiing and Australian accent could hardly
change our old skiing habits with our focus on the final performance.
The second
to the last week we all decided we all wanted to do the performance on blade
skis, they are super short, Band-Aid looking ski’s, that do not handle the
spring slush well at all. We had incorporated all kind of low level tricks and
turns that needed to be done in your normal ski but we thought the extra touch
of the blades along with our song choice “Eye of the Tiger” and team name of
“Snow Cheetahs” was a clear winner. Clearly we were into the cat family at that
time.
Pania told us that we could do not it on
blades, she told us do not bring them next week, she also explained we would
for sure not win any recognition if we did them on blades. Did we listen? Of
course not. We all lied to our parents, and told them we could bring our blade
skis, our parents, not strangers to the spring snow perils were questioning
this but let us go ahead anyways.
 |
| Ali, Alex, Ashton, Jordan, Ally, Me and Reid |
Fast-forward
to the final day, the big performance, we even received the privilege of being
able to take or helmets off, which our parents did not enjoy, to wear bandanas
on our head. Imagine a team of six 2nd
grade girls, in different colored bandana (hello bikers), being announced as
“snow cheetahs” to the song “Eye of the Tiger”, it was a scene. We started down
in our blades, about to perform our first trick of skiing under each other
legs, half the group made it through the other half, blades could not cut
through the slush, so it was a car crash 10 seconds in. As they struggled to
get up, the other half proceeded with Pania stuck in the middle, they were
doing a gate simulation with bodies. It
is staggering each other to ski through like gates, as they entered the tuck
position. Kendall Blake, I will never
forget, crashed into me so hard from her edge being caught, that there was a
gasp. We were laughing and within 30 seconds of our two-minute performance it
was already done. All because of those stupid blade ski’s. We are all so mad,
and embarrassed that we could not finish nor that we showed off our perfected
routine. On the other hand if left our parents and Pania laughing and gave them
the worst parent permission to say, I told you so.
All I can
say is, spring snow you win, you literally took us down. It not only taught us the ways of spring
skiing but also gave us a reality check about how seriously we should take
ourselves. Kendall, Ashton, Ali, Alex,
Jordan and Reid, I still think we look pretty good out there. I still have that
bandana, I wore the bright blue one. Spring
skiing may not be the best conditions for skiing but I think it is the best
condition for memories.
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