Hitting the Slopes

For the last three years I have been lucky enough to be a chaperone for the annual ski trip that the middle school my wife teaches at takes. It works out great all around. I get to spend time with my wife, spend most of a weekday skiing, take a day off from work, and I don't have to drive myself home tired from a day of skiing. In exchange, I keep an eye on the kids, retrieve gear that got lost uphill, and try to help them out when they need it.

So I spent a day at Chestnut Mountain. It was almost a perfect day for skiing: about 20F, cloudy in the morning and sunny in the afternoon, nicely groomed runs. The only drawback was a stiff wind blowing up the slopes. There were times I felt like I needed to tuck just to keep moving.

My big accomplishment for today is doing something I have rarely done on skis in quite a few years. I fell, several times. Two were big, entertaining falls. Two were possibly entertaining, but without an outside perspective, I don't know.

Three of my falls came when I decided to check out the terrain park. I've never been much of a terrain park guy, but today it just seemed like a good idea. I had a few pretty good runs and was starting to get confident. Then I hit a jump, caught some nice air, and landed just about perfectly. And then I flinched, or overcorrected, or something, because I was suddenly sprawled on my side, sliding down the hill. I remember thinking "It's a good thing I'm still holding onto my poles" just as my slide turned into a half-roll and then a stop.

My next two falls were probably less dramatic. There's...I'd call it a tabletop, though I'm not sure that's the right term. Remember what I said about not really being a terrain park kind of guy? Anyway, there's a ramp up, a flat (ish) section (where, given the angles and surroundings, you almost have to land), and then a slope to let you get down. Having enough speed is important. If your speed is too low, too much of your forward momentum gets absorbed by your legs, while the rest is turned into vertical momentum by the ramp. Newton's laws being what they are, you'll end up slowly rotating, and your tips just might stick into the top of the table. Your bindings might pop, and you might drop on your face.

And if you made the same mistake a second time, you might get the same results a second time.

I actually didn't leave the terrain park because my legs were getting tired, or because of the falls. I was overheating. The terrain park was on the lee side of the mountain, and the shorter lift ride meant less heat loss. Going back to the regular runs seemed like less work than readjusting my gear, so I did.

Warpath is probably the second most difficult run at Chestnut. It's a fairly standard black-because-it's-steep run. If the snow is good, it's easy enough to manage. A few years ago, it was icy, and that was not fun at all. Earlier in the day, I had discovered that the snow was great on Warpath, making it a very enjoyable run. And so, right after leaving the terrain park and skating my way uphill into the wind on my jump-tired legs, I gave Warpath another whirl. It was a great run.

So I did it again.

The top half (*) was great. But then, somewhere near the middle of the crossover area, I must have crossed my tips or caught an edge badly. I don't remember exactly what caused the fall, but I do remember that I was suddenly sliding on my back.

I will pause at this point to mention that there is a chairlift that loads at the bottom of Warpath and unloads at the top of Warpath. Obviously, all of Warpath can be seen from that lift.

As I slid, I ran through a quick mental status check. Everything intact? Yup. Chances of stopping? Not going to happen; I'm going too fast and the hill gets steep quick. Where's down? Towards my head.

Once I'd taken that split second to figure out what was going on, I managed to rearrange the universe so that down was toward my feet (**). Having my skis down gave me a chance to try to get back up as I slid. It didn't work. Not even the third time I tried. Fortunately, trying to get myself back on my feet had slowed me down enough that I was no longer approximately frictionless. Within 50 feet of my third attempt, I finally stopped. Once the cloud of snow around me cleared, I realized that I had slid at least a quarter of the entire run. And as I pointed out earlier, this was in full view of the lift. Boy, was I thankful I still had my skis and poles attached--I hopped up and headed right for the lift, and then over to a different run, full of people who probably hadn't seen my slide (***).

I can tell I'll be a bit sore tomorrow. But I feel great. I pushed myself today. The falls show that. Nothing got injured. I probably learned something or got a little bit better at skiing.

All to help out those middle school students. Ah, what a great day it was.

* At least for the Midwest ski hills I've visited, with a vertical drop in the 400-500 foot range, the runs tend to cross into each other about halfway up. The crossover/junction area tends to be less steep than the runs that it's joining.

** The fact that my feet are still the lowest (i.e. "most down") part of my body should provide ample refutation to anyone who might suggest that I simply rearranged my body with reference to the hill.

*** I really was not too embarassed. Glad I didn't slide into someone and hurt them, certainly. But falls happen, and the sliding was pretty fun.