I skied like a pro

L e t    I t     S n o w

I first saw snow when I was 4, when we lived in Nebraska for a brief time. We moved soon after the snow fell, and fell, and fell, and fell. My dad was working as a truck driver at the time, and, especially in those days, it was hard to drive when the snow was higher than the axles, with ice underlying the snow. We packed up, leaving our trailer there, and headed for the warmer climes of southern New Mexico, where we had come from in the first place. I only vaguely remember being in Nebraska, memories consisting mainly of the struggle to get into and out of my snowsuit, mittens and boots. It always seemed my mom no sooner zipped up the final zipper, than I had to go pee. That was a big deal to someone who no longer wore diapers, as my two baby sisters did, so I did not want to have an accident. I remember putting on and taking off the snowsuit just for that reason; I barely remember being outside at all.

My next memory of snow, and really my first memory, happened the winter I was 10. We lived in La Mesa NM, a little town outside Las Cruces NM, in an adobe house that was nearly 100 years old. In January, 1959, it snowed in Las Cruces, the weekend my cousin got married. I remember it because we kids, who weren't going to the wedding were excited by the snowfall; the parents and adult members of our family were less than thrilled by the snow, deep enough to make driving difficult and walking, particularly in high heels, unpleasantly wet and cold. The marriage didn't last, so perhaps they should have stayed home and joined us in playing in the snow, making snowmen soon to melt and engaging in rowdy snowball fights.

The next time we encountered snow, two years later, was our first winter in Grand Junction CO. It snowed in mid-November and there was snow on the ground off and on all winter. "Junction", as the locals call it, is somewhat protected from the fierce Colorado winters, so, surprisingly and much to the disappointment of us children, we didn't have a "white" Christmas. A cold one, yes, but no snow, even old snow, left over. It snowed again a number of times that winter, and the next, but it wasn't until our third Christmas in Junction that we had a White Christmas!

I had a paper route at the time, and somehow the wonder of tramping thorough the snow, at 5:30 a.m. wore thin long before the snow did. That was the coldest winter we had experienced to that time, a winter of storms one after another. I remember plodding through snow in the half-light before dawn, carrying my sack full of papers, as snow fell at a furious rate, filling my footsteps before I got out of sight of them! I was happy that morning to finish my route, and get home to steaming hot cocoa, in a warm house. I never gave a thought to my dad having to work outside, all day, everyday, in that same miserable weather. Ah, the blissful ignorance of youth!

The next winter we moved from Colorado to Phoenix, shortly after Christmas, another non-white one, but still bone-chillingly cold. Phoenix was a pleasant change from the cold, but it gets miserably hot in the summer. Shortly after school let out for the summer, we moved back to Colorado, to Denver, this time. We stayed through the summer, then in late October we moved to Vail, then only three (3) years old. My dad had bought a big mobile home and had it moved up there, taking a job building roads for the Forest Service in the surrounding area. Shortly after we moved there, it snowed, and shortly after that, the road work came to a halt as winter closed in. It was too late to get the mobile home moved out, by this time, so my dad took a job as a framer, building new condos for the growing ski resort. It was brutally cold out, often not getting above the teens on the thermometer; add in the wind chill and the temperature could be around 0 degrees in the heat of the day! The snow kept coming, piling up around the trailer and making work impossible, as the winter intensified.

I caught a school bus at 5:50 a.m. across a field from the trailer park where our trailer sat; each day we would walk across the field, following whatever path we chose, tamping down the snow as we walked. All the kids went out at the same time, the busses came within minutes of each other to pick up high school, jr high and elementary school kids. After several weeks, the path traced a wiggly line across the field, easily identified by the packed snow amid the two ft + of loose snow on either side.

In January, 1965, we had a blizzard blow through, a steady fall of snow, hour after hour that obliterated landmarks and all but the tallest man-made features. When the snow finally stopped and the sky dawned clear, two days later, there was a giant snow drift blown against the side of our trailer--at least four feet separated the roof from the underside of the "wave" of the drift! No one could go anywhere, although one guy tried, bucking his jeep back and forth, trying to break through snow higher than the fenders on the vehicle after it was packed down! He soon gave up, and we all walked around in a true winter wonderland, everything covered with several feet of fresh snow. The path to the bus stop was gone, the fence separating the field from the park buried beneath the new snow; there was no way to walk across the field any longer, because stepping of the path would mean stepping into snow over one's head. We walked around the field, instead.

I worked as a "parking attendant" at Vail Village, that winter, a job that required me to stand outside all day, keeping people from parking in the Village. I remember being cold, but not unbearably so, just uncomfortably cold. I worked in several restaurants after that job ended for the day, walking home around midnight in the cold, clear moonlight. I enjoyed the weather, more so than I had in Grand Junction, because the cold was steady, not on again, off again, and I was used to the cold temperatures.

I learned to ski, that winter, taking the gondola to Mid-Vail and stepping out, strapping on my skis, 220 cm Heads with the old style bindings, and schussed off on the trail down! I knew the rudiments of skiing, picked up from watching and listening; I had seen Billy Kidd blaze down the "International" slope that ended at the base of the mountain. He was the hot skier of that period, and I was eager to emulate his style and success.

I hadn't gone far before I got into trouble, moving faster than I could control, my crude attempts at doing a "snow-plow" not slowing my speed enough for comfort. I finally threw myself over, falling down, and in the process learning something of how to maneuver on skis. I got back to my feet, no small feat while wearing skis almost a foot longer than I was tall! Pushing off, I began experimenting with shifting my weight and balance to control my progress. I began having more success with this and leaned forward to increase my speed.

This worked much better than I was prepared for and I was suddenly flying down the slope, with little control! With a curve approaching, and unable to veer enough to make the turn, I jumped toward a snowbank, and discovered the stem christie by doing so, when my skis lifted and turned into the curve, just before I lost my balance and fell. Once again, on getting back to my feet, I practiced my new skill, at first hesitantly, but soon throwing myself fearlessly into curves in the trail. I proceeded down the hill in this way, still bumbling, but improving, at one point losing a ski by getting mad and stamping my foot; when I lifted the foot again, the ski shot from under it and blazed down the slope, burying itself in a bank a 150 ft downslope! I took off my other ski and tromped down to dig the first one out--only the last 4 or 5 inches stuck out!

I was blazing mad by the time I got it out and had both skis strapped on again. I took off down the slope, determined to show the mountain and the skis who they were fooling with! I came out of a long, straight, low-sloped part of the trail and suddenly found myself at the top of the International slope, the steep, mogulled competition slope also known among the local ski bums and hangers-on as the "Widowmaker" for the injuries that had occurred to skiers trying to navigate it's severe, rugged slope. There was a narrow path running across the top, where racers waited their turn to dare death or certain injury, and I was intent on following it across this frightful slope.

I had no intention of taking a trip down ol' Widowmaker, even if I was too young to marry...I might want to some day! As I was traversing, though, my leading ski took a dip into a mogul and suddenly I was falling onto the plane of the International, unable to stop myself! I leaned into the fall, and into the slope, desperate to maintain my balance because it was too far to fall to the bottom--my best bet was to come to a stop and crawl to the side, but it wasn't meant to be. I couldn't get myself to a position where I could perform my limited stopping skills, for fear of falling, so I skied over one mogul after another, in a downward course. I followed an angle across the slope, switching direction in on deep mogul to angle back in the opposite direction.

Somewhere along the way, the exhilaration of what I was doing took over and I found myself laughing hysterically, tears from eyes running down my cheeks and freezing, as I began to thoroughly enjoy the journey down the slope. Several times my heart leapt into my throat as gravity threatened to take over and send me head over heels to my doom. Each time, I managed to right myself, almost at the brink it seemed, and continued my headlong plunge down the Widowmaker. I felt like a cowboy on a bucking bronco, my knees absorbing the buck of the moguls and smaller bumps as I raced aver, through and across them.

Halfway down, I found a trace of a trail that looked easier and turned into it, suddenly aware of my newfound confidence on skis. I began to turn into the slope more, to gain speed, turning back to absorb it back, similar to the way I would later drive sports cars, picking up a goodly speed and beginning to think of myself in Billy Kidd's class after all. Of course, I was still angling across the slope, where he would have plummeted almost straight down at twice my speed, but I still enjoyed my fantasy as I negotiated bump after bump.

I turned downhill again to pick up more speed, only to suddenly find the base of the mountain rushing toward me, a long apron that ended at the wheelhouse for the gondolas, still a good slope, but relatively flat after the sharp angle of the International! I slammed into that apron, taking the change by going almost to my knees, pushing up with my ski poles to race down to the wheelhouse the way I had seen so many racers end their runs before.

I threw myself into a mighty stem christie at the end, whipping around in a spray of snow to burn off my speed, but ended up to far over and fell on my side, sliding into the benches. The people sitting there, who had been watching my progress down the slope a few seconds before, scattered to get of the way as I slid in, skis first. Not my best finish, but as I lay there, I realized the truth in the old pilot's adage, "Any landing you walk away from is a good landing!" I had made it to the bottom, in one piece and all that was even slight damaged was my pride, as I got to my feet, listening to the relieved laughter from my audience.

We moved back to Denver shortly after that, so my dad could get work and the following winter left Colorado for the last time, after the first snowfall. Since then I have only intermittently experienced snow, on those rare occasions once or twice a year when we get it. I remember those years in Colorado so very well, though, and always will, a time when a skinny kid came barreling down the mountain at Vail, determined not to let the mountain win!