The battle lines were drawn in the snow. It was me against the mountain. The mountain won. Again.
Vail is a great place to visit–I just don’t want to ski there. Lots of people do, of course, skillfully schussing down black diamond slopes and back bowls with wild abandon. Looks like great fun, and for most people, it is.
But the truth is I am a two-time ski school dropout. Despite instructor Howard Milner’s best efforts, I just couldn’t get the hang of it. While some of my classmates–all beginners with little or no experience–admitted to fear, they faced it and plowed on with determination.
Not me. I hung up my ski poles and broke out my notepad the next day to record the activities while the rest of the class skied confidently on powdery slopes topped with 5 inches of fresh snow that had accumulated overnight.
That’s what separated me from first-timer Shelly Blackburn, 40, a nurse from Ft. Wayne, Ind., who was highly motivated to join her boyfriend on the slopes. At the end of the first day of ski school–where she held the dubious distinction of being the first to take a tumble–she was braced for another go-around.
“I’m not discouraged,” she said. “I learned a lot today.”
Tracie Lutchmansingh, 32, of Ft. Lauderdale had never been near a ski slope, but she loves to challenge herself–and she was going to master the mountain with sheer will.
“Don’t think too much,” she advised me. “My scuba instructor says women think too much instead of just doing it.”
My previous experience on skis was in North Carolina on icy, manmade snow. I spent most of the time on my rear. Ski-loving friends convinced me it would somehow be different on the powdery slopes of the Rockies. So late last February, I bought proper ski apparel, signed up for the first-timer lessons at the Vail Ski and Snowboard School at Lionshead Village, rented sleek skis and ski boots from Vail Sports and hopped aboard the Eagle Bahn gondola with great enthusiasm.
It was downhill from there.
I knew I was in trouble when even clamping my ski boots into the bindings proved difficult. After a few tentative downhill runs and futile attempts at a decent turn, I decided skiing wasn’t my thing.
Snowmobiling looked exhilarating, but I didn’t fare any better at that. It was a little too exhilarating. I abandoned the scary black racecar on a snowcapped mountaintop in the backcountry of White River National Forest.
Why did I think this would be a good thing? I’d somehow envisioned something only vaguely threatening, though the Nova Guides brochure clearly explained: “Your guided tour begins at 8,000 feet and climbs up to 10,500 feet, covering miles of maintained trails and acres of open play areas.”
So I tried snowtubing at Vail’s Adventure Ridge. Surely, something that involved starting on your backside had promise. But the day I was supposed to try snowtubing, I lingered too long over lunch at Sweet Basil in Vail Village.
Later, hearing some teens talk animatedly about their thrilling experiences, careening at speeds higher than I ever imagined down the carved-out chutes on the mountaintop, I realized I might have hated that too.
Guess I’m just a flatlander (or a big chicken).
