Travis and I went skiing at Keystone
today. The bank couldn’t pull together the loan paperwork for the
Pathfinder in time so we didn’t get the car thing accomplished today.
But we got to go skiing instead!
We left at 6:00 AM to beat traffic, which meant that I had to get up
by 4:30. It was an early morning and I am beat–a nap is definitely in
order this evening. We got up to Keystone by 8:30 (even though we left
early, the traffic was still bad for a while). By the time we got all
our gear on, went to the bathroom and walked to the ski lift, it was
9:00–just in time for opening.
We were a little self-conscious about our ski gear–our skis and
poles (as well as my boots) are from the early 90s. Since we just moved
out to CO and don’t really have tons of extra cash lying around (have
you seen the prices of ski equipment?!?!), we got the ski stuff my
parents used back in the day when my whole family used to ski together
(a long time ago).
My boots are this nasty yellow-white color with aqua writing on the
outside and aqua/purple lining on the inside. Travis got new boots but
our skis have flourescent colors and the worst part–they’re pointy at
the end. All the skis nowadays are rounded on the end and edges. Back
when our skis were made, they were majorly pointy, as in witch’s shoe
pointy.
And when you’re standing in line waiting for the ski lift, all you
really have to do is talk to whoever you’re with and look at everyone
else’s skis/snowboards. I’ve been in ski shops recently and seen all
the cute designs. Everyone had them. As Travis said, we had everyone
beat by at least 10 years on the age of their ski equipment. It’s
interesting to see the culture of skiing/snowboarding. I bet about 90%
of the people out there have bought their winter clothes within the
past 2 years. I bet 75% have bought their ski/snowboard equipment
within the past 3 years. It’s a rich sport. You don’t see people from
the ghetto going skiing. Because you need money for the lift ticket,
the equipment, and the clothes, as well as money to just get near a ski
resort.
At least nobody turned their noses up at us. But Travis did hear a
couple guys’ comments: “Hey Bill! Do you remember when those skis came
out?” and “Wait, are those PREs [my skis]? I thought those would be
hanging up in a museum somewhere.” Nope, they’re here and I’m using
them to get down that hill.
Since this was Travis’ first time skiing in 10 years and my first
time in about 5, we didn’t really know what to expect. Add to that, the
last time we were skiing, we were skiing in Minnesota. We quickly found
out that a green circle hill in Minnesota doesn’t exist in Colorado. A
“green” in CO is like a MN “blue” or possibly even “black”–which led us
to the realization that all ski run coding is completely relative.
Needless to say, we stuck to the greens and blues. I was going to
stay the h— away from those black diamonds. The black diamonds,
however, did not stay away from me.
Keystone is a big place. There are two sides to many mountains and
countless runs that cross, parallel, and merge with other runs. For the
first part of the day, we stayed on the front side of the main
mountain. So many people! But I’ll get to that… So after lunch, we
decided to test the back side of the mountain. There were blues and
blacks back there and 2 really short greens.
We were going on one of the short greens called Scout. We figured,
“It’s a short run. We’ll just go down it quick, get back on the lift
and then go on another run.” Travis was really catering to me because I
wanted to stick to the milder runs. So we went down Scout. About 300
yards down the slope, it got really steep. I cut to the left, my ski
caught, and down I went onto my left hip, in a cloud of snow. I got
back up, a little shaken, and looked down the hill.
My heart stopped. It was a LONG way to the bottom and to me, it
looked like a complete dropoff. I felt like I was going to drop off the
face of the earth if I skied down that hill. I started to mentally
hyperventilate and I couldn’t move.
I looked up at Travis and whimpered, “I don’t want to go down this hill. I don’t like this hill. It’s sooooo steep.”
Being the sweet husband that he is, Travis skied down to me and
tried to reassure me, “No babe, you can do this. Just take it slow and
cut from the left to the right. We can make it down.”
“I’m just going to take my skis off and walk down.” That seemed the safest option but it was a long way to walk.
“No babe, you can do this. We’ll just take it in sections and go slow.”
I had to will myself to move my skis. I saw younger kids and other
women going down the slope like it was no big deal. I knew I could do
it; I just didn’t want to. I was scared.
But with Travis leading, I carved to the left and then the right. I
couldn’t get my skis straight when I cut to the left. I tried to
straighten them but down I went onto my hip again, spraying snow and
sliding 5 ft down the icy hill. One time I slid into Travis. I knew I
was going too slow cutting to the left but I didn’t want to go fast
because it freaked me out. So my strategy became to cut to the right
and snowplow to the left. Cut to the right, snowplow to the left.
Little by little, I reluctantly inched my way down the hill. Slowly, I
built up confidence and by the end, I was cutting back and forth with
ease.
But when we got to the bottom of that hill, I told Travis “We aren’t
skiing the back of the mountain. There is no way I’m going on another
run like that.” When we got on the ski lift and took out the map, we
discovered that lo and behold, we had just skied down a black diamond
called Diamond Back. I felt better about my fright–at least I wasn’t
that paranoid about a blue square! Seems that we had overestimated the
length of that short green–it was only about 100 yards long and we had
blown right by that ski lift–to continue on to the connecting black
diamond.
We went down the front of the mountain a couple more times after
that. I fell over a few more times. Seemed like I had lost all my
confidence by going down that black diamond. And the people whizzing by
me on both sides didn’t help. I wasn’t used to so many people on the
slopes, not to mention people really good at skiing/snowboarding. I
kept losing my concentration, scared I was going to cut in front of
someone and they were going to plow right into me.
Because of that, I stuck to a nice, steady pace. Travis liked speed
and adrenaline. So for those last few runs, he went on ahead of me and
we met at the bottom. We finally decided to call it quits when our
quads were so tired that we could barely stand up. (That and I had
started making a fool of myself by dropping things, falling over trying
to get up to the line for the ski lift, etc.–all signals that I was
ready to leave.)
I like to consider myself in pretty good shape. I run, use the
elliptical, do squats and lunges and wall sits. But man, none of that
prepared me for that leg workout! I hope that I can walk tomorrow. All
in all, it was a really fun day. It was warm, in the lower 30s–we
actually were sweating. Such a change from MN, where we often skied in
10 degree weather! I was worried my feet would be freezing (they almost
always are) but amazingly, they also were sweating. It’s so much more
enjoyable to be outside when you’re not freezing your arse off.
Skiing day #1– down!!