Skiing Mammoth

For Purple Mountain Majesties, originally uploaded by Bill Wight CA.

Tomorrow morning Jeff and I leave with our friend Denise to ski Mammoth in the Sierra Nevadas. Well, Jeff will ski, Denise will snowboard and I will flail, screaming down the mountain as a giant frozen ball of snowy fear-filled chaos, dotting the mountain with equipment shedded as I take out experienced skiers, adults and children alike.

I've only been skiing once before. Last year at Mammoth Jeff and I went with Denise and her friend Kristen. The three of them spent the day on blue trails while I enrolled in the adults-who-have-never-skied-before class. I feared it would be me and class full of 6 year olds but fortunately they don't mix the children with the adults. Not because they want to spare the adults the embarrassment of learning with youngsters but because the children are so fast to pick up the techniques they didn't want us to hamper their quick and natural progress.

I actually did OK last year. While I never could figure out how to right myself after falling without taking off my skis completely, I was the first in my class to to be able to control my awkward decent down the bunny hill and thus was rewarded the prize of practicing on my own while our teacher helped the rest of the class. At the risk of sounding boastful, our teacher, after the first hour of class, pulled me aside and whispered, "if by the end of the day I can get the rest of the class to the point you're at right now, I will have done my job." Beaming with pride (after all these words have stayed with me a full year now) I took that as implied permission to cut class early, grab a hot cocoa and hang at the lodge for the remainder of the weekend. Shit, skiing is hard work and my knees were killing me. I was the prize pupal after-all and didn't want to make the rest of the class look bad by one-upping them all day.

Ok, while the above is all true don't let it mislead you. I suck at skiing. I mean, I could barely stand it for 2 hours and now I'm going for four days. Humph. The plan is to ski the first day utilizing the pizza wedge technique I mastered so well last time. If I am completely miserable after the first day I will try cross country skiing at the Tamarack Lodge, where we're staying in hopes that I will like it better. If that fails, there's always and endless supply of hot cocoa at the lodge.

Wish me luck,
Christie