Do You Remember the First Time?

By Clark Williams

No not that first time. The first time you crammed your foot into an unyielding ski boot, attached them to unwieldy skies and hurled yourself down that deadly precipice known as the beginner’s slope. An event that I’m sure is as indelibly etched in your mind as it is in mine.  We were all beginners at one time obviously, however in order to grasp the beginner’s perspective most of us have to go a long way back into our memory (and that’s not easy for some of us). That first time for many skiers was sometime during that period of invincibility known as childhood. That time when we had no compulsion about doing things like climbing to the top of a bookshelf or jumping off the garage roof with a towel/cape tied around our scrawny necks. However a few of us started much later in life, after the immunity of childhood had lapsed. The awareness of our physical limits as well as our physical frailty is a mixed blessing. It helps us in our self-preservation efforts, but it does have a tendency to limit our horizons.  For those that started later in life the learning curve is a little longer and the memory a little more vivid.

Many of us started out using borrowed equipment loaned to us by so called friends, who were eager to either share a wonderful experience or to just watch us struggle.

We walk out to the top of the beginner’s slope stumbling around in our rented/borrowed boots, our skis on our shoulders with a half a dozen other first timers trying to not drop, clobber or be clobbered with our less than cooperative equipment. It doesn’t take long to realize that trying to look cool is a waste of time. Survival is the order of the day, along with having a little fun.

If you do survive the first trip down the aforementioned precipice you must now trust your life to an apparatus that looks like it was designed by a refugee from a defunct amusement park, the ominous chairlift. To the first timer this device looks like a series of fully refrigerated swings, hung in the sky from an all too small cable which is itself just lying there on naked metal and rubber pulleys. All of which is dragged up the precipice with your butt hanging 20 feet in the air and freezing itself and your jeans to the hard plastic seat. Boarding and exiting this device is one of the more disconcerting experiences of the day for a beginner.  You wait patiently in line for your turn to board, observing all the other first timers determined not to repeat any of their mistakes. One of the last things you want to do is to cause the ever embarrassing stopping of the lift and/or the denting of the back of the head. When it’s your turn you desperately try to shuffle out to the appropriate spot at the appropriate time to be seated on the chair which swings around the bull wheel at relentless pace. It strikes you firmly in the back of the legs sending you into a rapid descent onto the unforgiving seat. Then just as you are about to leave the ground you notice that the top of your boot and the bottom of the chair have decided to see just how much of your calf they can compress between them. As the device continues it unyielding progression up the mountain, you are now dealing with pain, two ski poles and the safety bar. Which in a way is a good thing since it distracts you from the fact that you are now 20+ feet in the frigid air. Once you do realize where you are, it slowly begins to dawn on you that somehow somewhere you are going to have to get off this thing.

So once your now-frozen butt has been dragged all the way to the top you must unfasten it from the frigid seat so that you may now test the will of the gods by doing it all over again. There is however one remaining obstacle. The refrigerated seat does not actually come to a stop. You must exit said device while it is moving. This little maneuver has been a staple of many a Warren Miller movie. I would not be surprised to learn that several sadistic cults view these scenes as a warm up to their human sacrifices. I can think of no other experience similar to this with the possible exception of having the rug literally pulled out from under you.  It is just one more of the challenges to be conquered, and what the hell, your jeans are already frozen harder than Chinese algebra so what’s one more fall.  The usual scenario involves at least one of the three inhabitants stepping on someone’s skies or hitting them with a stray pole or grabbing them as part of an instinctive reaction to falling. Often this result is a pile of skiers lying in the snow laughing their heads off.  

This little musing is not in any way meant to belittle or intimidate those adventurous enough to venture forth on this quest. I applaud their efforts and can relate to the feelings of fear and exhilaration. If they can make it through their first day on skis the hardest part is over. I won’t say the rest is all down hill (because it’s just to cliché), but I will say the remaining challenges will be well worthwhile. Many beginners have been know to actually say they enjoyed the experience, usually that is after their jeans have thawed out and a few amber colored beverages have been savored.