Gone … to Brighton
Shadows of the beautiful Brighton skyline. Photo courtesy of Steven Law
Steve Law poses as he waits to board the Snake Creek Express to take another adventurous ride down the Sunshine Trail at Brighton. Photo courtesy of Steven Law
Riding the lift, looking down at ski tips. Half the fun of skiing is the meditative nature of the chairlift ride. Photo courtesy of Steven Law
In which, the author, a 43-year-old native Utahn, decides he’s going to teach himself how to ski. I know it sounds crazy to start skiing that late in life, but maybe it would be crazier not to.
This is my second day teaching myself to ski. I think I’ll start with a pre-emptive Advil.
Because after my last ski session a few days ago my muscles are still sore, I have a bruise on my left hip from falling, and my hip joints feel as though their synovial fluid has been drained and replaced with rock salt.
I click my rented boots into my rented skis and, with my rented poles, push myself over to the chairlift. It’s early enough, and cold enough, that the chair of the Snake Creek Express is still covered in a peach fuzz of frost.
It’s always exhilarating when the chairlift sweeps you into the brisk air and you soar in slow motion over the pines. From my frosty seat on the chairlift I look down on an inviting daedal of ski trails running through the pine trees, and I read the cyanic ink of ski tracks written in graceful cursive, Zen calligraphy, and flourished uncials. With hashtags at the crossroads.
The chairlift deposits me and the other skiers right at the crest of Snake Creek Pass. Several skiers, including myself, pause to look off the other side of the mountain, which looks down on the majestic Heber Valley. After this infusion of awe, I dig my trail map out of my pocket and try to figure out how to get to the Sunshine Trail — looks easy enough — and give myself a push in that direction. I like the idea of gliding across a trail of sunshine!
I marvel as some of the skiers leave the trail and dive onto Hard Coin — a double-black diamond run — and I can’t help wonder if I’ll one day possess the necessary skill sets to drop into a double-black diamond.
I pass Pioneer Trail — a blue square run that today is still too steep for my novice abilities — and check my map again. OK, the next left should be the Sunshine Trail. I turn onto it when I reach it and start down the hill.
I make my way down the hill, rather slowly, rather carefully, in a Morse code of “pizza” (dash) and “French fries” (dot), that’s heavy on the pizza. I still haven’t mastered turning, and sometimes even a small bump on the hill can knock me off balance.
One of the things that drew me to skiing is that everything about it is graceful; from the shape of the skis, to the movements of the skiers. Even jagged mountains are smoothed out under the snow. Everything is smooth and graceful but me. And the other beginner skiers. In the beginning it all feels — and I’m sure looks — very awkward.
Sometimes — OK, kind of a lot — in an effort to maintain or regain my balance, I whip my ski poles around like Bruce Lee’s nunchucks. I must look like one of those inflatable men you see flailing around outside car dealerships. I should be wearing an orange jumpsuit. Something that signals to other skiers and snowboarders to stay a safe distance away from my flailing poles and lurchy, unpredictable directional changes.
I swerve and sway my way down the hill only a short distance before I encounter an impasse of other novice skiers. Now, the main problem with being a beginning skier is that my fledgling skills force me to ski on the easier, green circle runs. And what do I find there? Other beginners. Nothing says “Go” like a green circle, but on a ski hill a green circle means: Be ready to yield.
It can be sketchy skiing with other beginners because their movements are as sporadic, erratic and unpredictable as my own. You can see them skittering toward you and you just can’t be sure that they’ll turn and avoid you or just keep coming until the two of you collide.
An experienced skier hugs the slope as tight as a “V” kerned against an “A.” They lean confidently forward over their ski tips, like the figurehead on a ship, their forward momentum balanced against the very wind they are generating. Their movements are as steady and predictable as a metronome. It’s actually very beautiful and inspiring to watch. But we first-time skiers are irregular and unpredictable as knuckleballs.
As I make my way down the Sunshine Trail I encounter a beginning skier sprawled out across the trail where she crashed, and I slow down and go around her. Over the next hill I come upon a long, strung-out line of little kids following their instructor down the hill, forming an impassable picket fence snaking down the hill. They are going very slow and I want to get in front of them, but passing them will be a minor feat because neither my, nor their, turning and stopping abilities are very good.
I tuck my skis into a snowplow, move in close behind them and wait for an opening to pass. The instructor reaches the far left side of the trail and turns back to the right. When he reaches the right side he moves back to the trail’s left side. His impassable picket fence entourage follows.
Doing some spatial calculus in my head I can see a passing window opening up, but passing will require a precise, surgical maneuver. The last kid in line reaches the left side of the trail and starts back to his right just before the instructor, who is moving back to the left, makes it all the way back to the left. When the last kid in line turns back to the right, I pass him on the left and continue down the trail’s left side before the instructor closes the gap.
I know: Dramatic!
I pass a couple more beginner skiers who, like me are weaving, flailing and whipping their poles around like Jedis fending off a platoon of Stormtroopers.
And then I’m past the last of the beginner skiers and I can see the trail is clear and open all the way to the chairlift. Feeling victorious after having successfully navigated through the Novice Gauntlet I high-five the next pine bough I pass.
I ride the lift back to the top and do it again. And again and again, and with every run my movements get sharper, my control and balance improve, my confidence increases until by early afternoon I am feeling quite secure in my abilities.
My skis make sharp, satisfying cuts, crisp as a knife blade slicing through celery. It’s a great feeling when that blue-square hill that this morning was too steep for my abilities is, by the afternoon, no longer too steep. If you saw me coming down the slope that afternoon you’d think I was just another native Utahn who grew up skiing.
And, with increased confidence, my moves become more daring, more sophisticated, more exaggerated. And that’s when you usually crash and burn. Which I do, in rather spectacular style.
It happens when I’m following a more experienced skier down a blue-square hill. The skier in front of me is carving simple, yet beautiful zigzags down the hill. I’m trying to mimic his zigzags when somehow — as only a beginner can do — I manage to zig and zag at the same time and I roll across the snow like a trout being rolled in cornmeal.
If there’s yoga in hell — and I’m sure there is — I imagine it’s a brand with particularly contorted and torturous positions. When I come to rest after my crash I am twisted into one of those advanced level, Spanish Inquisition, Gordion knot, blackbelt yoga positions. I call it the M.C. Escher Asana.
My right ski is trapped beneath my left ski, but somehow — M. C. Escher-like — my left ski is also caught beneath my right ski. Tracers dance in my vision like a hundred glowing midges over the Provo River. I’m gonna feel that tomorrow.
But, my stress headache has evaporated.
I think you’ve noticed by now, everyday adult life is a steady trickle-charge of stress, and you and I are plugged into it. But skiing goes a long way toward bleeding off the stress you’ve been accruing. It’s as if your skis, gliding across the snow, conduct the built-up stress right out of you. If you go skiing twice a week you could probably fire your therapist.
Heck, a season ski pass should be covered by insurance because it’s some of the best therapy out there. Up there on the ski slope you’re above the smog that loves to linger over our beloved valley. You get fresh air, light therapy, cardio and muscle conditioning.
And then there’s the thrill of trying something challenging and new. And as your skills improve you’ll find it’s a great confidence booster.
I know it must seem crazy to take up skiing at the age of 43, but it’s actually the opposite of crazy. In fact, I think skiing will go a long way to help keep you sane.
By the way, the police code for crazy is 5150. I guess that makes skiing 0515.
• Steven Law is a science writer and guide in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.