Euphoria

School is coming to a close for the year and I'm having a really hard time staying motivated lately. I have such high standards for myself and my grades that I feel like such a horrible person when I can't get motivated. (I know that sounds silly, because I think that's called being human? Ha!) Up until the last month I didn't get to ski that much because of school work. Once the weather started getting nice all I wanted to do was ski, and now it's hard to get back on track. When you have something that you're so passionate about it's hard to balance it with the rest of your life; I see now how people can become workaholics.

On that note, this is a well overdue entry about the way I live. I was talking to my friend Rachel whose high school best friend attends a highly regarded college. Over the last two years they have become estranged because of her friend's demeaning opinion on our way of life, which is massively misunderstood. I think college is very important, I just think it's important to get out and experience the world as well. I'd honestly like to have a good chat with the idiot who decided it was a good idea for humans to spend their entire day inside a building. The sun rises everyday so you can see things... you know, outside. Some people may call us "ski bums", but it's so much more than that.

Me and my brother, who is studying medicine, talk quite a bit. I ask him about my injuries from skiing and he often wonders why I'm so in love with it even though it can be risky. Contrary to popular belief, I actually have a nerd side to me. I read this article in Time Magazine once about how the chemicals of love, happiness, and joy in a mothers brain after childbirth make the pain of pregnancy and delivery obsolete. That's exactly how skiing is for me, it's like a euphoria. The first thing I do when I wake up is think about skiing. I eat a good breakfast so I have energy for skiing. I don't drink, or smoke, or party so I can get a good night sleep and be well rested for skiing. I go out of my way to learn about nutrition so I'm that much healthier for skiing. I'm 20 years old... Really, you're going to look down on this?

I'm at one with nature and the mountains, and there's something so powerful about that because as humans we're so small. What's so captivating about skiing is how such a simple piece of fiberglass, wood, and metal can turn me into a superhero. I can move at highway speeds in complete control, jump heights with ease that would normally kill people, and cover thousands of feet through snow deep enough to halt transportation- all without the power of an engine or even the wind. Skiing has made me realize that I'm far more capable of feats that were ever deemed possible for humans. Yet there's something so natural about having skis attached to my feet, so much that it requires little to no thought while gracefully carving down a groomed path or trekking through the back country. My mind is clear from the worries of reality. I hear the snow under my feet, the wind through the trees, and the occasional hardy bird who stuck around for winter. There is nothing but tranquility in that.

I will never make a massive impact on this planet, but as a mountain girl, maybe the purpose of my life is just to enjoy it and make no lasting impact at all. I may never be rich with luxuries, but I know I'm always going to be rich with faith, appreciation, and humility. I may get hurt once in a while, but that's the price I'm willing to pay for the joy and happiness that skiing gives me. I can honestly say that I would rather die tomorrow skiing than to have never skied at all. I hope everyone finds something they love as much as I love skiing, otherwise I don't think life is worth living.

So before you judge someone based on their education, income, or way of life, remember that we are all out on the pursuit of happiness.  And thank the Lord we don't all find happiness in the same thing... Otherwise you would all be stealing my fresh snow on powder days!

A Day With A Legend

Before I start my story, let me say that a chairlift is the #1 place in the world to meet people. You're stuck next to 1-5 other people on a bench seat for a 5-15 minute period 30 feet off the ground. If you can't meet someone in that situation you might be a lost cause. I have always been one to listen to music while I ride, but I always take my headphones off on the chairlift. I'm not discriminatory towards race, age, or sex, because I feel like everyone I've met has had a story, and this time was definitely no different.

I drove to A-Basin this morning and planned on skiing alone. A lot of my friends have gone home for the summer or are just ready for summer (I can't say I blame them). As I was getting on the chairlift an energetic man, who had to be in his 70's, skied up next to me. He was a tall thin man wearing an older one piece suit, but his skis looked brand new. We started casual conversation and I could tell he knew a lot about skiing. "This is someone who's been skiing for decades," I thought to myself. I really like listening to the "old" guys in the industry talk (I put "old" in quotations because besides their age, nothing about these guys is "old"). The stories they have about places they've gone and how skiing use to be back in the day is so fascinating, and this man wasn't by any means short on stories. As I got off the chairlift I went straight to the next lift and he turned right and went down the run, but I really didn't think much of it. I went up the next lift, went all the way back down, came up the first lift again, and as I was skiing to the second lift I saw him.

I purposely tried to slow down hoping he'd catch up so I'd have a chairlift buddy. Not only did he catch up, but he flew past me. I caught up with him in the lift line and he nudged me with his elbow. "We meet again young lady!" He said with a big smile. We started going up the chairlift again and I asked him a question:
"So, I have a question. You seem like you've been skiing a long time and well this is my first season. Could you give me some pointers on how to keep the tips of my skis more parallel on my turns?"
 "What?!" He responded, "You mean to tell me you just started skiing? Well I'll be darned! I saw you ski, why don't you come take some turns with me and I'll show you."

He continued to tell me some of his crazy stories up the chairlift, about mountaineering (the sport of hiking up a mountain and skiing back down) and white water rafting and being an engineer on the side.
"This pair of skis I use to ride, well before they put them up on display somewhere anyway," was something he said that really caught my attention. I began to grow more and more curious about who he was, who he had been, and something in me told me he wasn't just anyone. We got off the chairlift and skied over to a fairly steep and narrow run.
 "Now you follow me first kid, try to keep up and follow my tracks."
 I laughed in my head, I could keep up with a 70-year-old just fine... so I thought. We started off and I was only a ski length behind him, after his second turn I was 5 ski lengths back, and then 10, 15, and 20. He was waiting for me at the end of the run. I was out of breath and exhausted, and I hadn't made half the turns he had.
Then he laughed, "Looks like those powder skis are a little hard to turn on these groomed runs!"
"Yeah," I responded adamantly, needing some sort of excuse for myself and him as to why someone 50+ years older than me just schooled me. I was sure he was someone, he had to be, he was probably a racer in his younger years.
"I have another pair of park skis in my car, I'll grab them later and work on what you've taught me."
"Well why don't you just go get them now," he said, "I've got all day."
 I'm always one to take advice from others on skiing. It's a very humbling sport, not like other team sports. The difference in talent from one skier to another can be the difference between a blade of grass and the empire state building. It's a sport I'm very passionate about, and I'm so inclined to learn.

I went to my car and got my other pair of skis and we met back at the bottom chairlift.
"Ahhh, you have twin tips," he laughed, "looks like I really won't be riding behind you now!"
(For those of you who aren't skiers, twin tips are skis that are curled up on the front and back, a modern ski made for skiers who like to do tricks. The purpose is so you can ride backwards without digging your tips into the snow causing you to fall. The curl on the back of the ski causes a lot of snow spray, though.) He had a very savvy personality which impressed me. We took quite a few more runs together and I was starting to keep up with him better, his pointers were really helping. 

"You know, a few of those last turns were almost perfect. You're catching on mighty quick, let me tell you. Faster than I've ever seen." 
"So did you use to be a ski instructor?" I asked.
"No, no, no... I just use to ski for a living, er, I mean a hobby. But it still is I suppose..."
"I knew it!" I thought to myself, he slipped. I looked down at his skis as he kept talking and I saw the name "Tom" written on the tips of his skis, often done as to not get one's own skis mixed up with someone else. 
"Tom, Tom, Tom..." I repeated to myself in my head, trying to come up with a retired pro skier named Tom, but I had nothing. 
"You know, I really like you Ali," he said, "you've really got something here with skiing. You've got heart. Now you just have to really put that heart into the way you ride, and not just skiing, you see?"
"Yeah, I see." I said.
"You just ride those skis like it's more natural to you then walking, but you don't give any effort. Lets go inside after this run, I've got some things I'd like to show you."

At the end of the run we walked into the lodge where his wife was sitting reading a magazine. 
"Look here what I've found," he said to his wife, "A 19-year-old super star skier!"
"Haha," I laughed, "He was just helping me with my carving."
"Oh is that so?" His wife said, "That old man slowed down enough for you to keep him in sight did he? You must be something." Even she seemed to know how fast he was.
He sat down next to me at the table and pulled a stack of full paper-sized pictures out of his book bag, along with a Ski Magazine.
"Now lets see here, where is it", he said as he was paging through the magazine. "I don't usually just carry these things with me so it must be fate!"
He turned the magazine towards me to a 7 or so page ski article about a very dangerous, epic, first-accent mountaineering excursion. I'm not sure if most of you are familiar with Skiing magazines, but it takes a darn important story to make a 7 page article, much less a 4 page one.
"There, read that first sentence there," he said as he pointed to the first sentence of the entire article. They say that people lose their memory when something shocks them, so honestly I don't remember exactly what it said, but it was something like, "You never get anything less than an adventure when you spend a day with Tom Spencer."
He started paging through the article before I could process his name, pointing out pictures of this insane mountain he climbed."
"It's 13,000 feet, but it ain't like these mountains here in Colorado where you can start the climb at 9,000 feet, we started at 3,000. I'll be climbing it again next year, that'll make me 76-years-old when I do." 
He pulled the magazine away and dropped a pile of 50 pictures or more in front of me and began narrating as he went through them. Picture after picture was a different magazine cover he was on.
"November 1971, see this is the first issue ever that Ski magazine published with a skier (yours truly) doing a freestyle trick on it, it was an 'aerial airplane turn'. Oh and see this here cover, I don't even know who took this picture, I sure didn't okay it to be published, but someone sent it in and then there it was. Oh and here's a picture of me and my good friend Jim McConkey."
(Jim McConkey was the father of Shane McConkey, a modern skiing legend who was sadly and tragically killed last year when a ski base jump went bad.)

It all started hitting me then, I knew who he was. Tom Spencer is one of the godfather's of skiing, one of the guys who was one of the first to do a lot of things on skis. He's one of the reasons the sport is where it is today. I know some people might wonder why I was so starstruck, since I can say I'm friends with some of the current best freeskiers in the world, but this is different. It's probably really cool to meet an engineer who builds and designs airplanes, but what if you could have met the Wright brother's who invented the airplane? I had just spent the day riding with a legend, and I was honored beyond words.

"See Ali, you didn't get to be friends with your friends so quick for no reason. I think they saw the same thing in you that I see. I'm going to get you on a real pair of world class carving skis, and I want you to keep them, for now. I can't even imagine where you're going to go on them. But let's find out, say Thursday? I'm going to bring two friends, they just might show. Two X US Ski Team racers, they have more advice when it comes to teaching."


We exchanged emails and I tried to thank him as much as I could for showing me all he had and sharing his stories. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it out on Thursday because I'm leaving for Wisconsin for a week on Friday, but I am sure that I have made a new friend. A new friend that is a legend, who has wisdom far beyond my years, who can hopefully help me achieve my dream of skiing for a living. It goes to show that you'll never know who you'll meet, and all it starts with is "hello".

Mission Possible

It was a cold and windy day today on the mountain. It wasn't crowded, but there was as an abnormally large amount of tourists for a week day. Some of which looked like they semi-knew what they were doing, some of which didn't, all of which were in my way. I got frustrated and decided to head over to a run called Freeway, where the park crew had set up a number of different extra large features, including three jumps. The gaps of the jumps went from 45, to 55, to 65 feet. This is my first season skiing, and though I've so passionately wanted to do some big jumps, I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it. It kills me to watch my pro friends shred so comfortably you wouldn't know the difference if they were laying on their couch watching TV. I skiied to the top of the jump line and suddenly stopped, causing a spray of snow to cloud over my view. As the snow cleared something funny happened, and I felt like I was looking at the jumps for the first time from a different set of eyes.
"This is ridiculous," I thought to myself, "you can do this!"
I looked around and saw not a soul in sight. No one to save me if I were to fall and wreck myself, no one to witness if I were to land and ride away. I had absolutely nothing going for me, but I decided to go for it anyway. Without hesitation, without a second glace, I aimed my skis down the run, and went. It was only a few seconds later that I was safely on the ground on the other side, and only another few seconds for me to realize what I had done. That short moment I spent flying over a 45 foot gap would liberate me from any fear I ever had of heights for the rest of my life. I rode down the run with so much adrenaline I felt like I was glowing like a light bulb.
"My head was just above the trees, the treees!" I screamed out loud and laughed as I shook the ski poles violently in my hands.
I collected myself before I got to the bottom and played it cool, secretly hoping someone had saw. I quickly realized none of my friends were to be found, and if anyone had seen, it clearly didn't impress. As I was standing in the lift line waiting to go up again, life around me was going on as it normally does. No one could see the triumphant fireworks exploding in my eyes behind my goggles, or the silent celebration that was rattling my inner core. I suddenly didn't care whether anyone had saw. I suddenly didn't care what I could or couldn't do on skis, or that the mass proportion of my friends were better than me. I had a private victory that made me feel like I had made it; I had done something I never thought I would be able to do. I got on the chairlift with a hot young lad I had seen many times before, and I knew he was an incredible skier.
"I just stomped my first switch 9 off that jump, super stoked!" He said, with a tone meaning to impress, as he pointed to a jump that was barely pushing 30 feet.
"How's your day going?" He asked.
I politely grinned and responded, "Ohhhh, pretty good," and paused, "nothing spectacular."

It was my moment, and I no longer wanted to share.

Great to be back!

I had an awesome weekend in Wisconsin. It was a little too humid for my liking, but it was very fun nonetheless. While I was gone I spent a lot of time with my family, even visiting a few aunts and uncles and cousins. We talked a lot about skiing (obviously), so my mom finally decided she wanted to learn how. She hates the cold, so we'll see if she actually gets out and tries it this winter. I know she has the athletic ability to, she's an awesome water skier! My grandparents came over for an early thanksgiving dinner. I also loved seeing my dogs, Dillon and Dan.

On the plane ride there I was reading the November issue of Skiing Magazine and thought a few of the articles were blog worthy. The first I'm going to share with you is about a local skier Rainer Hertrich. It was ironic to see this article, since I had just seen Rainer in the local newspaper.

"By August 31, 2009, Copper Mountain snowcat driver Rainer Hertrich, 47, had skied 2,134 consecutive days. That's every day since November 1, 2003- since the Marlins won the Series, and through bouts of the flu, a separated shoulder, and four rib injuries. And he's still going. he works six months a year at Copper and shoulder-season days at Loveland and Arapahoe Basin. He grooms Mt.Hood by summer and finishes the year in South America. He's amassed more than 70 million vertical feet and a Guinnesss record, all on telemark gear."  - Eugene Buchanan

Here's the article in the Newspaper:

The next piece of an article I want to mention was tips and tricks for a more enjoyable season. A few of my friends have one horrible problem off the mountain: SMELLY BOOTS! Since I know everyone can't afford boot driers, the magazine gave an awesome tip. After your long day on the hill, put a dryer sheet in each boot. The wicking action helps dry them faster, and the scent keeps them smelling spring fresh!
And another tip that I'm sharing from personal experience; If you suffer from cold hands, and can't seem to find gloves that work, I have a solution. Wear latex gloves underneath your regular gloves. You know, the ones doctors and dentists wear! I know this sounds silly, but the latex will keep your sweat in, which will keep your gloves dry. I also think the latex helps keep the warmth against my hands better.

The last article I want to share is probably one of the coolest skiing stories I've ever read. Again, this article was taken from the November issue of Skiing Magazine.

I LOST A RESCUE TOBOGGAN LOADED WITH A PATIENT.

" In the winter of 67'-68', I was 19 and recruited for the [redacted] ski patrol. Young and very sure of myself, I had the attitude that I could ski anywhere and could handle a toboggan.
     One day I was called to an accient in an advanced area. I was paired with "Dave," an avalanche-science guru who was also one of the strongest skeirs on patrol, and we took a two-man toboggan rig to the scene. We arerived to find a patiend with a dislocated hip, screaming in pain. Dave was a paramedic, meaning he was allowed to carry intravenous drugs. He took a needle from his pack and gave the shot to the patient. Thrity seconds later, our patient wetn from screaming to smiling.
    We packaged him into the sled and discussed the safest way down. I told Dave I'd skied this area a lot and I knew a chute through the cliffs. I told him to pick up his end of the toboggan and follow me.
    Dave had never skied this terrain before. The line was too steep for Dave's veteran edges, especially now that he was holding a loaded toboggan while dropping off the end of the world. We began skiing, me leading and Daven in the back. Suddently, we began to spin. Dave passed me- still holding on to the handles. Then the sled and I flew past Dave, who popped out of his skis and began selfarresting. I hung on for dear life, thinking we could recover and make it. But the sled broke my rip. I came ot a sop and watched the sled, still right-way-up, sailing down the ru. I started to ski fast, in hot pursuit.
    At first I though the whole rig might shoot down into the rocky amphitheater below. Instead, it beered into a few small threes, The sled bent the trunks in half but the trees halted its progress. I arrived about a minute after it stopped. I hurried to uncover the patient from the layers of tarp and blanket and feared the worst. When I got through, the guy looked up at m. With the same druggy smile he asked, "Are we at the bottom yet?"
    From that day forward, patrollers mandated the lowering of toboggans in this area with a rope.
    Twenty years later I was no longer a patroller but skiing in the same area with a friend, who broke his ankle. When patrol arrived, they bundled my friend in a toboggan and radioed th plan to HQ. "We're headed down Donny's Chute into the amphitheater with the patient and his friend. What's your name, sir?"
    Not knowing until that moment that the incident had gone down in local history, I answered him: "I'm Donny." As told by Jeff Burke.