Shots Across The Bow

Getting in Over My Head

I never take the easy way out.

I don't know if it's confidence or arrogance, but if it says "Beginner" or "Easy" on it, I skip it. I taught myself how to knit while out at sea on a six month deployment, and where most people would start with a simple scarf or toboggan (the hat, not the sled) my first project was an Aran pattern, with cables and bobbles and multiple stitch patterns. It looked similar to this one.

Fortunately, the sweater turned out nicely, but there are times when my leaps into the deep end of the pool do not come out as well.

Take snow skiing, for example.

While I was in the Navy, I was stationed in Bremerton, Washington. (Oddly, the majority of my postings while in the Navy were not on a coastline. My first two years were spent in northern Illinois, central Florida, and upstate New York, none of which are known for their bustling seaports. But I digress.) Now Washington State has some of the finest snow skiing in the nation, and many of the slopes were only an hour or so from the base, so a bunch of us decided to go skiing over one weekend.

I had skied before, at the fabulous Ober Gatlinburg Ski Resort, except back then, it wasn't so fabulous. There was Castle Run and the leg of Bear Run leading down to the one ski lift. Not too impressive, but what was cool was that Castle Run, basically a large, moderately steep bowl, was covered in AstroTurf.

Yeah, really.

They poured millions of waxy, plastic beads over the AstroTurf, and had an underground sprinkler system that would wet the surface down, all for the purpose of letting you ski in the summer.

And it worked! Well sort of.

It was a lot slower than real snow and falling could result in a nasty rug burn, and I never saw any ski bunnies skiing in bikinis like they showed on the commercials, but it was a blast, and a cool way to learn to ski. So, armed with my summer skiing knowledge, I went to conquer the slopes at Crystal Mountain

We left early in the morning to make sure to maximize our time on the slopes. My buddy Ski was driving, and we should have known how the day was going to turn out because we hadn't gone 5 miles before we hit a patch of ice and slid off into a ditch. Someone was sending us a sign not to go further, but we were too young to pick up on a subtle hint like that. As a matter of fact, we failed to pick up on several explicit hints later on as well, but I'll get to that in a bit. We all pushed the car out of the ditch, and ragged on Ski, who had been bragging earlier about his snow driving skills since he was "...from Detroit, man!"

About 2 hours later, we got to the mountain, and everybody started putting on their ski suits or bibs.

Except me.

I skied in jeans, a flannel shirt, a sweater, and a heavy coat. Never having been what some would call svelte, I was doing a pretty fair imitation of the Michelin Man as we walked toward the lifts. But, I did have real skiing goggles on, so it was OK.

We started off together, then split up into smaller groups as we gravitated towards our own skill level. Ski and I wound up running the intermediate trails together, since he didn't have too much experience either. We had a blast, falling more than a few times, but getting better as the day went on. But as we were skiing, we kept looking up at this one spot on the mountain that looked really cool. It was shaped kind of like a bowl, and was wide open. It looked like you could ski anywhere as you worked your way down it. We even checked out the name, and it sounded safe:

Powder Bowl.

How threatening is that?

So we decided to try it.

Now, here is a map of the mountain. It's linked to a larger map for those of you with small monitors or weak eyes. Like me.

Now, as you look at this map, you should see the Summit House. We spent most of the morning going up the lift to Summit House, and skiing down the intermediate trails on the right side of the ridge, but towards afternoon, we shifted over to the more difficult trails on the left side of the ridge. That's when we saw the bowl. If you look to the left and above Summit House, you see the Silver Queen Peak, at 7002' elevation. The dark blue, forbidding area beneath that peak is the Powder Bowl.

We skied down to the lodge to find out which lift to take to get there. We had to take two lifts, the first, the Forest Queen Express, took us about half the way up, and here is where we got our next warning sign. We had to ski a short distance down to the second lift that would get us to the Silver Queen Peak.

I guess at this point I should tell you how trails are rated. A green circle means your grandmother could ski it, assuming she could ski, of course. A blue square is intermediate. Challenging, but not too dangerous. A black diamond means for experts. Challenging and can be dangerous. The trail between lifts was a black diamond trail.

I fell getting between the lifts.

Now, wiser heads would have turned back at this, realizing that maybe we weren't ready to go on an advanced trail. But young men are not known for their caution, or their wisdom, and we forged on. Now, I'm not completely stupid. As we got closer to the lift, we started seeing signs.

NO EASY WAY DOWN!

TRAILS NOT PATROLLED!

TURN BACK NOW IF YOU'VE ONLY SKIED ON ASTROTURF!

But those signs didn't mean us, did they?

We got on the lift, Ski in his bibs and I in my Michelin Man costume, and went up to the peak of the Silver Queen.

Let me tell you, it was beautiful. The air was clear and you could see for miles around. Mt. Rainier dominated the skyline. Unfortunately, I couldn't enjoy the view because the managers of Crystal Mountain posted small informational signs that you could read as the lift ascended. They didn't block the view or anything, but somehow, my eye kept coming back to:

BEWARE! CLIFFS AND CORNICES AHEAD

NO EASY WAY DOWN

WATCH FOR TREES ON THE WAY DOWN!

SKI PATROL DOES NOT PATROL THESE SLOPES!

WE GOT YOUR BUTT NOW, TURF-BOY!

I didn't know what a cornice was, but it didn't sound good. And as far as I was concerned, the trees were going to have to look out for themselves, because I wasn't going to be able to spare any time for them.

We got to the top of the lift, and got off at the first aid station. Why do they put tham at the top of the mountain when you aren't going to need them until you get to the bottom?

Anyway, we skied over to the top of the bowl, and that's when it we discovered what a cornice was. The wind had scooped away all the powder from the ridge, and hollowed out a small cliff so you had to jump down about 10 feet to hit the snow.

That's a cornice. Never has a vocabulary lesson come at such a high price.

Smart guys would have tucked their tails in and ridden the lift back down out of danger. But then again, smart guys wouldn't have gotten themselves into this predicament in the first place. It had become a question of honor. We started it; we were going to finish it.

We decided to take off out skis, and hike a short distance around the rim of the bowl to an area beyond the cornice. Of course, while we were hiking, three or four real skiers came up to the lip and casually jumped off, dropping the 10 feet to the snow, and easily shushing their way to the bottom of the bowl. That gave us hope that once we conquered the cornice, it would be smooth sailing to the bottom.

We put our skis on, commended our souls to our ancestors, and headed out horizontally across the bowl. Using a very shallow angle across the bowl, we were able to stay under control, and we started to gain a little confidence. It was almost as easy as it had looked from the bottom.

Then it came time to turn.

I hadn't mastered the jump turn, where you hop into the air, spin your body 180 degrees, and head back in the direction you came from, and while I knew the slope was fairly steep, I figured I could turn quickly, and keep from gaining too much speed.

Wrong again, Turf-Boy.

I felt a tremendous burst of acceleration as I started my turn and before I knew it, I was flying down the mountain at break neck speed.

Until that moment, I didn't have complete appreciation for that phrase, break-neck speed, but I assure you, I have a deep understanding of all its many meanings engraved on my very soul.

I fell.

Normally, that's the end of it. You fall; you stop; you get back up; and you're back in business. When I fell, I picked up speed. Skis, poles, gloves, and hat; they were all littered behind me on the slope as I tried desperately to slow down. Somehow, I wound up on my belly, head first, looking at one of those trees the signs warned us about. I figured out I better find out how to stop and quick, or be prepared to accept that tree as my lawfully wedded spouse, to have and to hold for as long as we both should live.

Which didn't seem to be very long at that particular moment.

I spun around onto my back and got my feet in front of me. I figured I could dig my heels in and slow down that way. What really happened is I converted a feet first slide into a head over heels barrel roll.

Oh, goody!

Actually, the roll did slow me down as the constant impacts of my head into the snow created enough drag to slow me down, and I was able to get enough traction to stop before I hit the tree.

I looked back up the slope to Ski, who was sitting down and expressing his deep concern by laughing his butt off.

Guys are like that.

Learning from my mistake, instead of turning, Ski made his way down to my position by skiing across the face of the bowl, carefully sitting down, turning over in the snow, then skiing the other way. As he made his way down to me, he collected various skiing implements and articles of clothing that the mountain had stripped from me on my way down, and when he got to me, I redressed myself, and prepared to try again.

I'm a slow learner.

I stood up, put my skis on, and hadn't even started to ski when I felt the edge of my downhill ski come out from under me. I quickly sat down to avoid another fall, but it was too late. The momentum from me sitting was enough to send me off to the races a second time. Of course, now I knew the secret of how to stop, and rammed my face into the snow to slow down.

Fortunately, I kept most of my stuff on that time, but didn't bother to put it all back on. When Ski caught up to me, I told him I had found an easier way down the bowl, and I'd wait for him at the bottom. I placed my skis and poles across my lap, straightened my legs, and tobogganed down the rest of the bowl on my butt.

No easy way down? Those Yankees had never seen me ski!

I got to the bottom of the bowl and looked up, and saw that Ski was continuing his careful, slow descent, reaching me about 10 minutes later. By then, I had my skis back on, and was ready to get back down to the lodge and a warm fire. The rest of the trip down passed without any major calamities. We even took a black diamond trail on the way. After all, we'd just conquered Powder Bowl, right?

Posted by Rich at December 9, 2003 12:30 PM | TrackBack