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Think you can learn to ski in a weekend? I tried

 
A selfie before heading down the slope.
A selfie before heading down the slope.
Published March 29, 2017

AVON, Colo.

There are certain dreams you give up when you move to Florida.

Learning to ski, for one.

Eighteen years in the Northeast, and I had never put on skis. Despite the four hours I logged last year during a trip out west, the word beginner gave me too much credit.

So when friends from New York asked if I wanted to meet them at Beaver Creek ski resort in Colorado for a long weekend, I was apprehensive.

Can you have fun in the Rockies as a rookie?

• • •

In theory, skiing isn't even hard. Gravity does the work.

Timid skiers can get by keeping their skis at an angle with the tips in a pizza-slice formation, controlling their speed and making wide turns. But skiing with confidence means keeping your skis parallel, like french fries, carving side to side down the mountain and ejecting snow like rocket exhaust.

Confidence, though, is exactly what I lacked. So much so that I had decided it would be a successful weekend if I simply made it out of Colorado without hurting myself.

The uneasiness started even before we got to the mountain. Inside the ski rental shop, we had to fill out a form so the equipment people knew how we wanted our gear to fit.

For binding tightness, there were three options: beginner, intermediate and expert.

"What's the difference?" I asked. I assumed as a beginner, my bindings would be really loose, so my feet would easily pop out of the skis in the event of a crash. (In 1968, before ski bindings automatically released under torque, my father hurt himself really badly during a fall. His body twisted, but his feet, locked into the skis, didn't, and he broke both legs below the knees. It's why we never went skiing growing up.)

Turns out, it's exactly the opposite. Beginners tend to make a lot of mistakes, the equipment woman explained. With loose bindings, you'd always lose your skis. Better to be snug, she said.

I understood the logic, but couldn't help imagining myself in absolute agony, ski patrol strapping me into a toboggan with two broken legs.

Nevertheless, skiing has always been something I've wanted to master, so I was excited to try.

The more experienced half of our group headed to Vail, a neighboring mountain with harder runs, while the rookie half stayed at Beaver Creek.

• • •

Snapping into the skis for the first time, I transformed from a relatively coordinated adult human to something akin to a baby giraffe trying to walk. I almost fell getting the second one on because my other foot started to slide. Quite humbling.

I had decided before arriving to forgo a lesson because it was entirely too expensive, though I undoubtedly could have benefited from one. Instead, my friends and I hit the practice hill to get our sea legs, significantly upping the average age on the bunny slope. We shuffled to the magic carpet — literally walked sideways up the shallow incline. No doubt the college kid manning the slope laughed when I almost fell while stepping onto the moving mat. Or maybe my shame had me imagining that.

We did the bunny three times. Given the gentle grade of the hill, my level of concentration was, in retrospect, embarrassing. But each time, the feeling of always being on the verge of falling began to disappear.

• • •

There's a stark contrast between how peaceful it is to ride on a chairlift and how chaotic it is to get on.

Hundreds of people yield and merge until the line is condensed to four to six people who ultimately get on the lift. It's hard not to step on people and it's easy to trip. But you can't go down without first going up, so there's no way to avoid the mayhem.

Once you're airborne, it's really tranquil. It helped that it wasn't bitter cold. The air was crisp and the highs all weekend were balmy, relatively speaking, in the 50s, which was good because I don't own a proper winter coat and had to layer with Under Armour, a fleece quarter-zip and a light jacket.

Even if you ski alone, the chairlift is an inherently social activity. You're suspended 30 feet in the air for five minutes with total strangers; there's nothing to do but talk.

On one ride, I talked to a guy who owns a software company in Dallas. On another, my friend and I found ourselves in a political conversation with a couple after we heard them talking about a relative.

"She's gone off the deep end," the guy said to his wife. "She went to a Trump rally."

Some people find getting off the chairlift stressful, but I never felt that way. The ground rises beneath your feet and then slopes back down again. I'd wait a little longer and just fall out of the seat before sliding to a stop.

• • •

The views from the top were like nothing I'd ever seen, visibility stretching into forever. Someone from the resort must have arranged the mountains, like moving furniture, so they looked most appealing to the guests as they got off the chairlift. Before skiing, we paused for selfies and vista photos.

From the top of the lift, there were three ways to go: steep, steeper and not steep. Naturally, we chose the third slope. I ate so much pizza that first run, afraid to let my skis even approach parallel as I knew I'd fly out of control.

The hands-down worst part about being a 25-year-old rookie skier is seeing the little kids fly by. They're tackling blue and black runs with the confidence of someone doing nothing more than running downhill. Occasionally they'd fall and I'd pass them. And then they'd get up and pass me again. "How come I can't do that?" I asked myself. I shouldn't have. The answer — that along the way I lost my youthful recklessness and now I'm too afraid of getting hurt and too concerned with practical things like how I'd fly home if I got seriously injured — is way too depressing.

We did six runs that day, broken up by some apres ski — that's mountain for food and drinks — during lunchtime. Later in the day, my tentativeness turned to frustration as I wanted to ski a bit more aggressively. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get my skis to stay parallel through turns. My outside leg did just fine, but I'd have to fight with my inside leg to keep it from dragging and get it to follow smoothly.

Whenever I was on the chairlift I'd study the people below me, sure the secret to skiing was hidden somewhere in their body movements.

Things finally improved the second day. By then, every other turn was clean and fast, less like I was fighting with myself and more like it should feel: fun. On those good turns, I'd shoot my own trails of rocket exhaust. I imagined people even less experienced than me watching from the chairlift and trying to mimic my movements.

Then I fell.

My ski caught an edge, and my body flew forward. I landed on my back with my head facing downhill and my knees slammed against my chest. The impact stretched my left hip too far. It was no more than a 3 on the injury scale, but enough to end my day on the slopes.

• • •

Going by my definition of a successful weekend, I had failed: I didn't make it off the mountain unscathed. And, worried I could hurt myself further, I sat out the third day of skiing. Instead, two friends and I went snowshoeing.

I do wish we had had an extra day or two out there. Considering the flight and 2.5-hour shuttle ride from the airport to the mountain, it was a lot of travel for what amounted to just three days of activities.

But it didn't feel like a blown weekend. I made a lot of progress on the skis and think I'm only a couple more days away from really feeling comfortable. There may be hope for me to conquer the slopes as a Florida resident.

Maybe next winter.

Contact Josh Solomon at jsolomon@tampabay.com or (813) 909-4613. Follow @josh_solomon15.