My 1st Day on the Hill

Originally uploaded by love not fear
Today I am sore. yesterday, I could barely move, but today, my left arm, shoulder, left side of my neck, thighs, calves and ass all hurt. I’m moving slowly. Snowboarding is truly a young man’s sport.

Despite this fact, Sunday morning we loaded up the snowboards and some warm gear and headed out to Snowbowl for my first snowboarding lesson, four days after my 37th birthday. I was admittedly nervous, but trusted my good friend Lucas, the Original Gimp. Lucas, as many of you know, is an adaptive rider and snowboard instructor who has pretty much dedicated his life to the sport, so I knew I was in good hands.

My first challenge was figuring out how to strap in my feet. Foot, rather. To get on the lift, one must “skate” on the snow, a practice similar to that of skateboarding, so having both feet strapped in is no good in this case. I figured out how to do it, awkwardly, and then learned how to do J-turns by shifting my weight on the board and either lifting my toes or my heels, depending upon how I wanted to turn. I would come to learn that Luke was building a foundation of skills on which to build each piece of the day’s lessons.

The lift operator made my next challenge slightly easier by slowing down the lift. I caught the chair on the first try, but I misunderstood the instruction offered by Lucas, so I was riding solo for the 12 minutes up the lift, Lucas shouting encouragement from the chair behind me. Of course, I wrecked getting off the lift, but I was able to scoot out of the way of the next chair, and skated down a ways to strap in both feet for the next part of my lesson: setting an edge.

Just as with J-turns, one sets an edge based upon the distribution of weight on the feet, either forward up on the toes, or backwards, toes lifted. Learning this allowed me to “float” down the mountain a ways in a “falling leaf” zigzag pattern. The first few times I did this, it was in concert with Lucas, as I stood facing him on my board, and we “danced” down the mountain holding hands. He would squeeze one of my hands, and I would change direction simply by looking in the direction of the hand squeeze. Eventually, I was able to do this solo. I felt pretty comfortable doing this on my heel side, but my toe side definitely needs some work. Still, I was ready for the next step, which was combining toe side and heel side to actually carve a path down the hill.

Lucas explained the concept to me, and I gave it a whirl on my own. I ate shit. Of course. But I got up and tried it again, eventually figuring out how to carve a few turns on my own.

I wrecked. A lot. The most spectacular wreck included what felt to me like turning end over end 20 times, but Lucas reports that it was only 2 times. Still, I lost my goggles and hat, and was pretty beat up. I also became stuck in some powder at one point. I’d stand up and fall down, stand up and fall down, without really gaining any ground in regards to traveling any one direction. Rewind, repeat about 10 or 11 times, and I was pretty tired. Judging by Lucas’ laughter, though, I looked pretty funny, and I ended up lying there laughing, too. What else was I supposed to do, eh?

Even though I slept 11 hours last night, I’m still pretty tired and sore. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to give something like this a try, and, overall, it was a good experience. I’m looking forward to trying it again.