Wheee!

10:30 8 February 2009

I woke up today and my entire body hurts. I feel as if I was in a car accident yesterday. While I wasn’t in a car accident yesterday, I am sure that I was subjected to similar G-forces that people in car accidents go through. Namely, skiing yesterday has caused my body to revolt today- I used muscles I didn’t know I had and the rest hurt from the numerous high velocity falls I took. Even given this, it was awesome and I fully enjoyed myself and look forward to the next time I can try it. While I had cross country skied before, this was a completely different muscular experience and the feel is nothing alike. Nevertheless I picked it up fairly quickly, despite the lack of any truly easy slopes there and by the end of the day I was slaloming down the less steep parts of the hill with ease- there was one section that was the upper have of the mountain that I had mastered and consistently did with some grace and without falling. I was quite proud of myself and really enjoyed the feeling of speed combined with control that I had gained. To get down all the way was a bit different story. The rest of mountain was quite steep, probably about a 45 degree slant, and while I could use the same turning skills down the mountain, I ended up deciding that it would be quicker and more fun to just remove my skis and take the buttocks-express to the end of the slope.

Before I had really gotten the feel of how to stop- while I never really was able to get a good “pizza” or “wedge” my turning abilities eventually allowed me to stop much more precisely- I had a number of spectacular falls. They mainly resulted from me, in an attempt to turn, angling myself fully downhill and then chickening and not being able to work up the courage to change my course. This, of course, resulted in a tremendous amount of speed building up and me not knowing a good way to slow myself down. The most impressive of my falls (usually once I built up speed I would just sit down and stop myself) resulted when at the beginning of the hill I angled myself downhill and then couldn’t stop, I got all the way to the midway point where the serious slope started and knew I had to stop lest I actually die. I tried turning in a desperate attempt at an ice-skating hockey stop but the tips of my skis stopped and I kept going forward. I think I may have done a flip or two, it was so fast I don’t quite remember what happened until I stopped, and then I was tangled up and on my back. After that I took a break but was up again soon enough and then found, through the help of my much more experienced friends, how to gain better control.

At the end of the day, while we were waiting for our taxi, we had a cool experience. They use old ex-Soviet helicopters for heli-skiing here and as I was looking at one with friends, another came and landed right near us. It was so cool feeling the immense power of the winds of a big helicopter landing, the snow stinging and holding your hat in the blizzard like environment. Definitely a neat experience that capped off a great day.