When I tell people that I go to college in Vermont, almost everyone responds with “OH, you must be a big skier” to which I would have to awkwardly smile and let them down easy with the “oh, actually I’ve never been skiing but I would love to learn how!” WELL, finally give these inquirers an intelligent response about first skiing experience!
I was lucky enough to befriend a ski instructor who supplied me with all the gear necessary to go on this wonderful adventure. We set out at 8am, stopped for donuts and coffee, then were on our way to the mountain.
First step: Putting on the gear. It was a struggle to get the snow boots on and to learn how to walk with them on, but once I was all geared up and snapped into the skis, I picked up the shuffle pretty naturally and was able to move without feeling (too) awkward and clumsy.
My first experience actually skiing was going straight down a tiny little hill, I just shuffled forward enough and let gravity take me. The movement was easy and felt pretty natural, however I did run into trouble walking up hills in my skis, taking my first tumble trying to walk up a hill then sliding backwards and then inevitably landing right on my bum. Oops.
After learning how to roughly turn and control my speed, I was deemed ready to take on a green circle slope. I got on the chairlift with no issues, however unfortunately the dismount was not so smooth. I somehow ran into a cone and triggered the chairlift to stop (again, oops). On the top of the mountain we tried taking a picture, but I ended up skiing backwards down the slope, freaking out, and taking a another tumble. Other than that I enjoyed skiing down this more advanced slope in wide “S” turns.
To me, skiing is a lovely mixture of thrilling, scary, and fun. I ended my first day excited with the quick progress I made. It was a wonderful experience and one that I would encourage anyone to try out! Even if just for one day it was very fun and gave me a wonderful story to tell.
Sources:
Image 1: https://media.giphy.com/media/mNbSZf6tCMoKY/giphy.gif
Image 2: http://images.newschoolers.com/images/17/00/03/96/45/39645.jpeg
Image 3: Pexels
Image 4: https://media.giphy.com/media/FsF2iOxgHYa7m/giphy.gif
Cover Photo: (from Pexels)
https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-wearing-blue-jacket-standing-on-snow…