Night Skiing

By now some of you know that at some points in my life I become a little delusional. Given that characteristic, sometime in 2003 I went night skiing with four dorm friends at Mt. Hood Meadows (yes, that is ‘night’ there in front of ‘skiing’. Modifying it. Now the skiing is dark and somewhat horrifying). Keep in mind I’d been skiing only once before, at which time I fell twice. Only twice! I sort of fell down instead of sitting on the chairlift and another time I sacrificed myself on purpose while going like 90 down a hill to avoid a three foot tall pink snowsuit on tiny skis. Who knew the intermediate hill spit you out on the bunny hill? The different speeds are not conducive to merging. The little girl would have probably died. As it was, it only took me about 15 minutes to locate all my gear and find my mittens.

Back to 2003.


This photo is not from 2003. It has things in common with this post though. I did fall down while moving faster than normal on an icy surface right before this photo was snapped. And see? It doesn't appear to have deterred me! I look happy (delusional)and slightly soggy. It may seem that those gloves I'm wearing are white, but that's just chunks of ice and slush accumulated from breaking my fall. And yes, I spun a 180 and fell flat on my stomach, so my pants are soaked. If you're confused as to how this relates to the post, keep reading. Also I don't have all that many pictures of me frolicking in the snow, but I needed a visual aid.

The amount of time it took us to wake up, pack, eat, locate enough skis, and actually drive to Mt. Hood is the reason we were night skiing. I mean, we moved glacially for the whole day. Eugene time moves differently than other time. So it was somewhat of a shock to find myself flying down a hill on a slick surface with long things attached to my feet, but nevertheless, there I was. Well, first I was at the bottom of the hill naively asking the chair lift operator which hill was best for a beginner. She said, “Go down the run on the left and you should be fine!”

Ah, blissful ignorance. I thanked her and successfully landed on the chairlift. As I exited left off of the lift and over a precipitous ridge, I started wondering with increasing paranoia if the woman had meant my left coming off the lift, or one-who-was-smartly-looking-down-the-mountain’s left. Almost immediately upon starting to wonder, I realized that she did in fact mean the latter, and I had most unfortunately chosen the former. This was classic. I giggled a little to myself nervously as I started to pick up speed. Wheeee! Using my knack for unraveling mysteries rapidly and at unhelpful times, I deduced that due to the lack of night skiing lights on my side of the hill and the marked absence of anyone else, I must be on some kind of back-country kamikaze route. That’s cool, I thought. After all, I was still upright somehow. There were a lot of those pesky bump things (moguls?). I mean a LOT. Literally I was either airborne or bouncing up again to airborne the whole run. Boingboingboingboingboingboing. If the bottom of my skis had springs that’s what I would have sounded like on my descent. And maybe WHOOSH in the background for speed. I’m going to go ahead and call it a harrowing descent. While concentrating on keeping my muscles tensed exactly the same the whole time because it seemed to be working, I vaguely noticed trees popping up in my vision every so often. It was like that Pop Up game that kids have – you turn a knob or push a button and a cow or pig comes out of nowhere. Only these were not nice plastic farm animals. I tried not to look at them. This was easy, since by the time I realized they were there I was generally already past them.

Finally I saw a dim light through the trees. A millisecond later I flew out of the tunnel of trees, bounced off a final bump thing, and catapulted into a snowdrift. A middle aged guy skiing by at a safe, responsible speed looked startled. Children may have pointed and laughed, but I was alive. This was unexpected. Smirking and trying to return to a normal breathing pattern, I casually reattached my skis, mittens, and hat, located my poles, and glided slowly down the beginner hill. Nothing to see here…

This should probably have instilled some sort of conditioned response like driving the opposite direction of mountains. Buuuut no. No rational fears here! I later learned to snowboard and ended up colliding (oh yes, literally) with a Christian youth group who included me and an unsuspecting foreign exchange student in their activities for some reason for the rest of the day. I think they could tell I was on a fast track toward death and wanted to make sure I was properly prepared. But that’s another story.