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How I lost my skiing virginity and, subsequently, can now be called a Real Utahan.

Remember how I failed to go skiing last year due to, well, lack of trying really?  It was on my List of things to do in 2009, and I failed.  So I added it to the 2010 “Year of the Tiger” List.  If you check, item number one is “Go skiing or snowboarding or snowshoeing with some regularity.”  I went snowshoeing for the first time back in January, and again last weekend on my overnight backpacking-to-a-yurt adventure, and I have plans to go again on Saturday.  I feel this qualifies as fulfilling Number One 2010 Resolution.

People have been strapping highly waxed sticks to their feet for centuries, it can’t be any more complicated than learning to ride a horse, right?  As a native Utahan (a state that contains a dozen world-class ski resorts and training facilities for Olympic ski athletes) I should at least learn how to ski.  Skiing is one of Utah’s largest tourist industries and we have some of the most amazing snow in the world in our mountains.    After living here for 27 years I should at least attempt to be native-like, right?

Last week, Erin generously invited to take me to Solitude with her extra lift pass and when she volunteered to teach me how to ski as one of her New Things (she’s never taught someone before) I jumped at the chance to try it out.  I borrowed some ski equipment (Thank you Ashley!!) and we headed up to Solitude in Big Cottonwood Canyon, about 30 minutes from Salt Lake City.  It wasn’t until we were half-way up the mountain that Erin, a local journalist, mentioned she would be writing about the experience for her weekly outdoor column.  Um, what?  Suddenly I felt very nervous.  What if I sucked?  What if I was a wuss?  What if there was no possible way I would get off the bunny hill?  What if I was a complete and total embarrassment and now it would be splashed across a newspaper and saved forever in the archives–with pictures!–to my utter humiliation and shame.  My posterity would whisper about that time when I shamed the family name with my marked inability to make it down a hill on skis.  I would be outcast.  I would…..I would just have to prove all my inner doubts wrong.

The good news is that I picked up skiing relatively easy.  Sure, I took my tumbles, a LOT of tumbles–two days later and I am still feeling awfully sore and achey–but I was off the bunny hill by 9:45 am (the resort opens at 9:00) and by 2:00 I successfully made it down a blue run without falling (the easiest runs are green, then blue, then black diamond and double black diamonds).  I feel the day was a success!

The other piece of good news is that Erin was incredibly kind in her column and the pictures she chose do not show me careening head over ski’s down the slope.  Double Awesome.  So, if you’d care to click over there and read all about my skiing debut, here’s the link again.  (If you choose not to click over there, we can still be friends.  But friends who do not read friend’s debut’s in newspapers are somehow relegated to second tier friendship.  It’s in The Rules.  Somewhere.)

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