I’m an avid skier. So much so that about seven years ago, I actually got a place for the season out in CO and any day I wasn’t working, I skied. I always had a goal, too: I wanted to ski all the black bump runs, then the double black chutes, down a 60-degree slope, through the trees… then I took up telemarking (tele- bindings only lock in the toe of the boot, and tele- boots bend at the toe, like with cross-country skis), and started taking the teles down all the same runs I had already skied, except the 60-degree slope. Needless to say, I take my skiing hobby a little bit more seriously than the average vacationer.
So I surprised myself a bit when, during a recent lesson, I couldn’t answer my instructor’s question of, What do you want to work on? I told her I was sort of between goals, that I had been so focused on getting my daughters up on skis that I hadn’t given myself any new goals. During the conversation that followed–this all happened on the chairlift–she mentioned the half-pipe and I said, “That’s it. Let’s go.” After a quick trip down to the base so I could collect my bean bucket, we were off to the terrain park.
For those of you who ride the pipe, my hat goes off to you. It’s quite an ability. For those of you who are uninitiated, let me share with you quickly what a half-pipe is truly about. I need you to start by forgetting what you see on TV, with people flying out of the pipe 25 feet in the air. Let’s talk about reality. Let’s talk about what you see as you pull up to the pipe for the first time.
Cruising down the terrain park, you cannot see the pipe, only a rise in the ground, like an artificial hill. You ski (assuming that you are on sticks, like me) past metal and plexiglass beams, past 20 foot jumps, and countless boarders waiting for their turn to test their balance and risk their limbs. You cut over to the rise and ski up it. At the top, you stop. You look down, and below you is a tunnel that’s been turned upside down. It’s maybe 100 yards long, with 12’ high walls on either side. And by walls, I mean vertical sheets of packed snow. The walls build fairly rapidly, and the first thing you notice, because your eyesight is focused down the pipe, is that the walls also end rapidly: you had better know when to turn out of the pipe, because you could easily ride up a wall and find yourself with nothing to ride down. That would be bad. The next thing you realize is that the pipe is steep: if you cruised down the middle, you’d pick up a good head of steam. Then your eyes go back to the walls. By the looks of it, it doesn’t look possible.
Now your instructor gives you a quick lesson: dig your edges through the base, ride the flats of your skis up the wall, and sit back so that you don’t get spit out onto the deck.
You say, OK, though you’re thinking, What do you mean, spit out onto the deck?! You ski partway up one of the rising walls. You stop for a moment, watch the instructor do a few rides up the wall, and breathe one more time. Fear can be seen coming toward you from above; your courage sees him and gets up to leave–courage and fear are not friends–but before courage has a chance to ski away, you drop in.
You dig your edges like you were told, cutting a nice turn straight up the far wall. You sit back, expecting your momentum to slow, but it doesn’t. You ride all the way to the top of the wall; your ski tips break over the lip. You didn’t expect to get this high, and your brain suddenly calculates that if you got this high from a drop in from about six feet, then on your return trip up the far wall, you are going to break clean over the pipe. You realize that you forgot to ask your instructor how to slow your momentum, and your mind instantly runs through the possibilities: you can ride the flats of your skis through the bottom, but then you will move with the fall line of the hill and will pick up too much speed, or you can ride your edges up the wall, which will catapult you out the other side. You have no options, and no time to get creative: gravity is doing her thing and you are starting to fall. You wonder how this is about to work, as your body is parallel to the ground… what happens when the ground starts to curve under you? Will your feet rotate like they’re supposed to? Will it hurt? How exactly do you ski down a vertical wall, anyway? You don’t know what you’re doing, so you trust in the laws of physics and look down. There’s a lot of white down there, and you turn your skis toward it… they start to slide down the wall sideways, until toward the bottom you begin to feel their edges catch. Your feet swing under you and you’re skiing… edging a turn through the bottom of the pipe like you would anywhere else… and then suddenly you’re flying up the far wall.
All those calculations from before come flooding back. There is confusion. You sit back to ride the flats of your skis, still thinking about how to slow yourself down, but it’s too late. Your momentum has carried you all the way up the far wall. You look out and can see over the deck to the mountain below. You’re too high! Instinctively, you put a hand out on the deck to brace yourself. As you do so, you convert religions and start praying to the Holy Mother Effer. Loudly. Someone hears your plea and smiles. You stick your foot out, thinking that you can stand up on the deck, but you regain enough clarity to realize that you cannot ski back down the pipe if half of you is stuck on top, so you pull your hand and foot back in. Just in time, too: you’re starting to fall again… only this time, because you can see the world around you, it looks like you are moving parallel to the ground instead of toward it, and the visual is enough to make the feeling more like floating than falling. You’re hooked and you know it. This feeling is incredible. It doesn’t matter how high you go; the feeling has to do with that moment when forward momentum stops and you start the return trip to earth, and you want it again. All you need to do now is survive another two or three turns… you remind yourself to watch out for the bottom of the pipe where the walls shrink to nothing, and then you’re back in the moment. You know you were maybe just a few inches out of the pipe, but it was all you needed. You twist your head and your skis automatically pivot back toward the ground below, a giant mass of whiteness without contour or depth. Your skis slide unnaturally down the wall–which you notice for the first time is roughed out by constant edging of boarders and skiers–until once again your ski’s edges catch, and you are in the trough once more. You are upright and have no idea how you went from floating sideways to standing up. It doesn’t matter. You put your weight into the turn this time, throwing a mini-hockey stop, and ride the far wall up to near the top but not over it. You wonder why you didn’t think to do that before. As you reach the top, you don’t jump; you simply allow gravity to do its thing. You turn twice more before exiting the half-pipe. Your instructor is smiling. You feel your legs wobbling and hope you have enough control to stop before slamming into her. You do.
You turn and look up the mountain. You ask yourself, Did I just ski that?! Your instructor is asking you if you want to do something else, and nearly every part of your body is thinking that something else is an excellent idea. Unfortunately, it’s your tongue that is the holdout, and it unilaterally overrules the sane parts of you and says aloud, Again! Let’s do that again!
You cannot feel your body. You are lucky to be alive. You feel expansive, like you just cheated death. Adrenaline courses through your limbs, making them shake. You ski to the chairlift; you’d walk up the deck, but you need extra time to collect yourself. You smile like a goofy kid who just had his first kiss. You’ve flown before on skis, but never on purpose. And even when you’ve hit those kickers perfectly and managed to nail a quick backscratcher, the landing was still jarring. This was different. This was sublime. You know what you’ll dream about tonight.
On your second ride through, fear catches up to you. Your last turn is a miss, and you ride the wall down backwards. You sense the danger. You are OK, but your respect for the pipe is intensified. You debrief the problem in your form that caused you to miss and mentally redo the run, correctly. You take are deep breath and wonder if you should tell your wife what you’ve been doing for the past half hour.
Of course you tell her. Are you kidding? You’re going to tell everybody.
You go to bed later that night, glad for the one ride where you broke over the lip of the pipe. You replay it in your head, going higher and higher each time. Courage climbs into bed next to you; you’ve overcome enough challenges on the mountain to know that you will overcome this one, too, if you trust yourself with it. You relax and fall asleep, thinking about your new goal, and excited for the next ski season.
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I'm Jason. I make people shine. My mission is to help 1 million people tell their stories better. 