Skiing to me.

May 31, 2011

            I have been skiing since I was 3 years old. It is more then a sport or an activity, it is my life. To my friends and I, everyday we are able to spend in the mountains on our skis is a great day. Whether it has just snowed three feet of snow or is sixty degrees out and slushy, we find a way to have fun and enjoy each day to the fullest.

            Growing up in Detroit there was not much in terms of skiing; no big ski hills, no ski shops, nothing; however, just a few hours north from Detroit was Otsego Ski Area where my family had shared a cabin on the mountain with my uncles. Every weekend that I wasn't traveling for hockey games or tournaments I would convince my parents to take me skiing, I loved it. We would wake up real early in the morning and drive the three hours to make it there by the time the lift opened and then ski all day long.  I can remember more then once, we would get to the cabin unload the car and twenty minutes later be on the lift. After just a few runs with my parents they would get to bored of riding on the bunny slopes and would leave me to ride the rope tow all by myself. I would ride the tow all day long, up and down and up and down. I can recall have pair after pair of gloves shredded from the tow. It was here where I first fell in love with skiing,

When I was nine my family moved to Skaneateles, New York a small town on a Finger Lake outside of Syracuse. There wasn’t much more in the terms of mountains here but a few small ski resorts close by. I continued playing hockey in New York.  From ages ten to fifteen I was spending most of time each weekend during the winter either practicing hockey or playing in games or tournaments. It was hard to find time to go skiing but everyone once and a while I was able to get out there. When the winter of my sophomore year of high school came around, I told my parents that I didn’t want to play hockey anymore and instead wanted to get a season pass to ski every weekend.

            That first winter being able to ski every weekend was amazing. I had a ton of fun and started getting better and better. Looking back the terrain I was skiing couldn’t have been more boring or easy but back then it didn’t matter to me, I was having fun doing something relatively new to me. After season number one I was hooked. My brain became skiing, it was all I could think about. When I graduated high school I knew I wanted to go somewhere with huge mountains and tons of snow. I ended up here, in Utah! I can still hear my friends…why are you going there? Going to become a Mormon? The beer is only 3.2%… blah blah blah. When I chose to come out here, it was for one reason and one reason only to ski. I was never concerned with the party scene or the religious influences; I just wanted to experience this “bottomless powder” everyone’s been talking about in the ski magazines and with an average annual snowfall of five hundred inches and a major university just thirty minutes away it’s hard for a skier to turn down. 

            Since moving to Utah skiing has transformed into a way of life for me. It has lead me to people and places I may have never met nor seen. These mountains have provided me with some of the best times of my life in the past two seasons. One of my favorite places to ski is White Pine. White Pine is located just west of Snowbird in Little Cottonwood Canyon; it has some of the easiest access and some of the best terrain. Some of my best days this season were spent with friends hiking laps of untouched powder in the morning and then hitting a jump in the afternoon and eventually setting up camp for the night just to wake up and do it all over again. As the snow continues to fall, I’ll continue to keep skiing. 

View from White Pine looking across Little Cottonwood Canyon. Bluebird Sky's! What a world it is.