What is your skiing history?

D.B. Cooper said:
My parents were on the patrol at Jay before I came along. She was the only woman on the patrol at the time. My grandparents retired and built a house in the area the year I was born, so we were there every weekend. Pass at 5 y.o., they taught me to ski. T-bar, all day long. I remember being in line for the Bonnie (center pole double) for my first chair ride. I saw the chairs go into the barn and come back out looking like they were really hauling ass. Somebody up front had the liftie, probably Mountain Dick, slow the lift down so they could get on. I asked my dad if they would do the same. He said, "you get on it at full speed or you don't get on."
Racing at age 7. My family didn't have a lot of money; you could tell by the way I was outfitted. Parents split at 10, moved to Jay full time at 13. Worked summers (lawns) and winters (shoveling) for cash for ski gear and a pass. Damn, was I proud of those 203 cm Atomic GS "red sleds" I bought.
Last year in college I was on the ski team, taught every weekend through college. Skied 75 days that year. Taught out west for 4 more. Moved back east, skied 1 day a year most years for 20 years. Then things in life change. Back at it.
I credit my parents and grandparents for looking for opportunities. Always the most modest house (or apt. for us) in the nicest area type of thinking. Skiing is expensive, but there are ways to make it happen.
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You and I probably skied at Jay on many of the same days. Mountain Dick was a legend.
 
raisingarizona said:
Thanks Camp. I’m going to let it all hang out here and really tell my story. Harvey asked me to do something like this before but somehow I never got around to it.

I’m going to have to do it in parts and hopefully it’s not too boring or I seem like a self centered narcissistic ding dong. ?

Part 1.

I was born in Nyack. We lived on 3rd Avenue which was a steep hill overlooking the Hudson. My youngest memories are of doing laps down our streets sidewalk on my Dukes of Hazard big wheel, rebel flag seat and all! I’d run that thing all day long. I remember my Mom scolding me for wearing out the soles of my shoes every few weeks because they were the only way to slow down. I even ended up under a neighbor’s bumper while they were backing out of their driveway one time. He was pissed but got over it and before you knew it all of the neighbors knew to look out for the crazy little boy on his big wheel.

That was the very beginning of skiing for me. Pushing my big wheel uphill to go straight down that sidewalk over and over again was the start of something I’ve strangely done ever since.

My house while growing up wasn’t a whole lot of fun, it was often hostile and violent so this was the way I escaped that world. I was also an A.D.D kid so high speed motion naturally felt extremely peaceful to me.

In 1985 we moved from New York to Lake Telemark, New Jersey. My parents put me in a kids ski lessons program one night a week for two months at Craigmeur, the local 250 vertical foot ski area there. I was ten years old at the time.

I was immediately hooked. One of my most vivid memories is standing on my skis on my first run looking down the slope and thinking that it was the biggest hill I’d ever seen!

Getting dropped off at the ski area after school was like being freed from the stress and anxiety that home, and school created in my life. Like a lot of kids with A.D.D I had an extremely hard time with school which just added more drama to my parents turbulent relationship. I don’t want to put my parents on blast or get into details that no one really wants to hear and besides, by now you should get the idea that I wasn’t a very happy kid but when skiing all of my problems would just drift away.

This was the beginning of it all for me. The foundation for a life that’s been hyper focused on going down hill the entire time. It’s also the foundation for a life spent embracing and fighting addiction, depression, anxiety, ptsd and who knows what else. It’s not perfect or glamorous as I’d like people to believe but it’s real and it’s who the fuck I am.

Stick around, I’ve got a lot more to tell if you’re interested.
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Part 2.

My parents weren't skiers so it was challenging for me to get my days in. They did support me going for the most part and continued to drive me to the hill whenever they could and I was in our high schools ski club which did around 5 night skiing trips a season. I had a brief stint ski instructing when I was 14 at Craigmeur which gave me the basic understanding of the importance of technical skiing form for being a strong skier. So skiing remained in my life but it wasn't as regular as I would have liked it to be and I was constantly daydreaming about a different lifestyle.

A lot of my free time as a teen chasing tail and going to hardcore shows and playing guitar in a band. It was a fun social outlet. The hard core scene was a great place to get my anger and anxiety out and moshing and stage diving was a pretty darn good adrenaline fix but my heart was always in the mountains.

Then, at the beginning of my senior year I got my drivers license and everything changed. I skipped school regularly, often to go ski at Craigmeur or Vernon Valley. Years of being a kid with A.D.D. that was mostly unrecognized in a helpful manner as well as constant disappointments, nights spent crying over my math homework that I couldn't focus on, being scolded or worse when I couldn't deliver and a low self esteem had finally reached a point for me that I completely turned my back to what I had been told were the important things in life. That and my own personal disinterest in material wealth had me rebelling in a big way. New Jersey seemed like the epic center of blatant consumerism and the values of the majority there seemed so off puting to me that I grew a hatred for the region. My parents and family would tell me that my dreams and desires were worthless pipe dreams which fueled my anger and drive even more. I was skipping school so much that by the end of my senior year I was far from actually graduating. I was two years worth of credits short but I was determined and this wasn't going to stop me from fleeing the east coast to go live my ski bum dreams out west.

The following year I found a full time job working in a sandwich shop to save money and took enough courses at night school to graduate that spring. I spent my weekends going to Vermont to ski at Mad River Glen or up to Plattekill in the Cats where I found the steep terrain and down home feel of these mountains to be really attractive to me. That was the winter of 93/94 and the snow was deep. My hunger for fresh powder snow skiing had become a full on addiction. I would ski unmarked trees, smash fall line bumbs and jump off of rocks all day long. I would ski until my legs burned so bad that I would fall over from exhaustion. I loved skiing at those mountains but I was growing hungry for more. My eyes were now fixated on the west and moving to a place where it snowed a lot and crowds were minimal so fresh tracks could be had days after a storm.

Montana had caught my attention after reading about Whitefish and it's plentiful powder and perfect tree skiing matched with an uncrowded and hard to reach location. The cost of living was next to nothing and my girlfriend and I had saved around eight grand which could go a long way up in that area. We packed our bags and were on the road for my 19th birthday that September 3rd. As we crossed the PA border on I-80 I popped in a cd and cranked Tom Petty's Running Down a Dream and............... "I felt so good, like anything was possible. Hit cruise control and rubbed my eyes." I haven't looked once in my rear view mirror since that day and New Jersey has become a long gone, distant memory.
 
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This is really cool.

raisingarizona said:
Tom Petty's Running Down a Dream
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For me Petty is my go-to music when coming back from Plattekill.

nyskiblog.com

Plattekill: Runnin' Down the Dream

Friends gathered to ski the soft snow as hard they could.
nyskiblog.com nyskiblog.com

I also really like "Learning to Fly" as "it started out on a dirty road..."

Plattekill-Snowmagedon.jpg


If you haven't read RA's Part 2 yet, click this for a soundtrack:

 
Campgottagopee said:
Rock star too, eh?
That explains a lot ;) ?
You're a very good writer. Thanks for taking the time.
Looking forward to part III
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Nah, wannabe for sure tho ?. Thanks man.

This is gonna be it right here. I’ve always wanted to tell my story and sort of, get it off my chest. I won’t need to do this ever again. It’s going to close up my ski bum life and give me closure or that’s what I’m thinking.

skiing is awesome but I’ve got some other shit I want to do now and besides, this whole talking about myself thing feels kind of narcissistic and I’m done needing that sort of attention.
 
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raisingarizona said:
This is gonna be it right here. I’ve always wanted to tell my story and sort of, get it off my chest. I won’t need to do this ever again. It’s going to close up my ski bum life and give me closure or that’s what I’m thinking.
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Ski bum life. We share that, you and I. As you know I lived it, loved it, and honestly would most likely kept on doing it for a long time had I not gotten injured. I certainly wasn't jumping off shit, but I skied every single damn day. All winter long. The best part was the free feeling I had, every night was a Friday night and every day was a Saturday. I gave up a lot to do it, or so I've had people tell me that, but I wouldn't change a thing. Nothing. Well, heat would've been nice in one of the shacks e lived in...lol
raisingarizona said:
this whole talking about myself thing feels kind of narcissistic and I’m done needing that sort of attention.
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Remember I asked you for it. Maybe because you ski bummed longer than me and I want to relive that? Kinda? Who knows, but I enjoy reading about it. And it's different here than reading about it in a book.
raisingarizona said:
skiing is awesome but I’ve got some other shit I want to do now
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Same. I have my pass for Greek next year but I doubt I'll use it much, if at all. If there's tons of snow I'd SO much rather be drift busting on my sled with my buds. I'll meet the ski crew at the bar or they will meet us at the cabin.
 
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