What is your skiing history?

[cerv1]

We may be some type of twin-cousins.

Haha! Oxford, MS definitely counts as tropical. I have a friend who lives there now and is always complaining about the wildlife: snakes, fire ants, hornets.

 

[tirolski]

Haha! Oxford, MS definitely counts as tropical. I have a friend who lives there now and is always complaining about the wildlife: snakes, fire ants, hornets.

Yup, cottonmouths (water moccasins) are the poisonous ones around there but ya can smell em as they make a stink. Must not have met chiggers and/or spiders yet. The mammals, birds and fish are all pretty nice. The souther belles are outstanding.

 

[XTski]

when the Giants beat the Bills. will never forget that win. What the hell is wrong with you?

Got some paraphernalia from that game

 

[wonderpony]

Started in the mid 1980's in elementary ski club. Friday nights at Deer Run (Stamford, NY). Skiing in the 80's was a fun time, from the fashion, lack of snowboards, and of course ski ballet. Ski club moved to Windham once Deer Run ran into financial dire straights. To show how much of a skier I was, I went on a trip to Sugarbush on Super Bowl weekend in 1991. I think we were the only people from NYS in VT that weekend.

I then taught for two years at Greek Peak during graduate school. That was fun. I taught Cornell PE to students who didn't exactly grow up on snow. I taught school groups, little kids, drunk Philly guys in jean's right off the bus, and Ithaca College kids.

Back in Albany, I worked for five years at Jiminy Peak, managing the ski wee program. That was draining. I rarely skied, preferring to hit the bar or head back home at the end of the day.

I'm now just a wanna be ski bum. I live for pow days. Being a skier for 35 years really gives you an interesting POV on how skiing has evolved over the years. My wife goes skiing (our first date was at Magic), but prefers sitting at the bar to skiing in 30 below windchills.

I wanna see ski ballet!!!! You must have some photos or videos hidden in a dark corner someplace!

 

[trackbiker]

First time I went "skiing" was when I was 4 or 5 at Camelback. My mothers cousin owned an Inn nearby. One of his daughters went in a closet and dug out some skis and boots for my sister and I. I remember trying the boots on in the hallway. My parents took us to Camelback but we just walked up or my father pushed us up the hill and we slid down a little bit. I would say I really started at (not 10 but one year later) at 11. My sister was a freshman in highschool and went to Spring Mountain with a friends family one weekend. I really wanted to try skiing and my parents took my sister, brother, and me to Spring Mountain the following weekend. I walked up a few times and practiced snow plowing then on to the rope tow. Didn't fall or crash into anything my first time down. I went a few more times that season and saved my paper route money over the summer and bought my first pair of skis that August. I would get my mother to drop me off at Spring Mt. or catch a ride with my sister and her friends. It was only 20 minutes away. I felt like a real skier when I rode the chairlift for the first time up all of the 350 vertical feet. The next year we went to Doe Mountain (now Bear Creek). Doe Mt. was "much bigger" at 500 vertical feet. My parents took us to a few Pocono places over the next few years and in high school the ski club would do a trip on Sundays to a different Pocono area 4 or 5 times per year.
Once I got my drivers license I would go to the bigger Pocono areas but still ski Spring Mountain mostly on weeknights to avoid the crowds. One of my best friends parents have a cabin in Northeast PA and we found Greek Peak while we were still in high school. It was less crowded than the Poconos and if there was a crowd you could usually hop the T-bar to the top. The snow was usually much better than the Poconos back then as well.
I took a job in Greenville, South Caroline in 1994 and was there until 2002. I skied with a few friends at the North Carolina areas when I lived there and would extend business trips north over a weekend and ski Greek Peak with my friend from his cabin.
My kids had gone skiing and taken the group lessons a few times before we moved back to PA. They were a little older and we started in earnest when we moved back. I met a great group of guys and we did a lot trips to VT and NH for a few years with and without our kids. Then one of the guys bought a place near Gore so we added Gore and Whiteface to our trips. I've been lucky in that I got to do a lot of trips out west by tacking them onto business trips. And I skied with a good friend in Zermatt last year just before Covid hit. I think the first year I moved to SC I only skied twice but this year makes 50 seasons without a break. Damn I'm getting old!

 

[idratherbskiing]

My wife didn't start skiing until we met in college, she saw how I was about it (explaining why I had to cancel on her to drive to VT for a pow day) and started. She always says she regrets not skiing as a kid...long winters in CNY with nothing to do and she loves it now.

 

[gorgonzola]

I wanna see ski ballet!!!! You must have some photos or videos hidden in a dark corner someplace!

Plake still got it!

GLEN PLAKE on Instagram: "You don’t need it to be Steep and Deep in order to challenge oneself........ 😁Randoman can ballet #dontwastesnow ❄️AND can pull your ass out of the crevasse ☠️ head’n home after a day tuning up on rescue skills 😁with Avalanc

4,109 likes, 189 comments - glenplake on March 25, 2019: "You don’t need it to be Steep and Deep in order to challenge oneself........ 😁Randoman can ballet #dontwastesnow ❄️AND can pull your ass out of the crevasse ☠️ head’n home after a day tuning up on rescue skills 😁with Avalanche Academy...

www.instagram.com

 

[gorgonzola]

I started skiing in Middle school ski club in around 5th grade, mostly because I wanted to be cool like my older cousins who skied. The “mountain” was a molehill in South Jersey that had a great view of the Philadelphia skyline on those Thursday nights and is now a Trump golf course. Hated it the first time as I fell off the rope tow and spent most of the evening down in a gully tangled up and cold trying to get out if those Spademan bindings. My cool cousin told me to give it another chance and have been hooked ever since.

Moved around MASH (Mid Atlantic Ski Hell) a lot throughout middle, high school and college learning how to ski and party on club bus trips to the Poconos, Catskills and Vermont. Though my parents were both from NY ski country, neither had any interest other than supporting mine. This was the eighties and included many stereotypical trips to Huntah crashing with friends and family in Kingston. Somehow I don’t think I ever missed a season.

After ending up in PA to get married and start a family I took the kids to the local hill as soon as they could carry their own stuff. My wife wasn’t a skier and I told her unless she wanted to stay home alone on ski vacations she should start coming out with us and she did. The family would spend every Friday night skiing with our Church school ski club at Blue Mountain. Both my son and my wife instruct there now, she’s a PSIA Level 2 and gets in more days than me! Between our Church ski club, beer league racing, parking lot partying and their instructing the mountain has become our family, social club, gym and therapist.

Around 2007 a friend invited us to join him at Greek Peak to check out a quarter share he was buying. It was a St. Patty’s Day storm day with awesome bumps on Iliad, we were sold (more or less lol but that’s a whole another story in itself). We spent the next 7-8 years having great ski family times at Hope Lake Lodge which led me to NYSkiBlog and the great people I’ve met and skied with there over the years. I hope to get back more in the years to come.

I like both quantity and quality, my goal is to ski as many days as I am old every year. This year I’ll be a few short at 53 or so. My kids will have a much better ski stories than I do!

 

[Harvey]

I took the kids to the local hill as soon as they could carry their own stuff.

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[gorgonzola]

?

well apparently it is a bit of an exaggeration, a few summers ago a friend dropped off this picture from back in the day...