Steven’s Pass
On Wednesday, my sister and I went snowboarding at Steven’s Pass. She has two boards and I brought my own boots and all that jazz. We woke up, drove 1.5 hours, and made it to the mountain before 10.
My new snowboarding jacket I bought in the summer has a cool zipper pocket outside of the main jacket zipper, but up higher than a normal jacket pocket. I thought wow how cool I can put my ID and credit card there for easy access. Wrong. Ski places now give lift tickets in the shape of a credit card. Instead of hooking it onto a zipper somewhere, you put it in this front left side pocket and just walk up to the lift, do a little shimmy, and watch the thing read your card and let you on. Pretty fancy. Anyways, back to snowboarding. We went up the Daisy lift a few times to get warmed up. This is after all only my second time out this season, and the first time was only two hours. Naturally I eat it within a minute of starting. I was going down thinking oh yeah I can do this, piece of cake, look around for Rebecca, then WHAM! I wasn’t even going that fast but just because I had lost focus I hit some weird snow and just fell. I got the wind knocked out of me and had to sit there for a few minutes just coaching myself to breathe.
Whatever. This stuff happens. I know it’s a tough sport. When I’m ready I got back up and continued down the mountain. We went two or three times and then I said, “Let’s do something different.” I think Rebecca was excited I was ready for a blue because she’s way better than me and the easy stuff is boring. This was my goal for this season. To get on a blue square slope. I DID IT! I knew snowboarding with my sister would be awesome because she would push me in all the right ways. She knows what I can and can’t do and she knows what the slopes are like. If she said I would be okay then I said let’s do it! At one point she even called me fearless. I don’t know about that, but I guess it’s half true. Yes, I went down slopes that looked super intimidating and scary, but I also kind of did a Z riding my heels the whole way down. You’re supposed to make an S. Heels side turn, toe side turn, repeat. Well, I’m still working on my toe side turn so I like to say I do Z’s instead because I do a regular heel side turn, then I start boarding goofy and do a heel side turn like that. I did however make some excellent progress on my toe side turns!! Once we got on the blue square I had a little more room, and the slope was longer and slightly steeper. Both important factors. Sometimes the green circle is just TOO EASY to do something. I had this problem at Whaleback last year with flat areas and will get to it again when I talk about Crystal. I was doing my thing, learning how to toe side turn, going down steeper slopes, we even tried another blue square which was slightly harder than the first. I did AWESOME at the end of that one. It was a perfect day. Besides that first one I didn’t have any falls that were too bad. There was one where I thought I should have broken my arm, but I didn’t. There was another where I wondered how I got my leg to twist like that, but I could still walk on it (days later it still hurts, maybe I damaged it more than I thought). Snowboarding has to be one of the most fun things ever invented. Once we were exhausted (after about 5 hours of snowboarding) we headed to the car and on our way home. Not before getting some boys to push the car out of the parking lot. They got a lot of snow up there on Wednesday. It was beautiful to snowboard while it was snowing! We got home, ordered pizza, drank some wine (because the beer was gone), and waited for John to drive in. Easily one of the best days ever!
Crystal
On Friday, Rebecca, John, and I went to Crystal Mountain. What a day. First of all, John has been skiing since he was five and is a superstar. Once again we woke up early, got geared up, and headed out. Crystal is a little farther, about two hours. It’s also where Rebecca first took me to go skiing way back when (back when I was in high school!). It did not go well. This trip still had its times, but overall it was still very enjoyable, enough though I forgot my knee pads in Rebecca's car. When we got to Crystal, we just completely skipped the easy stuff because it was so crowded and went up the Chinook Express, then over to another lift. The area between the two lifts is pretty flat so you have to work up your speed in order to make it through. Well, it’s too scary to go that fast! Needless to say I didn’t make it and had to unstrap my right foot and skateboard over. We hadn’t even been boarding yet and I was already exhausted!! This was going to be a rough day. We rode up the Forest Queen Express next (I was on a 6 person lift in the middle and didn’t fall getting off!! Yay!) and then went down a green slope. Fjkldasfjdlkajfkldsjfiorfjka. That’s what I have to say about that run. There were so many flat parts. I hated it. I was getting extremely frustrated and exhausted. I just did so awesome the other day in blue slopes, I don’t understand why this green was giving me such a hard time! I got so frustrated that I shed a few tears (how embarrassing). I was not having fun at all. My heart went out to the 7 year old girl on skis crying while her dad was screaming at her to just do it. If I’m crying at 25 then she should be able to cry at 7! I was pissed and this was not setting a good tone for the day. I know when John and Rebecca say they don’t mind they mean it, but I still felt horrible for making them wait for me for so long while having to skateboard and shimmy across this thing. I finally got to the bottom and said, I don’t want to do that again. That one sucks. Rebecca said I’m like her and would rather go on something steeper so I can just go. So next we went down a blue one, Downhill was the name of it. I loved it! It was good to just go down and do my thing and remember how much fun it can be. I quickly decided I was having enough fun again to practice some more toe turns, since I know that would result in falling. Rebecca did great at kind of ignoring me and giving me my space, then just saying little things and cheering me on when I did something good and new. We went down that a few times and then took a break for “lunch”. We actually sat outside and ate a granola bar for lunch. It was too crowded inside and we were so hot and sweating anyways. It felt awesome to sit outside. John had been on the black diamonds at the top and said the view is amazing today, and if I’m up for it…it’s worth it. It didn’t take much for them to talk me into doing it. I was going to ride the Rainier Express to the TOP of the mountain. 6872 feet in elevation. Yes, John was right. The view was AMAZING.
There was a lot of skateboarding to get to the slope. We were going down Little Shot, to Upper Skid Row, to one of the other green ones all the way to the base of the mountain. It was so scary! The inside of my jacket right around my mouth was super sweaty from me breathing really hard and saying “OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD” the whole way. My legs were KILLING ME because I’m basically squatting for long periods of times. Especially if I’m turning goofy instead of doing toe turns. I went really slow, was heel side 99% of the time, and sat on my ass a lot, but I made it down! I DID IT! In the middle I even did a few good S’s in a row! I was getting tired and my goggles were majorly fogging up. I couldn’t see, I could hardly stand, I had to go down this super steep part, it was icy, and bumpy. I just wanted to get OFF THE MOUNTAIN!! Yes, I still thought it was worth the view, but I was ready to be finished. I was reaching that point where it started being painful and hard more than fun. We were done for the day and headed to the bar. Beer and nachos. Just what we needed. I barely had enough energy to pick up my glass of beer. It was 4 and we were hanging around until 9 when they had fireworks. Kind of cool to be watching fireworks when even though it was only 9, it was New Years back home. We had a good time waiting. Most people had RVs and fires. We had a love seat camp chair and a cooler of beer. We hung out, went on a walk, talked to some people, walked over to another bar, then stood outside with others watching fireworks.
They were beautiful. We headed back to the car and drove home. I slept the whole way. We got back just in time to watch fireworks at the Space Needle. I went to bed immediately after that. This year was off to a horrible start (to be explained in a different blog to come next week about starting new years) but ended with a day of snowboarding with my sister. Perfect! Happy New Year everybody!
High: I DID IT! You're not so scary anymore blue square.
Low: I think I did some serious damage to my knee on one of the falls. It still feels funny. Like something got twisted out of place.
On Deck: I have no idea. Maybe a New Year and wrap up blog once I get home and relax. Or else I don't think my next trip is until March. We all know what that is!!! :)
