Its a cold Friday morning as my wife, brother-in-law and I head out up the long, twisty mountain road to Eldora, Boulder’s local ski resort. It takes about forty minutes to get up there, we park, and Stephanie and I head for the rental stand. We get me the “first timer’s” package for $65, which includes four hours of instruction, boots, skis, and a lift ticket. This is a real bargain.

The shoes are a really bad looking matte blue with yellow trim. They don’t have size 12s, so I get a 12.5 and make do. They seem a little loose, but their fairly comfortable. We spend a few minutes getting me suited up, and then a frustrating 15 minutes more during which Stephanie tries to teach me the basics. She knows how, but she learnt it young enough that she has a hard time explaining it. After 15 minutes, we decide that its better for me just to wait for my lesson!

So, now its 10am. I’ll spend the next two hours on a “slope” about 50 feet long and 10 feet high at the peak. If that. What happens next is frustrating, but probably for the best all told. After going over the correct ways to get in and out of skis, we practice walking in a circle, gliding in a circle, and other basics. The idea was that all of this would prepare us for our first real slope in the afternoon. After walking in circles, we spent the rest of the morning walking uphill and sliding back down again. We started out walking sideways, and graduated to the forwards “duck walk” which is significantly faster - but harder to turn around from without sliding down.

Once we could walk up the hill well, we had three things to learn. Turning left, turning right, and stopping. We had about an hour and a half to learn them. Two of the five of us - myself and a smart 13 year old girl named Sara, picked them up pretty quickly. Two more people took most of the two hours to get them (which was fine - Sara and I were onto compound turns and having a fun, if slightly boring time doing them). The last person was … pathetic. She didn’t seem to listen, or even watch what the rest of us were doing. I mean, when everyone else is going uphill with their skis pointed 90 degrees from the slope, and they can do it, but your skis are 0 degrees from the slope and you can’t climb, don’t you think simple observation would kick in?

Apparently not.

Anyway, because of her, and the fact that it was a cheap group lesson, we got to spend 40 minutes of our second lesson on the hill as well before heading over to the “Tenderfoot” area. Also known, for reasons that will become clear, as the “carrot tow.” This is a pretty small slope, just the bottom half of a short green, and fairly flat. On the right hand side, looking up, there’s a chair-lift that goes all the way up. On the left hand side there’s, well, the carrot tow.

Imagine a typical, cable driven chair lift system. Now imagine that the cable is only three feet off the ground. No chairs, of course, but where the chairs should be you can imagine a bright orange plastic handle that sticks out about 18 inches and looks vaguely like a carrot. This is the carrot tow. The idea is that you line up with it, wait for a carrot to come by on your left, grab it and let it pull you up the mountain. At this point, veteran skiers are probably shaking their heads and feeling like I’m expounding on the obvious. Well, it was pretty weird looking to me, that’s all I can say.

So, up I go, then down the hill. Then up, then down. Its pretty fun. The first time down I got going a little faster than I was used to - like I said before, this was my first day on skis. I try to do a sharp turn to stop, and do the V stop, and look up, and… fall down. Ah, well. At least we were taught what to do in this situation (get out of one ski, stand up, get back on the ski, get going again). It was fine, and landing in the snow is really not a big deal. It even starts snowing, just a little - its pretty wonderful being out here.

After about a half hour, I bump into Stephanie who just came down the bigger slope seeing if she could find me. Since the lesson is effectively over, she takes charge and we hit the ski lift to go up to the top. Another first! For those of you who’ve never ridden a ski lift, let me explain a couple of things.

You basically wait your turn and, as a chair passes you, follow along behind it. At this point, if you’re thinking you will have told the operator that its your first time and they will have slowed the lift down for you. I was on the left side so, carefull that my skis stay pointing forwards, I put my poles in my right hand and look over my left shoulder. As the chair comes up, you grab the bar that goes up from the seat to form the chair back, and sit down. The chair continues forward, and you shortly find yourself sitting in mid-air.

This is when I am reminded of the fact that heights are not my closest friend. Its a little nerve-racking, but I manage the trip alright - taking care to not jostle the chair too much (although there are people up ahead twisting around, bouncing up and down - but hey, its my first time). During the journey, I find myself gripping my poles very tightly as people ski underneath the lift - dropping one on a kid’s head would not be a very good idea. As I get close to the top, Steph tells me that I just need to stand up at the end and ski down a little hill to a flat area. Sure, good theory.

Well, here’s what really happened. As we come up to the end, I scoot forward on my seat. Ski tips pointing up. Knees bent as the ground comes up to within a foot or so of the chair. Then it starts sloping down. I stand up, push off, fall over, and skid to an ignominious halt about fifteen feet away. Sigh, take off one ski, get up, brush the snow off the boot, get the ski back on. This, or some variant of this, would happen the next 4-5 times I went up the lift. I finally got the hang of it, but it wasn’t automatic by any means.

So now we’re up at the top, and the snow is coming down harder. Nice, big flakes - I think that this was the first time I’ve ever seen individual flakes several feet away. Anyway, we get back over to the top half of the carrot-tow slope. There are more snowboarders sitting and resting on the way down, so its a bit of an obstacle course, but it is more fun. Got going faster, turned more, enjoyed the heck out of it.

That slope was all I did for the rest of the day - less than an hour, actually. By then it was getting darker, colder and wetter, and the slopes started to shut down. So we got back to the rental station and turned in our equipment. I knew that my ankle had been bugging me a little, but I was still surprised by what I found after I took my boots off.

Blisters. Large ones, full of liquid. On both ankles, and starting up above them near the top of the boots. Ouch. Pretty painful, and fairly ugly. I was very careful getting dressed again, and walking back to the car, and we made a point to hit Walgreen’s first off. Let me tell you, there’s a product called Second Skin that’s a blister pad - they look oddly like high-tech leeches, but they do a very good job! I covered the blisters, and while they were sore, none of them burst or got really painful.

Even with those, there was nothing stopping me from gearing up for the slopes tomorrow. After all, its not like they’re next door…

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