The Adventures of Tap

Back in November, my best friend Paul suggested that I try telemark skiing. It was cheap to do, and it was fun. He would teach me. I thought this was an awesome idea.

My past has not involved any downhill sport of any kind. I did the tubing thing once, but that was only once. Biking down a hill doesn’t count unless its down hill mountain biking, and only crazy people do that. I have never skied other than cross country. I have never snowboarded, and I have done very little tobogganing, and that was when I was little. So you see, I didn’t really have much background.

Paul started me with snow plowing. I just had to keep my skis in a triangle in front of me and plow the snow. I could do that… mostly. Then came the turning while plowing. I could do that too… mostly. I thought everything was good. Now the part that came next looked easy, but I quickly found out that is was anything but easy.

Every god damn time I tried to do the crouching thing that makes telemark skiing what it is, I seemed to fall over. One ski would go crazy and I’d fall over, or the tips would cross and I would fall over, or sometimes I’d end up going to fast and I’d fall over because I was scared.

Paul finished his tutoring time, and left to go ‘rip it up’. I continued to try on my own. I had some pretty spectacular spills. The first one was the “too fast, gotta bail” complete wipe-out. I hit the snow hard. My poles went flying, my toque was ripped off, and I ended up getting a bunch of snow down my neck because of how much I slid backwards down the hill. A nice snowboarder helped me gather my things, as I was unable to get back up the hill. The second spill, and really the only other one worth mentioning was also the result of needing to slow down. I tried to sit on my butt and stop gracefully, but my ski tips crossed and I stopped so suddenly that I ended up sitting on my face. Just in case you have never tried it, sitting on your face just isn’t as nice as sitting on your butt. It is especially unpleasant when you try to sit on snow with it.

I promised myself I would try this tele skiing atleast three times. One down, two to go!

Trackback URL