Night skiing

Almost exactly two months ago now we were in Tahoe for the weekend to alternate skiing and babysitting. We went with other friends who have babies and we created a little rotation that gave everyone a chance to ski and a chance to babysit. On Saturday, Eric and I drew the skiing night shift, our only chance of the weekend to actually ski together. While we wanted to ski, we were both a little grumpy and tired and the required gondola ride to the night skiing area, though it sounds sort of whimsical and delight-inducing, was hot, noisy and crowded and just made us both even more crabby.

Once we got to the top, the lovely sunset lifted our spirits a bit. Perhaps this would be fun.

It turned out that a good portion of the night skiing area was a terrain park. We headed down one slope and quickly discovered that it was a series of small jumps. I was tentative at first, I don’t really fancy myself a terrain park skier*, but after taking a jump with more speed than I intended and getting a lot of air, I was hooked. And something about it being night time with almost no one else around made the whole scene quite unreal: like we were playing a video game of ourselves skiing in an alternate universe with dark skies. Reality took on a softer aspect and soon we were tearing up that terrain park. We were going off jumps we would never have attempted with the sun out. We went off them faster than we ever would have during the day. And we (well, I) hooted and squealed the whole way.

Then the finale: the half pipe.

We entered the half pipe guns blazing. Eric was determined to do the thing where you ski up the side of the half pipe, pause, and then ski back into it. He picked up some speed and went for it full force, but he picked a part of the half pipe where the wall becomes quite vertical and in spite of clawing at the top of the wall with his extended arms while, if memory serves, making a sort of kicking motion with his legs and skis, he ended up sliding backwards back to the bottom of the half pipe.

“I really went for it!” he shouted.

He made it look good, so I figured I would give it a try too. I gathered speed and launched myself toward the top of the side of the half pipe and, to my great surprise, popped right out on top. I was so startled I almost fell, but I kept it together, turned and jumped off the edge back into the half pipe, squealing loudly.

“Let’s do it again!” I exclaimed, exuberant with my success.

“I think we better not,” Eric cautioned. “We’ve got to head back before we realize we’re not actually this good.”

*I am a terrain park faller, primarily.