Another trip to the Epic archives......circa 2006
My father was from Maine and my mother from Idaho, and they decided to live in SoCal because they both hated snow. I first saw snow fall at college in New Jersey.
Introduction to skiing at age 23 was a total fluke. A friend invited me along on his uncle's high roller junket to Las Vegas for New Year's 1976. The uncle was from Miami and his daughter wanted to see snow, so we all went out to Lee Canyon (now Ski Las Vegas) and got rentals and played around on a 100-foot handle tow for a couple of hours.
Intrigued, I checked out my closest local area (Baldy, not a good choice for a beginner) when it finally snowed in February 1976. On my second Baldy day in March 1976 I blew out my left ACL and was not walking normally for the next 3 months. As the knee is not unstable, I didn't know the nature of the injury until an MRI revealed it 19 years later.
I was still interested in skiing and managed 5 days in 1977, which was dominated by my then overriding obsession of tournament bridge. I put in some more effort in 1978, becoming your typical low intermediate, sort of parallel skier on the easy runs, by March of that 12-day season. April 1-2 and May 13-14 were my first Mammoth trips.
By now I had the bug, but I was troubled by my slow progress as a beginner, consistent with my dismal performance at nearly all sports while growing up. I'd begun reading about skiing and was aware of the prevailing opinion that "skiing is easy to learn, but very hard to break through the intermediate plateau and ski carved turns, steep terrain and variable snow."
I was also very sore after those 2 Mammoth weekends and therefore started YMCA ski fitness classes in November 1978, just before my 26th birthday. The snow gods smiled upon SoCal in 1978-79 and I was able to ski at least one day of every weekend from November 18 until April in SoCal if I wasn't at Mammoth.
By April 1979 I had skied 30 days, the feared "intermediate plateau" was history and I was a true addict. I was carving turns on the groomers by February, and I had a 50K weekend at Mammoth March 31/April 1 which included my first runs on Wipe Out/Drop Out.
My father was from Maine and my mother from Idaho, and they decided to live in SoCal because they both hated snow. I first saw snow fall at college in New Jersey.
Introduction to skiing at age 23 was a total fluke. A friend invited me along on his uncle's high roller junket to Las Vegas for New Year's 1976. The uncle was from Miami and his daughter wanted to see snow, so we all went out to Lee Canyon (now Ski Las Vegas) and got rentals and played around on a 100-foot handle tow for a couple of hours.
Intrigued, I checked out my closest local area (Baldy, not a good choice for a beginner) when it finally snowed in February 1976. On my second Baldy day in March 1976 I blew out my left ACL and was not walking normally for the next 3 months. As the knee is not unstable, I didn't know the nature of the injury until an MRI revealed it 19 years later.
I was still interested in skiing and managed 5 days in 1977, which was dominated by my then overriding obsession of tournament bridge. I put in some more effort in 1978, becoming your typical low intermediate, sort of parallel skier on the easy runs, by March of that 12-day season. April 1-2 and May 13-14 were my first Mammoth trips.
By now I had the bug, but I was troubled by my slow progress as a beginner, consistent with my dismal performance at nearly all sports while growing up. I'd begun reading about skiing and was aware of the prevailing opinion that "skiing is easy to learn, but very hard to break through the intermediate plateau and ski carved turns, steep terrain and variable snow."
I was also very sore after those 2 Mammoth weekends and therefore started YMCA ski fitness classes in November 1978, just before my 26th birthday. The snow gods smiled upon SoCal in 1978-79 and I was able to ski at least one day of every weekend from November 18 until April in SoCal if I wasn't at Mammoth.
By April 1979 I had skied 30 days, the feared "intermediate plateau" was history and I was a true addict. I was carving turns on the groomers by February, and I had a 50K weekend at Mammoth March 31/April 1 which included my first runs on Wipe Out/Drop Out.