Day 2

On the second day we headed out to Lake Louise in Banff, where I learned all about closing out a skihill.

But before I tell you about that, let’s pause for a moment and discuss how great Lake Louise is. Of the three places we skiied this weekend, Louise was my favorite.

First off, I love a great bathroom. Before hitting the slopes, any wise boarder knows that she has to first pee. There’s nothing worse than trying to come down a hill while simultaneously squeezing the pee shutter-offer. So before we launched our snow adventure I made my way to the bathroom. Not only were the bathrooms clean, but there was auto-soap! I’m still having trouble understanding the reasoning behind motion-activated soap on sinks the employ manual faucets. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Jim just informed me that perhaps they got the soap dispensers as a package with auto faucets, and then they decided the auto facets were wasteful – we’ve all seen an auto faucet that failed to shut off, right?

In addition to the auto soap there’s the shelf. In each stall there’s a shelf above the toilet. When you go snowboarding there’s lots of stuff that you’re wearing. Jackets and gloves and hats. When you go to pee there *needs* to be a place to put this stuff down inside the stall. Louise has figured that out.

In other bathroom plusses they’ve also figured out that women have needs. There are baskets full of tampons scattered around the bathroom. Free tampons. When you’re boarding the last thing you need is to have a surprise period and not be able to pay for a tampon, especially after you’ve spent a whole fifty to sixty-ish bucks on your lift tickets.

And then there are the hair dryers! Now, this would make a little more sense if there were showers, but I suppose there’s wet hair to be had when you’re having snow fun. After a long day of boarding, you can then be free to dry your hair, change your clothes, and look acceptable for dinner, or whatever else kind of activity you were planning.

And hand lotion! There’s a lot of drying out while you’re skiing. Lotion at the exit of the bathroom is very thoughtful!

As discussed yesterday, I hate the chairlift. Lake louise is kind enough to help me out with that – there’s a gondola that takes you up the front face of the mountain. The chairlift-impaired like me can go up and down the mountain all day long without ever touching a lift! Now that I’m writing this entry and trying to find photos to go along with it, I’m realizing I should have taken more pictures. Some of you may not know what I’m talking about with this gondola business. The idea is that you ride inside an enclosed cabin. With room for six and a door that closes once you leave the loading area, you go up the hill in total comfort. Before you get in the gondola car, you drop your board or skis in a basket-like thing, so you get to ride up board free. Do you see what I’m getting at? At the end of the ride, you get out of the gondola and pull your board back out of the basket. You don’t have to do any of this silly skating down a ramp stuff.

So this gondola at Louise opened just last month. Valentine’s day. We didn’t know it had just opened, being our first trip out there, so taking pictures of it wasn’t high on our list of things to do. I’m realizing now that a photo of the gondola would be useful right here. In all my googling this is pretty much the only image I can find of the gondola.

Anyhow. So all four of us head up in the gondola in the morning. I ask Jim to hang out with me because we’re planning a second day at Louise later in the trip and I’ve opted out of a lift ticket that day. We get up to the top, which, I have to tell you is pretty darn far up. In fact, it took nearly two hours for me to get back down the front face of that mountain. For those of you who want to know what the runs look like, here’s a trail map. From the top of the Grizzly Express Gondola, we came down the green run (green == easy) labeled as “eagle meadows”, down “wiwaxy”, through “sunnyside” and “easy street”. At that point we found ourselves emerging from the big mountain into the baby section. We took a break for lunch and went back out. I was pretty frustrated by then, so I told jim to take a couple of runs down without me while I practiced on the baby hill.

Once again I’m kicking myself about the photos that I didn’t take. The baby hill at Louise is great. It’s long and not too flat, which is problematic when you’re trying to learn to snowboard. It’s fed by a very long retractable t-bar system that takes you up to the top of the hill. To the right of the t-bar are two magic carpets (I think those can only be so long, so they tend to come in pairs, one, then a break, then the second one.)

So I want to try the t-bar. I Stand on the side for a bit, watching the little kids do it. The idea here is that you get up to the place where you load, with one foot out of the binding, and you get your board lined up straight with the hill, while you are standing sideways. The attendant grabs the tbar and sticks it between your legs, and you are supposed to ride up the hill. Kind of like a water ski, on one ski, being pulled by a clothesline.

I got as far as about ten feet from the loading spot when my board caught an edge and I fell over. So it’s official: No t-bar for me. I figure by the time I master that thing I won’t need to be going down the baby hills anymore. I still don’t know how those kids do it.

Walking up the hill again. I practiced coming down on a heel edge. Right, then left. I got really good at controlling the transition from right to left – I figured out how to change directions when I needed to. And then I tried to come down on my toes. Not nearly as easy. Learning to snowboard is so frustrating when it feels like you’re falling down every three seconds. Finally I took one last run down the baby hill, on my heels so that I’d feel accomplished, and took a break to meet Jim.

I wanted to take one more run down the big mountain because 1. it was fun, and 2. I figured I had totally improved and wanted to see exactly how much. This time we took some pictures:

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Watch me not fall

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This kid is totally blown away with how pro I am.

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woohoo!

So you can see I did get better between day 1 and day 2. But as the photos prove, I am only able to glide down on my heel edge. Imagine lifting your toes for an hour. It hurts. So we’re coming down this hill – let’s remember now that the lift closes at 4. With all the quad pain from leaning on my heels and pulling my toes up, I have to stop every so often to rest my legs. But you know, it’s better to have to stop for muscle pain then to be stopping to pick myself back up after a fall.

At some point the lift stops. And then the last people who were on that lift come down the hill. When the ski patrol girls are behind us, stopping when I stop, moving down the hill when I move, even towing my sorry butt up the hill that I should have been flying down with momentum from the previous downhill, it becomes apparent that we’re the last people on the hill. On that HUGE mountain, three skiiable faces, I am dead last. Now I know why Sally Edwards comes in last at every danskin triathlon. This wasn’t even an actual race, but having been the last person down that hill, I know the sinking feeling that comes with being last.

At least I wasn’t being towed on the stretcher-sleigh.

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