Grades K-4 I followed a junior race coach, and the other racers, around all day. All we did was carve around the various blue squares our mountain had to offer. On opening day when I was 11, they asked us who wanted to ski moguls. From that day on until I was 14, my friends and I spent hours at practice, just skiing down mogul "zippers" as we called them, and hitting jumps made with a shovel. After practice, we would go to the park to practice 360s and such. The jumps were small, but they made us feel like we could fly. I spent several seasons doing this. When I turned 14, I started skiing park. The parks were geared towards more skilled riders at this point. The jumps that the local park rats considered small, we're now exponentially bigger. The rails were now much more diverse and creative; and certainly bigger. It was hard for beginners to progress. We didn't have a small flat bar. My friend taught me how to slide on a C-box, and later that day a down rail. So I stuck with jumps (which had a bad impact on my rail skills). I could do a 3 off of any jump. Grabbed or not. If I was feeling send, maybe a hideous looking frontflip. Later on into that season, park crew changed the one park so that it was geared towards beginners. I was still very scared of rails. A simple 10 foot down rail freaked me out. Front 2s out of the 5 foot flat bar were all I could do. That season ended, leaving me with a dissatisfied feeling. All season long, I watched edits from my home mountain of people doing insane tricks. I saw some of them in person, and they blew my mind. Then highschool started. I was a very antisocial person at school, so to escape the days I focused more on my skiing. When the next season rolled around, I was much more comfortable. I could slide almost all rails, and I started basic tricks. It was perfect timing too, because the parks were amped up to be much more beefy. In the late spring of that season, I learned to flip. Id try to find anything to backflip/rodeo/flat 3 off of. And nowadays, my mountain is still unforgiving to the beginners. But it is a good thing. I see the rate of progression exploding as a result. I see young kids who are better than me now. Kids in there first year of skiing, learning to slide all the rails in the park. My mountain teaches kids true progression.
