Have you ever had something happen that changed your view about skiing?

J

JackSkisPow

Member
I'll go first:

One time when I was a kid, I met some guy on the chairlift and introduced myself. I thought I was being pretty cool to say "hi" to people on the chairlift because no one ever talked on rides up. Anyway, we had a chat, it was his first time back on the slopes in a while, but he loved skiing and was about to go to college. Near the top he asked if I'd show him around some cool spots. We skied around together for a bit, and he was a decent skier, so I showed him some stashes and we dropped some cliffs together. I was so used to people being completely antisocial on chairlifts and not ever seeing each other again that this was mind boggling.

Never saw him again, but this changed my view completely about skiing because I thought skiing was an individual sport where you would ski with your friends from school or other sports, but nobody else.
 
Probably how important it is to people, like me. Always love seeing how skiing positively effects peoples lives.
 
This isnt something that happened, but more of a realization for me over the course of a few years.

All of the really good talented skiers Ive lapped with, and not just in park, are pretty damn humble people. On the flipside... the cocky, arrogant, condescending kids that talk shit seem to be average or mediocre.

Maybe its because the kids that really have a passion for skiing progress faster than people skiing for the sole purpose of getting attention or showing up another skier...
 
13738762:SKIU4EA said:
This isnt something that happened, but more of a realization for me over the course of a few years.

All of the really good talented skiers Ive lapped with, and not just in park, are pretty damn humble people. On the flipside... the cocky, arrogant, condescending kids that talk shit seem to be average or mediocre.

Maybe its because the kids that really have a passion for skiing progress faster than people skiing for the sole purpose of getting attention or showing up another skier...
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This. Also, I've noticed that the people that spend a lot of time on trying to get people to sponsor them and make videos about themselves aren't as good as the people who are really talented and skiing for the sake of skiing.
 
I started big into skiing when tom rocked that all brown north face outfit with the timberland fulltilts, slightly unrelated to thread but boy does that nostalgia hit
 
This is essentially what got me into skiing, it's weird how I can pinpoint the exact moment that I was like "so this is what I'm going to do".

In middle school we had a ski club that would take trips out to our local mountains for a day on the weekend. I live in PA, so there really isn't much, and I was never exposed to any form of big mountain skiing (I honestly didn't even really know it was a thing). Anyway on one particular day someone put in Light The Wick for our movie (coach bus) on the way to the mountain. Watching that Jackson segment, with Animus Vox from the Glitch Mob playing in the background just made that click happen.... I was instantly hooked.

It also helped that that day was particularly snowing and I got to ski some trees with good friends.

I know some other people on here know this feeling but I feel so fortunate for finding what I want to do in life at such an early age.
 
I rode the chair up with a 92 year old man on one of the coldest days I've ever skied. It was -35 wind chill, the runs were rock hard, ice was building up on my mask... and this guy was completely unphased. He was even riding some ancient K2 straight skis.

He told me stories about skiing back in the 40's and how the "chairlift" used to be run by a V-8 Ford truck engine, how he spent several years living in his car and skiing every resort that he could out west, and how much skiing changed his life and helped him through tough times.

Before this encounter, I never had the true passion for skiing. I realized that it can have a much greater impact than having a little fun and getting excerise.
 
I was on a race team for most of my childhood. On the first day of the 08-09 season, they told us to raise our hands if we wanted to ski moguls. I rose my hand and turned my back on racing.

Moguls scared me, and the most of the kids and coaches didn't really associate with the former racers. So the head coaches told the youngest coach to take us to the park to work on jumps. The coach was a park rat who was like 7 years older than me. He took us through and he just fucking slayed. We ended up lapping the park all day just hucking our biggest tricks. We repeated this process every weekend. It was so much fun doing "huge" 3s, 7s, frontflips, trying to learn rails, etc.

That season really changed my prespective on skiing.
 
13738892:THEDIRTYBUBBLE said:
I was on a race team for most of my childhood. On the first day of the 08-09 season, they told us to raise our hands if we wanted to ski moguls. I rose my hand and turned my back on racing.

Moguls scared me, and the most of the kids and coaches didn't really associate with the former racers. So the head coaches told the youngest coach to take us to the park to work on jumps. The coach was a park rat who was like 7 years older than me. He took us through and he just fucking slayed. We ended up lapping the park all day just hucking our biggest tricks. We repeated this process every weekend. It was so much fun doing "huge" 3s, 7s, frontflips, trying to learn rails, etc.

That season really changed my prespective on skiing.
Click to expand...

Haha that's sick. Did you ever end up actually doing moguls?
 
So basically I started skiing fairly young, but didn't have a ton of interest in it, and I wasn't that great at it. Then my dad got laid off from his job and I didn't get to go for a while, and I took up skateboarding (thanks to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, as embarrassing as that is to say).

Then I saw some videos with some free skiing and my mind was blown... I was never that excited on skis until this moment, I didn't know that this kind of stuff (mostly rails, specifically, coming from a skateboarding background) could be done on skis.

At this point I was in high school and with some lucky timing I went on a ski trip with a friend of mine. Somehow, I was magically less mediocre at skiing (I felt like I was pro at the time but I was far from it obviously) and was hitting easy stuff in the baby park quite well with no experience on it.

TL;DR: saw a freeskiing movie and found out that skiing isn't just riding down groomers all day.
 
I had internal bleeding in my head and underwent two surgeries. I'm still recovering and my head is fragile. Couldn't ski for one year and even though I shit my pants thinking about it, I'm gonna drop my favorite cliff as soon as there's enough snow. Not skiing for one year was too depressing
 
I was lucky to have parents who put me on skis at three years old. I always treated it as just another activity to do with friends growing up, and something to pass the time and a way to enjoy being outside. As I've gotten older and have to deal with life things: work, bills, daily stresses, I have grown to appreciate skiing as more than just a way to enjoy a sport with friends in the winter. It is an escape from the toils of daily life, and is a way to push myself while still experiencing the peace that being on the mountain brings. It is always a good day on the slopes and skiing will always bring me unbridled joy and excitement no matter how much stress life can bring.
 
I grew up with this perspective on skiing in which racing was always my main focus, but as the years rolled by and competition got so much more intense I started to lose my actual love for skiing. However my second year of being a j3 came along and something clicked. I stopped racing and started skiing more with my friends who rode park all along and almost overnight I gained this sense of skiing I had not felt since I was a little kid before racing. Not to make racing not sound fun or anything (believe me getting to ski super g gates as a tike was tight as fuck) but for me it seems like the view I had all along was hidden from me in those years of racing which was that skiing has always been about exploration and trying new shit and being dumb with your friends and thats something I never experienced with racing so that immediate moment in which I made that transition was probably the biggest realization I have had that changed my point of view on my skiing and skiing itself.
 
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