Couch Potato Goes Skiboarding

The first time I went skiboarding was in the middle of July, 1999. That's right, July. I had just moved to Colorado and all one of my friends could talk about was skiboarding. Before long I became obsessed too. When would it snow? If it snowed down in Boulder, would we be able to go skiboarding in the mountains? Wasn't there anywhere with snow yet? After weeks of my pestering and speculating, we decided to hike up to St. Mary's Glacier and skiboard down.

The drive was beautiful. I'm a California girl, so I was unprepared for REAL mountains. What we call mountains back home... well, I won't get into it. The vastness of the Colorado sky leaves me breathless. I don't know if it's because we're so much higher here or because the atmosphere is thinner, or what, but the sky is HUGE. So anyway, we're driving out to the glacier and I'm craning my neck around every corner for the tiniest glimpse of snow. Finally, we saw it! As we pulled into the parking lot, we saw some hikers carrying their skis down the trail and we knew we were in the right place. We gathered our gear, clothes, and skiboards, and headed up the trail. The trail wasn't steep, but I was totally surprised by the change in altitude. Every few minutes I had to take a literal breather as my Californian lungs struggled to extract oxygen from the thin mountain air. Filled with determination, yet behind the rest of our troop, I hiked on. It took us about 25 minutes to reach the base of the glacier.

If my lungs were complaining before, they were screaming now. My muscles never even got a chance to get tired; I had to stop so often just to breathe. The higher we climbed, the more incredible the view became: snow, trees, lake, foothills and incredible clouds in the distance.

Finally, the moment of truth was upon us. I put on my skiboards and instinctively turned my tips inward, trying to recreate the snowplow ski insructors had drummed into me years ago, only to realize that it was completely unnecessary. Finally, control! In a matter of minutes, I felt like I had always been doing this. The rounded heel of my MicroSkis made turning easier than ever before. I experimented with my stance and found that what felt the most natural also worked the best. Never again will I pitch myself forward on a pair of skis, I vowed silently.

The snow was the worst. I am not kidding - chunky, icy, dirty snow, complete with rocks and frozen ridges. I struggled to control the chatter of my boards as I coasted over bumps and lumps. As I relaxed into my boards, I was able to control them even over this awful terrain. If skiboarding is this effortless on a glacier, I thought to myself, I can't wait until I get to do it on real, fresh snow! We reached the bottom, more exhausted from the long hike up than the too-short trip down. The glacier starts out as a green run, fades into blue, and then ends on a steep slope that I'd call comparable to a black diamond run. When we reached the bottom, we all had huge smiles plastered over our faces.

As we hiked back down the trail that had brought us to the foot of the glacier, I reflected on my experience. I came to Colorado in search of the extreme. On that day in the middle of July, I found it on the snow.

Sasha Kuczynski