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Ski Sundown, Ratlum Road, New Hartford, Connecticut, USA

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Ski Sundown, Ratlum Road, New Hartford, Connecticut, USA

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Ski Sundown, Ratlum Road, New Hartford, Connecticut, USA

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Sundown is the first place that I skied in my lifetime. It is also where I learned to ski for the first time when I was 4. My parents told me about how my dad would have these ropes that would tie us together so that when I skied down in front of him he could control my speed. Now Sundown is really easy to me, but I still go there pretty much every year at least once because it's really fun to ski there with friends.

One funny story that happened to me at Sundown Ct was when I was 10 or 11. I brought a friend there who had never skied before and he was pretty nervous. When we got to the mountain and put on skis for the first time he felt very awkward in the skis so we decided to go to the easy section of the mountain first. Surprisingly, the first time he tried to get on the chairlift he succeeded. It was almost like his favorite football team had won the Super Bowl the way he reacted to getting on the chair lift. However, this happiness would not be short lived, as disaster struck while we were going down the first trail. On the trial we did there was netting on either side of it to keep people from falling into the woods. While my friend was going down the trail he couldn’t control his speed. He became nervou and caught an edge and fell. He then proceeded to slide down the trail right into the net and got tangled. He also sprained his wrist when he hit the ground. I remember him saying, “I’m never going to ski again.” But that statement was also short lived, as we were back again at the same mountain skiing the next weekend. This experience really showed me how easy it was to get injured and it made me think about how I couldn’t just go straight down the trails instead I had to make good turns and control my speed. Me realizing this helped me grow as a skier because I learned good technique as I learned how to ski properly.

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Okemo Mountain Resort, Okemo Ridge Road, Ludlow, VT, USA

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Okemo Mountain Resort, Okemo Ridge Road, Ludlow, VT, USA

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Okemo Mountain Resort, Okemo Ridge Road, Ludlow, VT, USA

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There is a mountain in Vermont called Okemo that my family has gone to since I was 5. This mountain was really the next step for me after Sundown. At first Okemo seemed so hard because it was way bigger than anything that I had seen before. I remember wanting to get good enough to ski a black diamond back when I was 8.Now after buying a condo at Okemo we go up almost every weekend during the winter. Okemo is something that I look forward to on the weekend as now I can ski all of the terrain there pretty easily. I also joined a racing ski group there called devos. We meet every Saturday and work on technique and racing skills. I joined them probably 2 years ago and since joining I have noticed huge improvements in my skiing ability. I also love going up every weekend because skiing makes me feel free and it washes away all of my worries for the time that I am skiing. This is why skiing is my favorite thing to do and right when the fall fishing season ends it is the most exciting thing on my mind. Now I know Okemo like the back of my hand and can recognize any trail because I have been going there for so long. There's nothing like waking up at 7:45 on a cold Saturday morning and walking out the door to a ski slope trying to catch the first lift.

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Breckenridge is my most recent experience of the mountains of Colorado and the hardest ski mountain I have ever been to. My family and I went there in 2019. Brekenridge is probably the best ski mountain I have ever been to just because of the amount of snow there was and there was terrain like never seen before. Breckenridge is this huge amazing mountain with jagged peaks and steep terrain. When you look up at it you can see the tree line where it turns to only rock. There are massive trails that are a mile wide and more snow than you could ever imagine. The first memorable thing that happened to me there was hiking up to the top of the mountain and then skiing down an untouched trail of powder. The feeling of getting to the top felt so relieving after struggling through the deep snow and thin air to get there. This was also my first time hiking to terrain so I could ski down it. The terrain we skied down after the hike was extremely hard, but I loved it. There was even a warning sign with a skull and crossbones before we went down which intimidated me at first, but as soon as I started skiing I knew that I could ski that trail. There was also another experience that I had there that was very memorable. There was a trail in the trees that we had wanted to ski all week but they kept it shut down because of avalanche control. However, on the last day of the trip they opened it up. This trail was one of the hardest trails we skied down during the trip and along with the hike trail really opened me up to how intense and fun out west skiing could be. Brekenridge was a huge placemark for where I am as a skier as of now and I will continue to improve as I go to big and better places. My goal for the future is to ski Corbet's Couloir, which is one of the most feared and intimidating runs in the world.

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Snowmass and Aspen are two mountains in Colorado that are about 30 minutes away from each other. When we visited that area we stayed in Snowmass, but went to Aspen a couple of times as we loved each of the ski resorts respectively. This was my first taste of skiing out west and there was a lot more snow than I thought there would be. I was used to the icy east coast skiing so when we went skiing on the first day of the trip I was blown away by the amount of snow there was. To add on to that, the mountains in Colorado are much more jagged than the ones that are in Vermont which are more rounded. You can see this just as you are leaving the airport as you are surrounded by high jagged peaks. They also are much higher and you can feel yourself breathing heavier out there because the air is thin and you are 10,000 - 13,000 feet higher than you normally would be just living a normal life in Connecticut. Skiing in Colorado really introduced me to a completely different type of skiing that I had never experienced before. I remember when I first got there I was falling a lot because skiing in that much snow is a completely different art form than skiing back on the east coast. In Vermont I was used to really getting on the edges of my skis and making sharp turns. However, in Colorado you can't dig your edges into the snow like that. Instead you have to glide on top of the snow and let your skis do the work for you. This is something that I learned for the first time when my family and I went out to Snowmas and Aspen.