I Become a Skier

Every few years Lassen gets a LOT of snow.

The year the Lassen Ski Lift opened was one of those years.

By the time the lift opened there was snow piled six to eight feet deep and by the middle of the season there was some forty feet of snow on the ground.  There was so much snow the groomers had to plow under the chairs so they could lift the skiers up the mountain and the chairs were already high off the ground.

The highway coming into the park from the south as far as the Lassen Chalet parking lot was plowed with perfectly vertical walls of snow towering up from the edge of the tarmac.

I absolutely loved being the first human being on the mountain every day in the silence of the dawn and I soon grew to know and appreciate the customers that used the lift.

Lassen had just the one twelve-tower lift and two or three groomed trails but the closest mountain ski area competing for the skiers of the northern Sacramento valley was way over at Lake Tahoe—so I thought we did pretty well.

As I said, I had zero experience of skiing or the ski scene so I was content with our little mountain.

I had no experience with the fantastic hordes of skiers or the expensive costumes and equipment, racers, bars, hotels, pros, sports massage or any of the merchandising hype that are, of course, the main reason for the sport of downhill skiing to exist.

At first I hiked from the Lassen Chalet down to the lift wearing two pairs of jeans and snowmobile boots  and would carry a set of bongo drums with me up to the top of the lift where I would stay for my work shift in the cozy heated little booth with a sharp eye out for trouble.

I played different drum rhythms through my entire shift—trying to “rhythm entrain” myself with the mechanical pulse of the huge loop of moving cable which had been laid out on an exact East/West line (I had checked through the surveyor’s theodolite when they were aligning the towers at the beginning of the project and wasn’t I surprised to find that the lift cable was designed to be right where my imagined homemade ley line was going to be!.)

As a matter of fact I was trying to send out a message with my drumming and the message I was sending out into the cosmos through the entire huge vibrating cable was “Send Help”, not just for me but for all of us because even back then the “handwriting was on the wall” for the ecological destruction of this planet by us humans. (“We have met the enemy and they are us!")

 One of the best perks of working at the lift was the opportunity of skiing for free when not working––and we could also borrow boots and skis from the rental shop for free.

The management had set up a “Bunny Slope” rope tow near the Chalet and one of the little girls I knew from Mineral was one of their most enthusiastic customers. She would grab the moving rope and get a ride to the top and slide down and do it all over again all day long.

I borrowed some boots and skis and poles from the lift's new rental shop and the first chance I had I asked her to teach me to ski––which she was delighted to do.

She showed me how to hold the poles and how to slow and stop by forming a “piece of pie” with the ski tips.

So I rode the Bunny Tow with all the little kids for a few hours.

Then I asked her if she thought I was ready to try the new chair lift and she shared with me this profound Little Kid Wisdom: “If YOU think you’re ready—you’re ready!” (Sound of a gong!)

So I slid on down the hill to the big new chair lift, actually slid into position to be scooped off my feet by the moving chair and before I knew it––I was riding high over the snow with skis on my feet.

Sliding off the chair and down the groomed ramp at the top turned out to be a piece of cake and so, like everyone else, I did it again and again!

It was good fun!

The real hard-core racers using the new ski lift, sort of as a joke, issued me the #1 ski racer's bib and I became a sort of mascot belated skier!

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