Column: My Burning Hatred of a Freezing Pastime

Hate is a strong word. I tell my children often that “hate” should not be part of their vernacular unless they are referring to any sort of injustice or the Duke Blue Devils. But let me tell you what I hate: snow skiing. And ironically, for something that is really quite frigid, I hate snow skiing with a passion that burns hotter than the place from which those Duke Blue Devils come.

As a generally outdoorsy and relatively athletic person, one would think that I would not have such a strong aversion to a recreational activity that so many people seem to not just tolerate but actually enjoy. And it would so happen that someone with an utter disdain for this winter sport would end up marrying a man who grew up taking annual vacations to various East Coast ski resorts from the time he was big enough to stand up on a pair of skis. He loves to go on about how some of his fondest childhood memories revolve around these family ski trips that he and his parents would take with a group of their close friends.

In stark contrast, my recollections of my first experiences on a ski slope are, to put it mildly, thoroughly horrendous. Unlike my husband, I did not grow up in a family of snow ski enthusiasts. We preferred to spend the winter months hibernating in the comfort of the great indoors next to crackling fires with mugs of hot cocoa, cozy blankets, classic movies, and central heating. I did not have my first big ski adventure until somewhere around age 15, when my church youth group offered a February retreat to Winterplace Ski Resort in West Virginia. With naive curiosity and blind optimism, I registered for the trip and added every bit of the gear I would need to my Christmas list.

I remember the excitement of stuffing my duffel bag full of new scarves, wool socks, thermal underwear, pompom beanies, ski bibs, and waterproof gloves, and loading onto the rented charter bus with an enthusiastic group of fellow teens to make the long drive to West Virginia. The vision I had of our destination was something akin to the Austrian Alps I had only seen in The Sound of Music.

I absolutely did not anticipate stepping off the stuffy charter bus in my new snow boots into a puddle of filthy slush in the middle of a parking lot packed with Presidents Day weekend traffic. In retrospect, the looks on the faces of parents dragging snotty, whining children with chapped cheeks and tears frozen onto their eyelashes with one hand while wrestling skis and ski poles with the other on the trek back to their cars should have been my first warning to head straight to the ski lodge and find a nice, comfy chair by a window and near the snack bar where I could remain for the rest of the day.

I proceeded to the ski rental area where I retrieved the awkward plastic boots that would ultimately give me the worst blisters of my 15 years, ski poles that would prove to be completely useless, and a pair of skis that would become the medium through which my body would transform into a human projectile, putting myself and anyone unfortunate enough to be in a 100-yard radius of me in extreme peril.

As I exited the rental building and attempted to properly equip myself, the fact that I fell flat on my rear end after only clipping into one ski should have been sign number two to get out while I still could, but I managed to right myself and inch my way over to the ski school on the bunny slope. My less-novice friends ditched me in line with a bunch of elementary schoolers and headed for the advanced slopes.

I shouldn’t have scoffed at those kindergartners too quickly, because they caught on a heck of a lot quicker than I did. They were able to perfect their “pizza wedge” stopping method on their very first runs down the slight decline, while the shape my skis made when I tried to stop looked less like a slice of pizza and more like the letter X—X for “you should stop right here, right now.”

I attempted several more runs down the bunny slope. The end result was the same for all: me, flat as a pancake on my back, skis in the air, gazing up at the winter sky, and asking God how anyone could think this is fun.

Determined to keep trying, I followed the ski instructor’s instructions to continue ahead to the ski lift to make my way to my first attempt at a beginner-level green slope. And that’s the part no one warns newbie skiers about: the ski lift.

I did my best to shuffle over to the lift to get in position for the moment the lift touches the back of your knees and scoops you skyward. Well, turns out there’s not an awful lot of time between one chair and the next.

For a virgin lift-rider, you have to do a good bit of positioning before you are ready to load. Before I knew it, one of my skis crossed over the other, causing me to lurch forward. I overcorrected, slipped on the packed snow, and fell backwards, whacking my head on the lift chair.

I hope that having to have the emergency stop button pressed just for you, halting an entire ski lift full of people, and holding up the long line is an embarrassment that you never have to endure.

The lift operator helped me to my feet, asked if I was sure I wasn’t concussed, eased me down into the seat, and said, “Are you sure you’re good to keep going?”

In hindsight, the answer to that question should have been a resounding “NO,” but the stubbornness of a teenage girl is a powerful thing.

My first—and last—green run went about like you would expect, given my ski school and ski lift fiascos. As I launched myself off the top of the hill, every tip I learned from the instructor left my brain. I forgot to make slow, side-to-side zig zags down the mountain. I forgot about the pizza wedge. I forgot to keep my poles down at my sides.

My life flashed before my eyes, along with blurs that I could only assume were other skiers dodging the out-of-control torpedo barreling toward them. Around the midway point of the run, I began an epic tumble. The lone rational thought that came to me as I involuntarily cartwheeled down the mountain was to abandon my ski poles out of fear of impaling an innocent bystander.

I flipped down that run for what seemed like an eternity, both of my skis popping off somewhere along the way. And when the orange plastic netting at the bottom of the slope finally halted my descent, I closed my eyes and rested my bare head (my beanie lost somewhere on the mountain) on the snow, and prepared to meet my maker. I assumed that every bone in my body was broken and that I had sustained irreversible brain damage.

It was only when I heard a booming voice and felt a shadow looming over me that I was roused back into the land of the living. I opened one eye to see the very angry face of a man peering down at me. He was gripping his small daughter by the hood of her ski jacket, and I came to the terrible realization that he had pulled her out of my way just in time.

“What the heck are you doing?” he roared. “Don’t you know how to stop?! You are going to hurt yourself or someone else! You need to go back to the bunny slope!”

After I profusely apologized to that man and his child and trudged up the hill to retrieve the collection of scattered items lost along the mountain during my 45-degree tumbling pass, I thought to myself, “The bunny slopes? Buddy, I can do you one better.” I hobbled my throbbing behind straight to the lodge where I would park myself for the remainder of the trip.

I came home from West Virginia with an impressive hematoma on my thigh, a cut on my cheek from the tip of my ski, and a nice array of bumps and bruises in various blues and purples, but nothing more injured than my teenage ego. It took me a decade after that to be convinced to give skiing another try, and by then I was a married lady trying to impress her expert-level husband.

That’s a story for another day, but let’s just say another 15 years have passed since my second and sworn-last attempt at snow skiing, and my husband likes to tell people that the only time our 25-year relationship was ever on the rocks was that one time he tried to teach me how to ski.

I am hoping that our two children won’t miss out on the opportunity to learn to love a winter sport that their dad adores. Maybe they inherited his uncanny ability to balance upright on two glorified floorboards while barreling down a slippery mountain at light speed in subzero temperatures, make it out alive, and say it was fun.

Or maybe they didn’t. And if that’s the case, they can revel in their mom’s favorite seasonal pastime: sitting stationary on a nice, flat sandy beach, basking in sun hot enough to melt the snow on the tippy top of the tallest of the Austrian Alps.

Read CityView Magazine’s “New Year, New You” January 2026 e-edition here.