SURFING IN NARNIA

Magical Winter Adventures With Mazama Nordic

by Elise Englert

As a child, my only two references for understanding the world of skiing were 90s comedy movie sensation Dumb and Dumber, and a traumatizing story of my dad’s first go with skiing: He bombed down a hill, tumbled tail over tea kettle for a couple hundred yards, and dislocated his shoulder. Based on these cumulative cautionary tales, I perceived skiing as a death trap for the elite and avoided it successfully until I hit my early 20s. As part of a college outdoor club outing, I touched skis to snow for the first time and felt an immediate affinity for the sport. I got barely any snow in my undies, and left excited to try again! On that day a lifelong passion sparked within me: a passion for going cross-country skiing once every two years, introducing an overly-confident boyfriend to the sport, and watching him suffer and have a terrible time while I slid around easily like a roller-skating queen.

With ten years of boyfriend torture under my belt, as well as a long expedition to Badger Pass on which I managed to not die, I signed up for the Mazama Nordic Ski course in December. I felt motivated to meet other skiers, start skiing more than bi-annually, and learn the words to describe the hodgepodge of self-taught survival techniques I’d cobbled together over the years. Also, I have seen people do the thing where they carry skis while climbing UP a mountain and then ski DOWN a mountain, and in my mind, that is apex outdoor chaos, the type of thing you do to both impress and alienate all your friends when you blow up Instagram with some Jimmy Chin madness. Anything I can do to get closer to that is a worthwhile educational opportunity in my opinion! I wasn’t sure which course to sign up for, but applied for the intermediate course because they would be going on trips over five miles (yay! I want to do that), required that you don’t fall much (I don’t, usually!) and also required that you had mastered a series of moves I had never heard of before (well, two out of three isn’t bad!).

At our orientation on January 4, we learned about the partnership between the Mazamas and Oregon Nordic Club (ONC) and watched an inspiring short video of ONC skiers on an expedition in Norway being absolutely throttled by hurricaneforce winds in open tundra. We learned that the Mazamas offers Incident Response Debriefings through the Critical Incident

Stress Management team, and that out of the few evacuations required by Mazamas since the CISM team formed in 1992, two have involved cross-country skiers. At that point, I wondered if I should pretend to go use the bathroom and quietly retreat to the (minimal) safety of my FIAT, but I stuck around to meet my crew: our teachers Tom Kline and Benjamin Dair Rothfuss, and six other students who I feared would leave me in the dust with their previous Mazama Nordic courses and no-doubt hearty knee ligaments.

Our first outing on January 22 started at 4 a.m.—for me at least, as I woke up an hour before my alarm from an excitement/ stress combo. I begrudgingly packed my rental skis into the car, scraped the ice off the windows, and thought grumpily about how nice warmth and sleeping are. I tracked down my carpool at the MMC and we were gas station burrito (and skiing!) bound. Our lessons at Teacup Nordic started with stretching, a quick drill, and a glide down to the meadow, followed by some individual attention on our poling and striding techniques. We learned to step firmly up steep hills so that our scales would get better traction. I learned my rental poles were too short AND I was holding them wrong. I had always avoided the black diamond sections of Teacup, but continued on next page

Narnia, continued from previous page this time with the safety of a group, no hills were off-limits! We attempted step turns, and various types of plow stops to slow ourselves. We took our first attempts at skiing off the groomed trails and I faceplanted multiple times. The snow was perfect, the sun was shining, and after hours of learning and playing, we finally headed home.

The next outing on January 28, there were no stress dreams, and no curmudgeonly disdain from this kid as I packed up my car in the morning rain to meet my carpool, just excitement. This time we met at Snow Bunny Sno-Park and practiced single-leg drills and doublepoling before heading off into the woods. We took turns breaking trail, and after a mile of stomping around with two inches of snow clogging my skis, I learned about Maxiglide wax and what an absolute miracle it is. This was a day of firsts after firsts for me: first time on a ski outing on ungroomed trails, first time attempting kick-turns, first time falling 10+ times in one day. We navigated off-trail to a series of pristine meadows and hills of varying intensity until we finally made it to an area Tom called “the clearcut.” The name hadn’t made it explicitly clear to those of us participating in the search that the clearcut was going to be the most beautiful scene we’d ever seen: an array of snow-frosted evergreens so perfect, it looked like Queen Frostine (yes from Candyland) herself had arrived before us. As I glided through untouched, open lines of snow nestled between old-growth forest, I occasionally caught sight of my fellow classmates to either side of me. It felt playful, joyful, and magical, like catching a wave for the first time surfing, but in Narnia, and surrounded by friends. This moment was one of exquisite freedom, and knowledge that new doors had been opened up to me. Eventually, we reconnected with the trail system and made our way back to Snow Bunny Sno-Park, where the fluffy pristine hills that had been glowing in the sunrise that morning had been compacted to ice slicks by hoards of children and their families having the time of their lives. It was back to reality, but now with a few extra tools for the next snowy wonderland adventure—I can’t wait to get out there again to chase that mountain high! Thanks, Mazama Nordic for a great experience!