Little Blue Skis: When My Runs Match My Skis

I do my skiing at Grand Targhee Resort in Alta, Wyoming. This is unusual because most Jacksonites opt for Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Teton Village. I decided to learn at Targhee because it's much cheaper and less steep. Also, my acquaintance with the Village was not five minutes old when the first dude in neon addressed me as "brah," which I hate.

This whole thing is important because learning to ski at Targhee has been a slow process of venturing out from the Kids' Fun Zone. The trail maps make it clear this is for "beginners of all ages," but ending up on one's ass as wood cutout cartoon animals mock you kind of brings it home that most beginners are not in their 20s.

Over the weekend, I tackled my first blue run without a babysitter.

In ski parlance "blue runs" are kind of the intermediate runs, with green being easy and black being expert (or, you know, shit-your-pants terrifying. Either one).

Tackling the blue runs used to be something I didn't really want to try alone. So my veryvery patient friend - we'll call him Logan, after the only dude in the Baby-Sitters Club - has been helping me branch out. Plus, you know, my skis are blue too, so there's always the whole aesthetic thing.

This weekend, Logan was sick, so I went out alone. And I tried a blue run on my own, with no need to call in the Ski Patrol.

The run I tried is so far my favorite run on the main mountain at Targhee - Chief Joseph's Bowl. You access it from a traverse that used to scare the bejeezus out of me but has great views of the back of the Tetons. The earliest stretch is pretty damn steep.

The rest is less steep, but still very much not-in-Kansas-anymore. The redeeming feature is that it's wide. When "some people" are still a bit of a 'fraidy cat about going all that fast, the way to control the speed is to make a very wide turn that allows you to cut across the slope rather than continue letting gravity and momentum hurl you to your doom. Or something like that. So more room to turn = a much calmer Looney Tunes brain.

My first time out on Chief Joseph, it took me literally an hour to get down because that's how I (didn't) roll. This weekend, I managed to cut that to 20 minutes, and I know part of that was because of my improved form on turns. Not that those turns were significantly tighter, but they at least kept a bit more of their momentum without causing any significant panicking. Progress, woot!

I don't expect to be shredding blacks by the time the season ends. Especially not in this part of the world, where steep is the new normal. I can say that I can do blues all by myself. Not bad for three months of weekends. Or at least, that's what I told myself to justify drinking beer at 4 p.m. when the lifts closed.