Word: skied
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This past Christmas Jim Bredar and I drove that route to Winter Park Ski Area in his old Toyota Jeep, as he had done hundreds of times before. The sky was overcast and it was freezing inside the jeep because the heater was busted and the windows didn't close all the way. We got to Winter Park around 8:30 a.m.--early, before the lifts started, because Jim was a senior ski patrolman and had to get instructions from the patrol leader before the mountain opened--and I was so numb I wondered if I could ski...
...beautiful day, the sky an unmarred shell of deep blue, the sunlight too bright, etching the dark green outline of each pine against the snowfields, the air so cold and so clear that the sight of the Indian Peak mountains to the northeast took your breath away. I skied with Jim and Mary Lyn Chapin and Nancy McKey, both friends of Jim's from the time in high school when he joined the Winter Park Junior Ski Patrol. Mary Lyn was a fast skier, as fast as Jim, and she looked the part, with blonde hair that fell past...
...BREDAR was born in February, 1957. His parents moved to Colorado that year and got interested in skiing. "As we grew up," Jim says of his brothers and sisters, "they started each one of us. I messed around on skis when I was five and six; it was hardly skiing. I think the first time I rode a lift I was seven. I loved it right from the start." Jim and his siblings got pointers from their parents and friends, skied scared, skied out-of-control, skied cold, but skied. Gradually, Jim's skiing improved, and he began to ski...
Some of them were on the junior ski patrol at Winter Park, and when Jim heard about patrolling and its responsibilities--watching for fallen skiers, providing first aid, packing the snow on unskied runs so they could be opened, and performing a painstaking "sweep" at day's end to make sure no one was hurt or lost on the mountain--he knew he wanted to join, too. He was 13 at the time; the minimum age for junior patrolmen...
...years later, a sophomore in high school, Jim had enough confidence in his skiing to attempt to join the patrol. "I wanted it so bad I could taste it," he said, "and I knew they would only take 15 people." After passing an endurance test, he took a written exam on first aid and ski patrol regulations, and passed with the second highest score. This qualified him for the skiing test: Jim had to demonstrate every technique of skiing, from stem christie to parallel to snowplow on a very steep slope, and ski every kind of snow--packed, powder...