The Non-Skier is Still Not a Skier
By: Jason Tross

As promised, here is a brief summary of my adventure spending yesterday skiing with my non-skier friend at Timberline on Mt. Hood.
We had two goals for the day – find some cheap gear for non-skier Craig and make some decent turns while waiting for the real snow to start hitting next week. We definitely accomplished our missions, but not how we’d like. This just proves there are many paths to reach the same point. This also proves we found the most difffult.
Our first stop was a house just south of Portland to pick up some boots we found on Craigslist.org. Craig tried them on in the living room and said, “fits like a glove.” No they didn’t – not at all. This was the first difficult concept to grasp. But they were $50 and in really good shape. We were just looking to save some loot by not renting again. Craig still paid though.
Even though we reached the glacier around 10:30 a.m., the snow was already mashed potatoes and infested with the upper echelons of PSIA’s northwest hierarchy of awesome. They carefully buzzed as close as they could to him and talked about what they would to do to help him make “correct turns” below us. Craig really doesn’t want any lessons from ski school now. Luckily he has patient friends who think they know how to make a “correct turn.”
Little did I, the awesome ski instructors or Craig know, but his boots absolutely didn’t fit. They are at least an entire size too big. No matter what the poor guy was trying, his foot was sliding around and balancing on the ski. A little over two hours and three runs later, we were both done.
We hiked back to the unload at the bottom of Palmer Glacier to download. The snowpack is so thin right now, you walk through dirt to catch a chair over more dirt and rock back to the historic Timberline Lodge. The view made everything better. It’s easy to forget you’re skiing on a mountain packing more power than 100 Nagasaki nukes. Now that’s awesome.
Craig is currently at home weighing the pros and cons of selling the boots or just packing foam and using bigger socks to get by. Hard to say.
No harm in the day. I thought I was patient and could just look at his skiing and fix it. He thought I could too. What we both learned we could do was share some good conversation and be patient. Someone was patient w/ my slow ass too – and I’m sure I whined way more.