Skiing in Snoqalmie

Right from the time I mooted the idea, my couple-friends and I were all excited about planning the micro details of our first ski-trip.....from the usual route maps to enquiring about driving conditions in the land-slide-prone mountain passes to traction chains for the car.



All set, we rolled off at 8:30am on a not-so-cold Seattle morning listening to carnatic music and the beats of mridangam ("sen-tamizh meets Seattle" ) instead of my regular fare of techno. Twenty miles off the gloomy-Seattle(yeah! thats what I have come to call it), everything around you seem to go through a slow transformation between each wink of your eye. Rain drops turning into snow flakes turning into heavy snowfall, barren terrain turning into snow-smeared one, pines and leafless trees covering themselves with white-coats to ward away the harsh winter. The white-carpet welcome to the mountains was breath-taking and we savored every frame of the scenic views passing by.

From the time we got down the car, there was this one guy who approached us and started helping us with all the information that any beginner would need like where to rent the ski-gear, what package to go for, which slope to ski down and so on. He seemed so much on our backs that we even started feeling if he was expecting some money like guides in India. But it turned out at the end that he was an employee of that ski-resort and was just doing his duty. Thats customer service! At the end of the day he wouldn't leave without us assuring him that we will visit the resort again. Now thats doing one's duty to the fullest. Oh my God! I am supposed to be writing about skiing, right? But, I guess its okay if something really grabs your attention....just like the rivetting way our skiing intructor went about teaching us!!

Getting into the ski-boots, fastening them to the ski and walking with kind of "suddenly-extended-feet" was in itself a big exercise. That, in fact, was the lesson taught for the first 30 minutes...walking on snow with the ski's. Hmm! Try it if that sounds like nothing. Next came lessons about propelling yourself on the snow, going on a "magic carpet"( just a name for an escalator) over to the top of a small slope, skiing down that, slowing down, turning and coming to a total stop. It was real fun doing all that, including the numerous tumble-downs that we had....inevitable!!

Four to five hours of doing all these was enough to tire us down. Then we sat and ate in the car watching the experienced skiiers doing their rounds down more steeper slopes. I kept wondering about "mera number kab ayeega?".....answer is "next season"!!!