For as long as I can remember, each Thanksgiving and winter break, my family has gone skiing in Tahoe. Sitting on the ski lifts, cruising over the white mountains and snow-covered trees, I’ve always daydreamed about jumping off and landing in a soft mound of snow.
However, after one fateful experience in which I fell off the lift — not of my own accord — I have to report that the snow is not as fluffy as it looks.
That fall happened when I was 11 years old. I went skiing with my friend at the Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort. My friend was nervous to get on the lift, so my mom suggested we all ride together: My friend on the left, my mom in the middle and me and the right.
As we shuffled in front of the incoming lift chair, my friend started shifting to the right, afraid that she would miss the lift. On the right side of the chair, I quickly found myself squeezed against the edge of the seat — so I had to turn my body around 90 degrees just to stay on.
Slowly, the lift began to swing forward and off the ramp, lifting us gently from the ground. My skis weighed my feet down, so I started sliding off the chair. Inside my puffy ski gloves, my little fingers clung to the chair railing with an iron grip, refusing to face the embarrassment of falling off in front of everyone.
One of the ski trails was right under us, so when we soared above the groomed snow, my little fingers couldn’t take it anymore. In what felt like slow motion, I slipped from the chair, closing the gap to the ground until I landed in the snow.
We had barely moved forward, so thankfully I wasn’t too far off the ground when I fell. But, my face still stung from the hard impact of the packed trail snow — the lift path wasn’t as soft as I had imagined. Overhead, the lifts stopped moving, and the lift monitor came up to me to see if I was OK.
When he got the OK from me, the lift monitor restarted the lift and as the chairs started climbing up the hill again. I sat helplessly on the ground, watching my mother and my friend drift further and further away from me high above.
For the next 10 minutes or so — although it felt like hours — I stayed on the side of the trail, waiting for them to come back down to me. While I waited, I made some snowballs and cried. (I think I may have had some separation anxiety.)
Interestingly enough, I never blamed the lift for my fall, so I wasn’t scared to ride them again. I’d ridden loads of chair lifts, even trying out the conveyor belt ski lifts, and I’d never had a problem before; the same was true with my mom. So, the only variable left in the equation is my friend.
My conclusion: I vowed never to sit on the same lift with my friend again — and I’ve stood by that.
