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Show OCTOBER 21, fa ' THE MOUNTAIN FLOWER" A By MARK SITZ Thanksgiving day, technique of angling my skis so that they looked like two sides of a triangle. Doing this, I could slow myself down. I could turn right. I couldnt turn left very well, but I decided to ski only right handed slopes. I also decided Id had enough ski instructions. My first time alone on the ski rins has to be a classic of ineptitude. The tenor was set when I crashed into a tangle of skis while attempting to get off the chair lift. Then the nn: For a few hunched feet down the mountain the traditional opening day of the skiing season will soon be upon us. Hopefully along with it the snow will also be upon the slopes. With any luck die snow will arrive before the turkeys and the snow people can get an earlier start. The Park City resort is shooting for a November eleventh opening day. Along with the familiar ski runs and lifts at Park City and Park West, skiers this year will find two new runs, Temptation and everything was great. The mountain was a crisp, clean white. The air rushing by was cool 'The Hoist, (both rated most difficult), and a new chairlift at Park City. and sweet. My skis carved a beautiful swoosh through the powder. But then I realized something. I couldnt stop if I wanted to. I didn't really want to stop. But somehow the thought of not being able to do it made it imperative. So lacing any other source of action, I fell. Falling on skis Is not an tuples uuit sensation if you I hope the skiers have fun. I wishljiould. Its not that I dislike skiing. I love skiing. But for some reason the great god of the snowy mountains seems to put more than my share of moguls in my path. Oh, what die heck. I might as well admit it. Its not really that the great god of the snowy mountains is against me. Its that I have an aversion to ski instruction. Call it masculine pride if you like. I did have some basic ski instructions many years ago. I learned the snowplow. But I was the slowest snowplow learner in the dass. But eventually I (fid master the PAGE personal look know how to do it right, (which I fortimately had learned how to do). But falling on the ski slopes does have one disadvantage. It leaves big holes in the snow that must be filled in to prevent some subsequent skier from falling into tiie abyss. I learned this shortly after my first fall when a ski patrolman snouted, Fill up that sitzmark. It looks like a bathtub! as he swooshed bv. My next fall was the real disaster. When I fell the first time, the safety bindings on my skis had not released. I wasn't going fast -- enough and didnt hit hard enough. But on tiie second fall, they did. Evidently I had forgotten to connect the safety strap of my left ski to my boot. When the snow settled around me. I noticed that my left ski was continuing on down the mountain by itself. It was accompanied, as it went, by shouts of Rinaway ski! It finally crashed into a clump of trees a few hundred feet down the slope. I had to hike down, leaving my right ski on to. keep from sinking hip deep into the snow, and retrieve it. The rest of the run was uieventful. A few more falls, but nothing spectacular. Fortunately, since then, things Mystique Contunied from Page 4 soon give way to, blend into it seems, the brilliant white of snow. The people at the ski resorts, the hotels, the restaurants, the bars and the shops were expectant too. Soon the skiers would be back and once again they would be selling their wares, filling their rooms. They also seemed expectant about the summer of next year. Perhaps it will be the one that will finally turn Park City, for them, into a year 'round dty; a city for aU seasons, not just for winter. And I was expectant. The first issue of this newspaper, the one you now hold in your hand, would be out in a week. I cant swear that my impressions of everything dse werent colored by my own expectancy. But I think not. Ive sensed a feeling of expectancy in Park Gty since the days when The Mountain Flower existed only as a topic of conversation around the big, Coors coved round table in the back room of the late, lamented Camdot Lounge in Salt Lake City. But the feeling is much stronger now. Its a feeling of at last the real boom is here. That feeling, it seems to me, is based on reality. It looks as if Ill be sharing my mistress with a lot more people than I have hi the past. If any are foolish enough to employ an old cliche and ask, Will success spoil Park City? the answer is a most definite no. Success is the normal state of Park City. The lady of the mountains, the one time silver queen, has waited long enough in the aedusion of her hills isolated from the here and hectic now by the mists of time that now and again hug those hills. She has waited long enough for her comeback. If the rest of the world falls in love with her too, that's fine with me. She has plenty of love, joy, unhurried feeding and mistique to go around . He ski slopes... .and a skier accepting thekfthallefcge. S at its main business. havent gone, so to speak, downhill. Ive improved a little. The mountains around Park City are beautiful with their winter blanket of white pierced by the green arrows of pine. And siding is one of the truely personal challenges. Its just you and the mountain. You either conquer the slope or defeat yourself. The mountain doesnt really enter into the contest. It just provides a place for you to test yourself. You either win or lose. Maybe thats skiings great attraction. A sport in which you dont have to be a pro to participate. But a sport in which you can prove yourself. A sport where the glory is all yours if you succeed, the fault all yours if you fail. Something like that deserves to be taken seriously. Perhaps I should lock my male pride in the closet with my golf dubs and learn how a set of skis should really be used. Ive been the snow klutz, I think, long enough. Id like to share the challenge of the mountains with those thousands of people who do those graceful turns and leaps and snow spraying stops on the slopes around Park (Sty every winter. After all, even they must have agonized over the snowplow at some time. |