Go skiing, go snowboarding -- just get out and play in the snow

By Cindy Schnitzler

December 18, 2007 | I'm so glad that it finally snowed. I don't care for freezing temperatures unless there's snow. Somehow, for me, the snow makes the negative temperatures worth it.

Some of my favorite childhood memories are of snow. My brother and I, when we were little, used to take our little red plastic shovels up and down the streets in our neighborhood, knocking on doors and asking the residents if they would give us a dollar apiece to shovel their driveways and sidewalks. It always seemed like a lot of money to us. But I guess when you blow most of your money on candy and arcade games at the mall, a couple of bucks goes a long way.

My friend Whitney had a trampoline in her backyard, and it was always fun piling snow up on it and then jumping off her roof into it. We would do the same thing with leaves in the fall. This is probably why my parents refused to buy one. Our other favorite thing to do with her trampoline was to use it to make snow forts. We tried several times -- all unsuccessful -- to make igloos, but we could never get the dome to work, even with sticky snow. So instead we would heap snow up on top of the trampoline to make our ceiling, and then use Whitney's mom's bread pans to shape blocks for our fort's walls. We would layer them up like bricks in a big circle around the base of the trampoline, leaving a hole just big enough to crawl through to get inside.

We had a huge back yard, and we could always entertain ourselves for hours in the winter there. We had a row of lilac bushes that acted like a snow fence, and on windy days they would catch huge mounds of snow in their hanging branches. We would dig tunnels all along the row, and play in them until mom would yell at us from the back porch to come inside. The snow was loose-packed and easy to pull out, but the branches of the bushes would hold the rest of the snow up, giving our tunnels shape and stability. Until the wind started up again, that is.

My dad would take my brother and my sister and I cross-country skiing at Harriman Stat Park and in Yellowstone, or up near Sun Valley outside of Ketchum. We once even took our cross-country skis over Galena Summit. It is ridiculously hard to turn on cross-country skis going downhill. I can see why most people aren't dumb enough to try it. But it was so much fun that we did it again the following winter.

Memories of sledding and tubing, of being pulled behind a snowmobile or truck, or even just snowball fights always make me smile.

A decade and a half later, I'm still just as fond of playing in the snow. I still love snowball fights and trying to build forts, and even just going for walks while it's coming down. One of my new passions, however, is telemark skiing. I used to ski a lot when I was little, but it was always cross-country. I still love cross-country skiing but there's just something so great about whipping down the mountain, feeling the wind in your hair and on your face, and the spray of the powder under your skis.

I picked it up a few years ago, when my roommate Becky and I decided to take a class together at Beaver Mountain through the university. Neither of us really had any experience, but we were good friends with a few people who loved it and encouraged us to try it out. Our class was great. There were only three students -- Becky and I and a professor from the History department who was taking the class for fun. He had a decent amount of experience already, but our tiny class had two instructors, so the more patient of the two put up with Becky and me all semester and the other took the professor up on the runs that would have killed Becky and me the first day.

The whole semester was such a blast. We would show up in time for our lesson, and then, when it was over, Becky and I would play around on the slopes until they kicked us off. It was so fantastic to be able to get up in the mountains every Friday and play -- and get a credit for it. The drive up to Beaver Mountain was always enjoyable -- so peaceful and calm and quiet, with everything covered in snow. Becky and I would make coffee (usually Highlander Grog from the Ibis) before we left and drink it on the way up, and listen to music and talk.

It's the only recreational class I've ever been willing to schedule the rest of my classes around, and it was totally worth it. I highly recommend taking a skiing or snowboarding class if you don't know how already -- it's a great way to relieve stress, and it gives you a great excuse to splurge on equipment. The very next season after our class I bought my own pair of telemark skis, and this past fall I bought brand new bindings to replace the used ones I had put on them. Overall, it's been one of the best investments I've ever made. As far as recreational equipment goes, at any rate.

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