How to... Ski - Rachel Bragg

This past weekend, I was lucky enough to go to skiing on the warmest day of February. A couple of my friends and I had acknowledged the fact that we had little to no idea how to ski correctly, so we decide to get a ski instructor to help us. This lesson ended up taking almost 2 hours. Tom, our ski instructed was equally horrible and amazing. He was a cute old man who treated us like we were 5 and took like 10 minutes just to tell us a bad joke. So today I am going to pass on all of the knowledge Tom gifted us with.

How to ski (like Tom):
- First you have to spend 30 minutes filling out paperwork/putting your ski boots on/walking up two flights of stairs in those snow boots because you forgot to leave your shoes in the lodge/getting the skis and poles
- Then put on the skis and try not to fall over.
- At first, you will have to use your arms a lot, because you are mostly likely not on the top of a hill.
- Find the easiest looking hill, probably not one you take a ski lift to, and stand at the top.
- Start with your skis parallel, hips length apart, and slowly push your heels outward until your skis resemble a slice of pizza, not too big, just an average slice.
- Next, set up your skiers stance. Push your weight forward a bit until you feel your shins hit the front of your boot, this is shin to boot contact. Then slightly lean forward, you want to be in the front seat, because the back seat is for messing around. Hold your poles out in front, elbows lightly bent, and point the bottom of the poles backwards. This is the skiers stance.
- Now you are ready to go, give yourself a little push with your poles, and keep the skiers stance all the way to the bottom of the hill.
- To stop, push you heels out more, to form a bigger slice of pizza.
- After you have completed that technique several times, you are ready to start turning.
- To turn, you must start with your skis parallel and instead of pushing both heels out to form a pizza, you push the leg farthest way from the direction you want to turn (for example, to turn right you must push with the left ski).
- Just repeat that until you can turn easily, and you can even stop yourself by turning, once you get the hang of it.

Those are the instructions that we were given by Tom, and right after we finished our lesson, we went straight to one of the harder hills... I fell in the same place both times I went down the hill. Sadly I forgot shin to boot contact and fell backwards both times. I also let go of my poles both times which led to me being stranded in the snow until a nice, experience person came to pick up my poles and help me to my feet. What great people.