My first ski area was New Jersey's Vernon Valley/Great Gorge. As a college student home for the holiday break, my high school age brother and his friend agreed to take me. On old borrowed equipment pieced together from friends, I rode the lift in the floodlights giddy with excitement. My brother and his friend showed me a quick maneuver with the instructions to give it a try and meet back in an hour. I didn’t have much luck those first few runs and there were several times when a crash sent both skis flying from my feet while flinging my still young and up-for-anything body onto the slope, a maneuver I came to know as a yard sale.
What sticks with me most about that first day is the thrill of sliding on snow. The camaraderie of riding on the chairlift and chatting with strangers. Cool air on my cheeks, but body comfortable from the work and the thrill of learning something new. From this small ski area, skiing on hard-packed conditions, I caught the ski bug and took my passion to the west.
Sure like the gold medal around his neck. I'm pretty sure I had an outfit like that once. Ah, the vast Craigmeur Ice Sheet. A rope tow and a T-bar, probably all of 600' long, with 20-minute lift lines! That was where I first learned to ski, when my Mom enrolled me in an after-school program; I was in 6th grade and we had just moved to Mountain Lakes, so she thought this was the way for me to make friends. My memory may be a little hazy, but the first year was miserable, if I wasn't such a good little boy I would have quit right then. We had these awful rubber/foam lace-up ski boots, and my feet would be completely numb by the time the lessons were over. I would cry the whole 25-minute ride home (which seemed like forever) since my feet were on fire as they warmed up, usually my fingers, too. The 2nd year wasn't much better, by the third year I thought I was pretty good when I could make it down the "expert" trail through the woods, but I had a permanent bruise on my right hip from repeated falling on the ice.
By High School we had graduated from "Beginners Country" (actually I don't remember that sign) and the ski club had weekly trips to Great Gorge (where the lift lines could be 45 minutes), where we would bomb the groomers all night long, but it took me a long time to feel comfortable on steeps and bumps, such as they were. Night skiing and the strange roar of snow making as we tried to get from top to bottom as fast as we could are what I remember, but we always fantasized about going over to the Playboy Club instead; I'm sure the cool kids tried it once or twice.
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Other lost and over-looked ski areas:
- Bear Paw Snow Bowl, Montana http://annvinciguerra.blogspot.com/2019/02/lost-overlooked-ski-areas-bear-paw.html
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