I went into this day with more confidence and was eager to continue to practice the skills I had learned the previous week. The gliding technique felt much more efficient than the shuffling I had started out doing and this combined with bending my knees as I pushed off the snow had me sailing along the flat track. I also worked on doing a light jog as I went up the hills which although seemed a bit easier on the legs required more cardio effort.

This week we decided to do the route we had done the previous week but in reverse. The route was quite hilly, one way being long gradual hills up and short steep hills down. We wanted to try the opposite direction, thinking that long gradual hills down would be more enjoyable and short steep hills up less work to climb. I was gradually gaining confidence in going downhill and was actually starting to look forward to them. We were headed down one particular hill that we had already been on three or four times before. At the bottom of the hill was a Y in the trail and we were headed left. At the top of the hill we caught up to two other skiers that were taking a moment to enjoy the scenery. After exchanging some pleasantries, I took off to get ahead of them, knowing that I would need as much room as possible to safely get down the hill and make my turn. Right as I was headed down the hill, at a point when I couldn’t easily stop, both of the skiiers came up from behind and one of them crowded the other one into me! I shouted “woah woah woah!” to convey my distress at being so close to another person at such a high speed and instead of slowing down, he cut me off to go right in the trail just as I needed to turn left, forcing me to go left as well. I ended up crashing in a heap of skis and poles and instead of checking to see if I was ok, he glanced back at me but continued to ski on up the hill! My mom voiced her displeasure at his behaviour with a few choice expletives and we continued on our way.

In the past, an experience like this might have made me feel like quitting and going home. It was fairly scary and I am really lucky I didn’t get hurt more than a bruised ego. But I decided to brush it off and continue on. I was not going to let somebody else’s poor behaviour affect my desire to get better at skiing or take away my enjoyment of being out in nature on a beautiful sunny day.

We continued on our planned route and were happy we did! We had quite a few kilometers of nice, long gradual hills down and a couple steep up hill climbs back to the beginning. We passed the skier who had cut me off, he wouldn’t even make eye contact with me! People are funny.