Skiing is an incredible sport that has been underestimated for ages. Now, it’s making a comeback.
Close your eyes and imagine this: you’re soaring down a mountain, the snow crunching under your skis, trees flying by left and right. All you can see is the snow covering the tips of trees, acting like a cold blanket over the ground. Suddenly, you hit a mound of snow and go flying through the air, the wind whipping against your face. Doesn’t that sound amazing? Now open your eyes. This vision is possible, and it’s all in the growing sport of skiing.
Skiing is actually split into two main parts: skiing and snowboarding. Now, in each of these there are many different variations, with thicker, wider, or thinner skis/snowboards. There are also different ways of strapping into the board, which may not seem very obvious. Skiing is generally more popular than snowboarding so this article will be based around skiing. The word ski comes from the Norwegian word skio, which means a split piece of wood. The first recorded ski race was held in 1879, in Sweden, an impressive skiing country that has a lot of skiing history. I’ll have an interview with an experienced skier, introduce a young skiing sensation, and add my view on skiing, along with some tips and tricks. To learn more about the amazing sport of skiing, continue reading!
Jackson Hole is a dangerous, famous place to ski. There are professional skiers who have skied all their lives, and still cannot conquer this beastly terrain. Kai Jones, currently 14 years old, has been skiing there for 12 years, and doing it well. Huge boulders, sheer drops off cliffs, these are things he has been skiing with for all his life, and are amazingly easy for him. His special trick is forming an X with his skis while doing a backflip, which might sound crazy for some, but not for him. Kai won the International Freeskiers Association’s North American championship for skiers under 12, and that is when his career as a famous preteen skier took off. One morning, Kai Jones uploaded a video on Instagram of himself doing a backflip off a 35 foot cliff.
He had 45,000 Instagram followers forwarding the video by noon.
My name is Adam Faughnan. I have been skiing since I was 3 years old, at Belleayre Ski Mountain in upstate New York. I’ve done skiing programs at the mountain, since I was young, and did the freestyle program last winter. This winter, I am free-skiing by myself and with my dad, who snowboards. Because of this, I can tell you that skiing is incredible. The speed, wind flying into your face as you zoom down a precipice of snow, carving lines into the pristine abyss is a stunning experience. But the main reason people won’t ski is simple; it’s too dangerous. As a person who wants nothing but to hit jumps and ski through trees, I can tell you that skiing can be a gamble. It can be dangerous, but that’s why there are runs for every level of skier. From almost flat green circles to drop off double black diamonds*, skiing is an easy sport if you take your time and stay careful.
*Green circles are the easiest type of ski runs, while double black diamonds are the most challenging types of maintained runs.
To conclude, I want to introduce you to Rachel Daykin, an expert skier who has been skiing for all of her life, all over the world, and is now a ski instructor at Belleayre Ski Mountain in New York! And when I say she has skied all over the world, I mean everywhere, including the Alps, France, Switzerland, Andora, Austria and the United States. These locations offer extremely fun as well as challenging terrain, so you can bet that Rachel knows her way around a ski run. When I interviewed her, she explained how her family started to ski, saying that her Grandfather was the first one in their family to ski when he was invited to be a travelling doctor for a group of skiers in the Alps. He loved the sport, and decided to teach his daughter, Rachel’s mother, how to ski. When Rachel’s mother met Rachel’s father, she explained her passion for skiing. Finally, when they had Rachel, they taught her to ski from an extremely early age —just 3 years old! Here are some other questions I asked her:
Would you support young kids who want to try skiing, even when parents say it can be dangerous?
Rachel absolutely supports young kids learning to ski. “The risk is worth it if you are being taught correctly and you are mindful of your surroundings.”
What are some suggestions or tricks that you have for people learning to ski?
One important thing Rachel says is you need to escape yourself and relax. “People tense up because it’s not natural to be flying down a hill on two planks.” Rachel says that the most important general thing she tells the people she’s teaching is that you need to “get out of your head and relax into the flow of it (skiing).”
Are there any skiing athletes or competitions you follow?
Rachel likes to watch the skiing Olympics when it is on, but doesn’t really follow any individuals. “I prefer to see the action instead of watching a certain individual.” She also aspires to the incredible tricks professional athletes are doing these days. “I can imagine that I could be there, whizzing down the downhill race or flying off of the freestyle jumps,” Rachel says.
Students of the Sidewalk 