Up until, and throughout High School, I was an avid skier. I skied at Hidden Valley outside of Estes Park, CO. Skiing there was cheap. As I previously mentioned, my grandmother gave me season passes each year. I think the passes were about $65.00. There were no chair lifts, every lift were T Bars or Poma lifts. There were two sections of Hidden Valley, Upper and Lower. The lower part of the ski area, were blue and green runs. The upper part of Hidden Valley is where all of the “fun” was. It was generally so steep that the snow crew could not get a snow cat up there to groom the snow. It was also full of “moon ripples”, which were frozen, crusty indentations in the snow that could drop you like a rock if you weren’t on your toes. Did I mention it could easily get to -30 below zero with the wind chill? We had a saying which was “If you could ski Hidden Valley, you could ski anywhere.” Which holds true to this day.

There were a group of us kids that were daredevils, we called ourselves the Air Patrol. We liked to jump and ski fast, really fast. We never put anyone else in danger though and weer very conscious of others. We would always block off areas around jumps and have spotters to prevent other skiers from getting hurt. JR and his sister Jennifer Gordon, Brad, Doug (Dr. Air) and Melinda Fitch and myself were a few of the kids that were members. Doug was fearless on jumps. There was one time when he did a backflip while wearing telemark skis. The rest of us were more conservative. Everyone except myself could do helicopters. I never mastered the art of doing a plain helicopter, though I had no issues with doing backflips. I was also the fastest skier of the group. JR’s Dad was also the head of the Ski Patrol, so we always had a watchful eye on us. In the beginning, he would consistently shut down our jumps because they weren’t safe enough. It took some trial and error, but we eventually got the hang of what he was saying and we eventually complied.

JR’s dad, Big John, was somewhat of a legend to me, and somewhat intimidating. He was a big burly mountain man that resembled Grizzly Adams. What made him legendary though was every 4th of July he would get a few of his pals together and skydive out of an airplane and land in Lake Estes. On 4th of July, when I heard the plane overhead, I would quickly grab my binoculars and watch him.