Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25241
The first time skied in Europe was in 1981, in Switzerland, on a school ski trip. There were nine of us who went and geeks all. We were high-school freshmen, science-fiction readers, had tip -to-toe ninja costumes and superhero dreams. Beyond each other, we had few friends and, really, most of the true magic in our lives came on the slopes. We might not have been popular, but we were hell on skis. Our local ski hi ll in Cleveland got its start as a garbage dump. It wasn't much taller than a post office. It wasn't anybody's idea of a dream vacation. For a long time we had our sights set on bigger fish and real mountains. We had heard stories about Colorado, but that wasn't good enough. We wanted myths and legends. We wanted the proving ground of Europe. It took a while, but somehow we convinced our teachers and parents that our lives would be deeper or richer or something like that if we could spend spring break skiing on a school-sponsored trip in Switzerland. It took a while, but it worked. We got our 46 proving ground all right, maybe more than we bargained for. I don't remember much about the Geneva airport, but I remember my first vertiginous view. We were on a bus, driving on narrow roads through a postcard of verdant valleys. Cottages, borrowed from bedtime stories, dotted the horizon. Then we climbed a slow hill. The bus teetered around a corner. There was mist and then no mist. Suddenly there were mountains everywhere. We were penned in , out of breath, surrounded by one of the earth's oldest armies: the Alps. The mountains rose everywhere, at every conceivable angle. They towered, they loomed, it was like being in New York City only the buildings were mountains. It was like standing in the shadow of the world. I had never seen mountains like this, none of us had - like crooked teeth, like ancient evi l. We spent our first few days skiing It means "little devil Les Diablerets. mountains" or something like that. It's not a popular resort with Americans, not like the tourist destinations of Zermatt or Verbier. It has the same cache as Taos or Telluride-a locals mountain for locals who mean business. I remember getting off the gondola for the first time. In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory the elevator went through the roof; at Les Diablerets, it went a little bit higher. There were granite boulders poking out of the peak, overwhelming, impossible rocks, our bodies tiny in comparison. The way down started somewhere-maybe between the rocks? It was impossible to tell. Most trails