Once upon a time, I failed.  I failed publicly and miserably.  It all happened so long ago that I can safely, without feeling embarrassed, look back on this incident where I got scared of a small gentle slope.  From this experience, I learned that confidence in a situation can save you a whole lot of trouble.

This all started at Mount Hood Meadows on Mount Hood in Oregon.  My dad and I decided that we were going to go on a ski route that I had never done before.  Once we found the right chairlift, we waited in line for the checker to scan our passes before boarding the lift.  The wheel spun as the chair collapsed our knees into a sitting position. After shuffling our skis and ski poles into a relatively comfortable position, we began idly talking and looking at the beautifully snowed on trees. We emerged from a column of trees that surrounded the chairlift until the last one hundred yards or so.  On one side we looked down and saw a wide-open ski run with skiers going down at their own leisure. Some were barreling down with no regard to control whatsoever. On the other side was a much narrower run with few or no people skiing.

As we got closer my dad said “skis up,” as I tilted my skis so the departure from the chairlift would be smooth.  I have gotten off more than a few chairlifts since I started skiing and I always got nervous getting off. I would think to myself “what if I fall?  That would be embarrassing.” This time I let those thoughts get in my head, as I see the slope I have to go down to get off. “Why is this slope steeper than all the other chairlifts?” I thought to myself, “then, where was my dad?  Why was I facing the wrong way? Had I missed the get off point?”

Yes, I just failed.  The chairlift was stopped and I was suspended in midair as my dad and the people running the lift.  Ski patrol was called, and soon two men on a snowmobile, and one guy on skis showed up. Everyone who was below me started discussing what I assumed was a way to get me down safely. I couldn’t hear everything they were saying but then one looked up, and I clearly heard what he said next.

“I could get him down by standing on the snowmobile,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. I mentally begged him to just let me be.

“No, he can ride down, ”Someone else said.

I didn’t reply because I was petrified because of my immense fear of heights.  The chairlift started up again; I began my descent back to the wonderful ground.  My dad and the ski patrol that had skis were skiing slowly under my chair. Descending on the opposite side of the chairlift is not as much fun as going up on the right side.  For one thing the side that everyone else is on much heavier so the ride is very high compared to the other side. Riding by oneself self on the right side is lopsided because the chair is not balanced on the wrong side the ride is very high up and very bumpy.

If this happened to me again I might enjoy it more, but this time I was too scared to look at anything but the horizon. The ride felt like the longest chairlift I had ever been on. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me; I tried as hard as I could to not make eye contact or at least look at them. Once I reached the bottom of the hill I gladly got off.  The story ends nicely because I got hot chocolate. I learned that confidence in pressure situations can save a lot of embarrassment in the future.