A Brief History of Downhill Skiing (Part Two)

Some skiers on the slopes are best defined as ‘carvers,’ and to them the mountain is their medium.  They make pretty turns and leave lovely curving marks in the snow.

You’ll see carvers smoothly sailing downhill, swooping gently back and forth.  These, mind you, are the same people who fold their clothes the very moment they remove them from the dryer—which is only seconds after the buzzer sounds.  These people label the boxes in which they store things.  They keep track of tax information throughout the entire year.  They make money.

A close cousin to the turn carver is the turn ‘thrower.’  You need to give these guys a little room on the hill.  They aren’t there to make friends.  Down they go, throwing hard turns from side to side.  To them the only disgrace is in falling.  They will do anything to stay upright: sacrifice a pole, wipe out the person in front of them.  These are practical people, mostly men, who feel no compunction about taking all their dishes—which they have not washed in weeks—to a carwash so they might spray the crust off.  A turn thrower most likely invented duct tape.

I would be negligent if I failed to mention extreme skiers, especially if you ever decide to ski an area with any notable cliffs, as it is likely that one of these types might land on you.  Where the Yuri Skier (the jumper) detests gravity, the extreme skier eats it for lunch.  The object of this kind of skiing is to commit suicide without involving the messy dying part.  These people fall off cliffs on purpose.  They also drive rear-wheel-drive automobiles and marry money.

—Mitchell Hegman