Ethan Bailey

Mr. Ferranti
Honors English III
22 October 2016
Personal Narrative
It was my first time out west skiing, but I made it a goal of mine to ski
every difficulty of slope on the trip. On the first two days, I achieved the
green circle, blue square, and double blue square slopes. My family seemed
to be less ambitious than I, and they wanted to stick to these slopes.
Because of this, I entered my first black diamond by myself. It had moguls on
the slope, and although I was not the best at moguls, I had jumping skills and
was soon bombing straight down the hill, catching the top of one mogul and
flying right off the proceeding one. I finished the run by skiing straight off the
lip that separated the blue square and black diamond slopes and executing a
perfect spin. On the last day, I still needed to ski a double-black diamond. My
dad and I separated from the rest of the family to hatch our way from the
left-most side of the mountain, where the slopes were easier, to the rightmost, more dangerous area, taking 5 different lifts and a gondola. When we
arrived at the top of the slope, my dad decided to ski the blue square slope
beside the Canis lupus double-black diamond slope. Excited, I dropped into
the steep slope. It was essentially a creek frozen over and snowed on, with
thin passageways, quick turns, and fallen trees that needed to quickly be
ducked under or jumped over with the half-pipe-feeling the slope created.

When I could see the end of the trail, happiness overcame me. I had
conquered the western slopes.