Skiing the Bolshoi Ballroom

                                                                            Skiing the Bolshoi Ballroom


About six inches of new snow fell Friday night; we awoke expecting Blue Ox to have been groomed, as that is the usual pattern in Vail. As a double black diamond, a groomed Blue Ox, covered in fresh powder, presents one of the most thrilling venues for those of us who love to ski, but in whom age has reduced flexibility and the stamina we once had.

However, on closer examination of the grooming report, we realized that Bolshoi Ballroom in Siberia Bowl had been groomed. It takes time to get there. One has to ride the chair out of China Bowl, glide along a cat-walk about half a mile to what is known as Siberia and then straddle a poma lift to the top of ledges that form the bowl’s northern perimeter.

Once on top, at 11,455 feet, with snow flurries competing with the sun, the .view is breath taking. Unmarked powder leading down through clumps of evergreens, which cling to the slope, give promise of the ride to come.

Skiing with three good friends, Helen and Bill Gilbert of St. Louis and Walter Harrison of New York, we jumped on to the slope, the lightness of the fresh snow providing little resilience against our turns while its softness made silence an eerie, but delightful companion – a silence only interrupted by sudden whoops of joy as we danced down the appropriately named slope.

It is difficult to explain to one not initiated in bowl skiing the thrill one gets as the skis pick up speed and the ease and the grace of the turns as one descends through fresh powder covering a groomed base, and doing this on a slope where we are, for all we can see, alone. We slip between trees and bounce down the undulating slope, each turn providing a sense of freedom and elation. Drugs or alcohol could never provide the high one experiences in those moments of wild abandon when the only care is the anticipation of the next turn.

In a matter of moments we reach the bottom, the thrill gone as quickly as it arrived; we catch our breath and follow Silk Road back to the Orient Express; as the chair ascends, we look at one another. We do it again.

Sydney M. Williams