I went to Koktokay on New Year's Day, skied 200km within the province, and also tried skiing in small forests and wild snowy mountains outside the province. I have skied over 500km this snow season; with the end of the journey and the closure of Chongli, the 2122 snow season is probably over.
This is the second snow season of formal skiing, and I have gained a lot of happy, painful, unforgettable experiences and lovely skiing friends. I would like to record and commemorate the achievements and insights of me and my friends in skiing with this article.
Pain and Joy#
In the winter of 2019, I went to several suburban ski resorts a few times, but it was just for fun. In the winter of 2020, I bought my own snowshoes and practiced following Huang Jialan's videos on YouTube, which can be considered as officially starting to learn this sport.
Although it is now promoted as "300 million people on ice and snow," there are plenty of "snow beauties" on Xiaohongshu (a Chinese social media platform) who wear bikinis at ski resorts. However, skiing is first and foremost a dangerous sport.
Amnesia#
On December 12, 2020, I went to Taiwu Ski Resort for the first time and fell and lost my memory on the Salsa slope. My helmet cracked when I fell. When I woke up, I found myself lying on the ski slope and couldn't remember why I was there; before waking up, I had many dreams, fragments of memories from the past few months: speeding through the ginkgo forest under the warm sunshine; the wind at the beach in Quanzhou; the fragrance of osmanthus flowers on the roadside in Shanghai for the last time; the small boat in Beihai Park... I had to check the calendar on my phone to know who I was and where I was. I rested in a small cabin at the foot of the mountain for over half an hour before finally regaining my memory, but I still don't know how I fell.
Later, I found out in a skiing group that four other guys were also injured on that day. Considering that this group has less than two hundred people, this ratio is frightening! So we agreed to avoid skiing on December 12th. I set up an annual recurring reminder to remind myself to stay away from ski resorts on that day (I even seriously studied the lunar phase and astrology for that day, but didn't find anything). However, on December 12, 2021, I couldn't resist and had a great time skiing at Yunding, and returned to Beijing safely. It can be considered breaking a curse.
Later, I changed my helmet to protect my life, and it looks something like this.
Tire Blowout Adventure#
This snow season, due to the impact of the pandemic and the Winter Olympics, Chongli's access policy changed every day. On a weekend in November, @SAAB and I planned to go to Yunding. Some skiers successfully entered the resort the night before on Friday, while others were turned away. Early Saturday morning, we decided to give it a try and set off before dawn in a Q5. Skiers ahead of us sent reports that they had passed successfully. We arrived at the Taizicheng toll station at 9:50 am, and tragedy struck! The inspection personnel told us that they received a call from their superiors at 9:35 am, and all people from Beijing were advised to turn back. We missed it by only 15 minutes, what a shame.
But we were not willing to give up, so we found a small road to try to bypass the toll station. The road became narrower and narrower. We passed through a village where it seemed that no outsiders had ever been. An old lady sat by the roadside, eating sunflower seeds and looking at us as if we were fools. We continued driving and ended up at the foot of a snow-covered hill with no tire tracks. We were not worried because we had Quattro (Audi's four-wheel drive technology)! The snow was very deep, and the road was narrow, with a cliff on one side, but we had Quattro! @SAAB skillfully maneuvered the car on the snowy slope, and then tragedy struck again! The car got stuck in a ditch.
No road, we had to pave our own way.
We shoveled snow, used branches and a broken sponge strip left by someone to pave the way, and finally rescued the car. We quickly reached a gentle slope, and now there was only a short distance to the top of the mountain. But then, tragedy struck again! The left rear tire blew out, probably worn out while struggling in the ditch. Don't panic, we had a spare tire. So we changed the tire, but another tragedy struck! The spare tire of the Q5 is a compressed tire, and there was no air pump in the car. We had to change back to the damaged tire and return the same way. The old lady was still sitting by the roadside, eating sunflower seeds, and she really thought we were fools.
In retrospect, we made the best decisions based on the information we had at the time, but unfortunately, the toll station was cunning and luck was not on our side. Fortunately, we remained optimistic and enjoyed a nice hot bath in Zhangjiakou.
Greedy algorithms don't always lead to the global optimal solution.
Knowing Oneself and the World#
Amnesia, numerous injuries, tire blowouts, and high time and money costs... I have repeatedly pressed myself against the wall and asked myself: why can't I let go? Why do I seek suffering? Why do I ski? Damn it, why?
In my year-end summary of 2019, I wrote that skiing is a sport that allows me to be with myself: when you are skiing, "you must be in harmony with your body and mind, otherwise you will fall."
At that time, I was a novice (and I still am), and two years later, I still agree with my previous view. However, as my skills improved and my understanding of this sport deepened, I gained new insights.
Skiing is a process of self-discovery. I learned for the first time how much my hip joint can rotate before it locks, and I realized that my flexibility is so poor that I can't kneel down; I also continued to learn about myself, knowing my physical limits, knowing the energy replenishment and rest duration required when approaching the physical limit, knowing which slopes I can ski and which slopes I can only push, so that I can continuously break through this limit.
Skiing is a process of deliberate practice. At the beginning, you need to overcome the fear of speed and falling, and master control of the snowboard; then you need to overcome the fear of steep slopes, realizing that the towering mountains at the foot of the slope are not as terrifying as they seem; and then you need to deliberately forget the subconscious movements, correct the wrong movements, and even if they are familiar to you, you need to deliberately do those unfamiliar but correct actions in order to further break through.
Skiing is a process of understanding the external world. You will know what kind of snowshoes, bindings, and protective gear suit you best, and how to adjust them to the most comfortable state; you will understand your snowboard, know its sidecut radius, know how far you can lean back to release energy without hurting yourself. You will become familiar with the ski slopes, know which spots have the best snow conditions and the fewest people, know where there are bumps and where you can have a great time, and know when it's time to call it a day when the snow conditions deteriorate. You will also get to know your friends, know when to provoke them to organize a skiing trip (in heavy fog).
So, you understand your own abilities, with familiar equipment, together with your friends, conquering one ski slope after another, one mountain after another. Ah, it's really great.
The whole process is not easy, requiring a high investment of energy and money, and constantly breaking your instincts and path dependence to establish new correct muscle memories. But as the famous Nobel Prize runner-up Haruki Murakami said when running a marathon, "people exist because of pain."
Breaking Limits and Pursuing Freedom#
Once, while on a cable car, I talked to @LionBrother about the process and feelings of skiing:
At the beginning, we need to overcome fear and learn the movements, establish correct muscle memories and feel for the snow. At this stage, the limitation is the technique itself; after mastering the correct methods, physical fitness and core strength become bottlenecks, as good physical fitness is needed to support skiing at least 30 kilometers a day and accumulate skiing mileage. When bending under pressure, if the core is not engaged, it is difficult to withstand the centrifugal force caused by speed. When all of this is not a problem, ski resorts in the suburbs of Beijing and even Chongli may no longer satisfy you. Ski resorts in Northeast China, Xinjiang, Japan, Switzerland, Austria, and Canada beckon, and in the summer, you can go to New Zealand. In addition to the ski slopes at ski resorts, there are also forests, powder snow on mountains, ski mountaineering, and even helicopter skiing. There is always a style that suits you, and the bottleneck at this time is time and money. And when you can freely shuttle through major ski resorts around the world during the snow season, you are probably no longer young. The limitation at this time is time, aging, and the fight against time, aging, and injuries.
You see, the more you progress, the more you demand basic and fundamental abilities, but basic and fundamental abilities are even more difficult. Skiing is easy when you are young, but when you ski at the age of forty, you need a strong body, a harmonious family, family support, a stable career, financial freedom, and a youthful mindset...
In this light, "see you at the mountaintop" is such a beautiful blessing, containing so many beautiful expectations.
I almost knelt down and converted on the spot when I saw the illusionary sun at Koktokay.
We constantly break through limitations, gain greater freedom, and go to bigger worlds, challenging higher peaks.
See you at the mountaintop, my friends!
The first draft was written on the flight from Urumqi to Beijing, but I kept delaying its publication. This weekend, I couldn't resist and went to Qishan Ski Resort again, and then tragedy struck again—my ankle was injured. It turns out that I shouldn't have made the claim that "the 2122 snow season is probably over." This time, it's really over.
So now I'm sitting by the window on the second floor of the ski resort's lobby, watching the heavy snowfall outside. My friends are enjoying the fresh powder snow, but I feel nothing inside, just a swollen ankle.
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2022/01/23 @Beijing