One evening in the early 1990s I was night skiing at Mt. Spokane. I can’t remember why I was there alone, maybe I stayed after a day of teaching or I just had to get away to clear my head of the stresses of running a business, who knows. 

It was a beautiful clear night and there were few skiers on the slopes so I was enjoying cruising without any traffic. I would ride Chair 2 to the top, ski over to a run called Rock Slide, then join Northwest Passage for a fast run back to the chair. 

While on the chairlift I noticed Bruce Davenport, a fellow instructor and former ski racer, a couple of chairs ahead of me. When I got off at the top, I saw he was going to ski down Chair 2 Face. It’s a ski run located under the chairlift and mostly in the fall line with a couple of steeper pitches that were usually bumped up. For some crazy reason I decided to follow him to see if I could keep up.

The first two or three turns were on gentler terrain before the first steep pitch. I had hurried to be about 50-75 feet behind Bruce, but I don’t think he knew I was there. As I had seen earlier, this pitch had rather large moguls but were evenly spaced and had a regular rhythm. This was before the conversion to shorter skis and the proliferation of snowboarders. 

Of course, Bruce didn’t slow down and I was determined to follow in his tracks if I could. He set a smooth, fast pace skiing the troughs and I followed right behind. While we were negotiating this slope I heard a few skiers on the chair above cheering. After I reached the bottom of that steep mogul field, I stopped and looked back up at what I had done. Bruce kept going at racer speed and I never saw him again that evening. 

I had just amazed myself! I was not an accomplished mogul skier, but that one time I did what I always wished I could do. 

I only had one other experience skiing moguls that well. It was at Sun Valley, but that time no one saw me so I didn’t brag for fear of being laughed at.

Sometime later I told Bruce about successfully following him, but he said he couldn’t remember the event. It was just an ordinary trip down the mountain for him.

I guess Henry Ford was right: “If you think you can or can’t, you’re right.”

Ken Kaiyala
11-17-2024