“I’m doing it,” I declared to my friend Katie McGhee last week.
“You’re doing it?” she asked, slightly incredulously.
“Yep.”
“Are you gonna do it?” I asked Katie.
“Hell no, I’m not doing it! But I’ll hold your beer and watch.”
Sometimes, the only way to convince yourself to do something scary is to say it out loud to a friend who has your back. And who won’t let you back out.
Or, as Tina Fey said, “Start with a yes and see where that takes you.”
Where it was going to take me was straight down a steep, snowy ramp on skis, across a makeshift pool, dressed in a stupid costume, while hundreds of boozy spectators looked on. Come hell or freezing water, I was doing it: the Park City Mountain pond skim.
The tradition supposedly originated in 1928, when a pair of skiers was snowed in around what is now Banff’s Sunshine Village. The two made the best of being stuck, Donny Pelletier-ing their way through springtime mashed potatoes. The slush cup was born.
That story may or may not be true. But in legends, as in pond skims, close enough is good enough. Sometimes, it’s more about style than substance. Because in the skim, the ridiculous is as sublime as it gets.
And so it was that I found myself booting up the hill near Eagle lift, my trusty Black Crows skis propped on my shoulder. As I made my way up to the starting gate, my stomach was already doing double-backies. I walked alongside two bare-chested dudes, their competition numbers pinned to their jorts. They looked to be about 14 — way too young to have appreciated my Stuart Smalley morning routine. I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggone it, people like me!
I got to the gate just as the pre-pond-skim meeting was about to begin. Not that I was paying attention. I was too busy looking at the other contestants, who appeared to be mostly young and mostly male. A snowboard dude dressed in a bridal gown. A giant Whoopie cushion. A guy in a Borat mankini with a raccoon tail. “My tail is longer than that,” I overheard one guy say to his buddy. There was the inflated chicken and his inflated cocaine-bear friend who helped me get a last-minute ticket to the sold-out event. And an older dad-bod with a furkin thong who was open to heavy petting. I paused for a quick selfie, documenting my own lame costume: a white swim cap and goggles.
That’s when I saw Katie coming up the back side of the ramp, her iPhone capturing all of the action as she narrated. My personal paparazzi was none other than Katie-Ken Burns.
We walked up to the starting gate. It was go-time. The ramp looked much steeper, the pond much longer, than I’d imagined.
“Kate’s anxiety is running high,” Katie narrated, pointing her iPhone at my face.
“What am I doing here,” I asked.
Katie panned down the ramp toward the pond.
“You’re doing that.”
The pond skim emcee, Ryan Walsh, announced that the water was around 50 degrees, maybe colder. The pool was 100 feet long and 60 feet wide. And I wasn’t wrong: the ramp was steep — 15 feet higher than last year’s.
“What’s your strategy,” Katie asked a dude in a jester cap who was next to us on a sit-ski.
“I’m thinking just to the left of that,” he said, pointing toward one of the jumps on the front edge of the pond.
My strategy? Chill the freak out. My throat was as dry as a box of shredded wheat. I scooped up a handful of snow and let it melt in my mouth. I’m good enough…I’m smart enough…and gol-darnit…
And just like that, the first group of skimmers was off. One of the early riders launched off a jump and slid backwards across the pond, in an amazing switch-skim.
One by one, the participants took off down the ramp, some making it across the pond effortlessly, some crashing magnificently. The crowd of about 3,000 roared with every splash.
“You definitely do not want to scrub speed,” Katie whispered like an ESPN announcer. “Momentum is your friend.”
I was almost up. I walked over to my Black Crows and clicked into the bindings, my stomach now doing YOLO flips and quad-cork 180s.
Someone behind me said, “Kate, is that you?” I turned and saw a man carrying a pair of binoculars, dressed in a wicker hamper that was tied with a huge red balloon. “I’m a Chinese spy balloon,” he said — and I realized it was my friend Joel. He was just the moment of calm I needed.
I skated up to the starting line, just behind another woman much younger than me dressed — not ironically —as Superwoman. She was one of the first skimmers not only to huck off the jump but also to use the super-sketchy diving board before splashing spectacularly into the pool.
How am I supposed to follow that, I thought.
I stood at the top of the ramp and looked down across the pond to the bright orange barricade just beyond it. Swing for the fences — isn’t that what baseball players say?
Then everything went silent. I dropped in and flew down the ramp, definitely not scrubbing speed and aiming straight for the water. I hit the pond and leaned back, my skis gliding smoothly — was I actually going to make it — and then — stopping just short of the edge.
I sunk in dejected slo-mo, as my boots filled with water. A young woman offered me a hand to climb out of the pool. Buzzing with endorphins, I was on a post-skim high. All anyone wanted to know was, Did you make it all the way across? I was a little disappointed that I hadn’t.
Back at the car with Katie, I was changing out of my soaked ski boots and muttering to myself, “If only I’d just had a little more gas …”
My friend looked me in the eye and said, “Kate. It counts.”
We grabbed a block of Ski Queen cheese and a bottle of Chardonnay out of the back of the car and made our way to a friend’s tailgate. It was time to celebrate the end of the season, arguably the best one of my life.
Close doesn’t just count in horseshoes and hand grenades. It also counts in pond skimming far out of your comfort zone.