Siamon - Ski for your Mountain

illustrations by Brenda Clark

EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY

A DIVISION OF CANADA PUBLISHING CORPORATION

TORONTO ONTARIO CANADA

All rights reserved-no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. Reproducing passages from this book by mimeographing or by photographic, electrostatic, or mechanical means without the written permission of the publisher is an infringement of copyright law.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Siamon, Sharon.

Ski for your mountain

(Jeanpac)

ISBN 0-7715-7007-4

I. Title. II. Series: Jeanpac paperback original.

PS8587.I25S54 jC813'.54 C83-098209-4

PZ7. S42Sk

DESIGN: Artplus/Brant Cowie

Printed and bound in Canada by Webcom Limited

To Mom, Morning, Aileen

Acknowledgments: Id like to thank Pat Hurst of Larder Lake Ski Club, Abe Aidelbaum of Pineland Ski School in Kirkland Lake, and Lori Kreiner of Kamiskotia for sharing their ski lore for this book.

Other Books by Sharon Siamon:

Strange Lake Adventure A Puli Named Sandor

Theres nothing to be afraid of, the voice behind April Martineau said firmly. Just let yourself go!

April could not move. She did not dare raise her eyes from the blinding white snow under her skis. She had already had one sickening glimpse of the cliff that fell from the top of the ski lift at Snowbird Mountain. The run they called 'The Exterminator.

She wanted to shut her eyes and shut out that awful view of trees and frozen lakes impossibly far below, but her head spun whenever she closed her eyes. She wanted to close her ears to the swift hiss of skiers passing her and plummeting down the mountain at terrible speed she was afraid they would swoop her away with them! Her red ski mitts clutched her poles and drove them into the packed snow.

Its exactly like the hill youve already practised on! April could hear the impatience rising in her cousin Karens voice. We ll just do your turns, nice and wide, and you can follow me down. Karens voice was ringing in Aprils ears, but all she heard, all she understood was that Karen was going to leave her alone! Stranded at the top of the hill!

She must try. April forced herself to looknot at the four kilometres of mountain falling away beneath her, but just at the first few metres of it. Karen was gliding away, smoothly and with effortless grace, doing a slow leisurely turn at the right of the run and skiing back across the hill.

She stopped and looked up, shielding her eyes with a mittened hand. Come on! Karens blond bangs were a blaze of light under her blue ski hat. Her blue and white ski suit matched the sky, the endless blue sky behind her. That view of sky made Aprils legs turn to spaghetti!

In a minute Im going to faint, she told herself reasonably. If I faint, the ski patrol will have to come up and get me on a stretcher, and if that happens Danny Antoniazzi and everybody will know what a terrible coward I am. Ive got to try! Danny was fourteen, like Karen, and helped run the tow at Snowbird Mountain when he wasnt training with Karen for competition. The two of them were among the best young downhill ski racers in Northern Ontario.

April waited until half a dozen more skiers, some much younger than her eleven years, had whirled away below. Then, pointing her skis, not down, but towards the pines at the right side of the run she slowly let herself slide forward. Knees bent... up.... turn! she chanted,, the way Karen had taught her. She shifted her weight to her right foot and felt her skis coming around.

At that moment she caught sight of the awful

hill, falling, endlessly falling, below her. She forgot to keep her weight on the right ski and go into a crouch for the next turn. She forgot everything in a moment of total terror. She suddenly found herself flying down the mountain, her skis picking up speed with every second.

Turn! Turn! Karen shrieked behind her, but it was too late. April could not turn. She was already skiing much too fast for her level of turning skill.

Just fall, Karen shouted, taking up her racing stance, crouched low, poles back, like I showed you, back and sideways... FALL!

With a mighty dig of her poles, Karen hurtled after her cousin. FALL, April, she shouted again. NOW! But the wind whipped the words from her mouth and April heard nothing but a great roaring in her ears. Ahead yawned the terrible white emptiness of the nosedive, where the hill fell straight down for over a hundred metres. A few more ski lengths and shed be over the edge!

Suddenly, April saw a blinding flash of blue as Karen slipped across her path. And now she heard the shouted advice to fall and wondered why she hadnt thought of it. It seemed so sensible. She felt herself flying through the air as if in slow motion, felt the skis leave her feet as the bindings released on impact, felt the sting of snow: in her face and a clumsy clutter of arms and legs that didnt seem to be in the right place at all. Then there was a bright silence, and then the wind blowing through the pines over her head, and Karens worried face staring into her own.

Are you okay?

I guess so. It was such blissful relief to lie there, pillowed in the soft white snow. Alive! Not falling!

But as April tried to twist in the deep snow and roll over, she felt a hot poker of pain drive through her left shoulder.

Whats the matter? Karen was quick to notice the spasm of pain that crossed her cousins face.

I...dont...know...April stammered. She could feel tears stinging behind her eyes. Her whole left side felt like it was on fire.

Stayhere. Dont move. April saw her cousin straighten and ski quickly to the centre of the run, where she waved down the next skier. She heard her shout, Get the ski patrol up here, fast, with a stretcher. Get Danny.

April sank back into the snow. I might as well have fainted at the top of the mountain, she told herself. Dannys going to know Im no skier anyway. Theyre all going to know. Ill never be a skier. Alive, but so what? Ill never be part of all this. Ill never be a Hearst!

She had wanted so much to be part of it. Lying there, waiting for the next ski patrol to take her down the mountain, April remembered arriving at Snowbird Mountain two months ago, in October, right after her dad had died. She remembered driving down the last few kilometres of dirt road toward the ski resort in her Uncle Neil and Aunt Noras gold pick-up. And how right then, right from the beginning, shed got off on the wrong foot! Or ski, really, thought April ruefully you couldnt think of the Hearsts without skis on their feet!

Shed been so anxious to get a glimpse of the mountain. All her life shed been hearing about Snowbird Mountain in the northeast corner of Ontario. Her father, Michael Martineau, had helped his father build the resort, before hed grown up and moved away to British Columbia. Hed always promised to bring April back to visit the log lodge at the foot of Snowbird Mountain and her aunt and uncle and her cousin Karen. Now she was coming alone.

There it is! her Uncle Neil suddenly exclaimed. April saw nothing but a line of lumpy hills along the horizon. It was cloudy, that October day, and for a second April thought that low clouds must be hiding the peaks, the way they often did at home.

See, Uncle Neil pointed, that one to the right is Snowbird.

April couldnt believe it! That ordinary looking hill Snowbird Mountain! But then she was from B.C., where a mountain was a mountain.