My father was from Maine and my mother from Idaho, and they decided to live in SoCal because they both hated snow. I first saw snow fall at college in New Jersey.

Introduction to skiing at age 23 was a total fluke. A friend invited me along on his uncle's high roller junket to Las Vegas for New Year's 1976. The uncle was from Miami and his daughter wanted to see snow, so we all went out to Lee Canyon and got rentals and played around on a 100-foot handle tow for a couple of hours.

Intrigued, I checked out my closest local area (Baldy, not a good choice for a beginner) when it finally snowed in February 1976. On my second Baldy day in March 1976 I blew out my left ACL and was not walking normally for the next 3 months. As the knee is not unstable, I didn't know the nature of the injury until an MRI revealed it 19 years later.

I was still interested in skiing and managed 5 days in 1977, which was dominated by my then overriding obsession of tournament bridge. I put in some more effort in 1978, becoming your typical low intermediate, sort of parallel skier on the easy runs, by March of that 12-day season. April 1-2 and May 13-14 were my first Mammoth trips.

By now I had the bug, but I was troubled by my slow progress as a beginner, consistent with my dismal performance at nearly all sports while growing up. I'd begun reading about skiing and was aware of the prevailing opinion that "skiing is easy to learn, but very hard to break through the intermediate plateau and ski carved turns, steep terrain and variable snow."

I was also very sore after those 2 Mammoth weekends and therefore started YMCA ski fitness classes in November 1978, just before my 26th birthday. The snow gods smiled upon SoCal in 1978-79 and I was able to ski at least one day of every weekend from November 18 until April in SoCal if I wasn't at Mammoth. My first 20K vertical day was at Holiday Hill (now Mt. High East) on December 23, 1978. That day I figured out to do most of my hockey stops on my weaker side so within a few more ski days my turns were equal on each side. 12 years later I heard Billy Kidd give this tip to a group of visting skiers at Steamboat.

By April 1979 I had skied 30 days, the feared "intermediate plateau" was history and I was a true addict, first carving turns on the groomers in February. The highlight of the 1978-79 season was the weekend of March 31/April 1 at Mammoth.

My first trip to Mammoth had been one year earlier, mostly confined to lower groomers by both weather and my ability. I ventured once that weekend to chair 3 and didn't go back as I couldn't handle ungroomed snow then. In 1978 and 1979 I was learning to ski with my 1977 tournament bridge partner Steve, but in December he had a crash and missed all of January, during which I skied 6 days including two Mammoth weekends and my first successful runs off the top there. We spent all of President's Week at Mammoth and it snowed nearly the whole time with. the top closed. Despite the progress of that season, skiing fresh Sierra Cement on the skis of that era was exhausting.

The weekend of March 31/April 1 was more suitable for me. While riding the gondola to the top Saturday, one of the riders commented that Wipe Out had the best snow on the mountain. We were intrigued to take the 5 minute hike in those days before Chair 23 and check it out. Steve said it was too steep but I ventured in and skied it deliberately but successfully.

Before chair 23 was built in summer 1982, the gondola line to ski the top was often half an hour on weekends. In 1979 I would usually ski Cornice or Dave's run from the gondola and Scotty's by walking up from the top of chair 14. I had probably first skied Climax in January to be willing to try Wipe Out on March 31. I skied 24,300 vertical on March 31.

On April 1 we skied Dave's Run as our first gondola run. Steve fell and slid to the bottom distributing equipment which I retrieved. After 4 more runs he developed some knee pain and quit for the day, later diagnosed as a sprain but not full ACL tear. I continued on, taking the hike once more and skiing Drop Out. After skiing we went to Hot Creek and overheard some other people describing the "spectacular yard sale" they had seen on Dave's Run that morning.

I skied 26,100 vertical on April 1. The 50,400 for two days was relatively rare for weekend skiing back then. I only exceeeded that two day total 11 more times over the next 15 seasons. With the advent of high speed lifts it became much easier to ski over 50K vertical during a weekend.