Dave Dubuque: For Mt. Gabe Blackwood, a Spokane employee, skiing at Terrain Park is all about flow and progress
I am in awe of park skiers.
If you are unfamiliar with the concept of an all-terrain park, it is a section of the ski slope that is covered with a variety of features: jumps of various sizes; long, flat boxes and metal rails; Pipe sections; Large, vertical wooden walls and other items that skiers and snowboarders can fly off, twist and turn around, and slide down in heroism and coordination.
The Terrain Park fascinates me above all because I find so much of what happens there unfathomable.
As a fairly traditional skier, I find the idea of skiing on anything other than snow terrifying and unpredictable. If I jump and happen to land more than 8 inches above the ground, I sure feel like a sack of flour in the air.
Still, I have an incessant appetite for videos of daredevils spinning and spinning in the air. I dream of being able to do a back flip one day, but in reality I can’t even ride a bike on dry ground.
However, every few days I will find the courage to take a “straight” air from one of the park’s smaller jumps – a simple, forward-facing jump. I will then stop to watch the hill’s more accomplished park skiers make it look easy. During one of my shy forays into this daunting part of the mountain, I met Gabe Blackwood, a mountain. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park employee who helps create the park functions.
Blackwood, a talented skier that I saw fly 15 feet off the ground on a return trip, no doubt met me as the man who for the past four years has asked about the intricacies of a 360 (one) full turn while standing upright stay) without actually trying. He’s an incredibly tolerant guy.
He’s only been skiing for six years, but he said when he was a kid there was always a trampoline in the yard. He learned to flips at a young age.
This fact calmed my ego. My lack of access to a trampoline in childhood is certainly the reason I couldn’t thrive in the Terrain Park. Certainly not my unsightly build or lack of courage.
Blackwood said he started snowboarding when he was 18, but his friends did ski and he liked the style of the sport. Soon he was watching professionals like Phil Casabon and Henrik Harlaut and began to emulate their style.
“I love skiing because it’s a flow sport, like surfing,” he said. “You can do your own thing and the opportunities for progress are limitless.”
Blackwood worked as a chairlift attendant for a season but has been a member of the Mt. Spokanes Terrain Park Crew for the past three years. Not only can he play a role in planning the location of the park’s jumps, boxes, and rails, but his job is to use the features to make sure they are safe for the resort’s guests.
The time he spent riding the park he helped create has turned into a bigger bag of tricks. This season he learned to use a Switch 720 – a reverse jump with two full spins – and a Cork 900 – a combination of off-axis spins that I can’t fully understand even after watching demonstrations on YouTube and pausing every quarter of a second.
While I am convinced that attempting even one twist would get me to the hospital, Blackwood said that two broken thumbs are the worst he has ever suffered.
“Of course I fall a lot,” he said, “but to avoid injury you have to anticipate what could happen. And of course, if you don’t fall, that means that you are not rushing yourself. “
At least there is one aspect of Blackwood’s skiing that I want to emulate.