FALLING CAN BE FUN
Kailyn Forsberg back on snow
On a windy and cold morning in the mountains, family and friends gathered for a ski day that could have gone two ways for Kailyn Forsberg’s return to the snow.
If the falls proved too plentiful and painful to body and ego, she might have shed her lifelong identity as a skier. Or, if the turns rekindled a dormant but unextinguished flame, the soon-to-be 16-year-old would reconnect with the sport she loves even though it robbed her of so much. Oh, she fell Saturday. Over and over. Each time she pitched into the snow, she shook with laughter.
“It’s so funny. It’s like slow motion. I’m falling. I’m still falling,” she said as National Sports Center for the Disabled ski instructors Ronnie Meadows and Yuka Kaneko propped her bucket-seated monoski back upright on the snow at Winter Park ski area. “I love it.”
Kailyn’s passion for skiing had blazed as the promising young freeskier climbed the ranks of the national halfpipe and slopestyle scene in recent years.
That fire dimmed in April when, warming up for a national competition, she overrotated a backflip on the Copper Mountain
slopestyle course and landed on her neck. Even though she hasn’t walked since that day, she never let that skiing flame go cold.
On Saturday — her first time back on snow since the day everything changed — that fire glowed as bright as ever.
For her return to skiing, she wore a T-shirt buried beneath her layers. It read: “I am a skier.” She arced graceful turns between several sudden, snowy face-plants.
“I’ve been waiting for this day,” she said. “So fun. It’s nice to be doing something like this again. I haven’t been on snow in forever. It’s nice just doing it. Being outside. Getting tired. Being sore.”
The relief was evident for her father, Mitch, who traveled the country with his daughter so she could compete in freeskiing contests and keeps videos of her top performances on his phone.
“Stoke is stoke no matter how good you are or what you are doing,” Mitch said.
That thrill and love for skiing can be the same for a veteran skier throwing jawdropping tricks in expert terrain as it is for a first-timer crashing down a green run. As of Saturday afternoon, Kailyn has been both of those skiers in the past year.
Mitch was nervous heading to Winter Park from his home in Eagle. While he suspected that Kailyn — who always excelled at every athletic endeavor — would take to sit-skiing quickly, he harbored a fear that it might not click. The frustration could be too much.
Seeing her excited to at least try was enough for him to count the day as an overwhelming win before she even hit the slopes.
“Coming into this, I didn’t know what to expect,” Mitch said. “I just wanted to see her out here. Just being out on the hill, riding on the lift, watching everyone skiing.”
Kailyn was ready to fail and still love her new approach to skiing.
“I know I’m going to be terrible,” she said at the beginning of the day, as instructors outfitted her with a new ride. “I always think about when I first started snowboarding. I hated it so much. It was the worst experience. But then I started to like it. Nothing is really fun when you don’t know how to do it.”
Kailyn chose to ride a dual ski to start the day. Beneath a fiberglass molded, amply padded seat, a pair of hourglass-shaped skis roll from edge to edge like skis under a skier’s boots. It’s a more stable and forgiving ride than the monoski, which only has one ski and requires better balance moving from edge to edge.
“Let’s try the two skis first,” Kailyn said. “Just to get a sense of what’s going on.”
Good idea, replied National Sports Center for the Disabled supervisor Jeremiah Baltzer.
“That’s the best way to get back out there and start having fun as quickly as possible,” he said.
Barely halfway down the beginner-dappled Marmot Flats run, Kailyn was linking turns. The high-fiving, cheerful instructor Meadows said it was time for her to graduate to the monoski.
“You’ve got this,” Meadows said. “You’re ready for the next step.”
Mitch woke early Saturday to go buy a brown-bag spread for lunch. Turkey sandwiches on bagels. A bag of Cheetos and strawberries with a can of whipped cream.
“I wanted it to be just like the old days,” he said as Kailyn and her younger sister, Kiara, crowded a small table with their gear and food.
Shifting from her chair into the monoski — a sleek rig atop a purple K2 Empress powder ski Kailyn bought early last season for big snow days — Meadows makes sure Kailyn is cool with her wrapping her arms around Kailyn’s body to hoist her.
“I don’t want to invade your space,” Meadows said.
“Don’t worry,” Kailyn said, “my space was invaded a long time ago.”
That’s a glimpse of the new Kailyn. The fiercely independent teen who prided herself on her strength and resilience has yielded a bit. She needs some help and asks for it often, but her determination remains as vibrant as ever.
That’s the most important thing to rebuilding a skier, said Scott Olson, the assistant coach at the National Sports Center for the Disabled and coach for the New Zealand Paralympic ski team.
“In a monoski, it’s all the same. It’s about creating the same angles. As long as that person has a passion for skiing and enjoys themselves out there, they can do amazing things,” he said. “It’s got to be about having fun. Skiing is about having fun.”
Not a problem for Kailyn. She was grinning all day. As were her dad and sister. Their smiles said it all: They are back.
Kailyn barely hits the ground before she was wrestling with her ski-mounted outriggers, fighting to regain her ski position.
She wasn’t used to falling. But she was unfazed.
“This is so fun,” she said. “One more time?”