Snowboarding Trip!

Snowboarding is one of my favorite activities! When I turned eighteen I planned a trip to Colorado with my friends: Zack, Jason, and John. Everything appeared to be going smoothly, we even managed to get on the correct flight and arrive at our condo in the popular Colorado ski town of Breckenridge.

The very first thing we decided to do was explore the town.

“That smoothie shop looks good!” I exclaimed, feeling thirsty after a long flight. I then hurried inside.

“Hello, what can I get for you?” asked the lady behind the counter.

“I would like the mango smoothie.” I said

“Cool! That will be $5.99. Would you like any oxygen or anything else with that?” She replied.

“No, thanks…” I replied in a questioning tone. “That was weird”, I thought, while handing over money for the drink.

Realizing that there were no groceries back at our condo the grocery store was the next stop.

Everyone took notice of the oxygen cans for sale by the register when we got to the store.

“Why do they keep trying to sell us oxygen in this town?” asked Jason.

“I once read somewhere that oxygen will prevent altitude sickness.” replied John.

“I feel fine, I think it’s a waste of our money,” I said.

Everyone went to bed early with a long day of snowboarding soon ahead.

I woke up to the sight of large snowflakes falling down outside of my window. Roads were shut down and we had the mountain almost completely to ourselves for our very first day of riding. While taking a gondola up to the top of the mountain I got the chance to talk to a local.

“Is this amount of snow normal out here?” I asked the local.

“I have not seen this much snow here in twenty years!” the local replied.

After exiting the gondola at the summit I began to notice that it was much colder than at the bottom. I then saw a sign stating that Breckenridge mountain summit is over 12,000 feet tall. I began to feel a slight headache. "I did drink a lot of water today, so I should be alright”, I thought.

While riding I noticed a sign for a black diamond trail that goes through the trees; the east coast often does not have enough snow for good tree riding so I did not want to miss out on the potentially fun opportunity.

“Lets hit that trail through the trees,” I yelled

“That run through the trees looks too dangerous, I am going to stick with the wide open trail.” protested Zack as he looked around and saw Jason and John nod their heads in agreement.

After entering the trail I quickly realized the danger of striking a tree at high speeds. I grabbed onto a branch to stop myself and nearly wiped out. After the longest fifteen minutes of struggling to escape the snow, I managed to pull myself out by grabbing onto the trees with one arm and holding my board in the other. Feeling completely exhausted I then laid down to catch my breath.

When I finally met back up with my friends I came to find out that all of us were feeling sick from the high altitude. We decided to take the rest of the day off and go purchase the cans of oxygen we had taken as a joke before.

In conclusion, this trip taught me an important lesson on high altitudes, which is the importance of Oxygen!