Skiing

          Another thing I really enjoy is skiing. I've been skiing like 20 times by now and I like to think myself pretty good at it. I've taken a few trips to Colorado to ski and been to Minnesota to ski their "ski resorts." Minnesota and Colorado are way different. In Minnesota you can go straight down all the runs and be okay, but in Colorado you need to make turns and not go straight down. You can't go straight down in Colorado because the runs are much longer and steeper so you'd build up a lot of speed and lose control, then hit a tree and break 15 bones. 
         This year I would really like to take another trip to Colorado. I have family in Colorado and it would be awesome if we went up and stayed for a few days and skied. My mom said something about going over spring break to ski but, I have no idea if it will actually happen or not. I like skiing because it's pretty easy and doesn't require very much work to go fast. One thing I don't really like about skiing is the cold.
         I went to Minnesota to ski with some friends this winter break. I have to admit it's a lot of fun skiing with people who suck because they crash. Watching people crash on skis is pretty funny. One of my friends went off a huge jump that he didn't even see... he got huge air and crashed. I was surprised to find out that he didn't break anything. That same friend went straight down every run and had no idea how to stop without crashing, sometimes he ended up in the parking lot of the resort. If you ever get the chance, ski with people who suck because it's tons of fun watching your friends crash.

Devil's Causeway

             When I went to Colorado again this summer we visited a sketchy place called the Devil's Causeway. The Devil's Causeway is probably the closest I have ever been to dying. I didn't even cross it. I wimped out because I love life to much. The causeway is in a area of flat tops in Colorado where all the mountains in the area are smaller while being longer and flatter on the top, some with enough room for football fields. The causeway itself is about 100 feet long and as wide as a sidewalk. On both sides of the causeway are cliffs, If you fell, you would surely die. No chance of living at all. I walked up right next to causeway and turned around. On top of being only as wide as a sidewalk, there are rocks and other obstacles that one may stumble on and fall to their death. 

             If you crossed it, you had to make it back. Like I said I did not cross it. My dad, my brother and my uncle did, though. All of them managed to maneuver back and forth on the causeway. When you look down standing beside it you can see things that people have dropped. Another thing, while your up there you can feel like wind shifting your balance. The wind up there comes and goes quickly to add to your chance of death. Even though I didn't go across, I had a great time and got to see my family cross it. I hope to sometime come back later in life and cross the causeway but, my time is limited because soon it will become impossible due to erosion.  

            

First Mountain

           Grant Johnson here, I am currently a sophomore in high school at Mason City High School. This blog was created for my composition class. I will be updating approximately once a week. I will try to steer my blog towards the main idea of mountain climbing because that currently interests me quite a bit.
           I have some beginner climbing experience. I actually wouldn't really consider it climbing so much as hiking a trail to a peak. I have climbed three fourteeners in Colorado. Fourtneeners are mountains that are 14,000 feet or above. I also climbed a peak that was under 14,000 but we climbed the harder side of the mountain, which was much harder than the fourtneeners I had climbed because the officials didn't waste the governments money marking and building a trail for a mountain that wasn't a fourteener. Anyways, my dad and I climbed straight up the side of the mountain... which was mostly all broken rocks. The standard technique for climbing fourteeners is by hiking switchbacks, which are trails that go upward to a slant and then go back the opposite way. This is easier than going straight up because when you climb straight up you can easily slide down and going straight up requires much more effort. The mountain that was under 14,000 feet was pretty sketchy to climb. Sometimes when you were stepping from one rock to another the rock would slide under your feet and even a couple times the rocks would be very unstable. It's sounds a lot scarier than it looks, when your climbing mountains like these, you can see down 5,000 feet and you think you're going to fall there but, really when you fall you just land right where you were originally standing. It was even sketchier going down but, by the end of the day my father and I made it out alive.