Some people find chairlifts terrifying – with good reason. They’re big, lumbering contraptions of frozen metal poles; this heavy load, plus skiers and their layers and layers that seemed weighty enough on solid ground, is attached to a wire that looks alarmingly thin against the bleak winter sky; all of this – chair, skis, people all – is then hoisted twenty feet into the air and suspended there like some sort of perverse bird sporting ski poles and snowboards as malformed wings.

But give it two minutes, and the flight is over; there is solid mountain under your skis, the wind is carrying the fine top layer of snow across the ground in a current that whips between your ankles, the sky is blue blue blue, and the view of the spiny range of mountains below makes you truly and unequivocally believe in the theory of continental drift. The chairlift doesn’t even matter, not until you reach the bottom of the hill – and between then and now, there is an eternity of wind and crisp turns and new powder.

A good day on the mountain is worth anything, even the chairlift. For those of us that are lucky enough to miss being graced with the fear of heights, there are other things that might serve to deter – this Wednesday, it was the five AM wake up, the 2.5 hour bus ride on the dark highway between Mill Bay and Comox, the thought of a pit-stop dinner, the compounding stress of homework, the niggling sense of illness, the cold. But despite the deterrents, five busloads of Brentwood students, led by Mr Flynn, made the pilgrimage up to Mount Washington, hoping, subconsciously, for a good day.

And it was a brilliant day, in the chromatic sense of the word as well as the general. People piled off of the buses in colourful snow jackets, shouldered skis and boards, and then, in twos and threes and fours, began to meander through the chairlift and rental line ups, ready to begin the ascent.

But, as any skier or boarder knows, it isn’t the ascent, but the descent that matters. Whether you slide down the entire way on the seat of your pants (we all have to learn somehow), punctuate the run with multiple sharp and flailing wipeouts, take it slow with metronomic turns, carve your path down the middle of the run, or skim over the top snowy layer as though about to take flight, the right direction is down.

Each one of these styles was on display, and on Wednesday – a relatively quiet day on the mountain – someone from Brentwood could be seen almost every thirty seconds. Every type of person was there; from veterans who spent their childhood as the token two-foot toddler on skis, all the way to beginners. Those who had never skied before seized the opportunity to learn something new, and regardless of whether they spent the descent on their feet or off of them, the day was a good one. Special thanks to Mr Flynn and all of the teachers who accompanied us up to the mountain and made this opportunity possible.

That’s what School Ski Days are all about – seizing the opportunity. Despite the irrational fear of chairlifts, the somewhat less irrational love of a warm bed on a cold early morning, the view from the top is worth it all. For days like these, we have to crawl out from under the covers, struggle into the snow gear, and endure the bus ride. The clear, almost enameled blue of the skies, the red of skin alive with the cold, blinding white of new snow - there are amazing days out there, all you need to do is get out of bed.

Annie B