Generally, I’ve always loved mountains. I hike in the warmer months, and ski in the colder months. For years, I’ve travelled to mountains about twice every 3 months, for about a week, and always had a blast. There have always been small downsides. For instance, sweat and bugs in Summer, or the freezing mountain air in the Winter. I’ve always been able to ignore exhaustion or cold, and just enjoy the moment. And I’ve also always been able to enjoy the relaxation of coming home after a long day exploring mountains and having fun. You gotta take the good with the bad. However, a trip I went on recently didn’t have much good in it.

The commute from my house to the mountains I was going to was fairly long, but nothing out of the ordinary. The commute itself was pretty awful. The road was very icy, and hail was hitting the roof of my car relentlessly. I had had commutes like this previously, but it was still bad. The hail stopped about 40 minutes before I got to the mountain, but the commute still took twice as long as it should’ve.

I always start my commute very early morning, so I can get there early and have some time to do stuff. This time around, I got there quite late, so I didn’t have much time. I quickly went to my room, checked it out, and rushed to put on my skiing gear. But as I was putting it on, I started noticing that it was getting dark. REALLY dark. I decided to stay at the resort when I saw that. I sat down, and started reading one of the books they had at the resort. Nighttime was when the nightmare started. And contrary to most nightmares, I didn’t sleep a second.

When I was packing, I packed only one pair of pyjamas, and they weren’t particularly warm ones either. I figured it would be fine, and wore my pyjamas and tried to sleep. The blanket was very thin, so I was somewhat worried, and rightfully so. I didn’t sleep a second, and I was shivering. I tried to make it work for a couple hours, but eventually I realized it wouldn’t work, and I asked the resort employees for extra blankets. They gave me some, but those couple hours had quite the impact.

The next day, I had a horrible cold. I wanted to go skiing, but I knew for a fact that if I did, the cold could get a lot worse. I stayed at the resort and ate healthy, trying to recover as fast as I possibly could, and spent the majority of my time reading and on my phone. What made it worse was that this resort was near one of the best mountains for skiing that I’d seen. On the last day, I was feeling well, and I was very excited to go skiing. I went for a couple hours, but then I noticed my cold starting up again, so, with great sadness, I changed back into normal clothes and started getting ready for the trip back. The trip back was substantially smoother than the trip there, but I was still very sad.

I only managed to go skiing for a couple hours, but those couple hours were amazing. One day, I’ll go back to that resort, and I won’t delay asking the resort employees for help.