Skiing in Fishburn Park

As I tighten my grip on the thick rope my oversized mittens wring cold water. The rope continues to run through my hands until I squeeze a little tighter. Then I lurch forward, almost getting tugged out of my boots. I regain my balance and find myself cruising up the snowy slope, as it were. Several times on my way up the hill the thick rough rope threatens to put me asunder, but I stay with it, determined to hang on until I reach the top. Arriving there, I gladly let the thing go, with a THWACK, before it turns around the big pulley fashioned from what appears to be a wheel of a ‘52 Ford. Hang on for too long and I might lose a hand or some fingers. I join my dad and my siblings as they prepare to slide down the modest slope again.

It’s 1966 and my family and I (but not my mom. Are you kidding)  are skiing in Fishburn Park. Mechanics of Roanoke’s City Parks Department have cobbled together a rope tow system on a small hill here, and aficionados of this new sport –that is new to Virginia anyway- are delighted.

Alpine skiing officially came to Virginia a few years earlier, in 1959, when the Homestead, with its charismatic Austrian Sepp Kober leading the way, opened its ski area. Several years later came Bryce Mountain Ski Area in the northern Shenandoah Valley, and through the 1960’s that was the extent of skiing possibilities in the state. Except for, that is, creative little operations like this one in Fishburn Park, of which I guess there were others.

Heading straight down the hill is easy, but making my strap-on skis turn and stop in a controlled manner is quite a challenge. My big brother tries to give me some pointers. He’s getting good at this skiing thing. After all, he and my dad just returned from a trip to Vermont, and folks have been skiing at Stowe since the 1930’s.  Furthermore, my brother has “real” skis and ski boots.

My sister and I have a more modest set-up consisting of old leather hiking boots with wooden slats strapped to them. The ubiquitous bamboo ski poles work fine, but those flimsy hiking boots are about as supportive as bedroom slippers when attached to my skis which are, by the way, considerably longer than I am tall. But who cares? This is very exciting and FUN, and soon I am turning and stopping in a semi-acceptable fashion – hillbilly ski equipment and all.

The group of fellow skiers sharing the rope tow and the hill with us is not large – maybe fifteen or twenty – but they’re an enthusiastic bunch. It’s a festive occasion, in spite of the cold and thickly overcast sky and  we laugh at ourselves and at each other as we crash in slow motion at various points on the hill. Luckily, the hill is not sufficiently steep for high-speed wipeouts.

We’ve been at it all day.  In fact, we never stop. Along the way, however, we pause for tuna-fish sandwiches, huddling around the smudge-pot coal and wood stove which the city workers have provided. The snow melts into our thick, cotton hunting pants, bringing the cold with it. More exciting runs down the hill and before we know it it’s getting dark and the good-natured men running the rope tow announce that it’s time to call it a day. Thanking the men for doing a great job at keeping the tow going –it has broken down briefly and periodically throughout the day – we head for the car with armloads of skis and poles. In the cold car on the way home we sit and beam and relive the day. In our warm cozy kitchen I enjoy what comes to be one of my favorite parts of skiing, that is peeling off those cold, wet, slimy boots at the end of the day.

Aahhhh.

The city sets up the rope tow several more times in that year and the next –snow was plentiful in those day s- before the plan slips away into Roanoke history. I guess it was just a little too complicated to do, and actually I’m delightedly amazed that it was ever carried out at all. A few times it was operated on the substantial hill at the corner of Brambleton and Overland, where Madison Middle School stands today, which was particularly good, in spite of the occasional out-of-control skier who careened onto Brambleton.   But not to worry, traffic was slow and light on those snowy days and no driver was ever faced with a skier on the hood.

My family went on to be fascinated with skiing in the decades following the sixties, but no downhill excitement and delight has ever quite matched what I felt in those early days of skiing with friends and family using scavenged equipment on that modest little hill with the cobbled-together rope tow in Fishburn Park.

Except, of course, when my wife and sons and I started the same crazy process all over again, sans the Fishburn Park rope tow, some twenty years later.

See you on the hill.