Some of you may recall an earlier post similar to this a year ago.
For a ward activity, the committee decided to set up tubing at Soldier's Hollow. This is not similar to tubing in Florida where you are pulled along a boat at what feels like 100+ miles an hour before you're flung from the safety of the flotation device into the icy grips of the water beneath you.
No. This is actually much scarier. Instead of water, which sometimes can feel like concrete, you're zipping along at a solid 60 miles an hour (at least it feels that way) clinging on to a crappy rubber tube for dear life, hoping that you dont fly off the side of the hill and land on ice- not water, not fluffy powedery snow, but ice. On top of that, you have to stop the tube yourself by digging your heels into the snow. You can do this one of two ways:
- Behind the tube: toes. If you're laying on your stomach, this is pretty easy because you can just slam your toes into the snow to slow yourself down. Warning: don't wear shoes you are attached to because 9 times out of 10 you'll ruin them this way.
- Behind the tube: heels. This is probably the hardest because you can only do it if you're sitting in the tube and you spin yourself around some how and start going down backwards. Usually you end up with as much snow in your show as there is around you.
- In front of the tube: heels. You jam your heels into your pathway down the hill. The cons are a face full of snow 100% of the time and running the risk of catching the snow wrong and twisting your ankle (I did this).
- Bailey's way. Kicking and screaming.
If you don't stop the tube in time you can run into like 4 layers of crappy plastic fencing and then pay the dude at the bottom 20 bucks to fix it. Generally you don't run into the fence, unless you have like 20 plus people going down hill in one mass of tubes.
We went down in a cute little group of 5 and had plenty of space between us and the fence when we stopped.
Essentially, this is how I felt as we descended the hill:
