Get to Know the Sisterhood: Skiyente Stories

Apr 9
2 min read

Updated: May 6

Every month, to help us celebrate 70 years of amazing women who come from different backgrounds but all share a passion for winter, we will be sharing members' Skiyente Stories! This is an opportunity to reminisce, get to know others, have a laugh, have a cry - it's a toss up! Enjoy your fellow club members' special stories that brought them to our club and what kept them coming back for more.

Alice Jacklet

After retirement, we moved to Portland. There, watching over the city was Mt. Hood in all its majesty. It gleamed with snow and beckoned to me but I had left my skiing buddies back east. In a series of convoluted events, I found myself at Timberline with a laughing group of Skiyentes. All my life I had skied with men. My experience was that women skied slowly, complained constantly and wanted to stop along the trail and talk. Suddenly I was surrounded by women who not only skied, they skied fast and with such joy! Up and down, up and down, no stopping to gossip. (That could be done on the chair.) I had to push myself to the limit to keep up with them.

They convinced me to enter a NASTAR race that was taking place the following day. I had never been through gates before but was willing to try. How hard could it be? It was on Stadium. I could ski Stadium. What I hadn't considered fully was the problem of all the gates that I was supposed to navigate around while hurtling out of control down the course. My new friends said that all I had to do was to head to a blue gate, turn, go to a red gate and turn, and continue that to the finish line. They all went first to show me. Then it was my turn. I cautiously pushed off from the start and then... suddenly I was careening down, blasting past one gate, and YIKES! There was another one...TURN! NOW! As that gate flashed by, another was rushing toward me. I started screaming and screamed all the way down. I made it through the finish line, gasping for breath, eyes wild, adrenaline surging and was immediately surrounded by cheering, laughing women who congratulated me and hugged me and told me I was a super star.

And that's why I joined Skiyente.

-Alice