Loy Norrix freshman Lucy Heystek started skiing in fourth grade, and her family has been going skiing every year since during winter break. 

“I enjoy being out with friends and going down different hills,” Heystek said. “It felt good to show them that winter is fun.” Heystek has gone skiing a number of times during the winter.

Heystek loves to ski in Colorado because she is able to spend time with her family, and she gets to improve on her skiing skills. 

Along with being with her family during the trips, there are many health benefits to skiing as well. According to the article “Top 5 health Benefits of skiing and snowboarding” there are, “Benefits such as burning calories, cardiovascular exercise that help people burn some serious calories and lose weight.” Also skiing can “strengthen lower body muscles, skiing heavily targets the lower body such as hamstrings, calves and glutes.” 

“I dislike how it takes a long time to get to the hill, for higher hills it takes about 20 minutes,” Heystek said. Skiers take a gondola to get to the top of a mountain. A gondola is an enclosed lift to help passengers get on the top or bottom of a mountain. The gondola is the reason why it takes so long to travel to the top of the mountain.

According to the article “Skier Ability Levels” there are many levels of hills to ski. “When you ski there are different levels of difficulty, the easiest one being the green circle then there is the Blue square, Black Diamond and the hardest one is the Double Black diamond, only very advanced skiers consider taking this route.

”The hardest hill I went down was the double black diamond,” said Heystak.

The double black diamond is a steep hill surrounded by trees.

Even though skiing can be hard, she enjoys being with her family and bonding with them.

“There are many things I have gained from skiing,” said Heystak.

One of the things Heystek has gained is a better relationship with her family.  

“When I go skiing I can relate to my family and talk to them about skiing,” said Heystak.  “I have learned to be patient because you won’t get everything down the first time, you will need to practice.”