Happy Birthday Sweet Josie Roo!
What began as a day to snow board with friends, ended in a great adventure!
In Josiah's own words....
Racing the Fog
True Story (Almost)
Written by Josiah Waltner & Kaia Owen
Illustrated by Caitie Flanagan
Chapter 1
Getting Ready
Finally, after hours and hours of driving and hiding from park rangers, because we were illegally sharing seat belts in the back of the truck, we arrived at Snow Summit. We hurried to get our equipment on and SNOWBOARDS!!! When we got our equipment on, we raced to the chairlift. We were excited to begin our first trip down the 5,380-foot mountain slope. Little did we know we were in for a white out adventure!
Chapter 2
Swinging Chairs
Once we got to the chairlift we were so excited that the sky was clear and it was a sunny day. Our best friend Caitie started to daydream. We got on the chairlift without Caitie. Luckily, she got on the chair behind us. On the way up, Katie yelled to us, “I am sooooo scared. I was waiting for chair 11! It is my favorite chair!” As we got toward the top, clouds came rolling in from all around. It started to get windy. The wind came so fast and hard that the chairs started to swing…
Chapter 3
Racing The Fog
Once we got off the chairlift, it started to rain lightly, then it started to hail, then it started to blizzard! There was no way to get down the mountain except to go through the huge whiteout! So, we started down the mountain. When we got ¼ the way down the hill our legs started to get tired, so we sat down, unhooked our snowboards and started to make a snowman. One of us made the head, another made the middle, the last made the bottom. Caitie looked up the mountain to see how far we had gone. When she looked up she saw a curtain of fog headed our direction. She yelled at us in such a rush we could hardly understand her, “Fog is coming our way! We have to get our boards on quick!” We hurried to get our snowboards on and get down the mountain. But we were not fast enough. Once we got our boards on, the fog had already come. We were stuck!! We couldn’t even see our own snowboards!! All of us had to yell so we could hear one another. We were able to get past the fog and far enough away that we were able to rest again. Our legs were aching and our toes were frozen so bad that we could hardly stand after trying to get past the fog. So, we sat down and rested. Knowing that the fog was getting closer and closer we looked up. The fog had come so close that it had almost caught up to us again. We stood up and started down the hill. Although the fog caught up to us again we were able to get to the steep ½ way mark. The extra speed from the steepness got us past the fog a little ways. We were “Racing The Fog”!!
Chapter 4
Warm, Cozy Lodge
We sped all the way down almost getting to the lodge, when we spotted something racing down toward us. It looked like a little black dot, but as it grew closer, it started to gain color. It was something wearing a bright pink helmet. Out of the helmet stuck 2 brown pig tails. We could also see a camel pack for water on its back. As it came closer, we saw that it was our friend Sophie coming to the rescue! She helped us get down the end of the hill to the lodge. We set our snowboards down in the racks and climbed up the stairs to the deck. We went inside the lodge and upstairs to our special Snow Flake Room.
The room was covered with white wooden snowflakes on the ceilings, and the walls were brown. So the snowflakes seemed to stick out as like they were 3D. The room was also covered in trophies that Badger Pass had won. The whole room was so warm and cozy!! We took off our helmets, gloves and other snow gear and hung them so they could dry. Then we got our sweat pants, soft T-shirts, and our sweat pants and headed down to the restroom. Once in the bathroom, we each changed into our dry cozy clothes and washed our hands with hot water to unnumb them. We then headed back up to the warm cozy Snowflake Room.
On our way up, Josiah’s dad, Seth, said, “We are going to have to stay here for the night because the road is closed!” We all thought that he was teasing us, so we said, “you’re teasing us, do we really have to?” And he said, “Yes, go ask anyone in the room and they will say we have to stay the night too because of the storm.” Then we believed him.
Chapter 5
Stuck at the Lodge
Now that we knew we would be here for awhile, we tried to think of what to do. Caitie was eating snow and said, “Yum, this is good! You guys should try it!” So we each went outside a filled a little 1/2inch cup of snow and ate it. We said, “Yum, you are right Caitie this is good!” So we each filled up our cups once more. Then Josiah thought of putting strawberries from our leftover lunch in our cups of snow. So we each put a slice of strawberries into our cups of snow and mixed it around. The snow was pink now, but not very tasty. So we all looked around the room wondering what in the world to add to our cups of snow to make it sweeter. Then, Kaia looked and saw coffee creamer. She said, “Coffee creamer is suppose to make coffee sweeter right? So doesn’t that mean it will make our pink snow sweeter too?” So Caitie the bravest in trying food squirted a lot of coffee creamer into her mini cup. She mixed it around with her spoon, and then took a spoon full of it and took a bite. She swallowed hard and said, “This is delicious, you try!” So we tried it. It was good.
Then, our hero, Sophie, walked up and we said, “Thank you Sophie so much, you saved us! We probably would not have made it down the mountain without you!” We quickly set up a mini, pink, sweet snow cone for Sophie and said, “Try it, try it, it is good!” Sophie tasted it and asked what was in it. So we told her “coffee creamer, chopped up strawberries and snow of course!”
We found an empty water bottle and filled it up with our new and delicious mixture and headed down stairs to the main lodge to pass some time.
Chapter 6
Open Roads
