Rubbing shoulders with an Olympic champion is just one of the fringe benefits of being at Mount Washington so frequently for Saltair’s Maple Mellson.
The Grade 7 student at Chemainus Elementary School, who just turned 13 on Tuesday, has every weekend of the ski season booked plus two weeks at Christmas and three weeks for spring break with trips to the family condo at the resort for never-ending fun-filled adventures that include sessions with the Mount Washington Freestyle Club. Mellson’s ski boots were practically permanently affixed to her feet for snowboarding and freestyle skiing during a 2017-18 season that amounted to 55 days of skiing from Dec. 1 to April 8.
“It’s a lot of fun,” enthused Mellson.
Along the way while working with club coaches Stu Robinson and Kole Harle, she got to meet Cassie Sharpe from the Comox Valley, who has frequented the mountain regularly en route to attaining fame as a gold medalist in the women’s halfpipe during the recent Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
It’s all one big close-knit group, no matter what the skill level of everyone.
“The freestyle skiing and snowboard community is completely different than most other competitive sports,” noted Mellson’s dad Dennis. “They’ll prank each other.”
They also support each other to the fullest.
“Maple’s had some really great coaches this year,” added mom Kyla. “It’s not what you’re doing now, it’s you progressing.”
Maple was born in Kitimat when the family lived there briefly, but has otherwise been in the Ladysmith, Chemainus and now Saltair areas ever since.
“We bought our condo and I never skied before,” said Maple. “My dad has snowboarded forever. I started skiing when I was five, almost six, and we’ve skied every winter since.”
“We thought it was a fun thing to do as a family,” Kyla pointed out.
“This year, for sure, I fell more in love with it than I ever have before,” Maple indicated.
“I had some amazing coaches and I practiced so hard. My dad bought me a little rail and I set it up in front of our condo. I can do the rails now.”
Being a freestyle skier, Maple can certainly appreciate the crazy antics of someone like Sharpe on the halfpipe. There’s no halfpipe at Mount Washington, but the moguls, rails and jumps offer plenty of challenges.
“It was really neat inspiration,” Kyla said of Sharpe. “When Cassie spoke, if I can do it, you can, too. It was neat for these guys to see that.”
“She was very good at putting that across to everybody there,” Dennis added.
Maple doesn’t have any illusions of grandeur in the sport at this time because she’s simply having too much fun doing it.
“For sure, my No. 1 focus is to be laughing and having fun,” she conceded.
But Maple did prove to be a natural in her first competition on the Easter weekend, winning the Under 14 gold medal in moguls and big air, with a silver in slope style during the Mount Washington Provincial Super Youth Timber Tour competition.
“The day before the competition I thought if I get anything over seventh, I’d be happy,” she said. “I was so happy, never been happy like that for something I’ve done.”
“I don’t know if we’d ever seen her so proud of something she’s done,” Kyla confirmed.
There were about 150 participants in the event overall so the results were quite significant for Maple’s first-ever competition.
“Maple’s definitely had a ton of influence from other skiers,” Kyla observed. “More than anything, that’s what spirited her passion this year.”
“I’m pretty proud of my moguls,” said Maple. “I hadn’t even skied moguls until about four weeks before my competition.
“I was pretty scared actually for moguls. This is really intimidating.”
But all that time on the mountain paid off and doing some big air, too, well, that just sounds so impressive.
Whistler skiers often dominate the competition, but the home course proved advantageous.
“For the Mount Washington kids to be able to step on the podium was quite a big deal,” offered Dennis.
Whether Maple goes on to be a freestyle skiing sensation or not doesn’t really matter now.
“I’ll see what happens,” she said.
“It’s really just about having a good time up there,” Kyla stressed. “That’s what we have tried to foster up there.”
“The people you meet are so so strange and great,” quipped Maple.
“These kids wander around like they own the place,” laughed Dennis.
“You’re never worried,” noted Kyla. “There’s so many people looking out for her.”
Maple is part of a particular group of seven skiers who are all the same age and best friends.
“Some of them I’ve been skiing with since I was six,” she pointed out. “We’re each other’s biggest cheerleaders, for sure.”
For now, everyone is back doing other things in their lives and, for Maple, that includes a performance with her school’s Treble Makers musical group at the Chemainus Legion Hall Sunday.
Come December, it’ll be back to the mountain for another great four-month run.
