The summer of the barefoot

I realize that there have been A LOT of posts from Stormy Lake this summer and lots of skiing and tubing pictures, but I thought I needed to do a separate post on the bare footing.....for a few reasons.

(1) It is a ridiculously hard thing to do

(2) Matt and Tyler have been trying to barefoot for several years now and this was the summer that they finally got it down

(3) We have all witnessed countless runs that ended in horribly painful falls, water-logged sinuses, bruised backsides, bruised feet and disappointed skiers

(4)This felt like a family accomplishment and provided COUNTLESS teaching moments for our kids

For those who are unfamiliar with bare footing, i'll give a little background info. There are several ways to learn how to barefoot--stepping out of ski, off the boom--but the hardest way to get up is called a 'deep water start'. In the barefooting world, you are only a legit barefooter if you do deep water starts and can make a 60 second run. When you do a deep water start, you have nothing on your body but a barefoot suit (which serves as a flotation device as well as padding in the backside). Once the boat is straightened out and the rope taught, the driver says 'hit it' and the skier behind the boat holds their breath, wraps their feet around the rope in front of them and hangs on (being dragged under the water) until the boat gets up enough speed that the skier is bouncing on top of the water behind the boat. It only takes a few seconds for this to happen, but it's such a mental thing to not get all wigged out by the fact that you can't breath until your driver has you going fast enough. Once you are on top of the water, you have to balance you body and bounce along on your backside until the boat is going about 35-40 mph (depending on your weight) and then tilt your hips just slightly to get into the right spot on the wake before you plant. And then comes the tough part (as if the rest of that was a piece of cake)....you pull your knees up to your chest and plant both feet into the water--at the exact time and with equal force) and then stand up on them. If you misjudge this step at all, it usually looks like a rag doll bouncing along on top of the water at 40 mph. Yeah, doesn't that sound like a blast! 

Why in the world would anyone want to do this? For Matt and Ty, it's the equivalent of the Boston Marathon for a runner. It's the top level you can reach and there is a reason few people achieve it....it takes a lot of time, hard work, physical conditioning, failing and getting right back up. And for all these reasons and more, it's been awesome for our kids to witness this over the last few summers. Ok...I won't go on anymore at this point...time to show a few pictures.

Ty and Blake on an early morning run

Stormy Lake is a perfect lake for bare footing (and just about everything else, other than fishing) but even the slightest ripple in the water is like rocks on their feet, so the best time to go is either early in the morning or just before sundown. There are only a few people on the lake who do it and Matt was able to foot with them quite a bit this summer. Sharon (70 year old professional barefooter who helped teach Matt A LOT this summer) and a kid named Clay (20 years old) who basically works and goes to college just to pay for his barefooting. He bought his own boat last summer and goes as much as he can. So whenever we were up there, they'd rotate whose boat they'd use and take turns pulling one another. 

Matt getting ready to start

This is what his feet look like when he's just starting and his face is still under the water

Ty bouncing on his backside, waiting to get up to speed and get outside the curl

The initial plant

woohoo!!!

Matt trying to push through some rougher waters...

...and then catching a toe. (OUCH! Catching a toe is when your toe catches the front lip of the water and it basically just pulls your entire body down immediately and slaps you right into the water)

Pushing through....in this picture he was learning how to absorb some of the inconsistencies in the water and adapting each foot to the different waters underneath them and balancing his weight.

At this point he was pretty comfortable out there....and the two straight lines of spray coming off his feet are a good sign that his positioning and form are good.

So comfortable out there......

My favorite picture.....isn't this so amazing?! You can see the reflection of his toes on the water that he is just milliseconds away from skiing right over. If you look at the foot on the right, you can see how close their toes have to be to the water without 'catching a toe', sending them crashing into the water at painful speeds.

These pictures are of them going through some turns......learning how to manoeuvre themselves while the boat is turning...and also doing some wake crosses (the next hardest thing to do after learning how to barefoot).

Since barefooting is so technical, there can only be a few people on the boat (to enable the boat to get up to speed faster and to minimize the size of the wake), so sometimes the kids would watch from the dock or as in this case, from Papa's boat that be brought over once morning.

A little video Erik took one beautiful morning at Stormy Lake....the water was SO calm this day!



But Matt made it well over 60 seconds and therefore, he's an official barefooter. By the end of the summer, he was beginning to work on doing one foot barefooting and then the next step is backwards bare footing.....but a backwards deep-water start is ridiculously hard (just think about being face-down in the water and pulled at almost 40 mph and your face doesn't come out of the water until you plant your feet....and the falls are equally as painful.
But it was a HUGE accomplishment and milestone that these guys reached this summer and it deserved some serious kuddos!!