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Going to Extremes

Shredding the slopes for God, siblings Natalie and Chris Nelson are two of the nation's best snowboarders.

by Mark Moring

From California Highway 395, Mammoth Mountain looks much like the rest of the Sierras—stunning in its snow-blanketed splendor, magnificent in all of its 11,053 feet.

It's postcard perfect … and seemingly harmless.

That is, till you're at the peak. From there, more than two miles above sea level, the perilous side of Mammoth comes alive, with its jagged rocks, treacherous chutes and hidden bluffs. Some of its aptly-named ski runs set the scene, like Hangman's Hollow, Wipe Out, and Paranoid Flats.

So, on one hand, Mammoth Mountain, a popular ski resort, is the kind of place you'd love to spend a winter weekend.

On the other hand, it's the kind of place that can hurt you. Bad.

Just ask Natalie and Chris Nelson, who just might be the best snowboarding siblings in America.

Natalie, 20, has the battle scars—from knee surgery—to prove it, not to mention the memories of a broken wrist, a sprained shoulder, and various other injuries.

Chris, 18, has had a few wipeouts and bangups too. And he's seen a few avalanches; his best friend was nearly killed in one while snowboarding.

"He was almost sucked under," says Chris. "He thought he was gonna die."

So Natalie and Chris love and fear Mammoth Mountain at the same time. Mostly, they just respect it.

They have to. After all, they live at its foot in Mammoth Lakes, and they're up on the mountain almost every day—at least 200 days a year, says Natalie.

This brother and sister can do just about anything on a snowboard. They can race down the slopes at blurring speed, catch big air by jumping off bumps and ramps, and perform all kinds of aerial tricks—with names like "rodeo flips," "alley-oop indys" and "McTwisters"—in the halfpipe, their specialty and their favorite event.

Natalie and Chris never forget the risks of their sport. But they're willing to take those risks … to a degree.

"Snowboarding can be dangerous," says Natalie. "But it's so much fun. I love the rush. I love going as fast as I think I can go, feeling the wind rushing past my face, and then pushing the edge a little more. But at the same time, I play it safe.

"Sometimes you see some people going all out, just reckless, and they get hurt so badly. You're like, 'Why didn't you use a little caution there?'"

Chris is a little more of a daredevil than Natalie, but he has his limits.

"I won't go out and blindly jump off stuff without knowing where I'm gonna land," he says. "But you can't afford to be too conservative, either. To get better at this sport, you've got to be willing to take some risks. But I don't take it too far."

Many snowboarders do "take it too far"—not just on the slopes, but in their lifestyles too. While Natalie and Chris say the image of snowboarders is improving, they agree that there's a certain subculture that …

Well, let them explain.

"There's a stereotype that all snowboarders are into sex and drugs and alcohol," says Chris. "Everybody's not into that scene, but a lot of 'em are. It's pretty prevalent."

"Oh, man," adds Natalie. "A lot of people like to party. It can get pretty wild."

Don't include Natalie and Chris in that picture. Sure, they've got plenty of snowboarding friends who are into the party scene. But count these siblings out when the rest of the group breaks open the six-packs … and whatever else.

"We'll hang out with them and have fun with them all day," says Natalie. "We might still hang with them at night, but we're different. We don't drink, we don't cuss, we don't smoke, we don't sleep around. We're just not into those things."

By abstaining from "those things," Natalie and Chris are saying, "Hey, we're Christians, and our faith comes first."

Says Natalie, "People respect us for taking a stand. And a lot of them will ask questions about why we feel that way. They'll say, 'I have to do these things to have fun.' And we'll be like, 'No you don't.' They'll say, 'Why are you so happy?' And then we can tell them about Jesus.

"It's amazing how much of a testimony you can give just by being yourself."

Chris agrees, but says it's not always easy.

"The hardest times are when you travel somewhere for a competition, and you're kind of on your own," he says. "Sometimes you're pretty much the only Christian in the whole group. So you'll stay in your condo or wherever while everybody else goes out to bars and stuff. They'll come back and say, 'Why didn't you go?' And I'll say, 'I'm a Christian, and I don't really need to go. I have fun doing other stuff.'

"Sometimes that's hard to do, because you want to be with the group, but not a part of it. You want to have fun like everyone else, but you don't want to do all the stuff they're doing. You wish they could have fun doing other things, and you want to set that example.

"But saying no is kind of easy compared to explaining why you're saying no. They start asking all these hard questions that I don't always have answers to."

That's when Chris and Natalie invite their questioning friends to a weekly Bible study at the Nelsons' place in Mammoth Lakes. Their dad, an associate pastor at their church, leads the study, which attracts 15-30 people—many of them snowboarders.

Many of them bring their questions to the Bible study, where they find some answers—including the answer, Jesus Christ. More than a few of Natalie and Chris's snowboarding friends have become Christians as a result of this outreach.

"It's pretty cool," says Natalie.

These days, Natalie and Chris are traveling around the country for competitions. They both hope to someday earn a living as professional boarders, and both would love to compete in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah.

"That's what I'd like," says Chris. "I'm not good enough to make the Olympics this year (to be held in February in Japan), but I hope I will be four years from now when it's in Utah."

Natalie thinks her brother will go far.

"He really has a future in this," says Natalie. "He's incredible."

Chris barely missed winning a spot on the U.S. National Snowboard Team last year. His best friend, the guy who almost died in the avalanche, did make the team, and Chris would love to join him on the team in the future.

Natalie, meanwhile, faces a harder climb. After finishing second in the U.S. National Championships in the girls 18-19-year-old age group a few years ago, Natalie didn't do very well last year, partly as a result of injuries. She hopes to have a better season this winter.

"I just want to have fun with it and see how far I can go," she says. "It was difficult to perform so poorly last winter. I felt so deflated. But I'm OK with it now. I'm still who I am. That's something I've been praying about. If I don't do well, and I'm sensing that God wants me to let my serious snowboard dreams go, I can let them go."

Even if she does have a future in snowboarding, Natalie will continue pursuing another passion—working with the local search-and-rescue team, something she's done for a few years. The team specializes in looking for and providing medical aid to people injured or lost in the mountains.

Every now and then, Natalie gets a call: Somebody's been reported missing.

And so the team begins the search, not knowing what they'll find. Maybe it'll be some skier who had a few too many drinks and wandered off the trail and got lost. Maybe it'll be someone who wiped out and broke a leg.

"Or maybe it'll be a dead body," says Natalie, who has found a few. "It can get pretty gross."

Natalie recently earned her search-and-rescue certificate after going through intensive training sessions. She's also a certified emergency medical technician and a certified diver. Eventually, she'd like to be a licensed paramedic.

As a diving expert, Natalie is often called upon to search for possible drowning victims in the nearby mountain lakes. Once, she found a man who had been boiled alive in a hot spring. "He didn't look human," says Natalie. "I had a hard time dealing with that image for a while.

"But I love doing search-and-rescue. It's such an adventure, and I love to be able to help people who need help. That's just the way God made me. I was born that way."

She was also born to board. So was Chris.

And they were both born to battle Mammoth, the mountain upon which they've grown up, the mountain they've shredded and carved with their boards through the years, the mountain that has given them so much joy, and the mountain that has the power to cause such pain.

"It's a good mountain," says Natalie.

Good, and yet fraught with danger. Paradise, yet perilous.

The Nelsons like it that way.

The Adventures of "Wrong-Way" and "Delirious"

Chris and Natalie are a typical brother and sister.

They sometimes argue, but mostly, they don't mind being around each other.

Sometimes, they downright like it.

"We've always hung out together," says Natalie. "We're always doing the same things, so we're together a lot."

They spend a ton of time in Natalie's car, driving to snowboarding competitions all over the West, sometimes spending 12-15 hours on the highway.

They've taken these road trips for a few years. They were homeschooled in high school, which allowed them the flexibility to travel to the big events —not to mention hit Mammoth's slopes every afternoon.

All those road trips, of course, add up to a lot of stories. They shared a few with us.

"I'm Natalie's babysitter," says Chris. "Normally, it's the older brother who has to do the babysitting, but in our case, it's the younger brother who has to watch out for the older sister."

Says Natalie, "Not always."

Chris: "Yes, lots of times. After all, you're Wrong-Way Natalie."

Natalie: "You're so mean!"

Chris: "Everywhere we go, we usually have other people in the car with us. Natalie will be driving, and she'll be like, 'I think we should go this way.' And we're like, 'No, no, no. That's not the right way.'"

Natalie (getting defensive): "Here's the deal. Chris tends to get sleepy when he drives, so I'm usually the one driving in the middle of the night, while everybody else is asleep. So I'm exhausted, but I'm doing all the dirty work, mapping out where we're going and everything. One time, I was so tired, driving along, trying not to fall asleep. Then I took a wrong turn. One wrong turn! So they call me Wrong-Way Natalie because of that. It's so unfair."

Ah, but Natalie's got one on Chris, too.

"One night," she says, "Chris was driving, and the rest of us were asleep. I woke up, and Chris and this other guy are in the front seat, cranking up the stereo. They're singing at the top of their lungs. And Chris is like, 'Whoa! I sound so good, I can't tell which voice is mine and which is the band's!'

It was so funny."

Chris: "Not really."

Natalie: "Yes it was."

Chris (getting defensive): "We were joking around.

It was so late, we were just trying to stay awake. This is after like eight Slurpees at every gas station we saw.

Hey, we were delirious."

Thanks, Wrong-Way. Thanks, Delirious. We understand. (We think.)

—Mark Moring

Copyright © 1998 by the author or Christianity Today International/Campus Life magazine. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail clmag@CampusLife.net January/February 1998. Page 28

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