In an area as mountainous as the desert is cold, an avid skier still manages to fulfill his passion in St. Louis.
Tom Woodley, freshman, started skiing at 10 when family friends took him for the first time.
“I like the thrill of it,” Woodley said. “Just picking up new things and having fun. You can get really creative with anything you do on skis.”
Woodley favors freestyle skiing, a style which involves grinding rails and boxes, going off of jumps, and tricks.
Woodley goes to Hidden Valley, a small ski resort in St. Louis with artificial snow, multiple times during the week. He also goes to ski camps, including one in Oregon he went to last summer, and frequently goes to Colorado with his family.
Many members of Woodley’s family are skiers as well, so he will practice with them or with a coach during trips to Colorado.
“I think he could go very far with it,” Jodi Woodley, Tom’s mother, said. “I can honestly say I don’t think he’ll ever stop skiing. I think he will do it well into his adult life.”
Doing tricks such as flips, which can be dangerous to perform, Woodley has been hurt several times.  Last year, he had to put skiing on hold after injuring his tailbone.
“There are some days when it will be really icy and I’ll have a bad fall and hurt myself,” Woodley said. “I’ll get angry with myself and not want to go back out, but I usually the next day just push through that and know that I’ll like it once I get out there.”
Living in a town that does not provide real mountains and sporadically provides real snow could be viewed as a drawback, but Woodley still skis as much as he can.
“I know he wants to go to college in Colorado and he goes to Hidden Valley almost everyday he can, so he tries to cope with that disadvantage of living in St. Louis,” Ben Berthold, freshman said.
Though he may not be skiing on mountains in Colorado, Woodley makes the best out of St. Louis.
“I’m going to try and take it as far as I can possibly go,” Woodley said. “I want to succeed in skiing and be as good as I possibly can.”