By Jenny Maenpaa, February 2026 Ski & Ride alum
The day starts early: coffee, hot breakfast, and a whiteboard schedule, because when you’re organizing a group of badass survivors still in various stages of brain fog from treatment, you kind of have to herd kittens.
Then it’s gear time. Skis hanging from the ceiling. Stickers everywhere. Helmets staring at you. Chaotic in the best possible way.
Getting on that gondola, that’s when it hits you.
You look out at the mountain and think: I’m here.
A year ago, this felt impossible. And now I’m only going up.
The views at the top are just… I don’t even have a word for it. You’re standing above the clouds, above Lake Tahoe, above everything that was heavy, just for a moment.
And the best part isn’t even the skiing, although that’s great. It’s doing it next to people who just get it.
No “You must be so glad cancer is behind you,” because they know it’s never fully behind us. It’s just part of us forever now.
No explaining. Just: “Are you ready? Let’s go.”
I’m so grateful to the Send It leaders and ski instructors for pushing me outside my comfort zone. It’s hard to trust myself or my body these days, especially since chemo and radiation weakened my bones, my lung capacity, and honestly, my confidence in my own strength.
And then, when you’ve run out of energy and keep falling on even the green slopes, you know it’s time to come home. Make a cup of tea. Put your eye patches on. Sit by the fire to process, decompress, and celebrate.
Celebrate the fact that you stood at the top of a black diamond slope, cursing your confident instructors who said, “It’s fine. You can just ski down the blue side.”
And look down on the world when, when a year ago, your only view was a hospital room and your own mortality, and you feel really, really grateful to be alive.
Watch Jenny’s full “Day on a Send It Ski Trip” reel.
