In ski school parlance, they refer to it as making your first turn.

It’s the moment a novice skier changes direction for the first time, zigging or zagging across the slope. The maneuver takes control and, for beginners, not a little faith and courage.

Amid the masses bobbing and weaving down the mountain this weekend at Wintergreen Resort were more than a dozen people with faith and courage in abundance: young military veterans, grievously injured in training or combat, skiing without limbs, some for the first time.

Called Wounded Warriors Weekend , it was the second annual gathering at the Blue Ridge mountain resort. Last year, seven military members participated. This year, more than twice as many came. All costs for participants and family members – travel, lodging, food and equipment – were covered by the national Wounded Warrior Project through private donations.

To Michael Zuckerman , executive director of Wintergreen Adaptive Skiing, the weekend has become the highlight of his season

Zuckerman gathered a few dozen instructors and chaperones Saturday morning for some final preparations.

His enthusiasm permeated the room.

“If any of you have ever doubted whether you can make a difference, this is it,” said Zuckerman, a high school teacher with a scruffy white beard.

“They’ve got cups to fill. Give them your passion.”

By lunch, cups overflowed. Two new skiers, both of whom had lost legs while in uniform, returned from the snow triumphant. A beaming instructor made the announcement to clapping and whistles: James Stuck made his first turn at 10 a.m. Rosemary Salak made hers at 11:30.

Hoots and hollers filled the room.

“This event is not about skiing or boarding,” said Wintergreen Adaptive Skiing development director Tom Brown , who coordinated the event. “The whole point of this thing is to take these people and make them understand that their new and different bodies do not limit them.”

Leslie Smith has taken that message to heart.

A 36 -year-old retired Army captain with the presence of a network television broadcaster, Smith radiates warmth, with well-coiffed hair, lipstick that never seems to smudge and a smile that lights up a room.

You can’t tell by looking at her that she’s blind in one eye, the result of a stroke last year caused by a rare blood disorder.

Her sight is the second casualty of the disease first diagnosed in 2002. While serving in Bosnia with the 29th Infantry Division out of Fort Belvoir , Smith developed a blood clot in her leg. Allergic to the blood thinner, her body endured massive hemorrhaging that almost killed her.

She won the fight, but lost her right leg below the knee. Smith also lost her career: The service medically retired her while she was clinging to life at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington .

She left the hospital as her beloved Army was massing at Iraq’s border, preparing to invade. Within weeks, soldiers mangled by bombs and grenades began trickling into the ward she’d left.

Smith began to understand and accept why she’d lost her calf and foot – to help more junior soldiers, metaphorically, make their first turn. She nurtures the newly injured, visiting them at the hospital and pulling up the leg of her pants to show them her prosthetic. She’s a soldier, she tells them. She’s one of them.

“This is like my new family,” Smith said in the hospitality room where the wounded warriors were putting on ski equipment and munching on cookies. “This is where I belong, helping these guys.”

For most of Saturday, Smith belonged on the slopes under the tutelage of Ann Holliday .

Cheating death and losing her leg have made her fearless, Smith said. What used to sound risky now strikes her as fun. Smith didn’t ski before her amputation. She didn’t run marathons, either. Now she’s done four .

“If you come that close to death, there’s nothing that can scare you,” she said. “Anything can happen, at any minute, and it can all be taken away.”

So she strapped on rented skis and asked Holliday to stay ahead of her. Limited peripheral vision made it harder to see skiers and snowboarders zooming by. But letting that keep her off the slopes would be like letting other cars keep you off the highway.

“You’re given two choices,” said Smith, now a civilian Navy employee who lives in Tappahannock . “You can either roll over and be the victim, or you can be proud of yourself for surviving, and hold your head up high.”

She had more difficulty going up than down. The lifts bump skiers from behind as they sit down, a motion that threatened to pop her calf out of the prosthetic socket. To keep an eye on the connection, Smith skied with her pants leg folded up, and a sliver of skin exposed.

After a few runs down the beginner slope, Holliday urged Smith to make more aggressive turns, planting her poles in the snow and pivoting on command.

Still an achiever, Smith complied.

“It’s an incredible experience, coming down the mountain,” she said.

On another section of trail, Katie Butterworth had to work to keep up with her husband, Andy .

Katie Butterworth , a 1998 graduate of Chesapeake’s Hickory High School, didn’t have much choice about learning to ski. Before last year, she’d never done it, but after her spouse lost a leg in combat, she put ordinary fears aside.

Since learning how out West last winter, the North Carolina couple enjoy skiing together.

Andy skis “three track,” meaning he leaves three tracks in the snow: a regular ski on his left leg, and two mini skis fixed to custom poles, called outriggers.

A burly 26-year-old whose clean-shaven head, metallic black helmet and mirrored sunglasses make him look like he’s steering a Harley-Davidson instead of skis, Andy served in Iraq with the Army National Guard.

A rocket-propelled grenade slammed into his Bradley fighting vehicle in Tuz in November 2004 . The sergeant lost his right leg above the knee.

A self-described “speed junkie ,” Butterworth said he now feels more natural on skis than in shoes.

“It’s that feeling of doing something and going fast and feeling the wind in your face,” he said. After a few early spills, Andy had bigger issues with his apparel than his muscles. Duct tape solved the problem: He used it to affix the empty leg of his ski pants to his stump .

Getting up on skis marked a turning point in Lonnie Moore ’s life.

Moore was an Army lieutenant when he lost his leg after his convoy was ambushed in Iraq in April 2004 . The Kansas native learned to ski as an amputee last winter at a Colorado clinic co-sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Disabled American Veterans .

“It made me realize I was a whole person again,” Moore said of the experience. “It was the first thing I’d done since my injury where I realized I was as good or better than three-quarters of the people on the mountain.”

He was so energized, he’s now president of the Wounded Warrior Project’s board of directors. After lunch, he related a conversation he had Saturday morning with a young skier beside him on the lift, a girl about 9 years old.

“I don’t want to be rude, but what happened to your leg?” she asked.

“It’s not rude,” Moore said. “I lost it in Iraq.”

The young skier didn’t reply. She simply gave him a hug.

“That means a lot,” he said, his eyes filling as he shared the anecdote.

Those moments are a chance for the community to express their appreciation for what the soldiers have sacrificed, Zuckerman said.

“This is not about flag-waving,” Zuckerman said. “This is about supporting the guys who were doing the mission. This is about taking care of these guys, and nothing else.”

Leslie Smith appreciates the care she’s gotten. But since her life turned down a path she never expected, she’s filled with more than gratitude . She insists she is a better person: more grounded in the moment, more appreciative, more purposeful.

“If God – or whoever is the higher being – if he said, 'Hey, I’ll give you your leg back,’ I wouldn’t take it,” Smith said. “That was the old Leslie. I like the new Leslie better.”

Reach Kate Wiltrout at (757) 446-2629 or kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com.