Monday, February 23, 2009

Skiing at Mount Snow

This is a week behind schedule but here it goes.

Skiing at Mount Snow was great for the kids. We had decided (thanks to K's decision) to not enroll g in ski school. I had a lot of trepidation about this but thought that in the interest of saving money, I will just go along with it. At worst, the kids and I can go to a sleigh ride or shopping.

Things worked out, it seems. Fortuitously after we had rented the equipment and G did a run just to get his ski legs, the kids and I hung out by the ski school. While there, I saw the steps that there teaching the kids. So I started having g mimic everything that the kids on the other side of the fence were doing.

First, show the kids how to put on their skis. One ski first. Then walk around and get comfortable. Second, put on the other ski. Shuffle around and get comfortable. Next it was the pizza wedge. We did quite a few of those. I didn't notice what came next because by then G had returned and g was ready to move on from all that shuffling. She wanted to pick up some speed.

My first suggestion was for G to carry g up a few paces on the side of bunny slope and have her come down. They did that a few times before G was about the pass out from the effort of trying to walk her up with all her gear and his gear.

Next we moved onto the tow line. As G was lining up with g, I noticed another parent coming down the slope with his kid using the ski poles as a sort of harness. I told G to do the same. So with poles under each arm, G and g skied down. g giggled all the way down. She loved it.

We found out later on that all the "magic carpets" (a flat escalator to the top of a small slope) in the facility are open for anyone to use. We thought that it was exclusively for ski school students. Thanks again to K for the info.

The next day we got a little bold. We decided to strap some ski equipment on little s to see who she would fare. We followed the same basic steps of instruction. This time we went directly to the magic carpet. shuffling on skis took a lot out of little s since the equipment was probably almost half her body weight. After much prodding, she finally went down the slope. Once she did it, that was it. The little snow bunny was telling me, "no hold, no hold!!" She wanted to do it herself. By the end of the day, she was getting on and off the magic carpet by herself.

g and s had the time of their lives. I think the family C will be skiing again very soon.

1 comment:

EY said...

i was waiting to read about your trip. glad to hear it was a success! =)