Some friends and long-time ski partners with two young sons joined us. On friday we started the day with some nice, though overcast weather and a couple of pictures.
Then it started to snow, and snow HARD. Their sons and our girls we all in ski school and I kept wondering if I dressed them warm enough and I kept checking my cell phone all day, expecting a call about this or that daughter that was cold and miserable and wanted to call it quits. A phone call never came.
Between it being a friday and the storm, ski school wasn't crowded that day and they even split up Kate and Allison and gave each their own instructors. We didn't see Erin or Allison all day, but we happened upon Kate and her teacher at one point later in the afternoon. Check out the wonderful weather:
As soon as we said hello to her, she started crying. Her teacher reported that she had been fine all day, but we thought maybe the weather was finally getting to her, though she said she wasn't cold. She skied a few more runs with her teacher and us tagging along behind for reassurance.
Then we picked up Erin and Allison, who each reported having a great day and I figured Kate especially, and maybe everyone, would be ready to head inside the hotel, out of the weather. Nothing doing. There was SO much fresh snow accumulated everywhere and all they wanted to do was play in it.
Climbing on, jumping in, sliding on, eating snow. I certainly have some snow bunnies.
The next day was clear and gloriously sunny, but still a nice cool temperature which kept all of that fresh wonderful snow (18" at the mountain top) nice and dry. The girls headed out for ski school day number two.
John and I had fun skiing all over the place. In the morning the fresh powder had me buried up to my knees at times, it was AWESOME. Perfect conditions. I couldn't imagine anything better.
In the later afternoon I split away from John and ventured to one of my very favorite parts of Squaw Valley, the area under High Camp and the Silverado chair. I've noticed that my photos never do a ski area justice. These runs are super steep, double black diamonds-rated, with rocky cliffs here and there. John doesn't like it when I venture off to places like this alone, but he likes joining me on them even less. It was so fantastic back there, as I knew it would be.
That evening, our friends came over to our room for a spaghetti dinner and we got the full ski school report from the boys. Though the oldest is 7 and youngest is 5, they weren't grouped with our girls because this was their very first weekend skiing. Their parents weren't sure how they would like to skiing and lessons, but they took to it like most kids do--they loved it, especially their older boy.
The next day our friends set off for home and we skied with the kids.
Since it was Erin's first weekend with poles and Allison was given longer rental skis that I think she had previously used, we decided to head to a beginner's slope to make sure everyone was okay with their equipment.
"This is BORING!" Kate, the most cautious skier of our group informed me. "Let's go to a BIGGER slope." On to intermediates we went.
Later, at her request, I took Erin on some even harder intermediate runs and a few advanced ones too. She did really fabulously well on everything, she has made such amazing progress since this time last year.
She's cautious and doesn't seem interested in being the fastest skier around, but she gets the job done well.
Allison, on the other hand, seemed determined to turn every run into a ski race whether she really had the technique to ski that fast or not.
Erin and Allison were both practically begging to ski more this year, but with 3 days per week of softball starting, like, now, I don't see how we can fit in another trip. It's always sad to put away that ski gear for good.
1 comment:
Love the photos. I can really appreciate the videos now too -- the girls are doing AWESOME. How nice for you that you can all ski together -- even though Kate can ski circles around everyone in my family, our skillset is too broad for any of us to ski together now. I won't be joining Erin on black diamonds anytime soon, but maybe we'll see you up there next season!
Post a Comment