final ski weekend

Sunny days in the mountains and a long weekend at school, made longer by us having the kids ditch an extra day, became a great last ski trip since we have softball saturdays starting up.



We met friends up there are stayed in the village at Squaw Valley so that we could walk to everything we needed.

We skied with the Hsiens during the first two mornings while their kids and our kids were in ski school. In the afternoons we had the girls ski with us but their boys are beginners so after picking up their youngest at lunch each day they left the slopes.



I took a lot of photos of the kids skiing, as usual. But I thought I'd try a video of my own skiing, taken while heading down a hill. It's strange trying to keep up a reasonable speed while holding both poles in one hand and my camera out in front of me. It's not a natural position so it affected my balance, but I did the best I could. So John starts, then Yung (quite a fast, good skier) goes next, and while Diana does some wardrobe adjustment, I took off.








The twins told us that their ski instructor had taken them on an advanced run, which they proclaimed not too difficult at all. and they were anxious to show us how well they could handle one. We told us which lift to take and once up there we had a few advanced runs to choose from.

And they definitely could ski these places, though on some of the very long advanced runs they got pretty tired at times. I think an occasional shorter advanced runs but mainly staying on intermediates in where they should be.

By the end of the weekend, their instructor promoted Kate and Allison to a Level 5 skier (out of 9).

Erin, meanwhile, was promoted to Level 6, and her carving is getting pretty darn good.


Very proud and confident in herself, she started asking me to take her up the KT-22 lift. I think this was the first lift into advanced terrain at Squaw. The story I've heard is that when the owner bought the property he and his wife skied down this terrain and it took 22 kick turns to reach the bottom, and when the lift was built they named it after that. Anyways, it's famous, and high, and as many large warning signs at the bottom explain, there is no easy way down.

I know the territory up there but how difficult it is can depend a lot on the conditions, so after checking it out with John I decided that Erin could handle it. I took her to the lift and there were no other children in the vicinity. Because of that I was gathering a ton of odd, semi-horrified looks from many of the other skiers.
Here she is at the top:

And coming down. These videos never do the kids justice, the slope was steeper than it looks here:

She did really, really great and we even went up a second time. Cheers all around. Quite an accomplishment for an 8 year-old.