Traveling Wonderland

As longtime skiers in New England, my parents had wanted to try skiing in CO many, many moons ago, but “someone” managed to tear two ACLs and a MCL in high school and the trip never happened. Two decades later, we finally did it! The four of us, plus my parents, met in Breck for a ski weekend.

Since it was a holiday weekend, it was absolutely packed! Nevertheless, we enjoyed good, if cold, weather, lots of moderate terrain for the kids, and a cozy condo. Carrick and I ran off a few times to ski the bowl and other more advanced terrain. It was fun to ride the Imperial Express, which is the highest elevation lift in North America, but I particularly enjoyed riding up the old-school Horseshoe Bowl T-bar. The wind was whipping and it was freezing, but it’s not everyday we get to ride up a a bowl on a T-bar!

This year was really the first time that we saw skiing ”click” for the kids, since we were able to go twice, once over Christmas at Mount Hood in Oregon and then this trip to Colorado. They improved by leaps and bounds and, more importantly, got to a point where they are having fun out on the slopes! We are planning on skiing again this coming Christmas, perhaps in Maine this time, and even looking into another Colorado trip. I was also reminded of how much I love to ski and ride. While parenting and professor-ing in the midwest is not conducive to skiing 50+ days like when I was teaching skiing and going to college in VT, I do want to make more of an effort to get on the snow a couple of times each year.