It was a crisp morning above the frost line
on Whiteface Mountain during, lets say,
1988. The air was still and a few inches of fresh powder were a nice change
from the usual late January ice that makes skiing in the northeast a more of a
chore than it really needs to be. It was, all in all, a fine morning, right up
until my buddy Dave and I found ourselves facing a drop so sheer that we
weren’t really sure that we were supposed to be there. Clearly we had missed a
trail marker while we were chattering and trading stories about the previous
night that had started at Lums and ended up, well, never mind.
Anyway, retreating back up the lengthy trail wasn’t an
option, so we decided to face this nasty bit of black diamond the way only real
men would: we took off our skis and started sliding down on our butts. Genius? Absolutely,
and we were feeling pretty good about the whole business until we heard the
telltale swish of a skier flying down the hill behind us. Needless to say it
turned out to be a kid, all of six or seven years old, and not only was he
flying down the hill in perfect form, he even spared a second to glance back at
us with an expression of pity I’ll never forget.
It had never occurred to me until that moment that kids
and skiing not only mix well, but are a perfect match. And it was just that combination
of fearlessness and ability to pick up new things that I was counting on years
later when we took our boys to Ski Big Bear when they
were about six or seven. Since then, the three of us have had a lot of great
days not just skiing, but enjoying some of the other benefits of a day on the
slopes: getting a chance to shoot the breeze while standing on line, talking
music and whatnot on the lifts, and just generally having a good time away from
the pressures of school and the distractions of home.
So even if you’ve never been skiing or are looking for an
excuse to get back out after some time away, now’s the perfect time to pack up
the kids and take advantage some of the resources out there. There are, for
instance, late season
packages, discount ski passes offered by retailers such as Costco, and
the very tidy Liftopia.com.
And… now’s the time to start thinking about your fourth or fifth grader for next year
because there are skipass and passport programs available for free lift tickets wherever
you may be. Do it.
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