Heavenly - David's Ski Week

Ski Week - What a Concept!

David has this week off as does the rest of the public school universe.  They call it ski week.  You may be familiar with this ritual already. I am still new to it.  In a nutshell the kids get the entire week off (while you have work obligations) and you figure it out.  In this case, like a lot of families, we followed the tradition out there and went skiing.

As a family we all work hard.  We also found out we play hard.

We are blue level or intermediate skiers (with the possible exception of David who skied on black or advanced level at Northstar last year).

We decided to go on the Comstock trail.  It said blue. See the blue square on the sign.

However, do you notice you can not see the other side of the hill here. It just drops off.

This is the slope once you get over the edge.

  David went down almost right away.  He thought he was going to slide right into the trees.  While lying in the snow, clutching to that one ski for his life, David said:  "I am going to die." It was actually a good experience - although we were not that confident on that trail either.  It was not what we planned but it was important to us that he develop some fear and concern about his own welfare.  At 6 they are completely fearless which is not always a good thing.

So after a bit of pride was swallowed, we all kept going and made it right to the bottom (on skis not on our bottoms).

Who did we meet at the bottom - our ski instructor.  All that was just to start the day to meet our teacher.

We told him where we had gone and he figured why waste our time on the small stuff.  So up we went again.  Check out the view. That is Lake Tahoe in the background.  We are about 9,000 feet high.

Summer and David handled the trail - no problem.  Big S-curves all the way down.  It was a pleasure.

The Olympic Express was our favorite trail.  We just kept on going down that slope over and over again (even though technically we were skiing through a blizzard that day).  The winds were serious and my fingers were freezing but adrenaline can take you a long ways.

You can see why we loved this trail.

This is looking back up about half way down the slope.

Can you recognize us?  I told you it was cold.

Yes - that's me below - taking a break skiing - for a few seconds anyway.

And what a nice way to end the day on the slopes.

Not a bad ritual this ski week phenomenon.