Snow 101: Introduction to Snow

Things that we will learn in this class:
1. Always go to the snow after a week of rain. It will be really deep and really soft.
2. Always borrow a friend’s 4WD Suburban with DVD player for the drive up in the really deep and really soft snow.
3. Buy snow boots for the kids because if you think that wearing their tennis shoes from the car to the ski rental place is the only time that you have to keep them out of the deep, soft, wet snow…then you obviously aren’t aware of the kid/snow magnetism. (Is that a run-on sentence?)
4. Always, and I’m going to repeat this, always put your kids in ALL DAY ski lessons.
5. Always bring goggles for your kids so that you don’t have to give yours up and wear your sunglasses all day and complain about it because your face is cold, it’s too dark for sunglasses, and they keep fogging up. Be an adult.
6. Spend at least 30 minutes on the first run of the day, nay, first run in six years, helping an abandoned eight-year-old snowboarder get unstuck out of the really deep really soft snow, all the while listening to him say, between sobs: “Thank you lady, thank you.”
7. Ski on your telemark skis without actually ever doing a telemark turn because you suck at it and you haven’t been skiing in six years and you just want to have FUN!
8. Watch the kids ski down the bunny hill. Realize that your five-year-old son’s name, Canyon, does not certify him as a snow-plow expert…realize that it’s ok as long has he has fun in the really deep really soft snow.
9. Have lunch in the lodge, smile apologetically at the friend who brought her baby and is hinting that she wants to ski just one run and rush out the door.
10. Oh yeah, an integral part, leave the babies at home. (thanks Big Canyon & Hannah)
11. Ski hard all afternoon with a great ski partner, Trieste, and an occasional run with husband: thanks Dustin.
12. Don’t drink two diet cokes at lunch and expect that there might be a bathroom on the backside.
13. At the end of the day, go and ski on the bunny hill with seven-year-old daughter. Remember, DON’T TRY AND OFFER HER ANY TIPS ON SKIING. JUST LET HER GO!
14. If you are a seven-year-old girl and your name is Lily, if you accidentally “forget” to get off the lift, go ahead and jump off on the roof of the lift operator’s hut, because he will be happy to climb up there and get you and “it was just a little jump from the chair to the roof, mom, he probably wanted me to do that.”
15. If you are a five-year-old boy who is tired of skis and has just finished a hot chocolate, take your tennis shoes and your mom and find some great snow drifts and trees by the lodge and play, play, play in the snow, snow, snow for an hour without ever getting cold as your chattering mother watches and annoyingly keeps asking you if you want to go in the lodge. Duh.
16. Get in dry clothes and dry suburban and watch episodes of “Little House on the Prairie” all the way home.
17. Oh, and it’s nice to have your babies already in bed when you get there.
18. Take a shower in your million dollar shower and fall asleep to dream of snow.

If you can complete at least a third of these requirements, you will pass this class. Good luck. See you on the slopes.