The Inexperienced Expert Goes Skiing

The day was inexplicably gorgeous. The kind of day that is a welcome gift early in February. At the top of the pass, the sky glistened it was so blue, and the sun beat down on us to the point where we took off hat and scarves and instead donned more sun screen. This was the day to try skiing. The only unfortunate side-effect, was that everyone else was skiing as well. The gobs of human nature packed on the hill around the lodge, and drizzling down the snow packed hillside frightened me away from my original intention of downhill skiing for only the second time in my life, and instead lead me toward a more familiar side of cross country skiing. Still, I had not been in 15 years, and this time I had toddlers.

Simply strapping my girls into their skis became the first challenge. Unable to help, or even understand the point, my daughters flopped like rag dolls in my arms while I inexpertly popped first one toe, then the other into their skis. Immediately my youngest began to slide down the hill. Scrambling for her, trying to keep the oldest by my side and then put myself into my own skis, began one of many comedy of errors for that day. Finally everyone strapped in, we were ready to take off. My three year old immediately fell down and soon began her demands of being let out of the skis. We convinced her to give it another try, and off we took, again.

The two year old between my skis, and the three year old between my husband's skis, we used the practice loop to test our technique. The girls' poles were soon discarded and my husband and I dragged our own behind ourselves. I am sure we looked awkward and unbalanced, but it worked. Practice looped mastered, and three year old wavering between wanting to do it herself and wanting to be done, we turned to tackle the hill down to the easy course. The key word here, is the hill.

I was never skilled at skiing down hill. My husband was a downhill skier, hence the motive behind my plan. First, I must note that this is a very small hill, but I was terrified to crash on top of one of my girls. My husband would take one girl down and leave her at the bottom of the hill. He would then come up, get the second girl and ski her down. I would then ski down the hill, crashing as few times as possible, and that, with only two falls on my part is pretty much how it went.

At the bottom of the hill, we found a patch of snow and decided to make snowmen, but the ground was too iced over, and we soon abandoned our idea. Strapping back up, no more gracefully than the first time, we took off on the flat path through the woods. This time we were able to ski beside the girls holding onto one hand and moving fairly quickly. I was unbelievable proud of my girls as they plugged along for 10 or fifteen minutes. Cross country skiing, however, is hard work, and they were about done. We turned around and headed back. The girls did really well the whole time. The two year old starting to ask to take breaks, and the three year old starting to ski on her own. We made it back to the top of the hill and even had time for hot chocolate.

Altogether we probably only skied a quarter of a mile, and were out for maybe an hour, but it was exhausting and invigorating. The girls both slept all the way to Grandma and Grandpa's house, and everybody slept good that night.