Friday, December 05, 2014

Early-Season Skiing at Nakiska



Nakiska was barely open before we went out to the mountain with Grandpa M. Even though we already had passes to Canada Olympic Park from the early-bird sale last year, Nakiska had a ridiculous deal on adult passes for $199, so I had to pick one up. Because Scott is in grade 2, he got a 5-mountain RCR pass for only $20 and Katie's 6-mountain Tiger pass was also only $20. The deals were so good that Grandpa got in on the action and got a pass.



We had expected to go on the Bronze Chair for an easy warm-up. But the mountain hadn't gotten any real snow yet, so Bronze was still closed. We went up the Silver Chair and there was one run open. Everyone had to ski the same green run. We were caught up in a cloud of humanity, many of them skiing much faster and closer than I would really prefer. It's funny, your sensitivity to safety shifts once you bring your small children to the hill. I suddenly wanted to reach out grab a few people by the collar to keep them from skiing clipping the tips of Katie's tiny little skis. I restrained myself and there were no incidents. Ultimately, people spread out to some of the other lifts that were open higher up the mountain and things were better.

Katie does really well skiing, but she wasn't used to skiing on such long runs. One time she stopped part-way down the mountain and said she was tired. Another time she told me she had to make an emergency pit-stop. We raced down the hill to the lodge as fast as we could. Whew.



As much as the kids enjoy skiing, it almost seems like they enjoy sledding on my snowboard even more. They found a little hill near the lodge and they went down on the snowboard over and over again. There was a cameraman there, shooting footage for some sort of promotional video, and the kids nearly ran him over with the sled. The guy knelt down to get a cool action shot and he narrowly rolled to safety with his camera intact.

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