March Break at the Fish

[March 21, 2015]















Scott on Whitetail (blue run)


Katie on Chipmunk (green run)

It's All About the Half-Pipe

Tuesday Nights look for us up on the hill. Watch for a little purple blur moving through the shadows of the halfpipe.



Up until last week, you could find us at the magic carpets, where Katie would tear up the mini-slalom course, but now we take both the blue chair and the red chair to shred C.O.P. from top to bottom. It took a lot of convincing to get Katie to ride up the blue chair, but then she took on the halfpipe and she hasn't looked back. That first night she did the halfpipe 2 or 3 times, and then on Tuesday she did it at least 10 times more.



My buddy Steve brings his 2 older daughters to the hill every Tuesday night, so we met up with them. Even Mom joined us for the evening, because it was just too fabulous a night to pass up. Perfect weather, really. Steve's oldest daughter is Scott's age and they hit it off immediately, sharing a love for speed. After our first run together, I found them chatting at the bottom of the hill while they waited for everyone else (Katie and I had been stuck in a line for the halfpipe). After that Scott rode with her the rest of the night and they tore off into the darkness long before I could get my straps done up.

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.