We live about two hours from good skiing in the mountains of NC. We’ve lived here for over eight years now and have never taken advantage of the close proximity. First, I hate snow skiing. I did it once in my teen years and hated every minute of it. Even in college when we’d go night skiing in Boone I’d sit in the lodge watching everyone else ski down the mountain. When my family went to Lake Tahoe in my teens, while I enjoyed the snowy vacation in general, I was miserable learning to ski. I was 13 years old, completely self-conscious and awkward, and horrified when the ski instructor was a very cute boy (probably a college student). Horrified.
What made it worse was the morning I hit the bunny slope when the slope was more ice than packed snow. You accessed the bunny slope via a T-bar lift, the originated at the bottom of the bunny slope and was basically just next to the parking lot. No fencing separated the parking lot from the shed where the T-bar originated – it was just completely wide open. So, I ride the T-bar up to the top of the bunny slope, and gamefully begin skiing down, doing my best snowplow to keep my speed down. But snowplow skiing doesn’t work on ice. And so I went, and went, and went – completely unable to stop.
And proceeded to ski past the T-bar shed and straight into the parking lot. As I came trudging back into the bunny slope area, the cute boys manning the bunny slope were having a good laugh “with” me, I was embarrassed for my mortal soul, and from then on I decided skiing was stupid. The End.
Denis has gone skiing once with a group from a company for which he worked a few years before he met me. During the one hour lesson he was getting progressively worse and finally gave up and went to hang in the lodge while everyone else hit the slopes (to which we both say, “God bless ski resort lodges”).
Despite the fact that we hate skiing, I’ve often felt that the kids should at least have one chance to give it a shot to see if they like it. And so after brief discussions to gauge their interest, I’ve book a weekend trip to Appalachian Ski Mountain next month. They are apparently very beginner-friendly and their one-hour class for kids is highly recommended. I found what appears to be a very cute 2-bedroom place for us to stay only minutes from the slopes, so it should be a very good time.
Here’s hoping the kids ski better than their parents.