Another Successful Day at Nakiska

As I start to type, Ian is chattering in my ear about the next time we go to Nakiska. Think he’s enthusiastic? 🙂

Today was a day where Tammy signed herself and the kids up for their next lesson.  We’ve all been recovering from colds, and I didn’t get much sleep last night with a stuffed-up nose. But I wasn’t feeling too bad and everybody was good to go, so we were off at 8:00 to get there in time for 9:30 lessons. To recap where we were last, Ian and Miranda have both had lots of fun “free skiing” on the Bronze chair and didn’t like their lessons. There was a certain amount of grumbling yesterday when I explained to them that they were going to have a lesson today. But I promised that we would go for a free ski afterwards (at 11:00). Tammy was continuing to have turning conniptions on her snowboard. She could go down the hill on one edge or the other, but if she tried to do an S-turn (i.e. go from one edge to the other in a slalom style), she would fall down every time. I still hadn’t gone on any of the chairlifts other than the Bronze. Going up one of the bigger chairlifts implies that one has to come down again…

So, with that in mind, we arrived at the hill. Miranda, Ian and Tammy started their lessons, and I went for one run down the Bronze slopes then bit the bullet and got onto the Olympic chairlift. It goes about halfway up the mountain, and is a high-speed quad. It was successful (i.e. I got down again in one piece), but wasn’t a ton of fun. If you don’t know where you are on the mountain, it’s sometimes difficult to orient yourself and steer towards the right slopes. I had to unbuckle and walk a couple of times when I found myself downhill from where I needed to be. I was pretty tired when I got down, so I made my way to the bunny hill, where Tammy was having her lesson. The kids were nowhere to be seen, so they either had been abducted or their instructors had taken them onto the chairlift. Tammy was continuing to have conniptions. She was working hard, but still falling. I got a snack and water for everyone from the car and then came back to wait for lessons to be over.

I was lucky I did, because I got to see Tammy “get it”! Much like riding a bike, there is that moment where your brain just gets it. She was one-on-one with her instructor, Michelle, and she was very patient and enthusiastic, and then Tammy finally got a full “C” turn, and then another the other way. On her next run she got a full “S”!

Then the kids showed up at the end of their lessons (not abducted, that’s good). They had their own stories to tell. Miranda had done very well, and her next lesson would probably go up the Silver chairlift. Oooh! Then Ian showed up. He had been one on one with an instructor as well, and he reported that Ian was almost ready to jump from level 2 to level 4! They went up the Silver chairlift! Wow!  Ian went up the Silver chairlift before any of us!  He was just bubbling about it.

So we had our snack, and then Miranda, Ian and I went up the Silver chairlift together, while Tammy stayed at the bunny hill and worked on her turns. Everybody was tired, but  very happy when we went back to the car to drive home.

And to top it all off, Ian saw an Audi R8 on the highway on the way back. Could his day have gotten any better?  🙂