I’ve been skiing quite a bit with Sara this year - starting with a couple of days at Taos and then opening weekend at Snoqualmie and most weekends sense. This last weekend, Sara convinced me that we need to go camping more often so I decided on a double header - head up and ski on Saturday, followed by camping Saturday night, then lessons on Sunday morning and some more skiing Sunday afternoon. This was our first time van camping in a while (3-4 months I think) so there were some fresh learning pains - forgotten items, mistakes with parking, etc - but all in all a successful trip to kick-off the new year.
We left relatively early Saturday morning (8:30ish) after packing up the van, re-mounting the rooftop box, and refilling water tanks. Sara was “over-heated” when we got there and was off to an amazing start to the day - curling up in the snow and then doing snow angels.
Sara started doing black diamond runs the weekend before last, but she was very shy about it - skiing one turn at a time and needing me to be right there with her to help her make the next turn. She was a lot bolder today and skied to me and then away from me so I could get a video.
It’s hard to hear in the video, but the people in the chairlift were cheering her on the whole way. Sara didn’t particularly like this (they were saying “you go girl” instead of using her name - I had to explain to her that they were still cheering for her, they just didn’t know her name… :) )
She reverted a little the following day to wanting to ski each turn with me, but I continue to be amazed with her progress day to day.
We skied for probably 6 1/2 hours (from 9:30a till 4:00p) with probably an hour or hour and a half of hot chocolate breaks/etc. She was lively all the way until the end - excited even when she fell. She was particularly excited when she slid after falling on steep ice - I can’t imagine why, perhaps because she knew it was on me to stop her… :)
We finished the day with a short drive down to Cle Elum where we stopped off at a brewery that we have been to before (Mule and Elk Brewing). They have good beer and pizza that Sara really loves. I also got a picture of the plaque in the brewery that I think does a great job of immortalizing Sara’s mentality…
After some dinner/drinks to celebrate the day’s accomplishments, we headed out to our campsite for the night (a fairly nice rest stop near Cle-Elum).
I unfortunately parked at a weird angle so I kept sliding down to my feet all night and somehow the van quilt was unpacked so we had to wear some layers to bed - but otherwise we slept soundly. We woke early the next morning to get to lessons (I had though the meetup was a bit earlier than it actually was) and headed out. I was a bit worried that Sara would be bored in the classes given how much better she has gotten at skiing, but she seemed perfectly happy with the easier skiing and hanging out with her friends. She especially enjoyed her instructor - who was a fan of using his skis to throw snow and generally goof around.
After lessons, we met up with Angela and drove over to east summit where the nordic center was. Angela was unimpressed with the nordic trails, but Sara and I got the opportunity to ski back from east summit all the way to west summit. We made a couple of fun runs in between, but Sara was wiped by the time we made it all the way to the van. She slept almost all the way home - except for a quick ice cream stop, of course!