snow lessons
By John hake

As new parents and avid skiers, we were keen to get our two young boys on skis. We were apprehensive about bringing them to a downhill resort where it appeared difficult to manage young children in crowded lodges and keep them engaged in actual skiing. Too many objections to the cold, the wet, and lack of audio-visual entertainment. A common refrain from friends with young children was, “we paid so much but skied so little.” We ruled out backcountry skiing partly for safety concerns but also because there’s no refuge for warming little hands and feet. Which led us to the possibilities of cross-country skiing at Bear Valley. Lower risk and cost were advantages, as was warming hut access. Plus, parents could be outside, in the snow, getting some real exercise.

Of course, cross-country skiing can be cold and wet too, but given the relatively low cost we did not mind spending time with the kids in the warming hut drinking hot chocolate, and making new friends with the staff who got to know our little family. And there were other outdoor activities to engage in such as building snow forts, creating snowmen, throwing snowballs, sledding, and looking for buried Easter candies (more about Easter later).

Perhaps the first snow lesson for us as parents was the understanding that winter pursuits like skiing are best appreciated when they begin with a healthy dose of snow play. Lesson One: SNOW EQUALS FUN. Childhood development experts routinely remind parents that kids need unstructured, unsupervised playtime. Or better yet, in the snow let the kids supervise the parents and lead the way. Want to build a snowman instead of skiing? Sure, why not! We can ski later. And so began hourly cycles of tag team parenting, one parent gets to ski solo while the other gets pelted with snowballs, builds snowmen, and buys multiple rounds of hot chocolate.

Snow play evolved as the entire family absorbed the first lesson. To paraphrase Hemingway, change happens in two ways, gradually and then suddenly. Gradually, the boys got more interested in being on skis rather than building another snow fort. Sometimes the skiing parent would have a junior partner. Suddenly, we were on family adventures and the outlying huts (Osborne, Equipe, and Bjornloppet) became worthy objectives with the reward of the descent to follow.

Lesson Two involved hang time: A LITTLE AIR EQUALS A LOT OF FUN. To be clear, this was a boy-led mission. I always keep one ski firmly on the snow, if both my skis are off the snow simultaneously, that’s a leading indicator of a problem. The boys clearly had different ideas, building kickers as launch pads, sometimes near the warming hut. On one occasion their efforts attracted unwanted attention from an employee who deemed the activity too risky. The boys were told to cease and desist. So much for child-led, unstructured, and unsupervised playtime. We put up no resistance and quietly picked up our avalanche shovels, venturing further afield to hunt bigger game. Later I referred the matter to the local authority, a well-known skiing instructor and a bit of an aerialist himself. I explained the situation and solicited his counsel. He concurred with the childhood development experts regarding unstructured play and noted that this inspired activity would lead to improved ski skills. He also acknowledged that he built kickers and launched back in his day. That was all I needed to hear. You could accuse me of confirmation bias but I know good advice when I hear it. The launch search and aerial maneuvers continued. “Watch this, Dad!!”

Not all of the lessons learned on the snow were fun. As eternal as the snows of the Himalaya, there is the Buddha’s teaching that life is suffering. This teaching may present itself in strange and surprising ways and in this instance, it came with the Easter Bunny. Brightly colored plastic eggs containing foiled treats were arranged in the meadow near the trailhead. As the children were set to hunt for the eggs, so were the watchful crows. In retrospect this should have been obvious. Corvids are highly intelligent birds that raid eggs from the nests of other birds. What could possibly go wrong? It turned out to be an epic of Hitchcockian proportions. Winged marauders descended from the trees, pecking open the eggs and then rose to the skies with their tinseled treasures. Like a frantic Tippi Hedren, parents postholed through the snow to retrieve eggs before the birds did. The children were simply no match for these birds and frankly, neither were the parents. Suffering indeed, but fear not children, there’s more candy back at the cabin! Lesson Three: while the snow may not always be fun, sometimes the SUFFERING MAKES FOR AN INTERESTING STORY. This is sometimes referred to as “Type 2 Fun” or the “Suffer Fest.”

I’m not sure who learned the most from our family’s cross-country ski adventures, the boys or their parents. But one thing is certain, we all had fun in the snow whether we were actually skiing or not. These cross-country ski adventures strongly contributed to the boys’ appreciation of nature and interest in outdoor adventures of all kinds. As parents we know we’ve launched something, and it doesn’t always involve hang time!