The drive yesterday went very well, we made awesome time and the kids were as well behaved as could be expected. As soon as we hit the mountain we got into some weather, again, to be expected. Rain turned to snow turned to icy roads. But I'll take an hour of stressed out driving because it meant fresh powder!
We are staying at Cirque Lodge at Copper Mountain, on recommendation from a friend. It happened to be a fairly good deal too. We are in a two bedroom condo and it has an awesome deck, nice features, and we have a ski locker, gym, pool, hot tubs at our disposal. It's a bit of a walk to get to the lifts, certainly not bad if it were just me, but far for little kids. Copper Mountain does have these carts all over the place though, that you can use to haul your equipment (and children) around. Remind me to tell you how fun it is to pull a cart + 40 lb preschooler, plus our skis through fresh powder after a long day of skiing. Partially uphill. At least I am getting a full body workout.
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| View from our deck |
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| Someone was excited to get here |
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| Dropping Sam off |
We sailed down some green runs and Gavin had no problem remembering how to ski. It was snowing pretty hard the first hour or so, and then the rest of the day it snowed on and off. It was nice at the base of the mountain, but really cold when we approached the top of a couple of the lifts.
We progressed to some blue runs and then tried to plan out a black. I do find the signage at Copper a little hard to follow. We had a hard time sticking to our planned route due to a trail cutting across a mountain and not being able to make it over there. In the end we only hit one or two black trails, they were really hard! And Gavin does not ski easy - he is really cautious and doesn't get out of control but he also doesn't stop til he gets all the way to the bottom. I love how cautious he is, but that means more turning (more work for the quads) and then not getting a rest break (Copper has really nice, long runs) was making me cramp up a bit. I was also diagnosed with iron deficiency Friday, so the fact that my muscles are not getting / storing / using oxygen as they should doesn't help. Constant lactic acid pain is not the most fun thing.
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| Last picture, he was getting tired, cold and kinda over it |
I picked up Sam from ski school, and was a bit bummed with the results. He couldn't stop, could barely snow plow and could only turn right. Oof. We went into the lodge and met up with Gav and Chad and Sam promptly started melting down while simultaneously insisting he was ok to come on the ski lift and down the hill with me. Against my better judgment, we took off. He cheered up once he got the ski's back on.
We made it on and off the lift without consequence. Woohoo!
I started out trying the harness and he just fell backwards. We then did the Sam skiing between my legs while holding on to my poles, and it worked as long as it wasn't too steep. He was pretty tired by this point and just getting him to put his weight on his own legs (instead of leaning back on me) was nearly impossible. I think it took us about 45 minutes to make it down the run (remember what I said about the nice long runs? I take that back) and not only were my quads on fire but my lower back as well.
So I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to talk him into another ski lesson tomorrow, but I have reservations because I'm not sure he got a lot out of it today. I've heard good things about the harness, so I am now off to google You Tube videos on how to teach a 4 yr old to ski using one.
Wish me luck. And strong muscles. And patience.
Oh and the hubs? He dropped Sam off with us at ski school, helped Gav and I get our gear on, checked out the village, and did some snow shoeing!
