For the past two years, my family has gone on an annual ski trip to Steamboat Springs, Colorado. We spend four days skiing as hard as we could, so that we would receive the most amount of skiing for our money. Steamboat Springs is a very family oriented ski resort that has many friendly runs that are difficult but not extreme such as you would find back country skiing. Each year we have gone, the snow has been excellent. There is quite a bit of difference between Wisconsin snow and Colorado snow–I prefer Colorado.
The first year Dad was going to try and teach my sisters Marie and Emma, and myself. All of us had never really skied, but Dad was pretty confident. We finally had all the awkward ski equipment on and headed for the mountains; having never ridden a ski lift before, I was not too intimidated. All I wanted to do was bomb the hill–but dad wouldn’t let me, and I was so extremely bored. For the next ten runs, all he would let me do was turn and turn and turn and turn. I guess he thought I was going to run into a tree.
The time finally came, and we were allowed to ride the big lifts, whose seats swept us up to the top of the mountain, which was 10,000 ft. In order to descend down the mountain, there are different levels of runs that a person can take. Green routes are the beginner level runs and only have slight slopes and wide turns. Blue runs are considered intermediate runs which are for people who ski but aren’t really the adventurous skier. Black runs are the most difficult and are skied by the more experienced skiers.
My mom and sisters decided to play it safe and followed green and blue routes down the mountain. Even though I had really never skied a day in my life and on that large of mountain before I wanted to immediately bomb down a black run. But to my disappointment Dad and I stayed on the blue runs the entire day and I quickly found out that the angle of the slope was not what messes up a skier, it’s the flat runs with hidden bumps that will knock a one flat.
A few of my favorite memories of the first year skiing as a family, are when I had wiped out in 3 feet of powder, face down in the ground and barely off the trail. On another run, I was too far ahead of the family and Dad was hollering at me to stop and wait. I turned and stopped midway in the trail not realizing that Marie was going to come barreling around the corner screaming at me to move and of course I was leaning on my poles, not able to budge. In slow motion she plowed into me pushing both of us off the trail into a tree well. Dad came to help pull us out and he fell into the powder, thankfully a stranger came and used his pole to pull us all out. We all laughed so hard except for Marie–she was very upset at me, because I had been in the way.
The last day we were at Steamboat, I had been on blue runs all day. Finally, I was able to attempt my first black run. As I peered over the edge it looked pretty steep but I was determined. On the way down, Dad helped by walking me through the run “make your turns and you’ll be fine”. I actually made it down the mountain! And I wasn’t even injured, except for the sore muscles from skiing so hard.
We walked back to our condo, nursing our aching legs. Mom had prepared the most delicious meal spaghetti and chocolates chip cookies. To my great disappointment, the next day we left Colorado. The time at Steamboat was most amazing ski trip ever. I would do it again any day, well I did, but that’s for another time.