Ski Lessons

Ahh yes, it is true it is May 3 and I am still writing about skiing! Oh the joy of living in the mountains!  

Marc's family was in town this past weekend visiting our niece Carly...aka the abominable snow kid on the snowmobile in an April post....who attends Westminster.  They brought along their exchange student, Caesar from Brazil, so he could see what the wild west of America had to offer.  Caesar had never been skiing before and wanted to possibly try it.  I told him if he was interested I would be happy to take him up to Snowbird because I had a few freebie passes that I knew I wouldn't use up in time by the end of the season.  So off to Snowbird we went yesterday on an incredibly gorgeous day!  It had to of been in the mid 50's when we were up there. 

Once we got to Snowbird he went to go and rent some gear to ski, but unfortunately the only thing going up the mountain was the tram.  Now for a beginner...well really someone who had never even been on skis before....getting down from the tram is essentially like going on a suicide mission.  We thought it best to ride up the tram first and have him peak over the edge to make sure that this was something he really wanted to try.

Up at the top he walked around for a bit and then decided he really wanted to try skiing.  So back down the mountain we went and he rented some gear to try it out.  Now, don't think that I was actually crazy enough to let him go for it down the mountain right away.  So once he got his gear we walked over to Chickadee and I tried to teach him the basics.

Keep in mind I have never actually taught someone how to ski, but come on it's got to be like teaching someone the basics to skating so I figured I could do this.  We started with learning how to put your skis on, falling, and the oh so much fun part of learning how to get back up.

Then we moved onto learning how to stop..aka make the pizza wedge.  

Which wasn't the easiest thing to figure out. 

Poor guy!  He eventually learned how to stop and master the pizza wedge, but it certainly was not an easy intro to skiing day.  On top of just learning how to ski we were constantly walking up and down the hill carrying our skis with us each time.  Slowly he began to pick it up, but after an hour plus of going up and down Chickadee I could tell he was pretty tired. 

On this trip we didn't get to ski down from the tram, but hopefully Caesar will come and visit us again and then we can ski down together!