Monday, February 17, 2014

Slopestyle

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With the Winter Olympics in full swing, a four day holiday weekend for the kids, and the biggest snowstorm in four years barreling down on us, what better time for an East Coast ski weekend.  We rented a condo on the slopes in Seven Springs, talked Katherine & Lee into joining us for what would be their first real ski trip, and just needed to make sure we could actually make it out of town with up to a foot of snow on the way in DC on Thursday.  Our hastily created plan B was to assume everything would be closed on Thursday, and drive up to Pittsburgh to stay with Joe & Cate on Wednesday night, so we'd only have an hour drive to Seven Springs on Wednesday, and would hopefully miss the heaviest snow.

The plan worked for the most part, we made it up to Pittsburgh Wednesday night, had a lovely evening with the Mettenburgs, and awoke to reports of a foot of snow or more back home.  We had a leisurely beginning to the day as snow began to fall, and got ready to hit the road around two.  The only slight hiccup was that we couldn't get out of the driveway.  Joe & Cate had already made it out earlier with their more snow appropriate vehicles, but our poor van just spun its wheels trying to make it up the snowy hill at the end of the drive.  It took about 45 minutes of shoveling and salting before we managed to give the car enough traction to make it out of the drive.  Then we just had to make it the rest of the way to the mountain.

The roads in Pittsburgh and the Turnpike weren't too bad, but the snow was starting to come down hard, and reports from Katherine & Lee (who were doing the whole drive up on Thursday) were that the back roads were getting pretty bad.  Sure enough, it was some pretty white knuckle driving once we left the Turnpike, but we eventually made it to Seven Springs (amazingly just a couple minutes after Katherine & Lee).

You might think that once we were ensconced in our ski condo, with ready access to the slopes and no need to drive, we'd be home free, but one more obstacle arose when poor Nora threw up in the middle of the night.  It cost Nora a day of ski lessons, and Elaine a day on the slopes, but the girls very generously let the Owen and I ski on Saturday.  We enjoyed great snow conditions, some of the only sun the whole weekend that peeked out in the afternoon, and Owen gave Katherine & Lee some lessons (though I'm not sure they were really ready for him to lead them through the terrain park ;-).

Snow kept falling all weekend (about 2 feet in total), Elaine made it out on her skis, Owen had one private lesson, but skied mostly with me, Nora eventually had a great day in ski school on Sunday, plenty of Winter Olympics were watched, (not to mention Bravo), and Katherine & Lee had enough fun on the slopes that they might even be convinced to try it again someday.

(click here for all the pictures)

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