Saturday, February 24, 2018

Deer Valley 2018

Deer Valley 2018

2018 and time for another ski trip out west with the Hyatts and Mettenburgs. This year we decided to go to Deer Valley, our first trip ever to Utah. We flew into Salt Lake City on Saturday with a quick direct flight arriving well before lunch time (thanks Grandpa Don for driving us to the airport super early ;-). That gave us plenty of time to see Jen & Azher, play with Ivan, and meet their new baby Oliver! We all had a lovely lunch, the kids got to play for a bit, and then we were off to the Mountain!

The drive up to Deer Valley was actually depressingly brown for this time of year in Utah. It had been one of the worst snow seasons in decades, and despite 8" of snow up at Deer Valley earlier in the week, the mountains on the drive from SLC were unusually barren. The good news though was that the forecast looked very promising. We made it up to the amazing house -- the Snow Bomber -- a beautiful ski-in (mostly) / ski-out (yes) cabin near the Silver Lake area of Deer Valley. Joe, Gigi & Hugh made it to the house shortly after us (Cate decided to go to Japan instead), and Nabeel, Megan, Kaden and Liam followed up after a grocery stop (the forecast called for a big snow storm the next day, so we were glad to have plenty of food in the house!).

Deer Valley 2018

On our first day out skiing, the snow started to fall early afternoon, and it didn't stop until we had 18" of fresh powder the next day. We decided to ski out a little early to have some time on the slopes with the kids before lessons, and it's a good thing we did. All the kids except Liam were having a really hard time skiing in the powder, to the point that they couldn't even get enough momentum to go down relatively steep hills. On the little trail out of the houses, I ended up carrying Nora, and Owen took his skis off and hiked. We thought it would be better when we got to the groomed runs, but there was a lot of fresh snow on them, and the kids still were having major problems. Eventually, Nora stopped, sat down, and rolling over on her side I noticed the bottom of her skis had an inch of ice and snow built up on the bottom. At the same time, a ski instructor stopped by Owen and Elaine uphill, and gave the tip that we needed to scrape the kids' skis with a credit card. Apparently when the kids took their warm skis out of the house and put them on in the powder, they melted some of the fresh snow underneath them. And since the kids stood in place for a while after putting skis on, the melted snow had time to refreeze and stick to their skis. Then things literally snowballed as more and more snow stuck to the bottom of their skis. Liam and the grown ups weren't impacted, since we all moved quickly after putting on skis, not giving the ice a time to stick. Once all the skis were scraped we were able to ski quickly down to the bottom, just in time for lessons and a great day hunting powder. It ended snowing just about every day, and Deer Valley got almost 3 feet of snow over the course of the week. Honestly, the days later in the week were a little better since the groomers had time to do their thing, and you could still find some powder stashes in the trees.

The kids all did lessons the first three days, then the boys (except Hugh) skied with the adults on Wednesday, and Gigi and Nora joined us on Thursday. Owen moved up to the Advanced level by his last day and started to ski some single black diamonds, while Nora moved up to Intermediate and was skiing solidly on the blues. Kaden of course was skiing double blacks in lessons, and decided we were holding him back on Wednesday, so he went back for more lessons on the double blacks Thursday and Friday.

Deer Vally 2018

Grandpa Don had a trip out to see Jen & Azher that overlapped with our trip, so on Thursday night they all came up to the cabin and we grilled steaks. The kids had lots of fun playing with Ivan (fortunately the epic three day game of Munchkin had just wrapped up;-). Of course, we had lots of fun, and made many memories: watching Owen ski black diamond moguls we wouldn't try; finding our favorite lunch spot by the fire at Empire Canyon Lodge three days in a row; skiing through the gentle Aspen glades with Nora; skiing through the not so gentle Ontario Bowl glades with Kaden; late nights talking about climate change, radiology, and Nabeel's latest endeavors; and just having a wonderful time with amazing friends!

Deer Vally 2018

(click here for all the pictures)

Thursday, February 01, 2018

Still Dreaming...

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We thought when Owen performed the "I Have a Dream" Speech with his classmates last year at the Lincoln Memorial it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. But then this year, Stuart Hobson partnered with the fifth graders at SWS (and a few other schools) to celebrate the first day of Black History Month back at the Lincoln Memorial, this time reciting President Lincoln's House Divided Speech (CW Harris Elementary), the Emancipation Proclamation (Harriet Tubman Elementary), Letter from Eleanor Roosevilt (Harris Elementary), Dr. King's "Give Us the Ballot" Speech  (Marth Luther King Elementary), "I Have a Dream" Speech (SWS) and President Obama's, "Let Freedom Ring Anniversary Speech (Stuart Hobson). We didn't get to hear Owen deliver the line, "With that courage, we can stand together for the right of every child," but Nora got to cheer him on, and the local news even live streamed it (Owen's around the 43 minute mark).
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(To see the pictures, click here.)