The Ski School

On February 9 I wrote that I had been staying in the town of Norden near Donner Pass. The night before I hung out in the common room at Clair Tappaan until midnight with guests. The next morning I woke to the breakfast bell ringing. After breakfast, I said goodbye to several guests who were heading home that day.

Then I got my stuff together and hitched a ride up the road to Sugarbowl from some lady from Davis to the ski resort and went over to find my kids with their mom at the ski school. Once we had gotten set up with our equipment, I took the boys to the kiddie slopes. One had skis and, as it was his first time, I got him a lesson with a novice level one instructor who was really great. My other son, who had been snowboarding before, got an intermediate lesson – level three.

I left the boys to go on a couple runs on my own but halfway up Judah Lift I discovered my lift pass had somehow been canceled. So, I ended up backtracking to re-authorize it. Later I headed all the way to the top of Disney lift to enjoy the view. I had recently taken a few trips to visit places I could see from the top during the previous summer.

Then I had a cup of coffee and took Christmas Tree lift to the top. Later I stopped at the coffee shop at the Village Lodge. I did several runs to get back to the kiddie runs but in the end I had to cut across a few runs looking for my boys.

On the one hand, I found that my snowboarding son was doing really well. However, my skiing son had also improved and was no longer lacking confidence. I took the boys to Judah Lodge and gave them chips before heading back out.

My skiing son told me then that he was content to ride the conveyor. However, my snowboarding son wanted me to take him on the White Pine Lift which was for beginners. So, we did that a few times but then I told him that I wanted to see if his brother wanted to do the kiddie lift too.

Unfortunately, I think he misinterpreted my words because he dashed off to speak to his brother and promptly disappeared. When I caught up with his brother I learned that he had taken his board off and walked to Judah Lift. Thankfully, I was on skis so I was able to chase him over to the lift. That was how we had a surprise trip to the top of Mount Judah. We had a fantastic run. I got pictures. It was awesome – my son said the run was awesome twice.

When we got back, I let the boys use the kiddie slope and conveyor for a while. Eventually, the three of us returned to the ski school to drop our gear off. Their mother found us as we walked to the lodge and I said goodbye.

I stopped at the bar in the village then before hitching a ride to the lodge. I made it with plenty of time for the dinner bell and ended up sitting with some new guests. In all there were about 16 people. After dinner we congregated in the common room where someone had built a fire.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.