Apparently so. We took advantage of a beautiful day up on Mt. Hood to introduce Tristan to the art of downhill skiing. Only problem was, Lloyd and I haven't skied since we both picked up snowboarding over a decade ago. Can't be that difficult though...all they have to do is learn how to snowplow, right?
Well the first time, about a quarter of the way down the kiddie slope, with my back aching, quads and arms burning from holding him up from behind as he leaned way back on me while trying to let him slide down the hill, I thought to myself, there's no possible way this was going to work. At that point, we ran into a Meadows instructor giving someone else a lesson on the slopes, and he said to me "He'll lean on you for support all day long if you let him...", to which I thought "DUH!", but then he added a helpful tip "Why don't you stand in front of him instead of behind, and let him come to you".
Aha! That was the trick. So after I carefully set his skis in a snowplow, or 'pizza' as they call it at Meadows, I backed up about 10 feet or so, and what do you know, he actually stayed upright and skied to me. After another run of doing this routine, I realized that he could actually go much further and faster than I expected. I decided to just let him go as far as he could, and to my amazement, I found myself sprinting after him as he zoomed past me and kept on going all the way down to the bottom of the hill.
It was a fantastic day. No major spills, although there was a close call with little bro Austin on one of our last runs the end (see video). And Tristan learned how to ski -- yippee! He had so much fun, we blew right through nap time, and probably would have been able to go until the shift end if only Austin wasn't in desperate need of a nap at that point. Until next time...maybe snowboarding??? I did see really little kids on boards, so perhaps we can try this sooner than we expected :)
