With the return of the light in these parts or the Winter Solstice, snow sliding season is officially back and so is Katie B’s Ski Newsletter. The weather lately feels like we live in Alaska or something. Single digits are just a bit much for this perennial California girl. But according to the weather service, a white Christmas is imminent!
My 2022 was tinged with the break of my left collar bone the second to last day of February. I joined the legions of snow riders injured on the hill in a freak fall that seemed over as soon as it happened. While my clavicle is not back together, I’m pretty much pain free, thanks to the miracle of physical therapy and tissues filling in the blanks. And looking forward to getting back to where we left off with my ladies ski school students.
I spent a lot of time in California over the past year with my parents, Bobbie, 90 and Dave, 92. Mom is making her way to the other side and dad is into bocce ball, long walks on the coast, and the occasional tai chi class. Dave taught Bobbie to ski in the Swiss Alps. They were Americans living and working in Rome, Italy where they met in 1960. The visual that comes to mind when I imagine my future parents at that time is the cover of Dean Martin’s 1959 Christmas album, Winter Romance, all ski sweaters and black Head skis. Cue sweeping orchestra intro: I never will forget, the station where we met, you dropped your skis, a happy circumstance. No one would have guessed we had started a winter romance….
Like many of us, I look back at my childhood at Christmas time. And while I could share stories of tinsel that showed up in the weirdest places all year and Christmas stockings busting with surprises, the greatest gift my parents gave us was learning to enjoy sliding down a snow smothered slope, our feet guiding us with gravity.
One of the framed photos lining the walls of the stairwell in our Douglas home shows a line of eight people, my parents and their three girls and three boys, big smiles on our spring sun-warmed faces. The peak of the mountain behind us is cut off by the frame. We’re all on skis, the bookends my youngest brother Kelley, 6, and sister Julie, 8, the only one wearing a hat. Kelley’s twin Kristi is to Julie’s left. At 14, I’m the oldest and the only one with my eyes closed. Our clothing is circa 1976. Mom’s sporting a cool blue with neon rainbows ski jacket and pants. Brother John‘s wearing a ski sweater with bright stripes down the arms and like my dad and brother Kevin, the wool ski pants most popular in the 1960’s. I’m donning the new fangled “water resistant” quilted nylon bib overalls. On the tips of John and my skis are matching Olin logos.Those were quite an upgrade from our first pair acquired from the ski swap, complete with vintage “bear trap” cable bindings, invented in 1929!
A few weekends a year during ski season, mom and dad woke us up in the middle of the night. They’d load up their 6 kids (and sometimes a few of our friends?!) in a dull beige Chevy van with an air conditioner on top. We’d take off at 5 in the morning for the four hour drive from our suburban San Francisco Bay Area home. That is, unless it was snowing on Donner Pass, when between a snow storm road closure or the onerous requirement of chains on the tires, it took much longer. In any case, we’d end up a magnificent world away: the Sierra Nevada mountains.
We’d pile out of the car and into the lodge, where my sister Julie has the distinct memory of us all lined to get our ski boots buckled by our parents.
I was six when my father took me on my first chairlift ride. “I can’t get up,” I wailed after falling, awkward slidy things attached to my feet. “Yes, you can,” implored dad. He pretended to fall himself. Then showed me how to swing my skis under me, lean forward, and pull myself up to standing.
A few years later he demonstrated for my siblings and I how to “1-2-3, 1-2-3” waltz down the hill. Then he’d turn up his nose, shiny with Sea and Ski sunscreen up towards the run called Ball Room. “Love that ballroom skiing,” he’d exclaim.
When I was in high school dad brought me to a more challenging run at the ski area formerly known as Squaw Valley. It followed the path of the Super-G in the 1960 Olympics and was covered with Spring ‘Sierra cement’. “You did it,” he congratulated me, “you skied Olympic Lady.” Good training for Southeast AK “powder,” and way before fat skis.
Here in Juneau and Douglas our “world away” is the winter wonderland of Eaglecrest Ski Area. Mere minutes away from home, we can head up for a day or an hour, no waking in the middle of the night required.
Another greatest gift, for which we are grateful all year.
I hope you are enjoying the gifts of Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa or whatever you celebrate this time of year.
Peace and Love,
Katie B.
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So many beautiful details here of your family’s passion for skiing. And that photo is amazing of all of you. I love the image of waltzing down the slope, and your father’s sun screened nose. Thinking of you and your family, and hope your lovely writing helps all of you reminisce about what sounds like a magical childhood with your parents. Buon Natale!
So many beautiful details here of your family’s passion for skiing. And that photo is amazing of all of you. I love the image of waltzing down the slope, and your father’s sun screened nose. Thinking of you and your family, and hope your lovely writing helps all of you reminisce about what sounds like a magical childhood with your parents. Buon Natale!
Thanks for sharing. For history and more ski sweaters, watch the Heroes of Telemark with Kirk Douglas.
Thanks Susan and thanks for the tip!