Family Ski Holidays

Having skied for many years prior to starting a family, it has to be said, and perhaps in our twenties it would have been with great surprise, that the best fun skiing (and snowboarding) has been as a family.

Skiing deep and steep is of course a pleasure, but such pails into insignificance against watching sons and daughters learn to control and then initiate their first turns. Far from the pinnacle however, it is just the beginning as things thereafter just get better and better. First they start to fly down the slopes, picking out jumps and bumps, and embarrassing parents with the ease that they accommodate these and anything else that gets in their way. After the 2^nd week they are constantly searching out the ‘big air’, landing each one perfectly most of the time and making it look ridiculously easy. That is until we try, quickly afterwards realising that our role is best defined as cameraman, focused on capturing their special, rather than our funny, moment.

If you are relatively new to the family ski holiday adventure, you will find that in the early couple or so weeks it does seem that they are skiing at kamikaze speeds! Possibly they are, but with our heads in our hands covering our eyes it is hard to be sure! Despite our horror, somehow, defying the laws of physics, they nearly always seem to keep it together. Every parent questions how they do, we haven’t actually got a clue. Perhaps it’s their low sense of gravity, their flexibility, confidence, a combination of all three, but miraculously it seems to work.

After the kamikaze stage, sons and daughters soon switch to controlled and majestic. Turns are carved with precision and ease that only the young can truly master. Whilst our skis and snowboards seem to flap on all terrains and pistes, theirs seem to cut through each turn like a knife running through butter. It all seems too quick, the sorcerers apprentice soon becoming the new master or queen of the slopes to the parents astonishment.

Whilst it may have first started with us encouraging them to keep up, by their teenage years we soon start to realise that keeping up is no longer their priority, it’s become ours. The bigger they get, the more we have to sit back in awe. And then we realise, we don’t mind if we do sit back. Well beaten by youth, a great family morning in the bag, families head for lunch, a chance to relive the mornings escapades. For the parent’s long lunches typically, are a three course and lots of wine. Tired adult limbs ensure every mouthful is savoured. But the tide can not be help back no more, it is a chance for the teenagers to continue bonding, as we await coffees and liqueurs, for them it is a chance for a trip to the snow park or a couple of practice runs down the blues and reds. Perhaps it is the wine, or the liquours, but as they head out together, their faces beaming together as life time friends, that we realise we have given them one of the greatest chances in life – to ski and snowboard.