fun times in Park City

What to do when one doesn't have to work and one's family is taking a vacation? Join them! We drove out to Park City to spend some time with my sister, her husband and 2 kids, and my parents.

At the beginning of the week there was much sunshine and warm temps. The younger group all went to Heber City to ride tubes down a hill. The advantage of going to an official tubing place is that a mini-rope tow pulls the rider and tube up the hill, saving considerable energy compared to trudging back up the hill. Here's the gang after cruising down the hill all hooked together. Fun ride!

Despite the massive development of the Park City area in the last 30 years, one doesn't have to walk far to see signs of the pre-yuppy settlers that did some ranching in the area. Prior to that, there was significant mining in the area and the remains can be observed throughout the Park City Mountain ski resort. We took a couple apples to feed to this neighborhood horse.

And now for too many words on skiing.

During my teenage years, skiing was by far my favorite activity and I tried to ski at least 10 days per year. This included a number of one day events in which I'd wake up at 4am, drive 4 hours to Kirkwood, ski all day, and drive the 4 hours home. I still enjoy skiing very much but with some reservations.

I haven't experienced anything similar to making a perfect turn in skiing. On steep runs, I try to predict the snow texture, hill slope, and how much fear I can handle when planning my turn. The turn consists of what angle to move my skis, where to land, and how hard to drive my skis into the snow. When this works out correctly, pure bliss. When I'm wrong, down I go. And here's the great thing about skiing: nearly always the cost of falling is neglible because snow is soft which allows me to take more risks than I otherwise would.

But I've known one guy that was killed in an avalanche, met the widow and son of another guy, and have skied in the remains of an avalanche that killed 2 people (see red dot in the photo below taken from The Canyons website. This is the north slope off of the 9990 chairlift.). So really, it's not all that safe.

My other hangup is chairlifts. A great joy of cycling is riding to the top of hills and then cruising down feeling like I earned the descent. Maybe I don't feel that I've really earned the skiing downhill. But I'm really not too interested in hiking to the top while wearing ski boots and carrying skis.

So I now ski 1 or 2 days each year, usually with the family, sort of. Nobody in my immediate family actually skis with me now. But I look forward to the day when my daredevil niece joins me.