Okay… so it only took us two weeks before we found ourselves back on the slopes. A coworker gave me a good deal on some lift tickets for Diamond Peak, a resort in Tahoe, only a half hour further than Soda Springs from our direction. It's a bit bigger than Soda Springs and still has some pretty decent prices for families to ski.
Three special things about this trip that made it unique over our last one:
Eve's first time skiing! Landon got a free lift at this resort, so we decided to see how he would do on a beginner's slope, which meant Eve could get a lift ticket and ski, too. She picked up on it pretty quickly, after having seen the kids and me doing it for a couple of trips now, though she did stay on the beginner's slope with Landon the whole day. Cameron and I spent the morning with everyone on the beginner's, then moved on to some more challenging runs for the second half of the day. And while Eve had fun, she didn't seem to quite get the same feeling of excitement from the rush of skiing that I do.
Second, Haylee had a little accident. But not while she was skiing. Haylee had taken one of her skis off so we could stand together to have the above family picture taken. Just before I took the picture, her foot that was still in a ski slipped and as she fell, the other ski banged into her mouth. As blood was coming out of her mouth onto the nearby snow, we realized one of her bottom front teeth had punctured a hole through the skin just below her bottom lip (you can see the wound on her lip in the picture, which was taken by a member of the resort's first aid staff right after the accident). It turned out not to be as bad as it looked; even though a hole like that would normally require a few stitches, the medical staff person said since it was so close to her lip, you couldn't really stitch it up and it would heal fast anyways. Haylee quickly calmed down, and I was pleased to find out later that she decided to do some more skiing and didn't let the incident ruin her day.
Third and lastly, Cameron and I had our own harrowing adventure after we split up from the rest of the family in the afternoon. After going down a green circle run a few times, Cameron figured he was ready for something more challenging and asked me to take him up another ski lift we saw that evidently led to some blue square and black diamond runs. I tried to talk him out of it, as I wanted him to learn to turn and keep his balance better on the easier runs first. But he persisted, and I wanted to make sure he enjoyed himself for the rest of the day, so I gave in, knowing we could be in for quite an adventure… and we were.
After getting on the new lift, not knowing where it was taking us, we were surprised at how far up the mountain we went. Finally we reached what was the highest spot in the resort, and I was taken back by how breathtakingly beautiful it was up there seeing the tree tops and clouds as we looked over Lake Tahoe. After getting a few pics, we had to decide which run to take down, choosing from among a couple diamond and square runs. After the choosing the least intimidating square run (the one that didn't follow the top of a ridge), we began our descent. And it was pretty slow going for Cameron, as he couldn't go more than a few feet without falling. He quickly realized this was way more difficult than any skiing he had tried yet, and he quickly became very frustrated and frightened. He didn't believe he would ever get down that mountain and wanted to take off his skis and walk down. Knowing that walking down would take a very long time and take all of the fun out of the adventure, I insisted that he keep his skis on and keep on trying. I'd never seen him so upset. He just kept getting up, skiing a little and falling… and we had a long ways to go down. He cried every time he fell and asked me to call the ski patrol to send someone up to get him. He even hit his head one time when falling. A few people stopped to ask if we needed help, but I didn't know how they could.
Finally not knowing what else to do to calm Cameron down, and only having gone down I guessed about 10 percent of the slope, I asked him if we should say a prayer. He nodded yes, and I said a quick prayer for us. He at least seem a little comforted from that and decided to keep on trying. After that he only fell once, maybe twice, as he slowly skied, turned, and stopped… skied, turned, and stopped, zig-zagging his way down the slope as I told him which way to go and when to turn every 100 feet or so. In about 15 minutes we ran into the easier run we had taken before and Cameron was in familiar territory the rest of the way down.
Needless to say Cameron deserved a treat and we stopped at the lodge for some hot chocolate. He told me soon afterwards that while he didn't want to do that run again, he was glad that we tried it and that he didn't give up.
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