Why a Ski Vacation is Healthy for your Family and your Soul….
For many years, our family has looked forward to our ski vacations as a chance to enjoy the adventure of cutting loose on a mountain, and then bonding around a firepit each night to recount our “conquests”. These trips have been healthy in so many ways, mostly in the intangible ways of heart and soul.
Not too too long ago……during the first week of March 2020, I went to Park City, Utah with my youngest son to ski during his Spring Break. We had been doing skiing Spring Breaks for many years, with all of our sons, some of the sons, family friends…..a whole host of characters to add to the memories. The funny thing was that this year, I had almost not gone skiing. We had been away from NJ for the month of February and I wanted to stay home and catch up with work and my house chores. My husband had planned to go and have a guy bonding ski experience with his son. Well, my husband’s knee did not cooperate (a meniscus tear that was now quite painful), so I had to hop in as the bonding parent for the trip. The sudden realization that I was going skiing was quite exciting, as I am a planner, and usually planned these vacations well in advance. Now, I was basically throwing my parka and some long johns into a duffle. As I look back at what has transpired since March, I realize it was a gift!
The next week, the world was shut down.
My son and I enjoyed a week of great skiing, beautiful spring weather, and treasured one on one conversations. Of course I found time to have a few beers at the Viking Yurt with our friends, who were also in Park City, at Apres Ski! It made me realize that work and house chores can and should wait.
Over the years, we have taken our boys skiing every winter and spring. The labor intensive years of carting their gear to the mountain, working on the “snow plow”, listening to them whine about going to ski school, lamenting when they dropped a glove off of the chair lift… Those early years were not easy on us as parents. But then, the years suddenly arrived when the boys were zooming ahead of us, eager to show us a trail that they found during the ski school class that they now enjoyed. We spent many Spring vacations all over the Rockies… from Beaver Creek, to Vail, to Jackson Hole, to Steamboat, to Aspen, and then over to the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. We ate great BBQ at lunches, took the snowcat up for a starlit ride to mountaintop dinners, met “Elvis” at Apres ski. We all loved the skiing life and it is why, we were never asked about “Atlantis” or “Beaches” during those years….Thank God!
They are now accomplished skiers and they often talk about the wonderful memories that were made on all of these mountains. They have all accomplished “The Talons Challenge” of Beaver Creek, hiked up to bowls in Vail, Aspen Highlands, and Alta, and jumped into chutes that I don’t want to know about! They will carry this gift with them to their own families, we hope.
Warren Miller ( for those of you that know of him) said, “A pair of skis are the ultimate transportation to Freedom” Our sons are already talking about an entire family trip next year back to Park City….to free ourselves once more.
Check out my Hotels I Love section for some of my favorite Ski Resort Stays….
