Carving It Up
We were happy to have the opportunity to get back up to Big White this year after missing what was becoming our annual ski trip last year… I think it had sompething to do with a half Ironman in Florida? We traded a week with another owner at Stonegate so that we had the use of two units (our two-bed and a three-bed), and got Grandma & Grandpa Boys, Wendy / Tim / Ruby, Cass / Kent / Cam and our friends Amber & Bryn and family on board for a week of skiing at our favorite winter destination!
It was a long travel day for us to get there – leaving Bermuda at lunchtime on Saturday we arrived to the condo at 2:00am Sunday (6am Bermuda time). The kids were good travellers, though, as they were excited to get there! We split the three-bedroom with the Gilberts for a few days before they had to leave (my sister and her family came to take their room mid-week). Meanwhile, we put the other rowdies in our two-bed unit down the hall.
So with Jenn’s family arriving Sunday afternoon, we got busy and divvied up the pre-ordered groceries we had delivered, raided the beer & wine store, got our ski rentals, got the kids lessons sorted out – and after everyone had arrived – ordered a large quantity of some of the best pizza in the world before hitting the hot tub and then bed. We were ready to hit the slopes first thing Monday morning!
Family of Ski Bums
As is the norm on our ski trips, Jenn booked the kids into ski lessons (Josh in group lessons every morning for the week, and Ryley in an ‘adopt-an-instructor’ private lesson for three days). Some mornings were were up and ready early enough to take Josh on a quick run down the Hummingbird and back up the Plaza chair before his 9:30am lesson, but typically we would just walk the kids up the short hill from our condo to the village where we drop them off and then hit the slopes ourselves!
Josh picked up right where he left off – after one shakey run to get the cobwebs out he was good to go. He was a part of the Trail Blazers‘ group in ski school, and a few days into the trip he was using ski poles and making nice carving turns as he took on some of the steeper terrain of the blue runs higher up the mountain. Of course, when skiing with Jenn and I he would veer into the runs within the trees, zigging and zagging around and hitting little jumps – it’s getting much harder to follow him!
Pizza Monsters!
Ryley was also very good this year – with the help of her instructor Hannah, she was happily skiing by herself down the bunny hill and back up the magic carpet, and by the end of her third lesson she was skiing down the big run (Hummingbird) and riding on a chairlift! Jenn and I were very impressed, by our last day we were able to ski alongside her from top to bottom – she didn’t even have to break out the edgie-wedgie this time around. Way to go, Roo!
Conditions on the hill for us big kids were spring-like, despite it being February! Temperatures lingered on or above freezing for the duration of the trip, which brought some foggy pea-soup days and small patches of sleet / rain here and there (and no skating rink this year… boo!). But we did get a little new snow at times and a few days of blue-sky skiing, and typically the hill was nice and soft during the day (plus it was great for snowballs, much to Ryley’s delight)! We can’t complain – it was -25C in eastern Canada at the time and Whistler closed due to not having any snow… Big White was the place to be!
It was good fun skiing with the likes of Tim & Wendy, Jenn’s dad Peter and Cass’s – uh – Kent (who was really ‘shredding the gnar’ on his board). Evenings were typically spent chillin’ with a beer / wine and catching up with those who did not ski that day and graciously looked after Ruby / Cam / Ryley (when she wasn’t skiing). We found time to take in some tubing one night, and Ryley was as keen as Josh to get on the Mini-Z snowmobiles as well…
Hello there, Great Grandma!
One week was not nearly enough, but alas, this is all the holiday time I could afford this year at the hill. I flew back to Bermuda after we were done at Big White; Jenn and the kids, however, went on to Alberta for an additional week after spending a day in Kelowna with Amber & family.
They stayed for a visit with Nana and Papa in Fort Saskatchewan for a few days, where the kids happily helped shovel the driveway and made snow angels in the yard, among other things. Then on to Wainwright for a day with Great Grandma Lillian before spending the remainder of their holiday with Grandma & Grandpa in Stettler, where more shoveling and angel-making ensued! Jenn was able to do a little catching up with friends Colleen and Leanne along the way, too!
It was great to see everyone – as always, enjoy this year’s gallery of photos below, we’ll be counting down until next time! (And here is the Village Map – we’re #43 – and Alpine Map to see the mountain and where we were!).
