Whirlwind Skiing Fun

Sometimes good opportunities happen at the same time, leaving us with a dilemma - which do we choose? A couple months ago, I reserved the ski hut for an overnight trip with the kids. This hut is set up by the Ski Club as a warming hut for cross-country skiers but is big enough and is great for overnight stays. It's kind of a double-length outfitter-style tent with a wood floor, wood stove, a couple bunks, and a Coleman cook stove. It's 2 or so miles up the trail from Kelly Canyon ski area. Unfortunately, another opportunity arose later - the kids' school planned a ski day at Grand Targhee for the same Saturday. What to do? Well, we did them both, but it wasn't easy. Here's how it went:

We invited our friends, the Blatters, for the hut trip. So our group was me, Abby, Caleb, and Seth and also Gary, Carley (Abby's friend), and McKinley (Seth's age). We'd hoped to get to the hut before dark, but we didn't quite make good enough time. In fact, in the gathering darkness I missed a trail sign and we thought we might be lost for a bit. That wasn't too fun, with 5 kids who were getting cold and hungry in the dark. But we found the hut (about 1/4 mile away) and all was well again. Except that Seth was pretty disappointed when he saw what he'd skied all that way for. I guess he expected an Alps-style hut. We had our Mountain House dinner, hot cocoa, and snuggled down into sleeping bags. Gary and I stoked the fire every two hours through the night, but Abby still complained of being cold in her 25 degree bag.

In order to meet up with the ski club at Targhee, we got up at 6 a.m. and packed and left. The sun wasn't up yet, the temps were probably single-digit, and we were behind schedule. We met Jennie and the girls in Rexburg and worried how we'd find our group to get our passes. Luckily, the ski club was late too, and we had no problem meeting up with them. I've been skiing on free chaperone passes for two years now and finally had to perform when I came upon a hurt skier on our last run of the day. It just happened to be the ski club advisor's daughter who'd twisted her knee severely. I called ski patrol and helped get her loaded into the sled.

The kids and I had a fantastic day of skiing. The snow was great, the views of the Tetons were spectacular, and we were able to go into the lodge and see Jennie and eat snacks whenever we wanted. I'm not sure how much fun Jennie had, but she actually acknowledged that a family ski pass might be pretty cool. We got home around 6:00 Saturday night, about 26 hours after leaving a day earlier. We were exhausted, but I think all the effort was well worth it.