From Loveland to Mammoth, with a Little Beaver Creek and Aspen Thrown In
There comes a time in life when you have to ask yourself an important question: Are we going to spend another winter talking about skiing, or are we actually going to get out there and do it?
For Jan Baby and me, the answer is pretty obvious.
LET’S GO SKIING!
After a few years away from the slopes, we’re ready to dust off the ski gear, reacquaint ourselves with gravity, and head for the mountains. And if we’re going to do this properly, we’re going to need a ski cabin, several days of mountain adventures, a couple of pairs of skis, and a healthy appreciation for the fact that we’re not getting any younger.
But then, who says you have to grow up just because you’re getting older?
Loveland Ski Area: Colorado Skiing Without the Fuss
Living in Loveland, Colorado, puts us within easy reach of one of the state’s great skiing destinations: Loveland Ski Area.
Located high in the Continental Divide just west of the Eisenhower Tunnel on Interstate 70, Loveland is a Colorado institution. It’s famous for its high elevation, abundant natural snowfall, spectacular mountain scenery, and a refreshing lack of pretension.
You won’t find a sprawling luxury shopping village or a parade of designer boutiques here. Loveland is about the skiing, pure and simple.
The mountain has two distinct areas. Loveland Valley is a terrific place for beginners to find their ski legs, with gentler slopes and a comfortable learning environment. Loveland Basin offers a much bigger playground, with long groomed runs, challenging steeps, wide-open bowls, and enough variety to keep experienced skiers entertained.
And because Loveland sits so high in the Rockies, it often opens earlier in the season than many other Colorado resorts. When the snow starts flying, Loveland is frequently one of the first places where you can get out and enjoy it.
It’s the kind of mountain where you can spend the day working on your turns, chasing fresh powder, or simply enjoying the fact that you’re outside on a beautiful Colorado day instead of sitting in front of a television.
Naturally, we decided it was the perfect time to pay a visit and get Alisha up and skiing.
A Previous Little Family Ski Day
Jan Baby and I took Zac and his girlfriend, Alisha, to Loveland for a day on the mountain.
Now, I have a tendency to take charge when an opportunity presents itself. Some people might call it enthusiasm. Others might call it an inability to mind their own business.
Either way, when the opportunity arose to teach Alisha how to ski, I stepped right up.
After all, Jan Baby and I weren’t exactly beginners ourselves. We’d both been certified professional ski instructors, teaching at June Mountain in California. We had spent plenty of time helping people learn the fundamentals of skiing, from those first tentative steps on slippery boards to the moment when everything finally clicks.
So I figured I was reasonably qualified to take Alisha under my wing.
How hard could it be?
As it turned out, I had a pretty good student on my hands.
But first, a little history about how Jan Baby and Flash acquired their skiing credentials.
June Mountain: Where We Learned to Teach
June Mountain, located near June Lake in California’s Eastern Sierra Nevada, is one of those places that makes you fall in love with the mountains.
Surrounded by spectacular scenery, June Mountain offers a relaxed, uncrowded skiing experience that feels a world away from the hustle and bustle of some of the larger resorts.
Its wide-open slopes, varied terrain, and laid-back atmosphere make it a wonderful destination for families, recreational skiers, and anyone who appreciates a little breathing room on the mountain.
June Mountain also has something special going for it: a more intimate feel. You’re there to ski, enjoy the scenery, and spend time on the slopes without feeling as though you’re navigating a giant amusement park.
It was here that Jan Baby and I developed our abilities as professional ski instructors.
Teaching skiing requires more than simply being able to point your skis downhill and make it to the bottom in one piece. You have to understand balance, body position, turning mechanics, speed control, and the psychology of teaching someone who may be wondering why anyone would voluntarily slide down a mountain on two narrow planks. Of course, Jan ignored all that, hooked up with the pro skiers and tagged along to greatness.
You learn patience. You learn how to break complicated movements into manageable steps. And you learn that every student progresses at a different pace.
Those experiences helped us become better skiers and better instructors.
Eventually, we decided to take our skills to the next level.
That meant Mammoth Mountain.
Mammoth Mountain: A Whole Different Ballgame
Located near Mammoth Lakes, California, Mammoth Mountain is a major ski destination with an entirely different personality from June Mountain.
Where June is intimate and relaxed, Mammoth is big, bold, and expansive.
Mammoth boasts a high summit, substantial vertical terrain, a large lift system, and an enormous variety of runs. From beginner slopes to long cruisers, steep chutes, and challenging alpine terrain, it offers something for practically every level of skier.
Its elevation and generally generous snowfall have made it one of California’s premier ski destinations.
And with a mountain that size comes a more competitive environment for ski instructors.
Jan Baby rose to the occasion.
Out of approximately 150 skiers who tried out for instructor positions at Mammoth, Jan was one of only five selected.
Five out of 150!
That’s an impressive accomplishment by any measure. It speaks to her skiing ability, her technique, and the skills she brought to the mountain.
I was pretty proud of her. Of course, I also knew better than to let her forget it.
After all, it’s not every day that you get to tell people your wife made the cut at Mammoth when nearly everyone else went home without a job.
But Jan wasn’t the only one in our family with some serious skiing experience.
Meet the Skiers: Zac, Max, Jan Baby, and Flash
Zac and the University of Colorado
Let’s start with Zac.
Zac attended the University of Colorado Boulder, a major public research university nestled against the spectacular Rocky Mountain foothills. CU Boulder is known for its engineering programs, research, beautiful campus, and enviable access to Colorado’s outdoor playground.
It’s also a place where skiing can become a rather persuasive alternative to studying.
Zac was pursuing engineering, which presumably required a fair amount of time with books, equations, and other things that don’t involve sliding downhill.
However, I sometimes wonder whether he spent a little too much time enjoying the nearby ski resorts and not quite enough time contemplating the finer points of engineering.
I’m not saying skiing interfered with his studies.
I’m just saying that when you attend college in Boulder, the mountains are practically waving at you from the classroom window.
And when fresh powder is calling, even the most dedicated engineering student can experience a temporary lapse in academic discipline.
Max: A Natural on Skis, but Not Quite Hooked
Then there’s Max. At a very young age, Max seemed to master just about every aspect of skiing, developing the skills and confidence that would make many skiers envious. He had the ability, the technique, and the opportunity to become a lifelong mountain enthusiast. But for whatever reason, the skiing bug never quite bit him. While the rest of us were dreaming about powder days and planning our next trips to the mountains, Max was perfectly content to pursue other interests. But there’s still hope! We’re keeping our fingers crossed that this might be the year Max decides to reinvest in his skiing and join the family for a day or two on the slopes. After all, with his early start and natural ability, he might just surprise himself—and the rest of us. And if nothing else, a little family competition on the mountain could be just the motivation he needs to rediscover the fun of skiing!
Jan Baby: One of the Five
Then there’s Jan Baby.
As we’ve established, she was one of just five instructors selected from 150 candidates at Mammoth Mountain. She’s an accomplished skier with a solid technical foundation and years of experience on the slopes.
Although she’s taken a few years off from skiing, I have no doubt that her skills will come back quickly. Skiing is one of those activities that gets into your muscle memory. You might be a little rusty at first, but the fundamentals don’t simply disappear.
Flash: From Holiday Hill to Mammoth
And then there’s yours truly.
Flash began his skiing journey at Holiday Hill, where I first discovered the joys of sliding downhill on skis.
From there, I moved on to Kirkwood, near Lake Tahoe, California, before progressing to June Mountain and eventually Mammoth Mountain.
That’s a pretty respectable journey through some memorable ski country.
Along the way, I developed my technique, learned the art of teaching, and discovered that skiing is as much about control and balance as it is about speed.
Of course, being a ski instructor also gives you a certain degree of confidence when someone asks you to teach them how to ski.
Sometimes that confidence is justified.
Sometimes it leads you to take on a student who turns out to be better than you expected.
Which brings us back to Alisha.
Alisha: One of My Best Students Ever
When I took Alisha under my wing at Loveland, we started with the basics.
First, we worked on turning left.
Then we worked on turning right.
And, perhaps most importantly, we learned how to stop.
In skiing, stopping is generally considered a desirable skill. It ranks somewhere between knowing how to turn and avoiding trees.
The classic snowplow, or wedge, is one of the first techniques a beginner learns. By bringing the ski tips closer together and spreading the tails apart, a skier can control speed and eventually come to a stop.
It’s not the most elegant way to travel down a mountain, but it beats the alternatives.
Alisha picked up the fundamentals remarkably quickly.
She listened to instructions, concentrated on what she was doing, and made steady progress. She wasn’t afraid to try, and she was willing to make adjustments when something wasn’t working.
In fact, Alisha was among the best students I’ve ever taught.
I don’t hand out that compliment lightly.
Teaching beginners can be a challenging business. Sometimes you explain a movement five different ways, demonstrate it repeatedly, and still find your student heading downhill with the grace and direction of a shopping cart with a broken wheel.
Alisha was a different story.
She learned to turn both left and right, developed her snowplow stop, and gradually gained confidence as the day progressed.
By the end of our time on the mountain, she was beginning to make stem christie turns.
For those unfamiliar with the terminology, a stem christie is a progression toward parallel skiing. The skier begins a turn with a wedge, then brings the outside ski into a more parallel position as the turn develops.
It’s an important step toward smoother, more efficient skiing.
And Alisha was getting there.
I was beginning to feel pretty pleased with myself. After all, a former professional ski instructor likes to think he still has a little magic left in his teaching bag.
Then came the final run.
The Last Run: Never Trust a “Beginner” Sign
As the day wound down, we decided to make one more run.
It was supposedly a beginner run.
Supposedly.
By this point, Alisha had made tremendous progress, but learning to ski is physically demanding. Your legs get tired, your concentration starts to wander, and the turns that seemed perfectly manageable earlier in the day suddenly require more effort.
The last run turned out to be a bit rough.
Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly the triumphant, graceful conclusion I might have envisioned when I first volunteered to teach her.
But that’s skiing.
Even experienced skiers have bad runs. Sometimes the snow isn’t what you expected. Sometimes your legs are tired. Sometimes the mountain reminds you that it doesn’t particularly care about your plans.
And sometimes a beginner run turns out to be a little more interesting than advertised.
The important thing was that Alisha had made remarkable progress throughout the day. She’d learned the fundamentals, developed some control, and taken her first steps toward a more advanced skiing technique.
One rough run couldn’t take that away.
Besides, every skier needs a good story about the day things didn’t go quite according to plan.
I’m sure Alisha will have plenty of opportunities to remind me of this one.
Jan Baby Is Ready to Reinvest in Her Skiing
Our day at Loveland accomplished something else, too.
It got Jan Baby thinking seriously about returning to skiing.
For the last few years, skiing has taken a back seat to some other adventures.
Jan and I spent considerable time traveling around the country in our fifth-wheel travel trailer, exploring new places and enjoying the freedom of life on the road.
We visited new destinations, took in the scenery, and enjoyed the kind of travel that allows you to stay a little longer when you find a place you love.
More recently, we’ve been splitting our time between our beach house on North Topsail Island, North Carolina, and our home in Loveland, Colorado, affectionately known as The Ranchette.
It’s hard to complain about having those two places to call home.
On the island, we can enjoy the beach, ocean breezes, and the pleasures of coastal living. In Loveland, we’ve got our home, our projects, our friends, and the Rocky Mountains practically in our backyard.
But there’s one thing the beach and the Ranchette don’t quite provide.
Skiing.
And after spending a day at Loveland, Jan is ready to make up for lost time.
She doesn’t need to learn how to ski. She doesn’t need to start from scratch. She already has the skills, the experience, and the credentials to prove she belongs on the mountain.
She simply needs to get back out there.
I suspect that once she’s had a few days to shake off the rust, she’ll be skiing with the same confidence that earned her that coveted Mammoth instructor position all those years ago.
And knowing Jan Baby, she’ll probably be correcting my technique before the week is over.
I suppose that’s the price a husband pays when he’s married to a woman who can ski.
Christmas With the Kids
Before we get too carried away planning our mountain adventures, there’s another important event on the calendar.
Christmas!
We’re looking forward to spending the holiday with our kids: Zac and Alisha, who are now married, and Max.
Having everyone together is something we look forward to, especially as the years go by and everyone gets busy with the various demands of life.
Zac and Alisha have moved into the married-couple chapter of their story, and it’ll be fun to have them together for the holidays.
Then there’s Max, who’s currently unemployed and apparently determined to make the most of a carefree lifestyle while the opportunity presents itself.
Some people call it unemployment.
Others might call it an extended sabbatical from the responsibilities of conventional employment.
Whatever the terminology, I suspect Max is enjoying the freedom.
I’m not sure how long that particular lifestyle will remain sustainable, but in the meantime, we’ll enjoy having him around for Christmas.
After all, life isn’t just about careers, schedules, and financial planning. It’s also about family, making memories, and enjoying the time we have together.
And if the holiday season includes a little skiing, a little laughter, and a few days in the mountains, so much the better.
The Great Colorado Ski Cabin Hunt
Now we come to the part of the plan that has Jan Baby and me particularly excited.
We’re looking forward to finding the perfect mountain ski cabin.
Not just any cabin, mind you.
We’re talking about a place where we can settle in for several days and nights, enjoy the mountain atmosphere, get up in the morning, and head straight out for a day on the slopes.
A comfortable place to relax after skiing is important, too. We’re not necessarily looking for a sprawling luxury estate with a staff of twelve. We’d be perfectly happy with a cozy mountain retreat, a warm fireplace, a comfortable bed, and a convenient location.
Somewhere we can enjoy a little mountain solitude without being too far from the action.
Our plan is to explore the Beaver Creek and Aspen areas, both of which offer outstanding skiing and their own distinctive mountain personalities.
Beaver Creek: A Little Luxury in the Rockies
Beaver Creek is known for its beautifully maintained slopes, excellent grooming, impressive mountain scenery, and polished resort atmosphere.
It’s a wonderful destination for skiers who appreciate well-prepared runs, comfortable lift facilities, and a variety of terrain.
The resort has a reputation for making the entire skiing experience feel special, from its village setting to the quality of its on-mountain amenities.
Of course, all that refinement can come at a price, so finding the right cabin or accommodation will be part of the adventure.
We want to enjoy the mountain without feeling as though we need to sell a rental property to pay for the privilege.
A little research, some flexibility, and a willingness to stay just outside the most expensive areas might be the ticket.
Aspen: Four Mountains and a Whole Lot of Skiing
Then there’s Aspen.
Aspen is practically synonymous with skiing, and for good reason. The area offers four distinct mountains: Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk, and Snowmass.
Each has its own character.
Aspen Mountain is known for its challenging terrain and steep runs. Aspen Highlands attracts accomplished skiers with its demanding slopes and famous Highland Bowl. Buttermilk is particularly welcoming to beginners and intermediate skiers, while Snowmass offers an enormous variety of terrain for just about every ability level.
Together, they create one of the most varied skiing destinations in North America.
Aspen also has its famous town, with restaurants, shops, galleries, and a lively atmosphere that makes it an attractive place to spend time even when you’re not skiing.
But our primary mission is to get on the slopes.
We’re thinking several days of skiing, a comfortable cabin, a couple of pairs of skis, and enough time to enjoy the mountains without feeling rushed.
We’ll find our accommodations, load up the gear, and head out each morning to explore a different part of the mountain.
And when the day is done, we’ll return to our little mountain retreat, relax, and start planning the next day’s adventure.
At least, that’s the plan.
Knowing us, there may be a few detours along the way.
From the Mountains Back to the Island
Eventually, even the best ski trip has to come to an end.
We’ll pack up our equipment, load everything back into the vehicle, and begin the journey home.
But rather than heading back to the Ranchette for good, we’ll eventually make our way back to our beach house on North Topsail Island.
There’s something appealing about that contrast.
One day we’re skiing in the Colorado Rockies, surrounded by snow-covered peaks and crisp mountain air. Before long, we’re back on the North Carolina coast, walking along the beach and listening to the waves roll ashore.
Snow one week. Sand the next.
Not a bad way to spend retirement.
And that’s really what this next chapter is all about.
We’ve spent years traveling, exploring, working on our homes, enjoying family, and finding new ways to keep life interesting. Now it’s time to add a little more skiing back into the mix.
Jan Baby is ready to return to the sport she loves.
Flash is ready to dust off his ski-instructor credentials.
Zac and Alisha will hopefully join us for more adventures, and Max may eventually discover that a job and a ski pass aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
And who knows? Perhaps Alisha will be making beautiful stem christie turns by the next time we hit the slopes.
As for me, I’m looking forward to getting back into the mountains with Jan, finding that perfect cabin, and spending several days doing what we both enjoy.
We may not be the youngest skiers on the mountain anymore, but we’ve got experience, enthusiasm, and a healthy appreciation for a good day on the snow.
So, if you happen to see us cruising down a Colorado mountainside, give us a wave.
Just don’t expect us to stop for very long.
After all, we’ve got skiing to do.
Let’s go skiing!
— Flash