Ski dad

Sugar, speed, and self-discovery.

Lately, skiing with my sons is my favorite thing to do in the mountains. It used to be riding powder, but that’s been in short supply due to warming winters and my inflexible schedule. Going through the whole process of teaching them to ski has taught me a lot about being a dad.

I’m a better parent when I’m outside. I’m my most patient, present self. Skiing brings me to that headspace and helps me see the bigger picture: you can’t teach someone to ski any more than you can teach them to be themselves.

“We become builders by building.” - Aristotle

I knew intuitively that the journey of learning to ski would look a lot like learning anything big in life: competence, and later mastery, comes from doing the thing – and wanting to do the thing – over and over, with skill and joy. First, though, you need to become the person that wants to.

What does this look like for kids learning to ski? For us, there have been three phases. First, a candy-fueled, hot-chocolate-soaked introduction to the joys of sliding on snow. Second, an environment that enables learning and progression through play. And lastly, and this is the phase that forms the biggest chunk of my own learning to ski, self-discovery and unselfconscious expression.

The first phase, I decided, as many parents do, is all about getting him hooked on the idea of skiing. That means lots of snacks, candy, and hot cocoa. It also means zero pressure. If he’s uncomfortable – cold, tired, bored, whatever – we go in for a break. Skiing can be uncomfortable. That’s a lesson he’ll learn on his own. Besides plenty of sugar, the main thing that I knew would get Henry hooked was the exhilaration of speed. Speed may be the only thing more potent than sugar to fire the neurons of a certain type of young brain.

I had seen the look on his face after mustering up the courage to drop in on a big slide at a new playground. The fear melted away to relief, which cleared the space for surprise and, finally, wide-eyed, wild joy. His tiny frame, surging with adrenaline, scooted off the end of the slide and sprinted back to the ladder while yelling, “AGAIN!” I knew the feeling.

We didn’t ski much on our first trip to the mountain. Henry was two. We drove an hour and a half to Summit Ski Area at the base of Mount Hood, just east of Government Camp. Summit has a single chair, a magic carpet, and a small tubing area. The parking lot is a truck stop. Kids ski for free and adults, at the time, paid $40. We didn’t buy any tickets that day.

We spent the day getting used to the idea of skiing. Sitting in the snow on the edge of the slope, eating snacks, watching other skiers slide around. We took a break for hot cocoa before we even attempted to get on our skis. We found a little slope where he could glide for a few feet and come to a stop. That’s it. That’s all we did that day.

I don’t mean to create a how-to guide for teaching your kid, but if you have a very young child who is just learning to slide on snow, I will give you some unsolicited advice: don’t try to teach your kid to stop before you teach your kid to ski. For tiny kids, straightlining is the answer.

I’ve seen so many parent-kid teams at the bunny hill get bogged down with trying to figure out how to snowplow, how to turn, how to stop. If we’re dealing with a two, three, or four-year-old, pulling off a snowplow your first few times skiing is going to be tough. I know it’s possible and that there are loads of kids on Instagram linking turns with pacifiers in their mouths, but from what I’ve seen, the easiest path is to let them point it. All rocks roll down the hill. Let the skis run.

“This happens when psychic energy—or attention—is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunities for action.” - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (His book, Flow, is a must-read for anyone interested in the mind-body connection, as most skiers are.

What you want is to find a small slope that flattens out so the kid can glide and come to a natural stop. Work your way up higher and higher as they crave more and more speed. Let them feel the glide and get hooked on it.

That first season, we migrated over to Ski Bowl for a bigger bunny hill. The bunny hill at Ski Bowl terminates into dense trees protected by plastic fencing. A straightlining child would no doubt get tangled in the barrier, and, with the right amount of speed and pop, go careening over a fence into the wooded river below. I directed Henry to angle his path to the left at the bottom of the bunny hill where the slope flattened out and he could easily come to a stop. These Ski Bowl sessions are still vivid in my memory: three-year-old Henry, sending it from the top of the bunny slope, learning to weave around other skiers, and riding it out past the bottom of the carpet.

Eventually, that season, he was able to ski from the top of the carpet, crank a few wide arcs, and ski right to the bottom of the carpet. His most successful versions of this line had him carry his momentum right onto the carpet without me having to push, pull, or carry him.

I learned to say very little. Not without trying. There were many things that I wanted to say, but I learned to address technique sparingly, to focus on big body movements: where to put your hands (forward, like steering a car), what an athletic stance is (I’m coming to push you over, bend your knees and brace yourself), and how to stand back up on your own (sit on your tails, hug your knees). That will get you very far, as far as you’ll need for phase one. Good technique feels good. Get the big mechanics set and let them feel it come together.

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Interlude: what not to say as a Dad teaching your son to ski. Standing in the lift line at Summit Ski Area, I heard an overzealous Dad give the best example of what not to say to a child learning to ski. They skied to a stop behind us in the lift line. The son was older than Henry at the time, maybe five or six. I didn’t see him come down but you could tell he was getting the hang of it, probably starting to connect turns but relying on the snowplow for comfort and slowing down.

The Dad was breathless and unusually loud, like someone who, having to run to make their bus, catches it while still talking on the phone, their voice cutting through all other noise.

He bellowed, “Bud, great job. You are really getting it. But what I want you to focus on is really trying to turn the ski, right now you’re letting the ski turn you.”

I thought of Yoda in the swamp urging Luke to lift his X-Wing out of the muck with his cryptic riddles. The path toward ski mastery is long and winding, but I think most teachers would do right by their young students by saying less.

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The second phase in Henry’s journey to learning to ski was his entering an environment for learning. He got the basics down just by following me; he was turning parallel and, mostly, hockey stopping. I knew that the next phase would require more targeted and considered coaching. I dabbled on my own, reading some articles online and browsing youtube. There’s plenty of great information out there and I’m sure that we could have made a good effort at it ourselves, but I knew that getting Henry into a group of similarly motivated peers would accelerate his learning. We joined the excellent Meadows Race Team, me as a coach and him as a skier in the development program.

Within the structure of the MRT development program, Henry was exposed to drills and gates. This isn’t the path for all kids or families. Skiers don’t need to learn to race or learn to ski on one ski to eventually become expert skiers, but it certainly helps. I saw firsthand the acceleration of learning and accumulation of skills fostered by this environment.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical of the idea of drilling a seven-year-old, but I was quickly won over. The mechanics behind great skiing techniques are subtle, hard to articulate, and even harder for a student to interpret. An effective drill eliminates the interpretation by creating a physical movement, like lifting your uphill ski, and adding simple verbal cues, like “lift your uphill ski with the tip pointed down.” Balancing their uphill ski, tip angled slightly down, the student bends their knees, slams their weight into the front of their boot, braces their core in a powerful athletic position, and brings their arms forward. All of these movements are achieving the simple goal of maintaining balance on one ski, but they also unlock a chain of other movements that build the foundation for general skiing technique.

Good coaching looks less like lecturing and more like structured play. This is a recreational activity, after all. To achieve any kind of mastery, it should be fun.

The ability to have fun while working hard is one of the greatest competitive advantages there is. Joy and struggle can coexist, and in the best performers, they almost always do. Brad Stulberg from “The Way of Excellence” (Great book and he’s on Substack.)

The third and latest phase of Henry’s learning to ski is the freedom to ski on his own, to explore the mountain, and to find the features and types of runs that he likes. I just got a glimpse of this last season, but this is where we are headed.

He is eight and everything is coming together. He’s devouring books, developing a taste for spy novels and mysteries. The world is now something to experience through his own senses, with his own mind, without interpretation from Mom or Dad. He’s becoming himself.

I hope the mountain will be the same for him. Through play, experimentation, and guts, he will find his own lines, his favorite way to arc a turn on his favorite run, the sneaky wind lip that no one else sees that sends him sailing. Me, watching, thinking that I’d like to try that too.