Healthy life: Take That Tahoe

miércoles, 31 de octubre de 2012

Take That Tahoe

President's day weekend honors our great leaders of the past, but for parents, it's also synonymous for ski week. That's right, here in the San Francisco Bay Area the schools actually give anywhere from a couple of days to a week off for families to go skiing, sledding or frolicking in the snow. We may be unable to compete with other industrial nations on test scores, but there's no way we'll let any other country have more fun.

My last post on skiing with kids threw out the possibility of hitting a little known resort in Tahoe Donner. After spending the weekend there, I can say it's gotta be one of the best place to learn to ski with children:

The lifts go right by the children's learning area so you can see how your children are progressing. This is much better than getting a phone call while you're at the top of base camp (i.e. Squaw Valley) and taking 30-45 minutes to get back down.
They actually have transferable passes so one parent can ski in the morning and then hand over the pass to the other in the afternoon if you have a baby that needs tending.
The runs are wider than a fisheye lens so there's plenty of space to fall.
The prices are about 30-50% less than Squaw for most things and as we all know, kids already eat us out of house and home.

There are also fewer expert runs which is a good thing if your son, who can barely get off the lift, wants to ski off cliffs or dodge between trees, when he's clearly still learning. Fortunately, I had enough fear for the both of us.

The other beautiful thing about Tahoe Donner is the Snow Play area at the community recreation center. They had these long, well groomed tubing and sled runs. Super fun - Zoe and I got to spin in a tube together.

Baby Photography Notes - All photographs taken with a Canon G9 point and shoot. I'll stand by my previous comment that if you're learning to ski (i.e. falling all over the place), the last thing you want to be doing is shlepping thousands of dollars of gear with you. If you use the exposure compensation to get snow that looks more white than grey, then note the image on the back of your camera is typically a JPG file (or equivalent) even if you're recording RAW. For the techy types, that means the camera applies its own contrast curve and will show your highlights being clipped when in fact, the RAW file is fine. For everyone else, you can just pretend I took one too many snowballs to the head.

Finally, my posts are somewhat erratic in schedule because, well, child rearing is also erratic. Thanks for your patience.

The Christmas Miracle Goggles - A list of children ski tips and of course some winter photography tips.