Climate Changed

Another February school break in North Conway. A ridiculously warm one.  We left on Sunday afternoon after Phoebe’s soccer game and made very good time, hitting the McDonalds in Rochester NH and getting to the rental well before bedtime. It was a relatively new condo filled with sports memorabilia and had a nice basement man cave with a big TV and a foosball table. Cristin started immediately talking smack about her foosball prowess, talking about winning some Grad College competition at Princeton. There are several important factors to consider. The first is that this was two decades ago. The second is that there is possibly no place on earth with lesser aggregate athleticism than the grad college in Princeton. We caught a bit of the winter Olympics with the girls but the NBC coverage has become nearly unwatchable. An hour of primetime includes 25 minutes of Ford commercials, 10 minutes of commentary by sportscaster who know nearly nothing about the sports they are discussing, 10 minutes of backstories, and 10 minutes of filming certain athletes waiting for other athletes to finish and the remaining 5 minutes showing actual competition. We turned on the Lindsay Vonn downhill and were pleased with her medal, mostly because she had enraged the Trump fans to the point that whatever fraction of America they actually represent were routing hard against her.

We woke up Monday and headed to Wildcat which was a bit icy on the upper slopes but was fine in the lower areas where the girls stayed in their lessons. Wildcat is at high elevation and is in the white mountains national park so it remains fairly pristine. After lessons I skied with the girls for the afternoon and the concerns I had about Ellie in our morning run had disappeared. She has a bit less skill than Phoebe, but much less fear and she quickly put distance on Phoebe to the point where I was having trouble managing them. Tuesday it rained so we went to the Mount Washington Weather Observatory Museum which was interesting. They had a cool topographic model of the presidential range and lots of exhibits on the history of weather recording at the summit. We caught lunch and headed to the Kahuna Laguna. The cutoff to ride the slides alone is 48″ and they are fairly strict about this and we knew Ellie was close but just shy of hitting this number. Luckily the attendant cut her a break and we found this altered the parental experience of Kahuna substantially. I went down the slides with them a few times and then relaxed as Ellie and Phoebe proceeded to make countless trips, screaming the whole way down. Wednesday met up with Cora’s mom and grandfather Malcolm and Aunt at Attitash. Cora is an excellent skier and it was good for the girls to see her go.

We caught lunch and the girls headed to lessons and I got to go out and ski with Malcolm. He was skiing with his arm in a cast and had to forgo poles but this did not seem to slow him down. I was going as fast as I could and he was still having to constantly wait for me to catch up. We grabbed the girls after their lessons and by this point it was a ridiculous 70 degrees on the hill so I was stripped down as much as possible. I took the girls up a few times to see if they had made progress and Malcolm took his crew home to start dinner. We arrived at their place which is high up on a hill in Jackson overlooking Mount Washington and the valley below. It is a spectacular location. We had a great dinner and enjoyed listening to Malcolm who has spent so much time there as a kid and with his own kids and now with his granddaughter.

Thursday we woke up and went straight to King Pine which remains the girls’ favorite mountain. It is a tiny place, only 350′ vertical but the snow was the best of the three mountains we visited, the lines are the shortest, the tickets are the cheapest, and the atmosphere is extremely relaxed. I took the girls down some steep sections to show them they could do it but they became obsessed with this meandering beginner trail called Pokey Pine and I would estimate we went down this trail at least a dozen times, probably more (see second video below). The girls rode the lift together and literally giggled and laughed the entire day. It is great to see them getting along and having such a good time together. Cristin had planned on leaving early but we ended up closing the place down. We headed out and made a repeat visit to Revolution in Rochester, a great little restaurant and after that a quick trip home. A little bit of my heart is held out for Stowe, VT because of all the childhood memories and the freedom you feel as a 12 year old let loose on a mountain, but there really is something special about North Conway.