Skiing the Austrian Alps

Yes, it HAS been a while. I have no excuse except kids and deciding to do other things when I had time. Things other than blogging about the things we're doing. ANYWAY...we went to the Austrian Alps the first weekend of March with our dear friends, the Blokers, and had our first true European skiing experience. It was awesome! By the way, we found the best way to ski when you have small children is to bring your own childcare. Thankfully, we attend a church that believes in having lots of kids, and we got to borrow a couple for the weekend. Wesley and Lucinda are the second and third oldest of a family of nine, so they have plenty of experience. :) And, they were willing to trade a day or two of baby-sitting for lift tickets on their day off. Worked flawlessly. The three youngest kids stayed with them, next two oldest went to ski school and Ian (9) came with us. Perfect! Mel and I had planned out meals so well we didn't have to cook. Cereal in the morning with hard boiled eggs we brought along. Sack lunches on the slopes. Pasta, or lasagna, or chili that we brought with us and had made at home. We had a lot of fun in the evenings playing telephone pictionary. It's a blast!

Our first day we were afraid there wouldn't be much snow, as most of the peaks around us were pretty green/brown, almost no white anywhere, or at least VERY patchy. However, we got some info on the best ski conditions in the area and headed to the Steineplatte. You ride a gondola up to the top and then take lifts up to the peak. It's a lot different than skiing in Colorado, because the peaks aren't as high. The runs are shorter, but a lot of them are pretty steep still. That first day was nice to begin with, but the sun was shining brightly and it got slushy quickly. Skiing in slush is NO FUN. But, at least we had snow. I hung back with Ian, as this was still only my 4th time skiing, and Nick and the boys wanted to go exploring. It was good to have a nice sunny day, though, since winter time here is quite grey.

The second day was quite cloudy, and it had snowed a couple inches overnight so there was a little fresh powder, which was very nice. We took two shifts, one early so the boys could go have some fun while we girls took the later shift to bring the kids to ski school. The skiing was quite a bit better this day, but it got icy pretty quickly from the slush freezing. It was more fun, though, just because both Ian and I had gotten much more comfortable in our skis and we could all stay together as a group and enjoy it, instead of stopping and waiting. It was a lot of fun to go together, and we all went off into some trees together a few times. Ian and I hung out the rest of the afternoon while Mel and Ben went to go pick up the girls. We had a great time while Nick and Wesley paved new paths through trees and off boulders.

Since we had so much fun the second day, and we had driven 7 hours to go skiing, Nick and Ben decided to see if we could ski at least a half day the next day (our day of departure). Our 1/2 day ended up turning into pretty much a full day (8:30-2), because it had snowed about 2 feet overnight and we couldn't stop! It was SO CRAZY. The conditions when we got up there were nearly white out. I was so thankful we had been there for 2 days already so we knew where to go. The powder was up to our knees because they hadn't finished grooming the slopes at all. It was so much fun! If you fall, it doesn't hurt at ALL. I kept getting dizzy because I couldn't tell that I was moving unless I could see something that was stationary. We were pretty much up in a cloud of snow. Later on in the day it cleared up a bit more, and Mel and I went over on the other side of the peak where it was less windy and it was way better. We had fun making our own paths a little out of bounds down a particular run (under a lift) and she got picked up by one of the guys on the lift! Ha! We had an absolute blast. Riding the last lift up to the gondola was hard, knowing we had to go get in the car for 7 hours. It was such a blast! Check out our flickr site for tons of photos!
Here's Stella with Grace and Katie, and Melody reading them a bedtime story. Stella had a blast having sleep-overs with the girls. Next year, she'll be in ski school, too!