Child Care

At some point in life, each person makes decision to begin a family or not. This decision can be an active or passive decision depending upon the person and situation. The decision to start a family often changes the spending of money from a purely "me" to an "us" centric view. Enjoying skiing or snowboard is no different. Justin Blackburn as SkiBlog does a good job of describing the costs of skiing with a family these days, so I won't rehash that. One area that he skips is day care for those children not old enough to ski/snowboard.

Resorts have long since realized a need for daycare and have setup services to help accommodate these clients. Ranging from day long kids ski/snowboard programs, to actual day care services the most resorts are ready to meet your any needs. It's not cheap to put your child in day care, but then again neither is skiing/snowboarding these days. But it's certainly better than the alternative...

I post this now having seen what I current consider the largest disrespect for life on the mountain. During my Christmas day off and riding at another mountain, I ran into an older couple who were out enjoying the fresh powder day. There wasn't much new, about 4" worth, but it was very light and crisp, enough to make a joyous day of riding and more was coming. While waiting for the chair the woman had fallen over and was unable to get up herself. Two lifties were required to help her regain her upright posture. I thought nothing of the two until a friend said "Do they have a baby or a dog strapped to their chest?" Taking a second look, the husband/father had a baby carrier attached to him, stuffed inside were numerous blankets that moved. They headed up the lift and we followed three chairs behind.

Once at the top, we tried to get a closer look of what was going on. The couple took off down the run in front of them before we could tell what was going on, with my friend and I in disbelief following them from behind. We watched as they headed towards the black diamond runs and briefly stopped to adjust the bundle on his chest. It was indeed a baby. With the conditions worsening, snowing with flat light and more crowds then early on, this just seemed like a recipe for disaster to my friend and I.

We headed off in front of them to find a Ski Patroller to give a bit of a heads up. The patrol group we found were more shocked than we were to hear this, one of them completely in disbelief that this was evening happen (saying something like "I've been here all day and not seen them"). We took this particular patrol member for a little hike back uphill to wait and see. Sure enough the family came past as we were hiking up.

End of the story? I don't know. I didn't stick around to see what would or would no happen. The rest of my day I could only imagine what would happen if husband/father were to crash. Please, use a day care service. If you can't afford them, it's best to re-think your day of riding. For everyone involved really.