Coconut Tower

It's been about six weeks since I last skied with LT and I knew he's learned a lot in the three lessons he's had since then but I was still really surprised and impressed at how much he's improved.

I was so taken aback as a proud father that I had to break out my phone and try and capture some of it on video. Here he is skiing under the Kokomo lift which, for reasons I don't quite understand, he calls "Coconut Tower." The terrain under Kokomo is as beginner as it gets but this was still leaps and bounds ahead of what he was doing just a few weeks ago.

We went with some friends who have a boy a little younger than LT and two older girls.  LT was really excited to do Kokomo again until he found out that the girls were going to go on a bigger lift. He shyly told me he wanted to follow the girls. He'd been telling me the whole previous run that he wanted to go faster so I figured what the heck, why not take him on something more challenging.

We got to the top of Union Creek quad and LT and Elise (the middle girl) decided to ski down on the greens with me while her older sister and dad went to do some bumps on the blues. This was definitely more challenging than Kokomo and maybe LT wasn't quite ready for it.  But despite a few crashes and a little help down the steeper sections, he did great.   

One big run was enough and they decided they wanted to do some runs on the magic carpet.  

I took off my skis and just watched while LT and Elise did laps together on the carpet. She's a little better than he is but they are close enough in skill level to be pretty good ski buddies. Here you see Elise diligently ski around the cones while LT just cruses down the middle.  

LT did one more run than Elise and she hiked half way up the hill in her ski boots and told me it was so she could help LT get up just in case he fell over.

I thought he'd be exhausted when we got back to Baba's house. And he probably was but that didn't keep him from going sledding outside for over an hour (maybe 'cause the older girls were doing it). Regardless, I guess LT is just a snow-sports kid at heart.