Skiing with your family: A survival guide
A survival guide to skiing with your family
Skiing is a great sport for skiing together as a family. In fact, it's one of the very few where you can have three generations of the same family all participating at the same time!
Sometimes though, things can get a bit fraught, with kids wanting to do different stuff from the adults, people skiing at different speeds and general faffing that comes from a group of 4 or more trying to make a collective decision.
Our instructors have come up with some top tips in addition to those here to make your day as smooth as possible.
DON’t TEACH YOUR KIDS
Dave the boss of the ski school says, ''Whatever you do, avoid the temptation to teach your children how to ski. Generally, they won't listen and you'll get frustrated. If they can already ski a little bit, they'll get much more value out of just going skiing with you, jumping off stuff and exploring the mountain.''
HAve a meeting point
''When skiing with people who ski at different speeds, consider arranging set meeting points at certain times or certain lifts so that everyone can ski at their own pace and choose their own route,'' advises Max, the technical director at SnowPros. ''The one we see most often is that Mum always gets left behind and kids are frustrated waiting. If everyone knows where the next meeting point is, then everyone can get there in their own sweet time and use the slopes that they want. It's a much fairer way. ''
Talk about what you enjouy
Understanding is an important thing and the frustrations of the slowest skier in the group are often unheard. ''If your skiing experience is that the group is ready to go for the next slope when you've just arrived out of breath and already feeling under pressure, then you need to have a conversation with the rest of your family,'' says Patrick. ''Children are often so caught up in their own world that they often don't stop to consider what might be going on in other people's. A short conversation to explain that you might be more fearful, you just don't like going in the moguls and you don't like black runs might be all it takes to create some understanding between you. Don't keep it bottled up inside.''
Split up to stay together
Jim says, "I'm not sure how many people know this but often families split up the morning to make it more manageable. We know plenty of families that will split a three hour ski lesson between their two children so that they get 1.5/1.5hrs and whilst the kids are in lessons, they'll alternate skiing with the other child or just skiing for themselves at their own pace or having a hot chocolate. That means everyone is doing something and then they all come back together for a lunch on the terrace or a picnic on the slopes."
There can be some pressure on families to make the most of the weekend, especially with one or both parents working hard all week.
" I've learnt a lot recently through skiing with my daughter, that the key to a good ski day is to take a deep breath, look at the scenery and try not to feel that pressure to have a perfect day. Let a little chaos unfold and roll with it," says Dave. "Enjoy your children for what they are and appreciate the fact that you're out together in nature doing this sport together that we all love. When you take the pressure off, the magic starts to happen."