Worth the time and money: 10 tips from 10 years of fun on the slopes with children
Skiing with small children, you’ll mainly play the role of pack mule, protective barrier and bodyguard. You invest time, money and nerves in the hope it’ll pay off at some point. Good news – it will! You’ll just need a few years of patience.
To be honest, I found beach vacations much more relaxing when with small children. But since my love of winter sports didn’t die when I become a parent, I and many other young families are still drawn to the mountains. This inevitably kicks off a costly test for both you and your equipment. Maybe you’ll recognise yourself somewhere here. In that case, feel free to add tips in the comments or simply avoid one or the other mistake I’ve made.
Phase 1: from skiing couple to Sherpa
In year one, your child is still far too small to try anything between the mountain station and the après-ski hut. They can shiver from the cold, cry and melt your heart with a chuckle out there, but getting anything started in the snow will be tricky. Sure, you’ll still go to the ski resort. But instead of getting ready to set off in the morning, you prepare for any eventuality. You pack spare clothes, diapers and food in a backpack, forming a good counterweight to the baby carrier in front of your chest.
In the end, you look like a Sherpa and are as far removed from your former piste self as the Matterhorn is from Mount Everest. Let’s just hope you don’t get wedged in the gondola door lugging all that around. Forget about skiing together unless you can get a babysitter.
Bad investment: your lift pass. On average, you’ll manage two descents. Either share one pass or discover the hiking trails together instead.
Best investment: a baby carrier provides closeness, warmth and doesn’t get stuck in the snow like a bulky stroller.
Phase 2: an early start on the baby piste
A year later you’ll start renting baby skis, since your child should already be standing and walking a bit. So why not start skiing? However, your kid will still prefer being carried and will have little care for your plans to put them in clunky boots and strap boards to their feet.
It’s a good thing you’re wearing your helmet. It’ll muffle the screaming during those strenuous practice sessions, when your kid’s skis spend more time in the air than on the actual snow. You use the last of your energy for the obligatory photo, which you can always conjure up years later as proof of the early start to your child’s skiing career. Luckily, no one can see the full diaper and teary eyes under all the skiing equipment.
Bad investment: kid skis. Kid ski boots. And your lift pass, again.
Best investment: this sled backrest and a matching sled bag.
Phase 3: tobogganing is nice too
All of a sudden, your kid is three years old. You tell the youngsters that skiing will definitely be great fun this year. You’ve replaced those plastic slats with «real» skis and you’re vindicated – for about ten minutes. They’re skiing, all by themselves! Smartphone out, film it all.
In the end, you’re left with that one video in which your pride and joy, beaming with happiness and mittens on their knees, slides towards the camera before smashing into your abdomen and the recording ends abruptly. Of course, you deleted the fifteen other shots, the ones with tantrums and skis flying every which way. You spend the rest of your vacation week blissfully sledding.
Source: Michael Restin
You sled happy in the knowledge that your kid will be ready for the piste next year. You shall conquer it once again, together. At least, between 9 and 11:30 a.m. Unless you have a second child by then, of course. In that case, it’s «Welcome back to phase 1».
Bad investment: those new kid skis. Those new kid ski boots. And your lift pass, again.
A better choice: a suitable sled or bobsleigh on which you and your kid can have fun together.
Also, check out everything fellow editor Katja Fischer has written up.
Phase 4: going under in kiddie land
As an experienced winter sports family, you draw up a plan of who’ll look after whom as well as when and where they can ski. You make a few descents again. But as wonderful as the newfound freedom is, you can’t let go completely. How will the youngsters do on their ski course? Just a quick look.
It’s already midday, the snow is slowly getting slushy and you’re bogged down in the kiddie area. A few extra shifts in the afternoon can’t hurt, after all the race is on Friday. Your child definitely would’ve won too if it hadn’t been for that one bigger and heavier kid with the long skis.
Source: Michael Restin
Bad investment: your new ski gloves, which constantly slip off the rope in Kinderland.
A better choice: a pair of work gloves that allow you to easily grab the lift rope.
Phase 5: into the wild
Ski courses are things of the past. Now there’s nothing holding you back, it’s finally time to hit the slopes together! If you don’t have to stay close to the rest of your family, choose a nice small area with wide slopes and avoid the crowds. Otherwise things will get uncomfortable and you’ll quickly learn that the turnstile on the lift at children’s head height has the same effect as three rotating baseball bats. Your child is still too small to get anywhere near the sensor for the ski pass in their jacket, so you’ll have to risk a cramp and lift them every time.
But before the first slipped disc comes the first joint descent. As well as the realisation that you can’t be everywhere. Because apparently, your kid very much can. As you ski forward in a wide turn, they plough past you on the left or have long since run aground in a pile of snow. Come on now, time to run a few clean corners with them. Only until the next snow cannon, promise!
Bad investment: ski poles for children who don’t know what to do with them yet.
A better choice: a children’s ski helmet in a bright colour. This way you and everyone else knows where trouble’s a’ brewing.
Phase 6: a ski tow bar behind the knees
At last, things are going really well. Your child’s safe on the slopes and has discovered the right angle to ski. They plough through slow groups of skiers, which you have to avoid and appease with a quick «Sorry». The next generation bumps over other skis, misses turns and leads you onto slopes you actually wanted to avoid. They don’t seem to know fear, but you do.
You’re constantly worried about a serious crash, but the fun factor is greater than the stress in those precious glorious moments. To avoid the crowds, you discover the ski tow as an option and spend most of the next few hours crouching with the bar behind your knees. Right where it really hurts. The otherwise welcome lift break becomes an ordeal, which your child next to you can’t understand at all. Once more with gusto!
Bad investment: the footage from your new GoPro isn’t great, far too wide-angle and at best only relevant for insurance purposes.
A better choice: a second pair of children’s gloves, since the first one is guaranteed to be soaked by lunchtime. If you have several children, it’s best to choose a glove colour you can still give the younger one in two years’ time.
Phase 7: down the connection trail
Little by little, you’ll conquer the entire resort together. No path is too far, no slope too steep. At most it’ll be too flat. Those connection trails can really slow you down. Not because they delay the time until your next descent, mind you. Nope. It’s because someone (you) will have to pull your kid along. After all, nothing frustrates children more than not being able to go any further despite crouching downhill while bigger skiers whizz past to the left and right.
And so you slow yourself down, look at the crest before with a pinch of sadness and stretch your pole backwards in obedience, trying to stay chipper in your new function as a drag lift. At times when you’d never even considered a break in the past, you suggest your first visit to a chalet. Followed by a hot chocolate.
Source: Michael Restin
Bad investment: your new racing skis.
A better choice: servicing the kid’s skis.
Phase 8: the parents start to slow down
While your children blossom, the ravages of time begin to gnaw away at you. Thanks to the contortions of recent years, your spine remembers every bump in the road with little jumps of joy and your cruciate ligaments are so worn out from the bar lifts and push-up duets that your knees rattle like two old drawers.
But your kid’s joy is contagious and you want to show them what you’re made of. Obviously, it’s less than you thought. You pay for five seconds of overconfidence with five days of pain. But otherwise the vacation is quite nice.
Bad investment: the Snowfeet that led to all this pain.
A better choice: a small warm-up in the morning – and regular training in the months leading up to all this.
Phase 9: there it is, the sweet spot!
Congratulations, you’re approaching the best place to be. Neither connection trails nor ice slopes can shake your children. Even the younger one has stopped slowing things down and wants to prove it to you and the whole world. When you’re fit again, nothing stands in the way of a perfect ski vacation, provided you take care of the right equipment early enough.
As fast as these children grow, it’s worth renting, trawling the huge section for used children’s clothes at Tutti and Ricardo or going for ski poles that grow with them and similar ski boots.
When everything’s been ordered, your anticipation increases. But wait, are the temperatures during your vacation week doing the same? At 15 degrees, you and half of Holland will jostle for position on the narrow, white tongue that winds its way down into the valley between green meadows.
Bad investment: the heated ski socks – at least this winter.
A better choice: packing the sunscreen you forget at home every other year.
Phase 10: skiing is out
The second everything runs smoothly, the children want to learn something new. Snowboard time. Surprisingly, a snowboard course grants you and your partner unimagined freedom – until it ends and the snowboarding brood is twice as cool, but only half as independent on the slopes as the year before.
So you go back to pulling, except that both kids are now heavier. You get tangled up together again in ski tows and wait at the edge of the slope until the last pile of snow has been jumped over. At least you can start using your GoPro now. But above all, you’ll need patience. Lots of patience.
Bad investment: the kid skis you bought in advance – you even have the next two sizes in the cellar.
A better choice: not only a back protector, but one for your tailbone too.
Current verdict: expensive fun – but fun nonetheless
All the things I just described are common occurrences and have happened in one way or another over the past ten years of my life as a parent. At best, they’re only slightly exaggerated. The average cost of 5,600 francs for a week of family skiing in Switzerland sounds exaggerated to me, but this figure is real. Things are only getting more and more expensive in Austria too. The dream of a midlife-crisis Porsche quickly shrinks into nothingness.
Those 56,000 francs for a family winter sports decade are well spent if you take things easy, remain flexible and focus on shared experiences. Every year I realise more and more that there isn’t that much time left before my kids go their own way. Until then, I’ll take as much as I can get. This may be expensive fun. But it’s still fun, in the end.
Header image: Michael Restin
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Michael Restin
Senior Editor
Michael.Restin@digitecgalaxus.chSimple writer, dad of two. Likes to be on the move, shimmies through everyday family life, juggles with several balls and occasionally drops something. A ball. Or a remark. Or both.
