Last year I waited and waited but snow never came to Lake Mountain... It was not a great snow season in Victoria. This year I watched the snow forecast and we jumped at the first convenient chance to take them to Lake Mountain. We went on a long day trip on Sunday 20 July and had brilliant snow, quite possibly the best of the season at Lake Mountain. We left home around 6am, and after the 1.5-2 hour drive we were some of the first people in the car park at Lake Mountain Resort which gave us a full day to play. My hubby and girls signed up for a x-country skiing lesson whilst I elected to snow shoe since my knee injury was still causing problems. I did a bit of snow running trying to find out where they were as they left on their ski lesson whilst I went back to the car to get my snow shoes on. I warmed up pretty quickly!
I'll tell the rest of the story with photos and share some of the lessons I learnt at the end.
We decided to end on a positive note so we headed back down and the girls went tobogganing on the very crowded tobogganing slope.
Lessons learnt:
- start them young - I think it would have been easier if they were younger, especially as we saw toddlers flying by
be a better role model by knowing how to ski yourself - that applies to me, hubby can downhill ski
be responsive to kids reactions and keep it fun - we did that, but there were a few moments where I thought they would never come to the snow again
never let them get hungry - snacks galore, their favourites!
have a reward for achieving a goal - in our case, the 3 course hot lunch
one day of snow and ski lessons is probably not enough to 'get it' - next year we'll try for a week at the snow so they can have lessons every morning
I haven't been to Marysville and Lake Mountain since the Black Saturday fires so we were really pleased to see people out and about as we drove through Marysville. The bare tree trunks in the snow, with some leaf regrowth, was a stark reminder of how intense the bush fires were 5 years ago. Our thoughts are with the people of Marysville as they continue to rebuild.