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Strollerderby
25 Photos of a Little Girl Not Exactly Roughing it on an Old-Fashioned Ski Trip
I'm not saying she's destined for a gold medal. But do I really have to? I mean, you see it, right?
Ski areas across the United States are taking a beating this winter due to the lack of snow.
But let’s be honest: Unless you’re Shaun White (and you’re not, by the way), who cares? It’s not the snow that makes the trip. It’s the family.
I grew up skiing on no snow. My family used to vacation in Vermont every winter where we basically skied on ice. And yet my memories of those trips are among the ones from my childhood that I most cherish. Jiffy Pop cooking in the fireplace. Hot tubs in the dark with snow quietly disappearing into the steam. My mom telling me to stop crying, get up and ski down to the bottom — right now! — if I wanted to ever see the light of day ever again. Those were good times.
Earlier this month our family drove about 90 minutes east of where we live to spend a weekend in Beaver Creek, Colo. My 3-year-old daughter took her first ski lesson and could have cared less that there was barely an 18” base (or that it dumped 8” pretty much the entire time she was on the hill).
Her experience reminded me of my ski trips as a kid. Only Beaver Creek isn’t exactly roughing it, and at the same time, the experience was just about as old-fashioned as you can get in terms of warmth and family friendliness.
You don’t need scores of inches of fresh powder to make good memories. You just need the people you love the most (although crayons, a magic carpet ride, snow angels and chocolate chip cookies don’t hurt). It’s what mattered most to me as a kid, and what I think my kid could actually articulate meant most to her when we were in Beaver Creek.
These are the images of her memorable weekend, although I swear they could have been ripped from my mom’s photo albums of our trips when I was little:
When I was a kid, the first night of a ski weekend was always the best: You arrive in the dark but the stars that forever seem to shine brighter in a ski town help add to the giddiness of anticipation. Some things never change, as arriving at The Charter in Beaver Creek proved to be true.
All images: Meredith Carroll
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Joslyn Gray 
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Meredith Carroll 
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