“Wow! Ski boots are really comfortable.”
~ No One Ever

I don’t ski. I don’t snowboard. In fact, I’ve never driven my car in snow and I have no desire to do so. Ever. As beautiful as it is in snow country, I am not at all inclined (pun intended) to visit the Sierras in the winter months. 

My parents took my siblings and me on our one and only family snow trip to Squaw Valley, site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, over the St. Patrick’s Day weekend in 1967. We took a morning lesson and did our best to put what we learned into practice in the afternoon.

In March 1971, I participated in a weekend ski trip to Squaw Valley with the St. Brendan Parish (San Francisco) youth group. My high school classmate, Tony Kopas, and I did our best to navigate some of the less-challenging slopes on Saturday, but we decided not to use our Sunday lift tickets. Instead, we skated at the Squaw Valley Ice Arena with some friends we had met the day before, then rented snowmobiles and thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon.

In the early- to mid-1980s, while serving as the Director of Youth & Young Adult Ministries at St. Christopher Parish in San José and then at St. Lawrence Parish in Santa Clara, I organized a number of weekend and day trips to various ski areas. Weekend trips were to North Lake Tahoe, where the kids skied at Squaw Valley on Saturday and Northstar on Sunday. For the day trips, we went to Dodge Ridge, Bear Valley, or Sierra Ski Ranch. All the trips were quite successful, but instead of venturing out onto the slopes myself, I always stayed in the lodge where the kids would know where to find me. I enjoyed those trips immensely.

The March 1986 weekend ski trip with the St. Lawrence Young Adult Group was memorable for a number of reasons. Kathy and I had married the previous June. We were expecting our first child in early May. Needless to say, Kathy and I spent our days enjoying the warmth of the lodges at Squaw Valley and Northstar. While back at the motel in the small town of Tahoe Vista on Saturday night, it began to snow. Despite my many trips to the Sierras through the years, I had never seen falling snow. I opened the sliding glass door in our room and stepped out onto the balcony. What an amazing experience! It was captivating. I was most surprised by the silence. When it rains, I can hear the raindrops pelting the pavement, the patio furniture, or the deck of the balcony. The snow was different. It settled silently in the courtyard of the motel and on the railing of the balcony. It was one of those moments of awe in my life. 

My decision to avoid skiing, and visiting the tops of the mountains during the winter months, has one particular disadvantage. I have never experienced a view like the one in the photo above. I saw this image in a Facebook advertisement for one of the ski areas and it caught my attention. All I could think was “Wow!” I don’t know for sure, but it appears that the snowboarder in the photo might have stopped briefly for the very same reason.