If you’ve ever been intimidated by the amount of gear you need to go skiing, you’ll love today’s post. You need even more stuff. Yes, you do. These are the items you simply cannot leave behind (at least in my opinion).
Duct Tape: Actually , no family should leave the house without duct tape in the car, in the backpack or in the stroller. Duct tape fixes our ski gloves (I’ve sported a silver thumb for two seasons now and I’m not still not ready to invest in new gloves). Duct tape fixes our rocket box. Seriously. On a really windy day, we were en route to Aspen when our box flew open. Luckily the skis didn’t fly out, and 10 minutes later, we’d repaired a structural tear in the rocket box and were back on our way. (BTW, Thule did right by us and got us a new box. But the duct tape did work really well!)
Folding Chairs: More often than not, we are sitting outside our car trying to put our ski boots on. When the boys were little, my husband had the brain wave to throw in two folding camp chairs. Now we sit in style, buckle on the boots, shake the snow off the chairs and head to the lifts. They come in handy at the end of the day too.
Good Ski Bags: There are duffel bags and there are backpacks and then there are really good ski bags. We’ve tried them all. When our kids were small, we each had a ski bag on wheels. Like roll on luggage, these bags have a handle that pulls out that anyone over three feet tall can pull. Because they are ski bags, they also have discrete pockets for gloves, goggles, and the like. We would both store and pre-pack all of our gear in these bags. In the morning when it was time to leave the house, each person was responsible for getting dressed and pulling his or her bag to the car. When we came home, I would empty out the items needed cleaning, strip down the kids and do the wash. Clean clothes went back into the bag for storage until the next weekend.
Now that the boys are older and have been to ski camp, they have ski backpacks (the Spyder Govy pack is a great one!) with straps for their boots, a helmet compartment and goggle pocket. They don’t store their ski clothes in their packs, but rather in a strong fabric cube in their closet. Getting dressed is still a breeze because everything is right where it should be. Then they throw on their backpacks and are ready to leave with us or with friends for the slopes.
My husband and I keep everything in our color-coded cubes and load those in the car, because we are neither young nor groovy enough for the Govy pack.
Ski Pants: This should be obvious, but four times (count ‘em – four times!), we have gone skiing without enough pants (shouldn’t they be in a bag or cube, you ask?). The first time my husband took our oldest son skiing, he forgot the pants. Turn around, drive home, drive back and barf. That’s what happened. Our son got carsick from so much back and forth on a curvy road.
My husband has forgotten his own pants the other three times. He doesn’t like to drive in them and he’d rather change into them in the parking lot. This has resulted in the unexpected purchase of new ski pants in two different states. Most memorable however, was the time at Aspen Highlands when he had no pants and the woman at the hospitality desk went back and took a pair of ski instructor pants from someone’s locker and loaned them to him for the day. Bottom line: remember your pants. In fact, just drive in them. It can’t be that bad.
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