Ski School

Photo courtesy of Ray Hubbe.

I just got back from another ski trip with my buddies, this one to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. (See “Big Sky, Montana,” January, 2008, and “Amazing,” December, 2007, for posts on previous trips.) As always, linking a ski vacation with aviation is a bit of a stretch, but, as always, I have found a way. This time it involved riding up the ski lift.

There are two main lifts at Jackson Hole, the big one a tram that takes a hundred or so skiers all the way to the top of the mountain, some 10,000 plus feet above sea level, with all expert terrain starting down. (The base of the resort is 6300 feet MSL, giving a drop of approximately 4000 feet, one of the highest in North America.) This particular day my buddies were riding that lift, but I had opted for easier terrain for awhile and was skiing by myself, going up the second major lift, a gondola, going up to about 9000 feet and taking about 10 minutes to get to the top. They hold up to eight skiers, but it wasn’t a real busy day so none were full, and on this particular ride I was joined, somewhat to my surprise for a weekday morning, by two young kids, a boy of about 10 and a girl of about 8. They were very polite, well behaved and friendly, and seemed amenable to chit chat, so I asked them how it was that they were so lucky to be skiing instead of in school. The boy said, “Homeschooling.” I said, “So you’re pretty lucky. You get to ski and go to school at the same time,” and the little girl said, “Our dad teaches us on the gondola.” I wasn’t sure how much teaching could be done on a 10 minute gondola ride, but I didn’t say that. I did say, “So where is your dad?” and the girl said, “He’s one or two gondolas back with our older sister.”

So I just looked at these two very outgoing and precocious kids and said, “So we need to have a lesson. Do you want to learn about airplanes?” They both burst into big smiles and said simultaneously, “Yes!” Scrambling quickly, I thought, well, let’s just start with Day One of flight training. I told them that the first thing you were normally taught when you were learning to fly, after you had been taught to preflight the airplane, was straight and level. I explained what straight meant, maintaining a heading, and that level meant to maintain a constant altitude, that you have a compass to tell you your heading and an altimeter to tell you your altitude, and the basic control inputs to correct for each. Then we talked a little bit about learning to fly in general, that you had to be 16 to solo airplanes and 14 to solo gliders, and that it didn’t take too long to reach that point so it didn’t make too much sense to start early, but that when they got close to those ages that was the time to think about it. At that point we were at top, said our goodbyes and got out.

We were all still pretty much together getting our skis on and the little girl said to me, “That’s our dad,” pointing out a very fit looking 30 something guy moving away from the gondola and talking to a 12- or 13-year-old girl. The older girl came over and said, “I love your hat,” and we all skied off in our own directions.