30 cm of snow fell on Perisher last weekend.
The first significant fall of the year.
I'm excited.
I'm also kind of nervous. Y7 is a hard charging, speed loving, all terrain skier. He skis like a boss and he knows it and it makes me scared because there is a gap there. A big space between his wisdom and his ability. His coach last year praised him for being a safe skier and I cling to that because it is a dangerous sport. There are all the risks inherent in a sport that consists pretty much of controlled falling at high speeds and then there are the risks of environment. Thankfully avalanches aren't the killers in Australia that they are elsewhere but there are other dangers out there for a boy who skis better than most adults with only a small portion of their knowledge.
Dinoboy...... he's not so hardcharging, not so fast but he loves the park and the park is full of hard things and scary tricks. And the jumps get bigger every year.
So I take them out there because I love it and because they love it too when it's all going right but sometimes I question it. Sometimes I wonder if we should all just go home and have a hot chocolate and get into a big fluffy ball of cotton wall.
EDIT - I've done a bit of googling and it seems that the average (mean) speed on an intermediate piste is 43.0 km/h. My boys ski faster than the average.
And 43 km/h is pretty fast. For comparison a good speed for a well trained road bike rider is about 35 km/h.
On the positive side competitive downhill skiers reach speeds in excess of 120km/h. My boys aren't that fast :)
