Our Ski Stories
Each person’s ski story is unique. Here are ours!
Lea
I grew up on Massachusetts’ South Shore, midway between Boston and Cape Cod. Like many kids growing up in Southern New England, weekend ski days up north were a fixture of my childhood. I learned to snowplow on the New England ice and chatter, and trips to Sunday RIver (Maine), Attitash, Wildcat, Black Mountain, Gunstock (all New Hampshire), and Stowe (Vermont) remain some of my core childhood memories.
Skiing was put on pause during my later high school years, through college, and into my early 20’s as I worked to build a career (and a bank account). My return to skiing in my mid-20’s coincided with meeting Mark, and I rediscovered my enjoyment of the sport with him.
I skied out west for the first time a few years before Mark and I met (Vail), and remember how much more intimidating the views seemed from up there compared to New England mountains of my youth. Over the years, as kids have joined our family “ski team,” we’ve explored destinations both east and west, and we’ve happily discovered that a fun day’s skiing can even be found within a few hours’ drive of our home in Chicago if one knows where to look. Wherever we are, there’s still nothing I love more than a wide, blue cruiser on a bluebird day. I’m not sure that will ever change.
Mark
I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and started skiing in Colorado at 5 years old. Colorado was a convenient drive from Omaha, and my family made the trip once a year until I graduated from high school. We typically skied in Summit County. Copper Mountain, Breckenridge, and Keystone were our most frequent destinations. My older brother and I took ski lessons for many years when we were first learning. The best runs of the day, though, happened after our lessons when we were able to take a few runs with our parents to show them what we'd learned.
These yearly ski trips developed my love of the mountains, and, after graduating college, I made the decision to spend a few years working and skiing in Vail. I worked an 8-5 job that allowed me to ski on the weekends and still pay the rent. A few ski seasons and beautiful summers were enough to satisfy my ski-bum itch.
Since leaving Vail for Chicago in 2006, I've made almost yearly trips back to Colorado with groups of friends and now my family. Providing our kids the same ski experiences that we had growing up was a priority for Lea and me. During the winter of 2020-2021, we committed to frequent Wisconsin trips to develop our kids' skiing. The winter culminated in a trip to the big mountains of Vail. We hoped that, once there, we could help our son and daughter truly fall in love with the sport. In the end, though, we were reminded that when it comes to falling in love with skiing, the mountains seldom need much help.
