A Guide to Raising a Ski Family

I’ve been a skier my entire life—so long that it’s basically woven into my DNA. I’ve also always known that I wanted to be a mom and raise a skiing family like the one I grew up in. Now, at the ripe old age of 38 and after two geriatric pregnancies, I’m the mom of a healthy three- and one-year-old. They may not know it yet, but they are destined to become diehard skiers. Not by luck or chance, but by design—my design.

I put a lot of thought into this. Raising a skiing family takes work and dedication. But that work doesn’t just start once kids are in the picture. It starts long before. Here’s the master plan to becoming a ski mom.

Step 1: Be a Ski Instructor for a Season

Your parents will disagree, but being a ski instructor for at least one season might be one of the most responsible decisions you ever make. Nothing builds patience and resilience like teaching 3-year-olds who still walk like drunken sailors on dry ground to slide around on snow (and let’s face it, you will be teaching the little kids because you’re a rookie instructor).

You’ll learn how to wrangle tiny humans on skis, which will come in clutch when you have your own. But more importantly, you’ll build a network to help with the logistics of raising a ski family down the line. Ski town friendships have long shelf lives—years from now, those same people might come through with a spare room, a buddy pass, or a bag of hand-me-down kids’ gear.

This first step isn’t essential, but it’s a strong opening move.

Step 2: Find the Right Partner

Most hardcore skiers I know who are single tend to gravitate toward other hardcore skiers. Makes sense—you want someone to help pass on the shredder gene. But here’s the twist: the best skier on the mountain is not necessarily the right partner. Why? Because the best skier is probably a little aggro, obsessed with the latest gear, the pow cam, first chair, and skiing bell to bell on powder days. And as a parent, you don’t get to obsess about any of those things.

My advice: Find yourself someone reasonably athletic and enthusiastic about skiing, not obsessed with it. It’s an important distinction. Someone who will be stoked to get out when the opportunity presents itself, but won’t be bitter when kids upend skiing plans.

Most importantly: Make sure your potential partner is on the same page about what season pass to get. Ikon and Epic partnerships don’t last.

Step 3: Vet the Family

Before committing, meet your partner’s family. It’s true what they say: you don’t just marry the person, you marry their family. And if you’re skiers, you’re going to be spending a lot of time with that family in a cramped ski condo—there’s no surviving ski trips without help from grandparents, aunts, uncles, or friends. Think you’re going to just stick your kids in ski school while you and your SO hit the hill? In this economy? Not likely. You’ll need someone to volunteer to hang back with the kiddos.

Some grandparents I know are just as fixated on catching first chair and racking up vert as their offspring. They are not the type to skip a powder to babysit. So again, my advice is to marry into a ski family that’s enthusiastic but not obsessed. I struck gold with my in-laws: My father-in-law skis casually—he’s happy to get out for an hour or two whenever—and my mother-in-law doesn’t ski at all (and even if she did, she wouldn’t want to miss out on grandkid time). You get the picture.

Step 4: Do the Math

When you’ve found the right partner with the right family and you’re ready to make a go of it, it’s time to do some mental math. Once you decide to get pregnant (and hopefully, it’s as easy as that), you’ll be pregnant for 10 months (don’t let anyone tell you it’s nine—that’s a bold-faced lie). Then, you’ll be in the throes of raising a newborn for the next couple of months. Are you prepared to miss a ski season while pregnant or nursing a newborn?

If not, then you only have one option: get pregnant in late summer (ideally August), ski through your first two trimesters, then call it when the snow starts turning to slush in the spring—just in time to have your baby and be back in action for the following ski season. This timeline should look familiar to the initiated: it’s the same as ACL recovery.

Step 5: Reframe “Skiing”

Once the baby’s here, your ski days won’t be quite the same. Your dawn patrols of yore will seem like leisurely starts, and your après-ski now involves a different kind of bottle service. But the chaos is part of the adventure. After all, we didn’t pick skiing because it’s easy. And when you finally get your little one on skis—despite all the tantrums, meltdowns, and crap you’ll deal with (both figurative and literal)—you start to see it: the plan taking shape. Not perfectly, not smoothly, but enough to know it’s working.