A Big Day Out Sledding

Yesterday Zane and I headed out for our second attempt to sled the big hill at the golf course in Hanover. The first time we went it was discovered that dad left all of the snow gear by the front door at home and, being a half hour+ drive one way, wasn’t going back to get it. This time we were WEARING everything, so no chance of forgetting something.

It was early and we were pretty much the first ones there. There’s a small hill by the parking area that we took a few runs down together, just to get warmed up, so to speak. There was a couple inches of really fluffy snow, which when hit with our little sled flew up into our faces. Zane did not like this, “No snow in the eyes, ok daddy?” Eventually Zane said he wanted to try the big hill. We took a couple runs from halfway up and then, at Zane’s urging, went all of the way to the top. It was a fast, mad-cap run down the hill! I held my arms out sort of like outriggers, steering and preventing tip overs, but when we hit a stretch of fresh snow and Zane started trying to turn around to avoid snow in his eyes there was no amount of compensation to be done and we had a big crash.

I asked Zane if he wanted to go back to doing shorter runs and he replied, “Do long ones, but no snow in the eyes!” That’s when we hit on the idea of having Zane sit backwards in the sled, which he seemed to find just as exciting and fun, squealing all of the way down the hill.

Eventually I was getting tired of trekking up the big hill, sometimes towing Zane. We went over to the little hill and to my surprise he was up for trying solo runs. Even though it’s a smaller hill, it’s a good 5-8 times longer and steeper than the little hill he’s been sledding on at home. As you can see he sometimes fell over, but no complaints about snow in the eyes. I thought maybe he’d bring the sled back up on his own, but most times he’d end up playing with the rope or sit down to play with the snow. We’ll have to work on that.