"Raising a Ripper"

"Raising a Ripper"
4241' | 2017/2018

“When I was in high school, my English teacher asked our class to write our own shorter version of Walden, Henry David Thoreau’s account of decamping to a rustic cabin on Massachusetts’s Walden Pond. My essay was called “Rutland,” and I led it with overly serious ruminations on living in the shadow of Killington Peak. That mountain, a four-hour drive from my home in New Jersey, meant a lot to me. My parents started taking me skiing there when I was seven or eight, and it’s where the act of sliding on snow grafted itself into my very own DNA. I was a skier, and Killington was my mountain.

Fast-forward about 25 years. I now live in Woodstock, Vt. with my wife and three kids. Killington, for me, is still that magical place it was when I was a teenager. So, in the fall of 2016, when my six-year-old son, Brian, said he wanted to learn how to ski, I could think of no better place to introduce him to the sport. The terrain feels limitless—especially to a kid—and the snowmaking and grooming guarantee good conditions in virtually any weather. Plus, children under seven years old ski for free at Killington and Pico, making it affordable to get lots of time on the snow and make consistent progress. The winter of 2016-2017 threw every kind of weather at the mountain, and we skied through it all. We logged 17 days together, and Brian is now completely infatuated with skiing. I kept a journal of our adventures. Here are the highlights from a season well spent.”