Downhill skiing 45:00 [1] +5000ft
Skiing at Bristol with Cheryl, Greg, and (briefly) Freddie. The main point of the trip today was to get Freddie in a lesson (free for Bristol's Spring Carnival weekend). Success. He not only had a lesson, but a private lesson, as he was the only kid of his age (4) there for the 11:30 lesson. It was a 1.5 hour lesson, and the expectation/worry of Cheryl and Greg was that he wouldn't last for the scheduled duration of the lesson, as he was in a somewhat grumpy mood (according to Greg and Cheryl -- I didn't drive down with them as I had a church commitment, and arrived after his lesson began.
Using a telephoto lens so I didn't have to get close enough for him to really see that it was me, I spent around 20 minutes taking some pictures of him, then got dressed for skiing and skied a couple of runs, by which time his lesson was just about over. Greg collected Freddie and had a chat with his instructor (a young man well younger than Greg), who reported that Freddie had a good attitude (to our surprise), and did OK for a 4-year-old.
We got a quick snack for everyone, then took Freddie up the Sunset Lift, for his first time on a chair lift. (Even though he hadn't been real into skiing until today, he had been telling Greg that he really wanted to ride the chair lift last time they were down.) With very significant help from Greg, he made it down Infinity, and said he really wanted to ride the chair lift one more time, so we did. By the time we had gotten to the bottom, he had become fairly whiny (not surprising considering how long he had skied at that point), and although he claimed he wanted to ride the lift a 3rd time, it was pretty clear that his skiing for the day needed to end at that point.
Greg put him in child care for an hour, and Fred was quite content to do that, while the 3 of us skied. Probably the first time we had skied together in quite a while. I think we did 3-4 runs at that point, and it was around 3:30 by then, so we called it quits, collected Freddie again, and had a bite to eat at the cafeteria (and drink at the bar for the adults).
So it wasn't a very hard day of skiing at all, but successful in the Fred had a good time and made some progress in learning how to ski (although he's still a ways from being able to ski down even a very gentle slope with no assistance).