By Christmas we had found our groove — maybe a little too well because that’s exactly when the mountain decided to teach me a lesson: On the flattest, slowest, easiest run to the base, after passing easily 2 dozen people, I remember thinking to myself “I wonder how slow I could carve a turn…” and before I knew it I was aiming my legs between two water spigots and hard-diving into the river bank to avoid being completely underwater… 

Fortunately my lower half came to a halt fully intact and injury-free… however the top half of me suffered a nasty bruise on my elbow and worst of all — some definitively broken ribs, in multiple places, multiple ribs. 

Thankfully Aaron and I had made friends all over the mountain, including the staff up at the mid-mountain cafe that graciously kept us in coffee-hot-chocolate and soup all season. For a select few days, rather than sulking at home, I gingerly took myself up the mountain to sit at the cafe while Aaron skied powder, and allowed myself a single baby run back down to the bottom.