Dear family and friends
Greetings once again from Mammoth Mountain!
Today the weather was awesome! Beautiful sunshine and calm winds greeted us after a cold night. B mid morning the snow had softened and it was a glorious day for skiing! And ski we did – WOW!
This morning Grayson was given one of the volunteer instructors for which there is a special bond. She is an awesome skier and really manages to connect with Grayson. The second instructor was Mark Spieler, the Director of Outside Operations for Disabled Sports Eastern Sierra (DSES) – also the former Training Manager for the Mammoth Mountain Ski and Snowboard School. Mark is responsible for training all of the volunteers and monitoring progress of all of the students. What a pair to work with this morning – with beautiful conditions also!
This morning with lots of active coaching, Grayson skied Sesame Street, but quickly moved to higher ground. The pitch of the slope on the beginner runs just doesn't "make" Grayson do turns – he just wants to point his skis downhill and go. So off to Chair 1 we went and we took St Moritz, Mambo (twice) and came home to lunch on Broadway. (Mambo and Broadway are Intermediate runs).
If you saw my Facebook posting from lunch today, you will have known that Grayson and I ate out on the sun deck at the main lodge – Grayson with a pizza and a fruit cup, me with a salad. Here is the picture if you missed it!
After lunch we had Zachery, one of the pros who has worked extensively with Grayson. He was assisted by another who skied with us last Sunday. Zachery consulted with me and we decided that there was no point in doing the regular run down Sesame Street, and we headed immediately to the Gondola. This afternoon Grayson ran 5 different runs of Intermediate to High Intermediate terrain. Specifically he went down Mambo, Stump Alley, St Anton, Broadway and finally Powder Bowl to Ralphies. The most impressive part was not that he went down this terrain, but that, unlike the morning, Zachery just led and let Grayson follow. And follow Grayson did! He went down these runs with few stops, and only once, in the most difficult terrain, did he get "stuck", a problem we saw repeatedly early in the week. He was awesome today!
When I planned this trip, I never realized what a benefit of having so many lessons continuously would have on Grayson's ability. In retrospect, it appears to be one of my better decisions! The growth in his ability over the course of this week – an intense week focused just on skiing – has been immense. He is now going down very long runs without a break, executing parallel left turns wonderfully, and doing very good wedge right turns in a continuous flow. In January he was building muscle and relearning in 11 half-day lessons over a 9 day period. In our few days in February he was doing some skill refreshing during 3 half day lessons. This week he has already had 13 half day lessons in 7 days, with 4 more lessons to go. No wonder there has been such an improvement in his muscle memory and his strength. Frankly he didn't have the strength to do what he did today just one week ago. Proof once again that continuous therapy, no matter the form, yields significant benefits.
For all of us, today was a real WOW day!
Pax!
Brant
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