Along the drive we continued to get updates from Aunt Karen back home with sick Rachel. They had gone to the doctor, had some tests, and went to the hospital for a chest xray. A while later we learned that Rachel had a little bit of pneumonia and RSV (virus that produces bronchitis and gives you a cough). Poor Aunt Karen had to alternate giving her medicine every 3 hours throughout the night on Thursday, and was giving instructions to take Rachel straight to the ER if anything should change for the worse. Thankfully, Aunt Cynthia and cousin Kelly came to spend the night at the house as well for support, in case anything did go wrong.
I'm still pretty surprised that Jason and I actually left town given all that was going on. I'm sure some would judge us harshly for doing so. But there were several things that lead us to this decision:
1) Aunt Karen is a very smart, calm, resourceful person and we trust her completely
2) Aunt Cynthia, cousin Kelly, cousin Kelsey, and cousin Jeannie all happened to be around for added support
3) Jason and I have really needed some time away together and had been looking forward to this for months
4) We have paid a lot of money for the course itself, time away from work, bringing Karen in from California, renting Karen a car, etc.
5) Being pregnant, I only have so many ski days left in me and I don't expect I'll be able to get away without kids for some time to come in the future. We've been away from Rachel for 1 night before and I think that's it... so if it takes us another 2 + years to get another few nights away, our opportunities are limited.
6) We have been really exhausted, stressed, frustrated with Rachel and lack of sleep, missing each other, and needed to have a break from being parents in the worst way.
So, judge away if you will. It was a hard decision.
Friday morning we got the update that Rachel had slept well (thanks to her meds) all night, even though we knew Aunt Karen had not had much sleep.
At 8am we arrived at the mountain guides office to meet our guide and our group. At this point I was nervous, not sure if we should go or not, but very excited as well. There were 3 couples taking the course and one guide named Jake.
At about 9:30am, we said goodbye to Aunt Karen, left our cell phones in the car, and donned skins on our skis. We skinned about 3 miles to arrive at our 'hut' for lunch. This was the most luxurious hut we had ever been in. Electric heat. Running water. 4 bedrooms upstairs. A full kitchen downstairs. A shoveled path to the outdoor outhouse. Snacks and hot drinks going most of the time. Luxury!
We spent the afternoon doing beacon / rescue practice in the snow next to the hut, learning different search techniques and the best ways to find someone should they be caught in an avalanche. That evening, we had a nice dinner and had a few lectures on snow, weather, terrain, etc.
We slept that night from about 9:30pm until 6:30am and we felt as though we were in heaven. Best sleep we've had ... well... in a very long time. Certainly since November we have not slept through the night, and it felt fantastic.
Saturday we had some more lectures, and also a skin/tour to go look at different snow conditions and learn about safe and not-so-safe slopes. We skinned up one hillside and happened to see an avalanche on the opposite face of Gothic Mountain (the one behind the hut in these pictures). An amazing learning experience, and great to see it from a safe position on another mountain, but close enough to learn what might cause one and what it might look like.
After hiking up a slope, we had lunch and learned to dig pits in order to assess the safety of the different snow layers. We hiked a little more, and the removed our skins for our descent. This is the part where my ego got crushed. Skiing down, with a small pack on, in variable conditions, with 6 other people watching was intimidating. I had several falls and felt like I was learning to ski all over again. I snow-plowed down our skin track and felt my legs dying. Finally we hit some lovely powder and enjoyed the excitement and grace of fresh tracks on the last part of our descent, even though I fell again here.
Saturday night we had some more lectures and got to know our other course participants better with games, dinner and fun stories.
Sunday we packed up, had our last lectures, and left the hut. Our packs felt heavy and we went out for a long tour. I felt good on the climbs and learned a lot about making kick-turns to get up the switchbacks of the mountain. We went up to 11,400ft for lunch. We skinned for about 5.5 hours before we found our descent. An easy ski down the road and then a little bit of fresh snow was about all I could handle with sore legs and a full pack. But it was beautiful around us and the weather was excellent.
We returned to our car at about 4:15pm, had a short debrief meeting and changed, and left town. We arrived back home in Lafayette at 10pm to get the updates from Aunt Karen. Rachel was already asleep, and was back to her old habits of turning her light on, blinds open, and falling asleep on the carpet by her bedroom door without any blankets on. She woke up again at about 1am and wanted to snuggle and play.
The avalanche course and hut adventure was a huge success, and we were thrilled by the experience. We will forever be in debt to Karen for her amazing care of Rachel for 3 days and 3 nights including a significant medication regime and not a lot of sleep.
Jason and Karen went skiing at Copper Mountain Resort on Monday (MLK holiday) while Meggan worked. Rachel was deemed safe to return to school and seemed to be a very energetic and happy little girl. Monday night we got together with extended family for a lovely dinner.
Work and the 'real world' are kicking our butts this week.
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