How skiing or snowboarding can change the way kids feel about winter
By Derrick Knowles
Cover photo courtesy of DOMA
The dark, cold months of winter can be a hard time for kids and teens, especially those with a lot of energy and not a lot of healthy outlets or resources to safely get out in cold weather. Without active, positive options, those long, indoor winter days can lead to a variety of behavioral and mental health challenges for some kids and parents. Getting your child engaged in skiing or snowboarding, even if it’s something you or your family have never done before, may be just the ticket to a newfound love for winter in our region.
When I was a teen growing up in Spokane Valley, winter meant more time spent with friends inside, often engaging in sometimes questionable activities to entertain ourselves. That is, until I talked my parents into letting me start skiing and then snowboarding with my friends (shuttled by skiing parents until older friends had drivers’ licenses). All of those days (and nights under the lights while night skiing) kept me out of untold trouble, and for that I’m tremendously grateful to my parents, who took us xc skiing often but themselves didn’t alpine ski.
Muir Harrison, a longtime snowboarder and owner of DOMA Coffee Roasting Company in Coeur d’Alene, had a similar experience growing up locally, where being introduced to snowboarding changed his life and transformed how he felt about the cold, snowy Inland Northwest winters. Here’s his story, which he recently shared as his inspiration behind helping to get new kids on the mountain with lift ticket and gear donations.
“A defining ‘this is winter’ memory for me is from 1993 or 1994. I was the type of kid who woke with just enough time to get cleaned up and dressed, grab an apple, and get out the door. I never gave myself enough time to dry my hair before heading out to wait for the bus. We’d be standing there for maybe 10 minutes, and my hair would freeze, then we’d get on the bus and it would thaw and drip all over my shoulders, neck and back. I hated it. I hated waking up in the dark, I hated frozen hair, and I hated constantly being cold and wet.
For a few years, that was winter to me. Dark. Cold. Wet. Then my folks took my sisters and me to the mountain to try snowboarding and everything changed. Winter became a joy, the time when we could ride. It was still a cold, wet, dark time, but carving down the mountain, flowing through the trees, opening it up and seeing how fast we could go transformed the worst time of year into one of my favorites. It’s a powerful thing and an experience I try to encourage and share.
Whether you’re new to the northern states or not, winter is a riddle that needs to be solved in order to thrive. At least for me, snowboarding was the solution to that riddle and it has been for the 30-ish years since I was introduced to the sport.”
Harrison and his wife Julia have continued the tradition with their own three kids, introducing them each to skiing and snowboarding and teaching them how to be comfortable and capable in the mountains and in the snow. But the unfortunate reality, explains Harrison, is that getting kids and families into skiing or snowboarding often faces barriers. It can be expensive or take time to hunt down deals on equipment and the proper winter clothing. (See our sidebar for gear tips and how to make gearing up more affordable.) For many families, he says, it’s prohibitively expensive and an option that hasn’t been on the table.
To help break down that financial barrier for some local kids, the Harrisons have been partnering with Venture Academy, Coeur d’Alene’s alternative high school, since last winter to raise money to pay for lift tickets, gear and some transportation for kids who might otherwise not be able to ski or snowboard.
“Next thing you know, a handful of kids were able to get up to the mountains and try skiing and snowboarding for the first time,” writes Harrison. “Some kids liked it, some kids were kinda ‘meh’ about it and some kids loved it. And those kids got that fire lit. Just like I did so many years ago, they might pursue the sport and enjoy a time of year that in the past was just a tough, long, slog.”
At DOMA’s grand opening block party for its new café in Coeur d’Alene this October, they held a latte art swan-pouring contest fundraiser that helped provide 45 lift tickets for Venture Academy kids donated by Mt. Spokane.
The Harrisons say it’s all about sharing good things with others—in this case, the ability for some kids to get to the mountain who otherwise might not be able to.
If you know a kid whose life might by changed by being introduced to a winter sport and the community that comes with it, scan the QR code or visit Skinwrockies.com to find a local Spokane/North Idaho area resort program to help get them started. Gift certificates are available, and trust me, they make an awesome Christmas gift!
Sponsored by SNWR
