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TreeBandit
04-10-2009, 10:56 AM
This year my daughter was in the Mt. Ellen Sunday Snow Blazers program and I have to say it was GREAT. I thought the Sugarbush team did an outstandig job with keeping the program inteseting, educational, and fun. Becuase she was in the program it ensured that we skied every weekend starting on Thanksgiven until last week. (more to come). Each weekend that the program took place allowed me to ski with her one day and to ski with friends or myself on the second.

Next year I hope Sugarbush offers the one day program again. I would love for my daugther to move to the Adventure Balzer program, but it is a two day program and that would result in no family ski time :cry: I would like to join the Bush Pilots as this looks like a great program to ski with others with the same likes and interst (did anyone do this program?....

This is where my issue lies...I enjoy skiing with my child, but I also enjoy the time out in the side/back country. With the one day program I get both. Right now I am a very bad influance as I ski the back country alone :shock: did I admit this...even if I did not my daughter always knows due to the fact that I pick her up smelling pine freash and with needles in my helment. I do not think I am alone, but I would like to see Sugarbush align the one day programs or maybe add so that I can be in a program at the same time as my daughter.

I am looking for feedback from the group if others would be intested in having Sugarbush align the one day programs or add addtional days to the program, but not combine them.

I welcome your thoughts / comments....I do not think I am the only person that is looking for the best of both worlds?

HowieT2
04-10-2009, 07:16 PM
welcome to the board.
We all do things we shouldn't :shock:
My kids are in blazers so I ski with my son before the 9:15 dropoff and if my daughter wants after the pick up. Plus all the non weekend days.
How many kids were in the Mt ellen blazer program?

TreeBandit
04-11-2009, 12:53 AM
I beleive that in the suwimmer they hoped of having 1 group of 8-10, but by October had to cut off registration at I believe 6 groups of 8-10.

muddy_hollow
04-11-2009, 06:36 AM
My daughter was in the same blazer class as TreeBandit's and I had the good fortune to ski with him on a number of Sundays. In fact there were many days were he was pointing out his tracks from the prior day through the slidebrook... mind you these were the only ones. Some great skiing. TreeBandit's real name was modified to have a prefix of "Woods", cuz everytime we saw him he was popping out of the woods in all the odd places.

Woods has a good point, the 1 day program is awesome since it provides the option to ski with the kid at least one day. Keep in mind that for us wintertime commuters it's mostly weekends; arrive Friday, Ski Saturday with the family, Sunday blazers with optional parental skiing. That was key for me, since I had the option of either skiing with Woods, my wife, or by myself. for my wife and I we also got to do brunch a couple times this season by ourselves down at the purple cafe. Mmmmm pancakes

My daughter was in the two day program and it was excellent, but we never saw her. We ski with a multi-family group and it was like not having a kid that entire season. Which is fine if you don't want to ski with your kid or just want to dump them off and run....

I hope they bring the program back, expand it to cover harder terrain and techniques for the kids and even consider integrating it with the LP program. Having done the two day blazes course, this one seemed to be disconnected from LP. The one improvement I would suggest is having John Eagen come over a the end of the season for the wrap up party. He does it for the two day blazers and my daughter was bummed he didn't show.

Yard Sale
04-13-2009, 10:53 AM
I can appreciate missing your kids in seasonal programs, but I recomend the two day program. It's just another familial balancing act. Two days works for us just fine. We ski with our kids plenty. The two day formatt simply offers the flexability of having more options. The kids can ski one day with us or halfdays, whatever. The ideal to maximize the benefit of the cost of the program obviuosly would be to not skip any Blazer time. But the reality is that is just not practical for us as we do enjoy skiing together. It's nice to have options for the kids to ski either day, both days or portions of both days with their Blazer groups because when guests are up and our kids want to ski with mom, dad and visiting friends there's still more opportunities to ski with their groups.