Family time i great whether it's BC or lift. I can't even begin to calculate what I've spent on raising three skiers - now 10, 12 and 16 - with seasons passes and professional instruction of some sort every year for all of them since they were each 3 years old. Do that math. Seriously, it's a number I don't even want to know, and I'm a very frugal guy. We travel for races and comps times three (four really because I go too). We ski a minimum average of two days a week during the season. It's fuckin' brutal, but I wouldn't want a penny of it back or do things any differently. Zap, bless your heart for funding your grandkids' instruction. Big applause from me.
My oldest will be competing in the IFSA Junior Freeride (big mountain comps, not park stuff) tour for his third season this year and took 5th at Stevens last year in his first year in the older age group. He rides with and competes against the 'young guns' you read about in Powder Magazine and sometimes betters them in comps. He seriously kicks my ass as a skier now and is a better, faster and gutsier skier than I have ever been, even when I was younger (not that I was ever a rockstar in any way). The two younger guys have been racing - with plenty of podiums and the occasional win for the last 4 seasons and will soon be kicking my ass too. They're also great powder, steep and freeride skiers too.
I have to say that while there is tremendous value of a particular kind to be found in the BC there's no substitute for pure vertical skied with good instruction when teaching kids (or anyone for that matter) to become good skiers. You just can't get 75 days and 1,500,000 + vert in a season - as we do year after year - on skins, and those vertical feet translate directly into skill and confidence.
As a few of you know I am the worlds slowest and whiniest skinner, but I do enjoy being out there and sometimes wish I had done more of that with them, but what they have become as a result of years of lift-served skiing is technically proficient (I might even suggest superior to a vast majority of the skiers on any given day at any given resort), passionate skiers who love to ski pow, jump cliffs, go fast as hell, and at the same time have pretty good sensibilities and wisdom about what they're doing.
None of them are strangers to hiking for turns though none has had skins on yet. I suspect - and am beginning to hear rumblings of this from the oldest as he admires big mountain skiers who do some serious BC riding - that one day they will discover the joy and beauty of putting on skins and venturing into the BC in search of bigger lines, more solitude and deeper pow. The difference will be that the technical skills acquired by all that skiing will allow them to have even more fun when they do so.
I have a ton of respect for those who know their way around a tour and have the skills to safely navigate the BC. Unfortunately I also see a lot of them who are not very strong skiers. Most of all I have huge respect for those who can really ski, and choose do it wherever they want, BC or LS. I know there are some of the latter here, and possibly some of the former as well.
I guess the point here, if you haven't already gotten it, is that while the purity of being a BC skier is indeed cool, you might enjoy it even more if you had really good skiing skills before you became such a purist (if indeed you're going to become one). I'd rather my kids were GREAT skiers and followed their passion for it wherever it gives them bliss than have them think that lift skiing was not as pure or somehow less lofty a form of the sport they love. Skiing should be skiing, no matter where or when you choose to do it, and is quite simply more fun wherever you choose to do it if you're good at it.
If you start with skill, you can rip anything and go anywhere which IMVHO is in the long run a more enjoyable place to be than standing on top of a peak you just climbed and not knowing how to get down it with any grace.
Kinda like what they teach you in music school: master all the technical stuff first, then go do it your own way.
