by Megan Hanlon
GARDNER — On Jan. 23, 2020 the Gardner and Peakview 5th graders went to Monarch Pass to learn to ski and snowboard. Annaleise states, “Snowboarding is difficult at first because you have to strap your boot onto the snowboard, and use one foot to walk or slide up the hill. After most of my group got the hang of snowboarding, we went on the magic carpet. The magic carpet is a conveyor belt or something built in the snow. It takes you to the top of a larger hill, of which you can snowboard down. If you went too quickly, you would need to stop yourself. There were two ways I got the hang of stopping; one being to point your toes closer to the ground (at least that stopped me) and just falling on the ground.” Payton states that she learned to ski and that she thought it would be boring but it was awesome instead. She wrote, “This amazing experience wouldn’t have happened if Ms. Hanlon, Ms. Pam, Ms. D, Mr. Moore, Mr. McGill, and Gary our bus driver did not work hard. Monarch Mountain is amazing!”
Primitivo’s experience was that he learned to snowboard and then was taken to a bigger hill that was hard at first but he started to get the hang of it. Rylee claimed the ski boots were too tight and heavy. She learned, “ when you want to stop you make a pizza slice.” Her favorite part of the trip was riding the Caterpillar, the magic carpet. Lugh wrote about a little ramp called the butterfly. He stated one of the kids had trouble standing up to go down the ramp. He mentioned the wonderful instructors and the bathroom breaks. He liked the repeated trips down the hill.
