School Ski and Fun Day

Usually, the annual celebration for all the Rangeley Lakes Regional School students and Saddleback ski school instructors that have participated in the Ski Tuesday program over the winter season is like an end of year class party. Lots of fun and a great way to end the season.

This year the party got kicked up quite a bit thanks to the collaborative and generous efforts of Rangeley Region Health & Wellness, Saddleback, coordination efforts of RLRS, and extended down the hill to the Rangeley Lakes Trails Center. It wound up being a way bigger bash with children spread out all over the mountain.

It started with RRHW having the bright idea that they wanted to make the Ski Tuesday Party a full-on winter celebration with pretty much everyone. Of course Saddleback and RLRS were enthusiastically all-in.

With the exception of the Pre-K students (who are a tad too little for these big kid parties), about 200 were on the guest list. Classroom teachers, ski/board instructors, kids that weren’t even part of the Ski Tuesday program- just a ton of Rangeley was on the mountain. When you consider the population of Rangeley is about 1200 right now, wow that’s a good percentage of the community.

Whether they were skiing or boarding on the Saddleback slopes, sipping hot cocoa, and having fun in the lodge, snowshoeing or cross-country skiing at the Rangeley Lakes Trails Center, it was just a great day for everyone to celebrate a great Rangeley winter.

Like all good parties, you need to put out the food, provide entertainment, invite great people, and hope for a dash of good luck. Well, Saddleback was a great host, provided a great venue, passes for the children who weren’t part of the program, made sure all hands were on deck (for safety on the slopes, at the lifts, or in the kitchen turning out energy food, basically providing a fun and safe playground. RRHW paid for the food, the gift bags filled with fun SB swag for the middle school and high schoolers, and not surprisingly Rangeley Lakes Trails Center as always provided free rental and use of trails like they do and have done for years for the dozen or so kids who wanted to cross-country or snowshoe. Then there is the RLRS staff who did what they tend to do best- They showed by example by promoting a positive healthy lifestyle, coordinated and pulled off the truly daunting task of wrangling, partied like it was 1999, and all while keeping calm and cool with the patience of saints when patience was what was required. Finally, as luck would have it, Mother nature did her part by providing fabulous weather and trail conditions.

As for me, even though I kind of crashed the party, I was polite enough to split before lunch was served and drove down the mountain. It occurred to me as I was driving past the beautiful mountain views how fortunate the Rangeley community is. It’s astounding really.

Fun with pizza. Margarita Dutile