Family Christmas in Montana, 2017

Big Sky, Montana, is not the easiest place to reach in winter.

That's one reason it never gets crowded, or at least not crowded by big city standards.

Driving north from Los Angeles can be hazardous, as major holiday traffic jams make escaping greater Los Angeles tricky, only to be followed by potentially icy roads.

Flying there can be trickier.

Inevitable holiday airport congestion throughout the country, compounded this year by weather delays caused by frigid conditions that many attributed to "catastrophic global warming," definitely makes it challenging.

All of our children, however, planned months ago to brave the elements, both natural and man-made in order to enjoy a Christmas family reunion in Montana.  

Despite a "snow bomb cyclone," their flights from Philadelphia and New York City encountered only minor delays in what --- you may have not have heard through the usual media hysteria about the world being about to end --- turned out to be the safest year in commercial aviation history.

My drive to the Bozeman airport to pick up Gina, Laszlo and Emma (which doubled as a grocery run to Albertson's in Belgrade) mid-day and my evening return to the airport with Julie to to fetch Amy and Lukas both went off without a hitch.

Julie and I had previously been blessed with the easiest Christmas season drive to Big Sky ever, escaping LA traffic jams at 4:00 AM a few days before the holiday weekend began and encountering nothing but dry roads with sparse traffic until we reached Montana that same night.

Jay and Sasha left a couple of days later, and they also had an easy drive, spending the night at Sasha's mother's house in Park City en route.

It seems the same cyclical La Nina system that brought powdery snow to Montana made those areas south of there along the freeway warm, just as had been predicted a few months earlier.

We enjoyed a wonderful vacation together, with terrific skiing accompanied by delicious meals and happy hours at the ski slope home of my sister Darlene and her husband Brooks or our condo not far away.

Thinking back to how long we've been going to Montana, Julie observed that she doesn't think we had skied at no other resort since our first ski trip there, which I believe was in 1996.  I'm positive our first family trip to Big Sky was in the summer of 1991, when Amy was a couple of months old, and it took a few years for Darlene to convince us to try skiing there.

On that initial ski trip, Brooks actually picked us up in his Subaru at the bottom of a ski slope by their house and transported us back to the top for another run, saving the kids the challenge of learning to use a chair lift on the first day.

The next year, Brooks and Darlene bought into a new resort development which had only begun to be built, and on one of the first runs down a beginner run on the new mountain, 7 year-old Amy missed making a turn and skied off a cliff.

My nephew Brooks III made the heroic rescue of his little cousin, climbing down the mountainside to reach her and help her back up.  While the rest of us were scared to death for Amy, she came up smiling and never looked back.

I still wonder if seeing this happen put Gina off skiing, although she did go a few times after that.  More likely, it is just that Gina doesn't like the cold.  As she says, she is, after all, a college professor who likes to be cozy and warm while doing research.

Like the rest of us, Gina loves evening festivities with the family, including lots of card games, as well as relaxing in the lodge while we skied.

Amy, Jay and Sasha tested their new skis for the first time, and all passed with flying colors, taking on everything from groomers to deep powder to windblown ice like experts.

Laszlo and Lukas also showed great improvement on skis, which they rented from East Slope outfitters in Big Sky Town Center.

Emma practiced skiing on the "Magic Carpets" designed for teaching beginners to ski, but for some reason she didn't have the bravado of Christmas in 2015 when at five years old she quickly mastered skiing.

Whereas two years ago she begged daily to go on the big slope, with her dream coming true because of my sister's impressive instructional skills (along with a rubber strap to keep Emma's ski tips from crossing), this time on the one trip up the big chair lift, Emma clung tightly to Darlene, making it impossible for her to ski down.

However, Emma and I enjoyed a cookie on the top of the mountain before riding the lift down, which turned out to be a pretty cool experience, too.

I didn't start skiing until I was in the Air Force, considerably older than seven, so I'm hopeful Emma will be ready to take on the big slopes in the future.  The important thing is that she had fun, as did we all.