Mother's Day at Stein Eriksen: A Mom-of-Two Solo Day

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, including Amazon Associates and Booking.com partner links. If you click and book or buy through them, I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. The Stein Eriksen brunch, spa day, and treatments referenced here were paid for by our family.

I asked for one thing this Mother's Day, and I asked for it in November, which is how you get the thing you want. I wanted Sean to take Charlie and Wyatt — both still in the post-ski-season fidget phase where they will hike anything if there's a candy bar at the top — up to Mountain Trails for the morning and leave me alone, in a robe, in Deer Valley, for as many hours as the day would hold. Sean is a Bay Area engineer; he understands a clean spec.

Sunday at 9:15 I drove up Royal Street, parked at Stein Eriksen Lodge, handed the valet my keys, and did not look at my phone again until 4:30.

Glitretind brunch: the tasting menu, the corner table

I booked Glitretind brunch six weeks out — Mother's Day in Deer Valley is not a walk-in proposition. I asked for the corner table by the window that looks out at the pool deck and the broad green run we ski on the days Charlie's not racing. The host gave it to me without making a thing of it.

The Mother's Day tasting was four courses with optional pairings. I went with pairings.

First: Chilled Utah trout, crème fraîche, finger lime, chive blossom. Paired with a Walla Walla dry rosé that surprised me. I texted my dad the producer; he replied with a thumbs-up, which from him is a parade.
Second: Poached duck egg on house-cured ham over morels and asparagus, with a brown-butter hollandaise. Sonoma Coast Chardonnay.
Third: Lamb shoulder over white polenta, pea-shoot salad, mint. Russian River Pinot.
Fourth: Rhubarb pavlova, elderflower cream, a small glass of Sauternes. Coffee. A second coffee, because nobody was timing me.

Two hours and twenty minutes. Forty pages of a novel I'd been carrying around for six weeks. The corner table caught the light off the snow still pinned to the upper bowls. At one point the woman at the next table asked if I was on a girls' weekend; when I said no, just a Mother's Day to myself, she lifted her mimosa and said good girl. I almost cried into the rhubarb pavlova.

A corner window table at Glitretind at Stein Eriksen Lodge with a coffee cup and a novel — The corner table at Glitretind at 11:30. I will be defending this table from a Bay Area girls' weekend for the rest of my life.

The spa: pool, steam, body treatment, repeat

From brunch I walked twenty feet to the Stein Eriksen Spa. The day-pass-plus-treatment package is the move — pool, steam, sauna, relaxation lounge, plus the treatment of your choice.

Order of operations, refined over six years in Park Meadows:

Outdoor spa pool — heated, steam visible in May, the Wasatch sitting up over the deck. Thirty minutes. Read nothing. Thought nothing.
Eucalyptus steam — ten minutes. My altitude sinuses briefly forgave me.
Eighty-minute Wasatch Stone treatment — basalt, lavender-and-sage oil, a therapist still present for her thousand-and-first.
Relaxation lounge with cucumber water — forty-five minutes. Brief nap. No apology.
Back to the pool — twenty minutes. The light had moved. Five hours at Stein.

Skincare prep, because Stein has more mirrors than my mother's bathroom in St. Helena: a ten-day Vintner's Daughter push before. I will not be in a Stein robe looking like I haven't slept.

The outdoor heated spa pool at Stein Eriksen Lodge with the Wasatch Range in the background — The outdoor pool at 1:45 — the snow still up top, the steam coming off the water, and not one notification on my phone because I had left it in the locker.

The Sunday-afternoon decompression

At 3:15 I changed into soft pants and oversized cashmere, settled into a leather chair by the stone fireplace, and ordered a Sonoma Cab. I read another fifty pages. A pianist was playing actual music, not lounge wallpaper. A family came in from a late hike with two boys roughly Charlie and Wyatt's ages, and I watched the mom unpack gloves and helmets and granola-bar grievances and felt — for the first time in maybe a year — completely unembarrassed about having opted out of a hike on a Sunday.

Sean had texted twice. Wyatt had attempted to climb a boulder that was, per Sean's photo, an actual cliff. Charlie had identified four wildflowers and corrected Sean on two. Sean's exact text: they are completely fine and I have earned a beer. I told him to grill the steaks; I'd be home by 5.

The Stein Eriksen Lodge lobby with stone fireplace, leather chair, and a glass of red wine — The lobby fireplace at 3:30. The pianist was working through something I recognized but couldn't name, and I refused to Shazam it.

A spa treatment room at Stein Eriksen Lodge with linen-draped table, lavender oil, and basalt stones — The treatment room before the eighty-minute Wasatch Stone — basalt, lavender-and-sage oil, and a therapist who had clearly done this a thousand times.

What I packed, because I get asked

A real, paper novel.
An AirTag in the tote — my Stein keys have wandered before.
A Vinglacé tumbler for the drive back up the canyon — sparkling water, ice intact two hours later.
Soft pants and cashmere for the post-treatment lobby phase. Stein robes are excellent; what you wear after the robe is where most women miscalibrate.
A penciled list in the novel's flyleaf of things I was not allowed to think about: Charlie's summer ski conditioning, Wyatt's Woodward reauthorization, Sean's San Jose board meeting on the 19th, basement remodel quotes.

The drive home

I left Stein at 4:35. Royal Street was empty. The light through the aspens down to Park Meadows was the long, slanted gold that May does in Deer Valley and nowhere else. Windows cracked, radio off. Charlie met me in the driveway with a pocket-pressed wildflower and a long story about a marmot. Wyatt was face-down on the couch in his Mountain Trails kit at 4:45 p.m., which is its own compliment.

Sean had grilled the steaks. The boys had set the table badly — two forks at one place, none at another, one folded napkin per person (Weilenmann-taught). On my plate, a hand-drawn card: HAPPY MOTHRS DAY MOM in Wyatt's blocky six-year-old print, and below in Charlie's tidier hand, we love you, you are the best skier in our family (don't tell dad).

Stein Eriksen, the Glitretind tasting, the eighty-minute Wasatch Stone, and that card. Mother's Day, mom-of-two, solo day. Asked for in November. Delivered in May. I will be doing it again next year and I will not be apologizing then either.