Why I Pull Charlie and Wyatt Out for Random PC Race Weekends

The Friday-pull rhythm

Most PCST race weekends follow the same pattern:

• Thursday night: ski bag packed, race suits inspected for tears, ibuprofen in the snack bin, both kids in bed by 8.
• Friday morning: leave by 6:30 if it's a drive, or 7:00 to SLC airport if it's a fly. Wyatt brings his iPad. Charlie brings her workbook and is annoyed by the fact that she has it.
• Friday afternoon: arrive, hotel check-in, course inspection, race-day prep. The U10s do a quick on-snow shake-out at most venues. There's almost always a parents' welcome reception that I always say I won't go to and always end up at, drinking a hotel chardonnay with three other PC moms whose lives look exactly like mine.
• Saturday: race day one. GS for Charlie. Two runs. Lunch in the lodge. Watch the older girls' races in the afternoon. Wyatt either skis with Sean or goes to a kids' program at the host mountain.
• Sunday: race day two, then drive home or fly home. Pizza in the car. The kids are asleep within twenty minutes of crossing into Summit County.

The Weilenmann thing

I want to be clear about why this works for us, because it doesn't work everywhere. Charlie and Wyatt go to The Weilenmann School of Discovery, which is a private place-based-learning school in Park City. Their educational philosophy literally includes "the world is a classroom." They have Ski PE. They take kids to a meadow for reading time. Outdoor days are not a treat — they're scheduled.

So when I email Charlie's third-grade teacher in October to lay out the season's race calendar, the response I get is the kind of response you only get from a school that means it. "Send us a one-paragraph reflection from one of the trips. We'll use it for her geography unit." That's it. That's the entire compliance burden.

I am genuinely not sure I could pull off this race schedule at a more traditional school. Some of our teammates are in PCSD and they make it work, but they have homework packets going home and tests being taken on the road. Weilenmann meets us at our actual lifestyle.

Aspen is the away race I love most

Aspen-Snowmass hosts U10 races a couple of times a season and it is, no contest, my favorite. The drive is long — about six hours through Wyoming and Colorado mountain passes — and we usually break it up with a stop in Glenwood Springs for the kids to swim in the hot springs. The race is at Buttermilk, which is the friendliest U10 venue in the West. The hotel breakfast routine becomes the part of the trip the kids talk about most: the make-your-own waffle station at the Limelight, Charlie's pre-race oatmeal, Wyatt's quintuple-syrup chaos. We have the same waitress every year. She remembers them.

The skiing is also, you know, Aspen. After Charlie's runs we'll head over to Snowmass for the afternoon. Sean and I will get a babysitter and dinner at Element 47 at the Little Nell on Saturday night, which is the closest the race-weekend grind ever gets to a real date.

Big Sky is the most fun for Wyatt

Big Sky's freestyle scene is where Wyatt lights up. While Charlie is doing GS at one venue, Wyatt is sometimes off doing his own thing — terrain park, slopestyle, big-air. His comps are different from Charlie's in every way. Charlie's race day is solemn, watch-checked, time-obsessed. Wyatt's is loud, bib-pinned, music-blasting, every kid wearing a different colored hoodie under their jacket. The judging is subjective. The vibe is festival.

I make sure I'm at one of his big-air comps every season even when it overlaps with Charlie's race. We tag-team. Sean stays with Charlie at the GS course; I drive Wyatt to the park. We trade kids on the way back. It's a logistics ballet and I'm strangely proud of how good we are at it now.

Snowbasin and Steamboat: the workhorse races

These are the bread-and-butter mountains of the U10 circuit. Snowbasin is the day-trip — barely 90 minutes from PC, no hotel needed, we just leave at dawn. Steamboat is a flight (or a long drive) and we make a real weekend of it. The Steamboat hot springs are the unofficial PCST tradition the night before race day.

The race-mom uniform

I have a uniform. I will not pretend I don't. Bogner snow pants, a Bogner jacket I've had since 2020, a Smith helmet, my Costa sunglasses, a thermos of coffee that I refill at the lodge, and a small Yeti bottle that may or may not have a single splash of something in it for after the race. The other PCST moms have variations on the theme. We can spot each other across a parking lot at any mountain in the West.

What I tell new race-team families

1. Email the teacher in October. Lay out the whole season. Don't drip-feed it Friday by Friday.
2. Build a packing checklist and laminate it. I am not joking. Mine is on the back of the mudroom door. It saves me at 9 p.m. the night before every trip.
3. Pick one race per season to make a real family trip. Aspen for us. Stay an extra night. Get the dinner. Don't make all eight weekends feel like a grind.
4. Find your race-mom people. The relationships I've built standing in the snow at Buttermilk and Lone Peak are the most honest friendships I have. Bay Area moms can keep their book club. Give me a finish-line fence and a thermos.
5. Let the kids see the bigger picture. Charlie knows the families on her team in a way she would never know other kids. They've seen each other crash, win, throw up at altitude, and recover. Wyatt rolls with a cohort of freestyle weirdos who would die for each other. That's the part nobody puts in the brochure.