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Published: December 26th 2010
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Christmas morning! Yay - my first white Christmas!
The day started a little slow - we all slept in until about 8.30am, - quite a sleep-in given its Christmas morning.
Darren made us all scrambled eggs for breakfast and the boys gave me a cute Christmas present - a snowman Pandora charm, very cute!
We left the house at about 10.30am and drove over to the other side of the lake so i could take some photos of the lake with Snow Summit snow fields as a backdrop to lake front houses - very pretty (though a lot of glare at this time of day). The lake had iced over in parts and there were sheets of ice cracking and making an awesome shattering noise as the lake water lapped up onto the boat ramps. The boys had lots of fun head-butting and ninja chopping sheets of ice.
We continued driving through Fawnskin and onto highway 18 to take some more photos of the gorgeous mountains and pine trees covered in snow - very pretty.
We headed back into town and had lunch at Subway before heading over the Action Zip line tours office ready for
our 1pm tour. Apparently we were the only 4 people booked on the tour until yesterday, and now the group was at its maximum at 14 people.
We watched the safety video and loaded into the vans to head out to the entrance to the ranch before jumping into 4WD jeep like vehicles to take us up to the first zip line. The ride was so bumpy and the climb was very steep. I was amazed we didn't slide back down - a normal car would not have made it!
When we arrived at the base cabin we got harnessed up and had time to play in the snow whilst we waited for the rest of our group to arrive. The snow was perfect powder snow -as soon as you took a step into it your foot and leg sank up to knee height - it was awesome! I jumped in and fell onto my butt - sinking right down. My hands were *freezing* as i didn't have my gloves on and had to use bare hands to get myself upright.
We had another demonstration on how to brake etc. on the zip line - key point
is not to try and brake by putting your hand in front of the trolley, and to brake by pushing down with our strongest hand's palm at the rear of the trolley (but not gripping it). Joel went first for the group, then Dan, then Darren, then I. It wasn't scary as such, just more fear that I’d accidently grab the zip line in front of the trolley.
Because of the amount of snow that had fallen the day before we arrived in Big Bear, the zip line tours had been cancelled (including the 10am tour this morning) and luckily we were the first group in a couple of days which were able to take the tour. We weren’t able to do three of the zip lines because the platforms were covered in 4 foot of snow – however we were still able to do 6 of the 9, and missing out on three was a small price to pay compared to missing out completely.
We were only given these garden gloves to wear and my hands were absolutely freezing – so much so I could hardly feel my fingers when I was trying to use the video
on the camera to film the guys going down the zip lines. A mother and daughter on the tour were nice enough to lend me one glove each to wear.
We were the first out of our group to finish the zip line and Darren and Joel took the chance to throw snow balls at group members as they were coming down the final zip line. By the time the last guide come down everyone from the group was ready and waiting to throw snowballs at him. It was quite funny. Joel made an awesome snow angel – I wished I could have joined in but I wasn’t wearing a water proof jacked and I was cold enough!
When we arrived back at the office we were given the choice of a free beanie or t-shirt in lieu for missing out on two of the zip lines. We chose the beanies.
Tonight we had dinner at Nottinghams. The waitress let us try some Root Beer – which is pretty much like Doctor Pepper. The dinner was pretty nice – I had a stuffed Salmon and veg and wild rice. It’s quite funny that everywhere you go you
get soup or salad and mash potato or roast potato or wild rice with your ‘entrée’ (main). So much food. It’s quite a challenge to eat healthy here. I ordered my salmon without the sauce, but probably ‘fell down’ with the creamy chicken soup – umm maa! Dinner last night felt more like Christmas dinner – but tonight was still nice.
When we got home Joel accidently locked the bathroom door - with no key knob! Joel and Darren went outside to try and brake in through the window but no joy. Daniel was hero of the day - he broke into the bathroom using a coat hanger. We were a little disturbed by his skill but glad all the same 😊
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