Backyard Adventure: Winter Sledding
If you live in the upper Northern Hemisphere that can only mean one thing. SNOW! Instead of staying indoors all winter, eating comfort food and complaining about the cold, why don’t you take advantage of the white fluffy stuff!
One of the easiest ways to enjoy the snow is to find a hill, any size will do, and go sledding. Don’t give me the excuse that you are too old to enjoy this sport. In fact, it’s a great way to bond with your kids and enjoy yourself in the process. Walking up that hill in full winter garb will also burn off oodles of those Holiday calories.
I just went sled riding myself. I live in Bowling Green, OH, and if you’ve ever been through, you know that it is very flat topography! There are no natural hills within miles. However, there is a golf course on campus, and on the last hole there is a 50 foot high man-made hill that is perfect for sledding.
If you’re worried about spending money on a sled, think again. My friends and I decided to use some unconventional objects that didn’t cost us a dime. We took 2 large cookie sheets, 1 garbage can lid, and a giant 2’ x 5’ plastic tub out to the hill. We soon found out that the plastic garbage lid did not work at all. It just dug into the snow and stopped. The 2 cookie sheets worked well if you went down the hill on your stomach, but if you sat on them you often ended up going down the hill backwards.
The ultimate sled was the giant tub. It was big enough to fit two people! We decided to pretend we were in the classic Jamaican bobsledding film Cool Runnings. One of us would push the tub down the hill and then jump in the back. The other sledder would steer with their hands by putting pressure on the ground. It was similar to steering a kayak. You just put your hand down on the side that you want to turn toward.
There were plenty of tense moments as we picked up speed on the hill and lost control. About half of the time we would flip out of the tub near the bottom of the hill and go rolling for 20 feet. Toward the end of the night we mastered our steering technique and we even managed to steer ourselves through an opening in a fence on the more “dangerous” side of the hill. It was one heck of an adventure, and it was only 5 minutes away from my house.
So when the snow starts to fall, jump into some warm clothes, find the biggest plastic tub in the house. and run for the hills! Happy Backyard Adventure!
If you have any Winter Sledding tales, please share them with us in the comment section below.
