Snow fans celebrate winter’s blast
By Jane Michaels jmichaels@pioneerlocal.com January 13, 2012 3:00PM
Kym Hackett of La Grange and his 6-year-old daughter, Alyssa, walk up the sledding hill Jan. 12 at Memorial Park in LaGrange Park. | Photo by Jane Michaels~Sun-Times Media
Updated: March 19, 2012 1:59AM
As motorists muttered and inched cautiously home on slushy roadways, squeals of delight reverberated on a LaGrange Park sledding hill Jan. 12 heralding the area’s first significant snowfall.
All shapes and sizes of snowsuit-clad daredevils descended on Memorial Park’s hill off La Grange Road at Woodlawn Avenue. Several boys tried an alternative path for their saucers down the snow-covered amphitheater steps, and one or two hopped on a railing and slid down.
“They’ve been looking forward to this for months,” said Theresa Heflin of LaGrange Park, who brought her three daughters, Maggie, 7, Emily, 5, and Lily, 2. The youngest was content to sit bundled in a pink snowsuit on a sled and had no intention of zooming down the hill.
“They were very excited about coming here after school,” Heflin said. “Even when it was warm, they wanted it to be snowing.”
Mandy Olson of Brookfield said her children, Micah, 5, and Jake, 7, also were anxious to hit the slope.
“They’ve been waiting and waiting,” Olson said. “ We barbecued yesterday, and I said, ‘We’ll be sledding tomorrow.’”
Michelle Wright of LaGrange Park said her daughter, Ava, 7, too, felt a bit snow-deprived.
“We definitely missed the snow over winter break,” Wright said. “As soon as she got home, she asked to go sledding. We put the homework aside to go hit the slopes for a little bit.”
Liz Dickman of LaGrange Park took a few steps to give her children a push down the hill on a large inflated snow tub sending Kate, 9, and Reid, 4, quickly to the bottom.
“It’s new and a bit too large,” Dickman said. “I had to jury-rig a way to get it here tying it on top of the car.”
Ian Robertson, 10, of Indian Head Park, was eager to try out his new Yeti inflatable snow sled, shaped like a triangle.
“I got it for Christmas,” Ian said and smiled broadly from under a snowsuit, hat and scarf, as his glasses soon were covered by spitting snow in the late afternoon.
Ian’s mom, Hollie Robertson, sipped a steaming cup of coffee and said she’d “share his sled” after a while. She said she didn’t mind the drive, because there wasn’t really a place to sled in Indian Head Park, unless she headed to a neighboring forest preserve.
“I grew up in La Grange, and we came here all the time. This was the place to be,” Hollie Robertson said. “There used to be a Howard Johnson’s next door, and they let us park our sleds there and come in and have hot chocolate.”
Repeated trips down Memorial Park’s hill on a knee board also brought back memories for Kym Hackett of La Grange, who brought his 6-year-old daughter, Alyssa.
“I grew up sledding on this hill,” Hackett said. “We moved back to La Grange about three years ago, and we walked here from East Avenue and Cossitt. We couldn’t wait for the snow.”
The veteran sledder noted bales of hay added to cushion inadvertent crashes into a backstop on the north side of the slope.
“It’ll take about a week for everybody to get the hang of walking up the side of the hill and going down on sleds in the middle,” Hackett predicted.
Instead of hitting the Howard Johnson’s or the former International House of Pancakes for hot chocolate, Hackett said he planned to head to Panera’s for a hot drink and serving of macaroni and cheese, his daughter’s favorite, before the long walk back.
“I give her a ride part of the way,” he admitted. “But I’m glad she doesn’t mind walking.”
In addition to 5.3 inches of snow in LaGrange Park, the area’s first major storm brought plunging temperatures welcomed by skating enthusiasts so that rinks in La Grange and LaGrange Park could be flooded and frozen.
But a revised 15-day forecast Jan. 16 called for 11 days of temperatures above freezing, said Dan Laczynski, who coordinates the Pond Posse, volunteers who maintain two ice rinks at Gilbert Park in La Grange.
At least five days of freezing temperatures are needed for the ice to cure, so a decision has been made to hold off flooding the rinks until the weather outlook is more promising, Laczynski said.
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