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News Specialist Ed Yeates reportingKids with cancer thumbed noses at their disease today and took to the slopes of Park City.
The kids are all battling various stages of cancer, but it was time to forget their ailments, if only for the moment, and do something most have never done before.
We may be in a drought, but that doesn't matter to 17-year-old Eric Cordero. Though cancer has taken part of what he was, he's still up for learning something new.
"I've never skied before you know, so this whole thing, the whole area, the whole thing is different. But you just got to get used to it and try your best," Cordero says.
Eric and 11 other kids are here from the M.D. Cancer Center at the University of Texas.
"I've never been up here and I've never seen so much snow at once, so it's really exciting, a good feeling," he says.
Some kids are seeing snow for the first time.
"So notice how deep this stuff is here and this snow is a little softer and stickier," one child says.
Steve Rael's bone cancer is not under control yet, but he says it's doing better.
Better enough to stand on the one leg he has left and do something different.
"It just feels cool to ski and just to have fun," he says.
These kids came here because friends back home make all kinds of artwork like this that's used on products.
All profits come back to the M.D. Anderson Center to fund trips for cancer kids, just for the fun of it.
"Made a lot of good friends, staying up every night playing cards and watching movies and stuff like that," says Shelby Robin.
One class act here today was 12-year-old Michael Ames. Though a brain tumor has blinded him, that didn't stop him from feeling the sensation of the snow.
With help from guides, Michael sees not with his eyes but with movement and smells and feelings.
"At first it's scary. But you get used to it after a couple of days and it's great. You feel the air against your face," Ames says.
"It feels good. Actually, it feels really good," he says.
More information about the students' artwork can be found by following the link above.
