Here's something you can't do in Kansas City, a guy from Kansas City pointed out to me on the ride up the Montezuma Express chairlift March 13: ski with your kids on a school night.

The guy had dashed up to Keystone to get in some runs after a day of business meetings in Denver. I was riding the lift with my 6-year- old son, Nick, watching the sun sink behind Buffalo Mountain and Lake Dillon on a 45-degree evening.

True, weeknight skiing with your kid is one of the privileges of life in the high country. The drawbacks are numerous too - stratospherically priced real estate, nearly $3-a-gallon gas and tourist-gouging grocery bills, to name a few - but sunset skiing with junior eases the pain.

Weeknight snow riding with the kids in the springtime is something Denverites can enjoy, especially with clocks springing forward earlier than usual.

Pick up the kids from school at 3 p.m. and you'll be at Keystone by 4:30. Or if they're into the whole park/pipe scene, you can be at Echo Mountain Park in 45 minutes. Lift tickets for children at Keystone and Echo Mountain after 4 p.m. are $25 and $20 until 9 p.m.

That's a relative bargain for the number of runs you can get in on a fairly uncrowded weekday evening. Nick and I were a little more leisurely in our approach but still managed to get in quite a few surprisingly high- quality turns before heading home at 7:30 (it was a school night, after all).

I picked him up from school in Edwards just before 3 and after heading home to grab our gear and a snack, we ran a few other errands, made the 45-minute drive east to Keystone and got on the gondola just before 6.

There was enough light for the next hour and a half to even jump into the trees along the sides of the handful of runs equipped with lights. With temps in the mid-40s, snow that had been softened considerably by daytime temps in the mid-50s didn't have a chance to freeze over into the dreaded "coral reef" spring skiers dread first thing in the morning.

So let's see, soft snow, relatively warm temps, the alpenglow of another killer Colorado sunset . . . this was nothing like the night skiing of my youth. Granted, it was back East, but I remember frostbite warnings, glaze ice and insanely crowded slopes.

Tips for night skiing with kids

• Dress in layers. You never know what you're going to get weatherwise, especially after the sun goes down. If the wind kicks up, it can get quite chilly above 8,000 feet, even during the springtime.

• Keystone, the largest night-skiing operation in the state, is open until 9 p.m. seven nights a week until April 1 (it's typically only open at nights Wednesday through Sunday). Day tickets are good at night, and an after-4 p.m. ticket is $47 for adults and $25 for kids. Call 1-800-344-8878 or go to Keystone.Snow.com/info/mtn info.nightski.asp.

• The terrain-park-only Echo Mountain Park 35 miles west of Denver near Idaho Springs offers a $20 ticket from 4-9 p.m. every day. Call 303-325-7347 or go to EchoMountainPark.com.

• SolVista Basin near Granby offers sporadic, free public night skiing. The last one of the season is 5-8 p.m. March 24. A free lift ticket is required. Call 1-888-850-4615 or go to Granby Ranch.com/ski/ski.php.