The sights, sounds and smells of skiing, for me at least, were ingrained at an early age. Brown paper-bag lunches, hot ski wax, musty three-holed cotton face masks, a Space Invaders machine glowing in the gloomy corner of a dingy but warm lodge.

The skiing was often secondary. The sensory bombardment of the sport was more about escape from the city, from schoolwork, from the routines of life in suburban Virginia. Frostbite warnings, glaze-ice trails, mind-numbing lift lines - none of it mattered as a kid.

I remember rope tows shredding my leather mittens when I first learned to ski in Germany as a 10-year-old Air Force brat, strains of Slim Whitman's Una Paloma Blanca ringing in my ears.

But it wasn't until my family moved back stateside in 1977, bought a cabin in Western Pennsylvania and season passes to a tiny ski area called Blue Knob, that the sport really took root in my still-forming subconscious.

It was often so cold at Blue Knob that we skied in Jason-esque leather face masks, and so icy that missing an edge could mean a full-slope human luge ride courtesy of our slick, synthetic '70s ski clothes.

The next half-hour would be spent walking back up the vertical ice sheet collecting gear scattered in what we fondly referred to as a "yard sale."

Again, didn't matter as a kid. You learned the value of your edges and only occasionally succumbed to the cold - only to be dragged away from the pinball machines by a father unwilling to buy lift tickets so we could hang out in the lodge.

I wonder now what memories my kids are forming from the sport. They just as readily run to the now hyperviolent video games in the corner of the lodge and are just as easily pried away to go play in snow that even on the worst of days is so far superior to what I grew up sliding on.

They seem to be having fun. The only twinge I get is when I pack them off to ski school at North America's largest single-mountain resort, Vail, where my oldest son's Devo class is often inundated by 550 kids on any given Saturday.

Some days at Blue Knob that was the head count for the entire mountain for the day.

With Vail able to accommodate a moderate-sized Midwestern city most weekends (capping out around 20,000 skiers a day), I worry sometimes that my kids are getting lost in the megaresort shuffle.

To counteract, my wife and I have made a conscious effort to visit Colorado's Gems as much as possible every season. Eight small throwback resorts lumped together by the state ski industry's marketing group, Colorado Ski Country USA, the Gems are an important feeder system to the bigger mountains and, for me, a critical, family-friendly connection to the sport's simpler, far-less-frenetic past.

Some of the Gems (Loveland, Eldora) are nearly as close to Denver as most of Utah's resorts are to Salt Lake City.

Other Gems are more far-flung (Powderhorn, Monarch, Ski Sunlight), thus producing even more sparsely skied slopes. Our hometown favorite is Ski Cooper, less than 45 minutes from Vail but worlds apart on the relaxed resort scale (I defy you to lose your children at Cooper).

Regardless of the Gem, though, visit one with the kids, and you'll ski back in time . . . and price. With the season rapidly winding down, most of the Gems are offering retro prices as well.

Colorado's eight Gems

Arapahoe Basin

Closes June 5, conditions permitting.

ArapahoeBasin.com.

1-888-272-7246.

Eldora Mountain Resort

Closes April 15.

Eldora.com.

303-440-8700.

Loveland Ski Area

Closes May 6.

SkiLoveland.com.

303-571-5580.

Monarch Mountain

Closes April 8.

SkiMonarch.com.

1-888-996-7669.

Powderhorn Resort

Closes April 1.

Powderhorn.com.

1-970-268-570.0

Ski Cooper

Closes April 1.

SkiCooper.com.

1-719-486-3684.

SolVista Basin

Closes April 1.

SolVista.com.

1-888-850-4615.

Sunlight Mountain Resort

Closes April 8.

SunlightMtn.com.

1-800-445-7931.

Colorado Gems Card

Offers ticket discounts at all eight Gems; sold out for the season.

ColoradoSki.com/ Resorts/Gems/ GemsCard/.

David O. Williams, a Colorado resident and avid skier since 1979, lives in Edwards with his wife and three sons.

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