A beginners guide to how not to ski.

This is a story for all those people who ‘just can’t get enough of skiing. It’s just sooooo good. Such adrenaline.’ Etc etc etc. Well, I always wondered what the attraction was to sliding around on some ridiculous platform appliances, sticks waving in the air and those horrific plastic boots that make you walk like some kind of retarded robot. And the freezing cold that creeps into your bones and stays there until you get safely back to the nice, normal, rainy temperatures of home. The only fun thing I could envisage was the hot chocolate and raclette in the evenings. What’s more, and I don’t mean to generalise as a lot of skiers I know are lovely, kind, normal people, but I’ve always associated the skiing society with those macho, competitive, ex-public school types who spend their winters in Chamonix and their summers in the villa in Greece/sailing in Antigua/in the holiday cottage in Padstow. Their ‘rah’ tones fill up the surrounding three miles and in the evenings they chortle heavily at whoever fell over the most. They fill me with bubbling rage.

Anyway, seeing as I’ve heard SUCH good things about it from so many people, I thought I would give skiing a go. After all, I’m only going to be within an hour of the Pyrenees once (probably) and I might as well take up the opportunity of a 20 euro trip, including a lesson and equipment. So off I went at some horrifically early hour on a coach of a hundred or so enthusiastic and naturally sporty French students who’d all be been practically born on skis. There were a small minority of débutants and an even smaller minority of us completement débutants. I was filled with a mixed feeling of dread and apprehension, questioning myself why I didn’t stick with my instinct to spend my Saturday at the market, making soup and recovering from my hangover from the night before.

However, my dread was replaced my excitement and nerves as we approached the peak of the mountain. It was beautiful. The snow laced the views of the Pyrenees like a delicious icing and I couldn’t wait to launch in. I was sure I would love skiing; this is what all those people were talking about. I envisaged future, working holidays with my young professional contemporaries in the Alps, whooshing around during the day and talking about black runs over beers in the evening. Later, I could bring my offspring skiing. They would become like the enthusiastic French students born on skis, fearless and full of excitement at the thought of those glistening mountains.

But the dread returned when the skis were actually attached to my poor, confused feet. I stood there frozen, slipping around at the tiniest movement. The instructors ordered us to walk like ducks half way up the slope. This was an absolutely impossible task, at least for me. Every movement constituted sliding backwards into some poor, unsuspecting young child. I could not fathom how to climb this snow and people covered hill on these obtrusive, ridiculous new substructures that had replaced my feet. Every time I moved a little bit forward I slid back four times as much. The instructors eventually dragged me into place and I joined the long queue, waiting for my turn to have a go at sliding down the slope. It looked fairly easy, and it was. Surprisingly, I didn’t fall over, just slid and screamed and got caught by an instructor that erased any of his potential rugged good looks by wearing a stupid comedy, hairy, orange hat. That was fine. But then I had to recommence the climb. This time the instructors were too busy running around trying to catch yelping, out of control Spaniards or Americans who had built up confidence and were sliding all over the place, like in some monotonous Nintendo game, so I was toute seule on my long, hard voyage. Sliding backwards reoccurred as a problem, and all I had to depend on was unsuspecting other learners to grab onto. I eventually made my way back into the queue with the help of those slightly more able then me, who kindly took my hand and showed me how to master the totally unnatural duck movement of walking sideways and digging your skis into the snow. The queue of débutants gradually depleted as people got better and were granted permission to go and try an actual, whole slope. There were six or seven of us who stayed, those who still couldn’t turn, stop or change speed. In short, ski. But by the very end of the lesson I had sort of got it. I was still awful, but I could go very slowly and turn a little bit, and even stop. I was ready for a proper slope and I was even rather excited.

We approached the top on a silly conveyer belt which you stand on and it goes very slowly, similar to those in airports. It looked completely out of place in the middle of a mountain. At the top I looked down with bubbling nerves at the bottom, so far away, but I was raring to go. The instructors were all around so I felt relatively safe as well. I started sliding, even directing where I was going a bit, until David, a fellow beginner who was kitted out in purple, 80’s style salopettes, fell over right in my path. Consequently, I crashed into him and we lay in a tangled mess until an instructor came to relieve us. With the help of this kind man, the second part of the slope was rather fun, and I even managed to get to the bottom and stop without falling over or crashing into anyone! I was on a high and went to lunch telling all my fellow skiers that I could now ski. We high-fived. I was one of them.

I ate my pasta and watched the slopes, happy in my environment. Even in my plastic boots, that I’d actually become a bit fond of. Then the thought dawned on me that there were no more lessons after lunch, we would be left to untangle and pick ourselves up when we crashed. No matter, I went up the slope with David and prepared to descend, alone. As soon as I started, I picked up speed scarily quickly, heading straight for some orange fencing, into which I crashed and had to be helped up by a friendly, chuckling French man decked out in orange salopettes and thick sun block. I survived the rest of the slope, just about, but was scared about going again, alone. Happily, I found some French friends at the bottom, my flat mate Cécile and Guillaume. Although, like all French people, they are naturally very sporty, (Guillaume doesn’t go hiking with the university because the ‘difficile’ hikes are too easy, he likes to run up mountains.) they were willing to help this poor, displaced immigrant. But not on the run I’d just done, no, that had too many people in the queue and on the conveyer belt. The slope they wanted to take me to was up a button lift, one of those lifts that has a little, well, button like thing that you balance under your bum, grab onto the pole and it hauls you up a mountain. Now, when I say I’m a complete beginner at skiing, I do lie a little. When I was around ten, my Norway-based relatives took me for the day, which involved going up one of these stupid appliances. Not having a clue what to do, I sat on the button and put my weight on my bum, forcing the whole lift to have to stop functioning so that they could rescue me from sliding down the mountain. I skied one slope after that, and then we went home after I refused to go back up the lift. Another reason why the idea of skiing has always disgusted me.

But, I decided to face my fear, and remembered how the angry Norwegian lift worker showed me how to use the lift twelve years ago, putting your weight on your feet and your arms. I clumsily followed the graceful Cécile past a load of excitable French children and grabbed a pole with a button on the end of it. I managed to stay upright and balanced, but as we rose up the mountain, I was shaking I was so scared. My skis in front of me were going in all sorts of directions as I tried to keep my balance. I remembered what Cécile had said to me, ‘reste détendue’. Relax. Relax. Relax. This was better, quite nice views actually. Wait...shit. I’d become so relaxed that my skis were all over the place. Shit. One had come off. Shit. I was off. Shit. I was sat under a lift with the excitable French children riding past and laughing at me. Luckily, I was on a flat part of the slope, so I grabbed my stray ski and took off the other one, climbing away from the lift area. Now what? I sat on the side of the mountain with absolutely no clue what to do. The only way down seemed to be an impossibly steep slope which advanced snowboarders were grinding down. I looked around. A man on skis vaguely told me to take some slope down the mountain as he swooshed past. No one else. I shouted at people going on the lift past me to ‘Trouvez l’aide s’il vous plait!’ But nothing seemed to happen. I sat for about ten minutes in thick snow, waiting to see if Cécile and Guillaume would come to my rescue. I started to cry. Eventually a nice man on a snowboard came past, and asked if he could help. Through my panicked, sobbing French, he deciphered I was English and kindly helped me down in his perfect English, cursing the university for giving me too long skis and no poles, and not staying with us for the afternoon. We walked down like mountain trekkers and he told me his life story while I told him I wanted to be a journalist. He was right when he said at least this would make a good story.

And that’s all I’ve really gained from my experience of skiing. I’ve tried it, and although I tell Cécile I’ll try again, I probably won’t. The bus journey back was smelly, cold and wet. I didn’t have that big high that people talk about, and that I sort of had before lunch. Just disappointment and a feeling of numb shock. Skiers, please don’t judge me, the reason I don’t like skiing is not because I’m scared, or because I don’t like adrenaline. I go surfing and scuba diving, which I think are proof that I do. To me, skiing was the most unnatural thing in the world. True, if I persevered I would no doubt improve and enjoy myself, but the fact remains that I have an ingrained fear of those lifts. But I’ve tried it, and I can say I’ve tried it. And who knows, in another twelve years I might try again. I’ll be able to afford to go for a week in the Alps, and have lessons 8 hours a day. But for now, I’m happy spending my Saturdays being hung-over, going to the market and making soup.