Okay - I didn't start until I was in uni, but a season as a chalet girl in Italy ended with us being able to ski a gorge that we'd hiked for a couple of hours to reach. Yes, it was extremely scary, but also exhilarating. I've not done anything like that since but I did feel it had left me a 'capable' skier.
After that there were several skiing weekends with work and friends and when George and Jaz - and then Elle - were little, we spent five days skiing with family friends at Mt Buller for seven consecutive years.
This last Christmas we skied in Japan. And now we're in Queensland, New Zealand.
Our first day was at Coronet Peak. Elle and I joined the guided tour after lunch with a few others and we all described ourselves as 'intermediate'. In truth, we were a bit better than one couple and probably on par with the others (guides excluded!). So weren't we surprised when our next ski day at Treble Cone proved we can't ski to save ourselves.
Having done a couple of warm up runs in the home bowl and checked Sass into ski school, we moved over to the second bowl over the back and O...M...G. It didn't look that challenging from the chair lift so I skied straight over the front - cautiously followed by Elle and Geoff. It was an ungroomed Red run - so not even Black, the most difficult. (We've now come to realise that Black isn't a standard and when the snow is a bit crunchy and ungroomed it can be the difference between do-able and down-right dangerous!) It was so steep and the snow so unforgiving and I was so fearful of falling, I couldn't turn and actually had to sit down on my bottom and flip my skis back the other way. How embarrassing.....
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| Ignore my religious-looking head gear and check out the scenery - amazing! |
We eventually managed to pick our way down to a point where we could get back onto a groomed piste only to be further humiliated by a kid who I swear was 5, shoot past us at the speed of light, his mum and siblings calmly swooshing after him. We looked like absolute amateurs.
But as the day wore on, something started to become clearer.... everyone we met on the chair lifts were locals. Okay - one guy was from Australia - but he was working there having done three seasons at Thredbo - so he might as well have been local. I shared a lift with an older guy who was complaining heli-skiing was ruined by people who can't ski. I thought he was boasting to his companion but it was also revealed he's a guide for the 'back country' - ie of the map.
At lunch, (a delicious NZ$18 pork belly with apple gravy, glazed carrots, peas and onion and garlic roasted baby potatoes no less!) we noticed all the families knew each other. We were clearly tourists.
We've since skied The Remarkable (rudely dubbed 'Unremarkable' by a Treble Cone local) and Cardrona so have our confidence back - just.
1 comment:
Laughing at your descriptions! I have skied once in my life and by the end of a four day stint had become reasonably proficient. That was also 21 years ago and I have since gained a degree of self preservation and fearfulness, so no desire to go careening down slopes. However Bike Boy and The Dancer had their first snowboard/ski experiences on Grand Final weekend at Mt Buller. And Oh Dear. We have created a pair of monsters. Took to it like ducks to water. Why is it that young people are like that? Oh, that's right, fearless with no sense of self preservation.
We have a chalet at Mt Buller which we rent for the ski season as we are mountain bikers, not skiers. As the children now think they would like to participate in winter sports, we had a long conversation about the economics of that (considering the winter rent allows us to have the chalet for summer). They remain unconvinced as they seem to think I have a money tree secreted away.........Oh how I wish!
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