New To Skiing? A Guide
People new to snow skiing are sometimes intimidated by the sport itself, not to mention the vastness of the resorts, the novelty of the equipment, the way the mountains rear up majestically before them and pierce the clouds, the various traditions and unspoken customs that govern the behavior of these many hundreds of skiers on the slopes at one time.
Have no fear.
Well, have fear – after all you’re sliding down a chuck of geography at high speed along icy ground with no real control over your descent – but some simple tips at the front end might help you better manage the experience.
First, I would say, you should look around your part of the country and see if there are some local slopes that you can fall on. Every region has its small resorts that are perfectly fine for slamming down upon at high speed, a skill you are going to want to master sooner than later.
No such resorts within driving distance? Human ingenuity finds a way…and you don’t have to spend a lot of money.
Many people make do perfectly well with simply dashing themselves onto the ground in their own back yard over and over. Some others throw themselves down basement steps or off low-hanging roofs. Variations will occur to you. Any senseless activity will do that simulates the sensation of crashing over and over into the hard granite surface of a ski mountain. As one of the fundamental things you are going to do, you need to get comfortable with these skull-quivering collisions with the planet.
Another thing to conceptually acquaint yourself with is the ski lift, which admittedly takes some getting used to.
If you have never seen one except in a James Bond movie, you may have in your mind a kind of enclosed gondola that is lifted from ground level to the top of the mountain in a smooth and scenic passage.
It may be your impression that while in transit you sit and chat with the other skiers, sip hot chocolate, and discuss the matters of the day.
Well that’s close, except in reality you are not in an enclosed car at all but clinging to an open bench-like structure no bigger nor any less rickety than your grandmother’s old porch swing; you are not protected from the elements in the least – indeed, these cars make a point of tearing in a headlong direction into the elements – you do not board it as you would a small rail car but instead you are set into a line of people who one after the other are situated on a designated spot and told to look behind them because RIGHT NOW this wildly swaying piece of metal contraption is coming up behind you at about the speed of a car accelerating onto the interstate and you are expected to sit yourself upon it while demonstrating dignity, elan, or simple survival.
In the length of time between boarding and exiting the chair lift, you are whipped along a set of cable strung between massive metal towers, rather like telephone wires strung up and down your street.
At certain times it will seem to you that you are really, really, really high up off the ground, clinging to this chair that sways back and forth as if your grandmother’s porch swing had become possessed by the collective evil spirit of the fine people who used to live on her land and is now trying to fling you off.
Have no fear. Everything is relative.
You’ve flown on an airplane, right? Make a point next time of getting a window seat and looking out now and again.
You’re so high up! The land reveals itself as a quilt of farmland, and the cities looks like they were built of children’s blocks, here at 30 000, 32,000 feet.
Now stop and consider, when you are on one of the ski lifts that take you up to the top of the mountain, you will only be a little more than half that high off the ground!
Sure, you’ll be swaying in the wind like a demented thing, the metal creaking and moaning all around due to the stress placed upon it, you’re forgotten by everyone at the bottom, top, middle of the mountain, and blinded by a snowstorm, but like I say, if you’re any more that 16-17,000 feet off the rocky ground at the highest point I’d be surprised. So you can relax.
Well, go ahead and have fear if you insist, fair enough.
The speed that these systems whip you along, the onrushing landscape that goes whizzing by, the numerous assaults to your senses, and your own terrified screaming can blind you to the fact that you are really traveling quite a distance, miles and miles it can seem like, in natural conditions unfriendly to human life.
The landscape below is totally deserted and if you somehow were stranded down there you would be in quite a pickle!
Many people still their uneasiness in these matters by looking around at their companions on the very chair they sit upon, and on the chairs right ahead and right behind them, and mentally making a list of the order in which they would eat them if it came to that.
The slopes are designated green, blue, and black, in ascending order of difficulty. All are terrifying. Most terrifying of all is the black diamond, which is as close to throwing yourself off a vertical cliff to your doom as you can get, a bit like those local madmen in the various tropical sites who dive off of cliffs into the water far below in order to….well, I don’t really know what they are trying to do. Never did. But anyway a black diamond is a bit like that.
If you ever find yourself on one by accident, you may have time to sketch out a quick will, leaving all your money to a worthy non-profit, say The Society For The Prevention of Skiing.
There are no white, or say beige slopes, which would amount in your mind to a level city pavement on a sunny summer day, populated largely with bars and restaurants, and which is the difficulty level you are really interested in, so don’t bother looking around.
Fine people are available to instruct you in the art and science and complete madness of skiing on purpose – remember, you are doing this on purpose you complete fool, someone told you would enjoy it and you believed them, little knowing that it was only a bit short of an assassination attempt – but it is important to chat with them a bit and make sure your learning style meshes with their teaching style.
This is a polite way to say that you should stay away from pure nuts who seem to think that you want to get better at the sport rather than simply survive it.
‘Have no fear!’ they will tell you again and again, but as we may have already discussed, I would go ahead and have fear.
After all, evolution spend a few billion years building a self-survival mindset into your personal cranium, and situations like this are what it is all for. You don’t want to scorn Mother Nature, do you?
Most of these instructors have other jobs once they get off the slopes; I would say just get a little line of questioning going as to what those other jobs are. Be alert to any conflicts of interest. If they work for an orthopedic surgeon running a special this week or are in the family mortuary business, just give some thought to whether your interests and theirs are completely aligned.
Well, you finally get down the slope, and you deserve to give yourself a pat on the back, though actually whipping off your goggles, hat, and ski suit and kissing the ground is viewed as a bit ‘over the top’ by aficionados.
Simply vowing to devote every waking minute of the rest of your life either to good works or to out and out madcap decadence is usually enough for the occasion.
You are still in your skiing outfit as you make your way back to the various amenities provided at the base of the mountain, so you walk a bit like one of the slower participants at the back of the pack in a zombie movie, but that is fine, that is fine.
You have faced the worst that nature can throw at you and survived. ‘Fear,’ what is it but a word? That is your whole attitude now. It’s all in how you think about it.
That is when you open the menu of a likely looking little joint offering everything that you hold dear – cheeseburgers, and fries, and sarsaparilla flowing like a mountain stream – and take a look at the prices.
Now you can have fear.
