So I threw myself down the mountain....

Having worked in a French ski resort for about 9 days now, I couldn’t wait to get up on the slopes. All my brand-new ski clothing was unpacked, and hanging there, begging to be taken out for an airing, and I was tired of waiting in the bar for my rosy-cheeked colleagues to stagger home in their clumsy plastic boots, telling me about the wonderful time they’d just had up on that elusive mountain, that I see and admire every single day, but have never visited myself. Every single work-day, I’ve watched customers tramp slushy ice in and out of the bar, and felt a touch of jealousy when they eagerly finish their overpriced vin chaud, and quickly zip themselves back up, ready for another session. They must all be having so much fun, otherwise why would they be out here in the minus degrees, flinging themselves before the force of the elements and gravity, only stopping to pay a small fortune for an espresso, which they drink whilst posing with a cigarette on the front terrace in their designer salopettes, before whisking away again in a cloud of powder snow. Skiing must be amazing.

So, I thought, today is the day that I finally make the leap from resort worker to resort user. From this day on, I will actually have something to say when people ask, “are you a skier or a boarder”, the question that inevitably pigeonholes you in their mind for the rest of your relationship. No more will I have to meekly admit that I’ve never even seen this much snow in my life, let alone participated in winter sports of any kind, while my conversation partner gives me a semi-disgusted “and I thought you were cool” look, and slips me into the specially reserved pigeonhole for snow-virgins who suspiciously work in the mountains, taking up one of those low paid, yet much-coveted saisonaire bartending jobs that many English snow-enthusiasts would (and do) give a right arm for.

Full of enthusiasm to begin my journey into the world of skiing., I went to have my skis fitted. As I was sitting there in the tech room, full of skis, poles and strange objects that a newbie like me wouldn’t even know the name for, I forced my foot into a ski-boot (those things are pretty uncomfortable) and was falsely comforted by the fact that they reminded me of my old inline skates that I pretty much mastered as a kid. I snapped the fastenings into place with familiarity, and hopped onto my feet, imagining myself gliding down the mountain as easily as skating across a roller rink. Meanwhile, Sid the technician was preparing my skis for me. He showed me how to link the skis and the boots together to carry them more easily, and waved me out of the door. Naively noting how the skis were a lot heavier than I’d imagined, I hurried off to meet my friends who would be my ski-instructors for the afternoon. My nightmare encounter with skiing began there.

Navigating the 6 flights of steps between the tech-room and the slope must have taken me an age. I had to stop every few metres to get a new grip on the giant bundle of equipment, and just as I thought I’d finally figured it all out, one of the poles would slip, or the edge of the ski would start poking into my shoulder so hard that I was forced to dump the lot once again, and try to devise a new way of holding it all. Even still, I was secretly hoping that now I was carrying skis, I might at least look like someone who knew how to use them, and anyway, in a few minutes time I would at last be a bona fide skier, albeit a newborn one.

Finally at the slope, and with snow under my boots, I met my friends. They laughed as they saw me struggling, and instructed me in the correct way to carry skis (up your arm, holding the bindings), and began the lesson by showing me how to snap my feet into the skis. That went okay, and we pushed off on the flat ground, and began making our way to the nursery slope, trying to avoid being flattened by the fearless 3 year olds who periodically come whizzing past, wrapped up in squishy one-piece suits on their miniature skis.

The next few minutes were spent walking up the hill sideways (I was nowhere near ready for the lift), so that I could practise stopping and starting. The stopping, as I would soon realise, is by far the hardest part. Pretty much every move you make will send you flying down the mountain unless you make a very special effort to slow yourself down, and even then, if you do that wrong, you might just end up going faster, or even losing control completely. Which, as you may have already guessed, is exactly what happened to me.

The snow plough, which is the supposedly basic braking technique taught to people when they are the very newest of beginners, involves moving the tips of your skis together into an upside-down V shape, and pressing outwards with your heels. In theory, this should bring you gracefully to a complete stop, as demonstrated by the numerous pre-school children out skiing that day, but, it is a lot harder than it looks.

My first ever attempt at the snowplough saw me sliding out of control, skis nowhere near resembling the neat V that I was aiming for. I barely had enough time to acknowledge that things were going horribly wrong, before I realised that there was a group of people sitting in the snow right in front of me. Having already been told that, in case of an accident, it is always the fault of the person behind, I knew that it was up to me to avoid collision.

Unfortunately, this was not the moment that I triumphed over the snowplough, and came sliding to a gradual stop in front of the awestricken, seated onlookers. This is instead the moment that I discovered how to stop by flinging yourself sideways as hard as you can onto the snow; the only braking technique that I have mastered to date.

To add insult to injury, a woman in the group then turns round calmly to face me, lifts up a giant flashy camera, and proceeds to take pictures of me laying there in the snow, skis and poles sticking out everywhere, and an odd look on my face as the terror of the whole situation melted into bemusement. But accurately capturing this authentic and horrible life event of mine on film wasn’t quite enough for her, evidently, because then she actually asked me to pose. For some reason I did it. No idea why or how, but I then found myself gazing mindlessly away from the camera lens, while my friend posed behind me, pointing to some non existent object on the non-existent horizon (there is actually a huge block of cafés and hotels there, but you would never be able to tell in the picture).

After a few snap-happy minutes, the woman thanked me, gave me her card, and let me get back to my ski lesson, at which point I suddenly remembered what I was actually doing up there on the mountain in the first place, and clambered to my feet once more. A bit more sidestepping uphill, and I was ready for take two of the snowplough. That one went a bit better, as did take three and four. I even managed to turn to one side of my own freewill. Things were looking up.

Unfortunately, my tutors’ patience was beginning to wear off at this point, and they met up with some others, then shot off up the mountain to go do some real skiing. With nobody to baby-sit me, I was left to decide whether to call it a day and retreat indoors for a mug of hot blackcurrant and a biscuit, or stupidly go back up alone, and attempt to teach myself. It seems so obvious when it’s written down in black and white, but at the time I was foolishly convinced that I was on a roll, and that I should definitely go and try just a few more times.

So, I walked up once, and skied down without incident. Walked up again, and skied down once more. Everything was going fine. But then I decided that I didn’t want to walk up the hill anymore. Why am I walking up and down like a mug while people behind me are effortlessly dragged up with the lift? I was going to use the lift. It was only a little baby one anyway. Sure, it went twice as far up the mountain as I had been bothered (or brave enough) to climb previously, but that just means twice as much downhill time to practise stopping, right? And most of the people using it were genuinely shorter than my waist-height, so it would most probably be fine.

Soon after this, I was whooshing down the hill a lot faster than I was actually comfortable with. My skis were in the perfect V shape, but I was not slowing down. Had this been a primary school handwriting test, I would have got top marks for my wonderfully precise V, but in this situation, it was hopeless. Embarrassingly, anyone watching would have instantly recognised that I was trying my very best to do a snowplough, but for some reason it just did not work, until the moment that danger crept up, and I actually needed to stop.

After failing to even slow down, let alone stop on the flat ground at the bottom of the nursery slope, I went shooting further downhill with all the big-kids. A bit further on, I my attempts at braking kept sending me sideways, and I was definitely travelling too quickly to throw myself at the ground. But decisions had to be made, because I was getting closer and closer to the buildings on the non-existent horizon.

Just a few seconds away from a solid wall, every fibre of my being screamed “THIS IS NOT A DRILL! I NEED TO DO A SNOWPLOUGH AND I NEED TO DO IT NOW!!” And it actually worked. My skis caught into the slope, snow was ploughed, I slowed down, I did not fall, and – most importantly – I did not end up plastered on the exterior brickwork of Hotel Le Skilt.

For some reason, I was entirely optimistic about this near miss; surely this just proved that I am capable of skiing? I just have to be in the right mindset for it, and if that mindset happens to be the one of a person two seconds away from certain injury and a bill for the damaged paintwork, then … Great! Shouldn’t even require too much imagination.

Now, I had expected my total disregard for my own personal safety to backfire, but I was anticipating something along the lines of cuts bruises and broken bones, or maybe a bit of lower-body paralysis, if I was really unlucky. Was I was not expecting, was the small boy on a sledge that came shooting out from nowhere, right into my path, just as I was picking up pace. This was no time to test the emergency-snow-plough theory. If I did not stop, this child would be hurt, maybe killed, and if that happened I’d never be able to live with myself. So, I put my faith in the one thing that I knew would definitely work, and I flung myself at the ground. Hard.

Happily, the little boy didn’t even notice how close he had come to an accident, and by the time I looked up he was already at the bottom of the hill with his mum, but I was pretty shaken, and suddenly overcome with guilt. How dare I endanger other people in order to extend my ski skills? How could I consider entering the communal space of the piste without having the even foggiest of ideas about how one is actually supposed to use it? What would have happened if I had run over that little kid? I’m sure it would have been much worse than the sizable bruise that I could feel developing on my bottom as I thought all this.

Feeling defeated and tearful, I headed to the bar where I work to get a drink of water. I abandoned my skis outside, not even caring whether someone would steal them, and clumped in with my heavy shoes. Seeing that I was dressed in my snow-clothes, one of my colleagues asked how my session of skiing had been. Ashamed, I thought of how I’d actually been so terrible that I was actually a danger to everyone around me, and I started to cry. Right there, in my workplace, surrounded by the people I live and work with everyday, I was weeping. They originally thought I’d hurt myself, which made it all the more embarrassing when I explained that I was actually just crying because I couldn’t ski. Not wanting to make the situation worse, I ran home, dragging my skis back down the 6 flights of stairs (it really is much easier when you know how, though), and ate a packet of fig rolls and a whole tube of fake French Pringles to make myself feel better, whilst vowing to never ski again.

Maybe at some point in the future I’ll find the courage to try again, but until then I’ll stay inside where it’s warm, watching the nice fluffy snow fall onto the picturesque mountain outside the window, and eat my biscuits.