Snow, Skis and Falling Over

Learning to Ski has always been a life-time ambition of mine. I suspect it was all those Bond films when I was younger, but I've always wanted to try it - even knowing that I'd have no natural capacity for it!

So I was lucky enough to be able to arrange three days away from work and head over to see Elaine and Co., to try the slopes of Mount Washington, and even luckier that Elaine's amazing! She took John and I to the bus stop at 4:30am (urgh), as well as lending me her ski pants, a knee brace, and taking me out to an absolutely wonderful meal the night before! (Thank you 'Lainey!!)

The place was amazing. I'd never seen snow so fresh and deep, mountains so high, pines that ghostly shade of white and covering the land as far as you could see! The air was crisp and clear. My feet fell right through the snow the moment I stepped off of the bus, and it even snowed on-and-off while I was there!

It's been a really good season for them at Mount Washington, way better than at Grouse or Cypress in Vancouver. Washington's bigger too, though not so big that it's a resort-trap. There's not much in the way of shopping, which means everyone there is there to ski or board! I managed to book myself a lesson for $72 with included rentals, and a lift pass. Not bad and very cost effective because God knows I'm not a natural! So John went off to board and I started my 10am lesson.

We started off with learning how to put our skis on and start-stop - something I still haven't really mastered - ha! Our two instructors were Aussies - sisters I think - and I got to know Jess all too well because I was at the bottom of the class. I was constantly running into people and falling over, so the last hour or so I basically got a one-on-one lesson - how cool is that?! Not only were the instructors very patient but they even managed to be really encouraging, which was good, because it kept your outlook positive. It also helped that the snow was nice and thick, so I wasn't falling onto hard ice or anything, and I wasn't hurting my knee - yay! Though you could still kinda tell that it was weaker than the other one - which didn't help when trying to stop gorram it.

Anyway, after much slipping, sliding, falling, etc, I still enjoyed myself! So my first proper pay-packet when I get home, I'm going to start planning a trip to the Alps. It was exhausting but in a good way. After my lesson I completely crashed – didn’t help that I’d been up since 3:30 and eaten barely anything. So John and I grabbed a BeaverTail – a cool little donut-mix in a flat-tail shape, covered in sugary goodness. I had cinnamon and sugar, mmmm.

Then we trudged back to our gear and John watched with amusement as I struggled to put on my skis! Then he realized how slow I was and went off for a run while I kept practicing starting and stopping. I literally managed to go down the baby-baby slope twice before giving up. But it was worth it to get a better handle on it in my own time.

By that point I was dead tired. Sooooo tired. I had some water, deposited my rentals, met up with John for a bit, had pizza. He came back from his last run pretty pissed. His goggles had epically failed to protect his eyes, so much so that when he complained he got his money back on them. But he was still pretty ticked off that his last run had been a bummer. We caught the bus back, making good time on the way home, and chilled in front of a few DVDs. Even better, I woke up in the morning to a smattering of snow – how cool is that?