Meg Matthews

Learning to Ski Over 3 Weeks

Not long ago a friend asked me along on a ski weekend - someone I fancied and wanted very much to impress with my spirit of adventure and Èlan. Eager to show off my natural athletic prowess, of course I said yes, but as soon as I'd agreed, however, I began to panic. After all, I had less that a month before the big date to transform myself from a woman whose experience with skiing was limited to watching the Winter Olympics and using the same lip balm as Picabo Street to one of those graceful beauties schussing effortlessly down the piste. Did I cancel the date? Of course not. I did what any reasonable but infatuated woman would do: I signed up for lessons. Not just anywhere, mind you - I was in love, remember? - but at French Ski School. I'd love to tell you that the date went swimmingly and we lived happily ever after, but the truth is that the date turned out to be a total disaster. It seems my date couldn't bear that I was the better skier...

Ecole du Ski Français

Everyone told me that to learn to ski, I should go to France. After all, it is close to home - I could drive, train or fly there at no great expense - and was considered the ideal place for beginners. Picturing a large but infinitely romantic place tucked into the Alps, its gorgeous scenery complemented by equally gorgeous skiers from every part of the globe, I told the gent in the travel agency that I wanted to go to French Ski School.

"Which one?" he asked.

What a gubbins I was. As he explained, French Ski School is not a place, but many places - over 250 of them. He waffled on about its history, explaining how members of the French Skiing Federation (FFS) had founded the consortium of ski schools in 1937 with the idea that one school ought to be using the same teaching and skiing techniques - ecole française - as the others, and how they likewise thought it rather important that the instructors be certified, and that the pupils be rated using the same standards. All the while I was thinking, "What a relief!" I'd been anxious about picking the "right" school, and now it turned out that any ski school affiliated with EFS would follow the same principles, methods and standards and the others. I could throw a dart at the list and still be assured of choosing the "right" school.

I admit to being a bit flummoxed by the options. Should I spend the extra euros for private lessons, which would probably be more effective? Or save a little dosh for the "date" by joining a group? In the end I decided to do both: I would begin with group lessons while I was still a rank amateur who'd never before so much as touched a ski - and then, when I had the basics down, move on to private lessons for "classe 1" skiers (that is, those who have skied one or two weeks and can manage the tows and lifts without wreaking havoc). My goal was to reach "classe 3," which in EFS terms meant a "good" skier looking to master the technique and pick up the pace. This would likely mean more private lessons once I'd left the nursery hill and the green trails and moved on to the blue intermediate trails.

The agent recommended several places that featured "doorstep skiing," which literally mean that I wouldn't have to walk too far in those Frankenstein boots carrying skis, poles and who knew what else just to get to the snow. I chose one in the lower price range, sacrificing quaint architecture in favour of package pricing that would allow me to stay longer. It was near a quaint enough town that appeared to have enough shops, pubs and restaurants to help me wind down after a boffo day on the slopes. I won't tell you which one it was, but I will say that I booked six day-long, beginner-level group lessons for just over 200 euros. That didn't include lift tickets or insurance, but it did include hiring skis and boots for the whole six days. I also booked a handful of private lessons in the following weeks at €50 an hour (afternoon prices are lower).

I should say right off that I am no athlete. Physically I am just your average woman approaching 40 - I stand 1.6 meters in my stocking feet, and weigh in at 9 stone 4 - in reasonable but not exceptional shape. I was a tad worried that taking on a rather rigorous sport at my age might be daft, but weighing the odds of serious injury against the possibility of true love helped calm my fears a bit.

Learning To Ski

"Nursery" School

It didn't take long to see that before I could hit the slopes, I first had to hit the shops. I had no equipment, and not a stitch that I considered appropriate for floundering about in snow for hours at a stretch. Yet I didn't want to buy everything until I knew for certain that I liked it as much as I did the aprés-ski. To read about my recce of the shops and hiring agencies, see my article, Prepping for the Piste.

Once I was properly outfitted, though, there was nothing for it but to bundle off the chalet I'd chosen, an old-fashioned lodge that slept - and fed - around fifty people. That night I practiced putting my boots and skis on and off several times, and tried walking about the room in just the boots, which I found I could only do if they were unbuckled. As promised, there was indeed snow right at my doorstep, and the next morning I set off after a hearty breakfast, confident that I could fake my way to the designated lessons area. What I found was that standing and walking in skis on snow was not at all the same as doing so on carpet. I was forced to remove my skis and walk until I spied my group. Only then did I reattach the skis, which seemed determined to trip me up by criss-crossing with every step.

My fellow students stood, looking as wonky as I and equally determined, in a nervous cluster. I was thrilled to find that I was not the oldest among us to be taking up a new sport; a scholarly looking fellow who introduced himself as Sanjay - we did not shake hands since neither of us dared loosen out death-grip on our poles - looked to be about fifty. The group also included Claude, a swaggering man of perhaps forty, and Keiko and Mariana, giggly twenty-somethings bunking off from university. Our instructor glided up, flashing a snow-white smile and looking like the ski brochure come to life. She said her name was Nina.

Ups and Downs

I had imagined that our first lesson would be some simple manoeuvre - say, walking several feet without falling. Instead, after we had all given our names and confessed our complete beginning status, Nina told us to drop our poles and fall over. Having practiced this inadvertently many times that day I was a pro at this, but I was less successful at the next part: getting up.

First there was the little matter of the incline. Even though we were near the base of the nursery slope, it still had a bit of an incline. Every time I very nearly made it vertical - and how I did that without my poles was nothing short of a miracle and sheer determination - I would start to slide. Trying to halt this sent me off balance and back into the snow. I looked around, relieved to see the others in similar straits.

Meanwhile, Nina dropped gracefully to the ground, and demonstrated how easily we could stand again by digging the edges of our skis into the snow perpendicular to the fall line, shifting into a sitting position uphill of the skis, and pushing ourselves to shift our balance until we were standing again. The fall line, it turned out, was not the scar gouged into in the snow with each new fall but the invisible path a ball might follow if you let it go on the hill - in other words, the route our skis were trying to take us before we were ready to go. Among us, only Nina was able to stand without relying on the poles.

Even the best skiers fall sometimes, she assured us, so we should learn to do it without hurting ourselves (or someone else) She passed on these pointers:

Speaking of flying skis, Nina also reminded us that we should have had our bindings set to the proper DIN setting; that refers to the international scale for the pressure required to release skis from their binding. The "correct" setting varies according to a skier's weight, height, skiing style and ability. Given our ability level (none, so far), we should have had our bindings set so that in the very likely event of a fall our boots would release the skis at the first hint of trouble. This reduced the likelihood of us floundering about with lethal weapons attached to our feet and twisting our legs into unnatural positions at high speed. Better to lose a ski than to break a leg. As we improved, Nina assured us, we could move to less sensitive settings so we wouldn't spend half the day putting our skis back on.

Baby Steps

Once we were standing again, Nina showed us two ways we could move from one place to another. As I mentioned, I had practiced standing on my skis the night before, and had even tried to walk forward a little. This was not at all the same - it was somewhat easier. To walk in skis we did not need to lift our feet, just slide one forward, then the other, and repeat until we reached our goal. At first it seemed that for every two "steps" forward we all took one back, but eventually we were all able to scoot forward like a small band of wind-up tin soldiers. We weren't ready for the black runs yet but ... dare I say it? ... we were starting to feel comfortable enough that we were having fun. Even the reserved Sanjay was smiling.

Once we could stand more or less still, and move forward without having to remove our skis, it was time to start with more of an incline. Nina showed us two ways we might propel ourselves uphill. The first, called sidestepping, involved standing with our skis parallel to each other but perpendicular to the fall line. By carefully lifting the uphill ski and planting it a comfortable distance up the incline and then digging in with the outside edge, we could follow suit with its downhill mate. It was cumbersome at first, keeping the skis parallel, daring to move one ski more than a few centimeters away from the other, but soon we were plodding up the slope successfully, if not gracefully.

The other way to climb required facing up the hill with one tip pointing about 45° anti-clockwise, the other pointing about 45° clockwise, and digging our inside edges into the snow. In this pigeon-toed pose we were able to "herringbone" up the incline, although Nina warned us that for steeper grades we would find sidestepping more effective.

So far, none of us had broken any body parts or left in tears. In fact, we were all feeling quite please with ourselves, and eager to try some actual skiing. After all, we had mastered standing, falling, getting up, walking, sidestepping and herringboning. It was not to be. We spent the rest of the afternoon picking one ski high off the ground, assuming the snowplough and digging our inside edges in to stop a slide, and even hopping around a bit in our skis. From a distance we may have appeared possessed, but by the time the group broke up for the day we all felt much more comfortable with having boards almost as long as we were tall attached to our feet. I was even able to make it to the lodge without having to take off my skis. All that was left was to point downhill instead of up and go, right?

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