Today was D-Day.
The day we decided to fly by the seat of our pants, go skiing up the mountain without any more lessons, without teachers, without sense!
Thankfully Magz and Sophie kindly offered to come up with us and help us get down without dying. We decided to go to down the longest slope at the resort, which, in actual fact is made up of three different slopes.
For a regular skier, it’d take 30-45 minutes tops. For us, it took two and a quarter hours.
But we did it!
It didn’t look good at the get-go, my biggest nemesis over the course of my lessons, had been the ski lift. The Chile Express (the lift that takes you to the top of the mountain) was no different.
The ride itself takes about 20 minutes, but, when I was at the top all of the threads came loose. I fell, but the guy didn’t see and stop the chair lift. When he DID see, he stopped the chair lift, ON TOP OF ME. I was pinned under the seat, my skis didn’t disengage, I was trapped. I tried not to panic, but it was momentarily terrifying!
The name of the first slope – the longest one, was called ‘Heading Home’. The first half of the slope was fine, I was keen, full of energy and, though there was some hairy-ish points, I enjoyed it.
The second half, well, that’s when the lack of fun started. My calf gave up (the calf that I injured last year), the concept of skiing is about shifting your weight, you wanna turn left, you put your weight on your right leg – and vice versa. When it came time to shift my weight to my left leg, it burned like the fires of hell, my leg was weak, it didn’t like being pushed and, it resulted in numerous stops, lots of complaining, ‘I can’t do this’, ski’s off, stretching at the side of the slope and tears -yes, I cried two or three times. It hurt, a lot.
But I did it! And my best skiing was the most difficult parts, the steepest hills, the parts where I didn’t concentrate so much on the 40 things you need to do to ski, the parts I was most terrified in, the ones where I screamed ‘I’m gonna die’, or ‘I can’t stop’, were my best bits!
Sophie was impressed, for a beginner, I didn’t do much falling in the two days I skied, but I was a little disappointed with myself on that second day. I was sore, really, really sore and although I pushed myself, in retrospect, I felt a bit of a whiner (which, Col tells me is silly, but I still do.)
At the foot of the mountain, we had pics with Tracy, we dropped our ski stuff back at the shop, bought a couple T-shirts, had lunch with the gang and watched Eve for a couple of hours while Magz, Sam and Soph had a couple more runs on the slopes before dinner, hot chocolate in front of the telly, while skimming through six hundred pictures on my camera before bed!
