Beginner's doom
WINTER SPORTS HELEN MASON
The Scots, having tempered all the old frivoli- ties with guilt and prohibitions, have a rightful suspicion of new ones. And how else but frivo- lous could they consider ski-ing when it first struggled for recognition inside their own borders? So although the sport was never, so far as I know, actually denounced from even the Wee-est or the Free-est pulpit—even the Church could see in the early days there wasn't too much fun involved—it was never in the begin- ning encouraged. One laird explained his resis- tance—even to clearing a slope, let alone building a ski tow in the snowy heights he owned—by saying simply, 'Look what hap- pened to Switzerland.'
However, in spite of the likes of him, in spite of meteorological whim which can leave the runs bare at the height of the season, in spite of roads which bar the way to them after an average fall—it is finally happening to Scotland. It is happening slowly, though. There may be more hotels, quite a few them good : but some of the better ones still have slot-operated elec- tric meter fires; and there's little of that foreign nonsense about building them conveniently at the foot of slopes. One is expected to be thank- ful for buses, even if they are liable to be unheated on the forty-mile drive. Ski lifts? Well, all right—but not too many. It is still a far yodel from Switzerland. But with beat groups at Avie- more and fourteen ski schools in the Cairn- gorms. an echo of it is beginning to be heard. The laird's worst fears are coming to pass.
His lips must be pursed at the hedonism of it all—and mine with them. It is all too late for us pioneers. We are doomed forever to be figures of fun on the slopes.
When I first skied in Scotland (and I have a scar on my soul for each of the ten years that have passed since then) it was a positive chal- lenge. I had my first experience of the sport in a waist-deep, sharply sloping field in Crieff. (We had planned to go to Glenshee but the road was blocked.) My closest friend and I took turn about with her skis and also, in spite of an embarrassing difference in the sizes of our feet, with her boots. Her mother stood at the bottom looking frost-bitten but game, prepared to stop us bodily if we looked like crashing through the fence. This introduction explains why, in spite of subsequent instruction in snow-ploughing and the like, I shall never for- get that the easiest way to stop on skis is to sit down. With only a brave but frail Scottish lady between them and a crippling fence, anyone would learn that. I have since had many, many lessons, one lot privately from an Olympic skier in Mayrhofen in the best school Austria has; but I shall probably never eliminate the wobble I acquired in self-protection that first day. But by the time I reached real slopes my com- panion of that day, notwithstanding all that money spent on equpiment, had quit ---as, for the same reasons, had who knows how many other potential champions. However, I went on to greater things—like going abroad; where- upon I learned that Scottish snow really is wetter, that ski lifts do make things easier, and that there is a great deal more to be hoped for in the way of fun than a singsong in the bus.
I do, of course, frequently vow to give up, to admit I'll never ski well; but I like snow and I like ski resorts and I think ski pants are flat- tering. The nearest I have come to common sense in the matter was a course of training last year in a London sports shop. It was nearly as disastrous as a plunge over a Swiss ravine. The woman in charge was as brisk and unsym- pathetic as the ten year old gold medallist I met on my last ski-ing holiday: the skis were fake and unconvincing and the exercise miser- ably difficult. 'What do you think,' the in- structor barked at us, 'is going to happen to you when you get to real snow?' I knew what. The only advantage of the classes was that at least I knew why.
1 graduated to an artificial slope made of wiry rope-like fibre and found it every bit as frightening as a real slope and harder to fall on. At least in resorts there is more to apres than a bus ride home and a hot bath. The only thing that I have achieved by these cowardly lessons, is, at last, a distaste for beginners' classes. I am seriously considering a return to my homeland before it is overrun by such luxuries. 1 am even thinking of taking my skis to Crieff next time I go. I think I could just about tackle that fence now.
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