Travel
Snow scene
Carol Wright
There is nothing so demoralising as skiing for sorting out the sheep from the mountain goats. I am definitely the former. It is for the sheep to the slaughter that I write this; the first-timers lulled by the seemingly (and very often actually) year-by-year identical pictures in ski tour brochures of healthy, laughing, sun-tanned figures whooshing through snow or having a hell of a hearty time over the candlelit gliihwein and fondue evenings. These people have a right to know what adventures they are in for.
Starting with the pluses. There is nothing, but nothing quite as exhilarating and heady as standing on a sun-lit snow slope looking across a valley to a range of white mountains against violet-blue sky and down into the valley, amidst the pine trees, are the bright painted old houses, spired church, and feathers of wood smoke drifting up. There is nothing so warming as the kiss of ultraviolet-laden sun on the face over a Campari in an ice bar terrace watching the beginners' class collapse in heaps below. There is nothing so satisfying as the end of the day, coming our of dark blue pine shadows into the village, seeking warmth and fellow humanity with hot chocolate piled with whipped cream and hoofing it around in snow boots at that old-fashioned event that happens only in skiing, the tea dance.
A skiing holiday is no longer for the rich only. Ski holidays have also got shorter (eight days are very common—fine for the beginner and the lowest prices start around £25 in Austria. Britain too has a fine array of artificial slopes, close to most big cities, so the first-timer can cut some corners and tone up properly.
Though the purist and dedicated may scoff, the travel trade is gradually taking a lot of the sports emphasis out of winter sports holidays. They realise many people who go and try skiing will not be repeat customers unless they are allowed to enjoy some exercise without the restrictions of learning classical skiing in ordered class.
For the sheep like me, the big come-on ideas of the skiing world have been ski bobbing, ski touring and — though I haven't tried it— learning on short-length skis which in Switzerland are said to cut the learning time by half. Ski bobbing is, I suppose, a cheat, sitting on a child's tricycle affair on skis with short skis on your feet and whipping down second and third year standard slopes with only a day or two's instruction. It's fun, bouncy and enables the sheep to keep up with some of their goat friends.
The most satisfying and oldest form of skiing is now back in fashion: ski touring. The Norwegians, who invented skiing anyway, love it as a natural expression of humanity moving around on snow, but haven't till now encouraged it too much as it was vogue to pursue plunge-down alpine skiing. In ski touring, the skis are shorter than normal, usually in wood with only a toe-tip binding, leaving the heel free to move, and lessening the feeling of imprisonment to the skis. Instruction can be reduced to a day or so and the fast gliding motion the Norwegians set up is attractive to watch. One can take local buses to nearby village resorts and tour across a lake surface into surrounding forest.
Whatever the sporting angle may be, even if you only curl, skate or walk the cleared trails, a winter sports holidays is the perfect holiday answer to the single person who can join a group easily with no shyness problems; after all you will literally be picked up several times a day when you inevitably fall. Villa parties with British girls doing the cooking and cleaning are chummy built-in groups of friends. The beginner should avoid the over-new resort which could lack apres-ski facilities and the dedicated high alpine hotel where there is absolutely nothing to do but ski. An exception is the new French ski resort of Flaine; a hotel complex with built-in art galleries, cinemas and concert halls with cosy listening chambers for two. A budget ploy is to pick a resort near a famed and more expensive one and enjoy the amenities of both as is possible In Fieberbrunn, Kitzbuhel's neighbour.
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