EPISODE 4: Be careful who you ski with – it could damage you for life!

In my previous post – “Be kind to the woman you love”, I talked about how a woman’s first ski experience (yes, I said “ski” experience) can change the way one views the sport forever.  How do I know this?  Because I lived the experience.

After my disastrous “episodes” in New Zealand, I figured my skiing days were over, but then love came along in the form of a tall handsome guy called “David” (renamed to protect the not so innocent) in 1984 when I was living in Sydney.  David was very sporty – loved his cricket and going to strip clubs (as I found out later, but that’s another story and one I won’t be going into or mentioning in a future post).

David also loved to ski – not that he was very good at it, just fast and, in my opinion, very unstylish.  I used to refer to him as a “Kamikaze” skier.

Dating David was initially great – never argued, always laughing and enjoying the newness of a relationship.  So when David suggested we go skiing to Thredbo, I agreed, but with some trepidation considering my very unglamorous skiing history.

Thredbo at night

Thredbo Resort is a very pretty ski town located in the Snowy Mountains in southern New South Wales and was, at the time, about a 6 hour drive south of Sydney.

So, the plan was this:  David and I would leave Sydney at 1am on Saturday morning and drive the 6 hours to Thredbo, arriving at Jindabyne (the town at the base of the mountain) at about 7-8 am.  This would have been okay if I’d been able to sleep during the drive, but driving with David was taking your life in your hands as he insisted on over-taking on bends, sitting right on the rear of the car or truck in front of him, and generally driving like a mad man.  This behaviour was also reflected in his skiing.  But as his passenger, I would sit with my foot on the brake and knuckles white from gripping the nearest stable thing to me.  So by the time we arrived at Thredbo, I was what you’d mildly refer to as “out of my mind” with exhaustion and anxiety.

The newness of our relationship was wearing thinner by the mile, especially when I discovered that he wouldn’t let me stop for a restroom break!  But David was not entirely mean as he actually stopped for breakfast in Jindabyne and I vaguely remember snapping at the waitress.  Surprise, surprise!

Anyway, we continued on up to Thredbo resort, DID NOT check into the hotel first, just got our ski rental gear, parked the car and made our way to the slopes.  Now, for those of you who are lucky enough never to have ridden a pommer (Episode 1), or a T-bar, let me explain what a T-bar is:  It is a pole on a pulley, with a bar on either side of it which forms an upside down T.  The idea is that two people sit on each of the bars which form the seats and they hold on to the pole in the middle.  Like the pommer, you are not to “sit” on it, but rather let it pull you up the mountain.  Having had vast experience on pommers, the T-Bar was relatively easy.

A T-Bar

However, riding a T-Bar on a steeper incline can be quite challenging, as I found out on another ski trip to Perisher Resort (also in New South Wales) where on the steepest part of the mountain, a cross-country skier 6 T-Bars up from me and my passenger, fell off his, slid and crashed into the next two unsuspecting skiers, who then slid into the next two, and so on.  Unfortunately, by the time the person who loads skiers on the T-Bar noticed, it was too late as about 12 skiers had fallen to the left and to the right scrambling to find their skis.

But back to Thredbo.  David and I reached the top of the mountain, and he, in his infinite wisdom, decided not to take me down the beginner green run, but to take me to another area named “Crackenback” which was accessed by a cat-track.

To this day, one of the things I loathe about skiing is having to go down cat-tracks and I think the hatred stemmed from this incident, which was nothing short of traumatic.  The cat-track was narrow and reasonably steep for me, the beginner, with a sheer drop to the left of the trail. Even now, I will avoid a cat-track and trails if I can.

I somehow survived the cat-track only then to be faced with a more ominous task – skiing down a blue run which was very very icy.  Unlike Utah, where most of the time you ski on light fluffy snow because of the dryness of the climate, Australian ski slopes can resemble skiing in Vermont on the East Coast of the USA, and the slopes can get icy.

I’m a bit embarrassed to go on with this story now, because I think I cried all the way down while screaming at David through my tears for having been so inconsiderate, and I think I called him a few names.  Sleep deprivation will do strange things.  I fell over more times than I care to admit and think at one point, I actually took off my skis so I could slide down on my bottom for part of the way.

But I survived to tell yet another tale of woe on the slopes.

And what of David?  I’ll let you know in the next episode…..