 Poster: A snowHead
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A lot of us on here have quite a few km under the belt. I’ve slid down a lot of mountains on planks, traipsed up them with clinking climbing gear, and rolled over them on various XC, enduro and DH rigs.
But my first go at skiing?
1986
Courmeyeur
I was 26. I’d resisted skiing since I thought it was a privileged indulgence - I no knowledge of Scottish skiing, clearly - and what’s the point of a sport which you could only do for one or two weeks a year? Until then I had focused relentlessly on my studies, with times hiking in the Lakes. I’d not started climbing properly then, either. What stays with me about that first trip was the quality of the light pouring into the pension the first morning….pure white light. Anyway…back to the top gondola on a red the first day….and that was it. Hooked. Oh…and I remember the thickest hot chocolate in the world at a tiny restaurant. And the weird wooden ramp at a through-the-wood button lift.
The Damascene Conversion took about 10 minutes, I guess….
Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Mon 11-03-24 19:14; edited 1 time in total
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Haha
1971, aged 5, walking up and sliding down a little hillock at the foot of Cairngorm with my feet in welly boots forced into mild steel toe bindings that were basically spikes* for leather boots with cable heels.
* it was only back at the chalet (hut) that my parents believed my protestations of pain when they saw the blood.
Bizarrely, despite the Torquemada-like baptism, I was rather hooked.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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1979, Maurach, Austria, on a school ski trip. Tiny resort, with just four or five lifts, but perfect as an introduction. Might be the passage of time magnifying fond memories, but we seemed to have fresh snow every night and blue skies during the day. Took to skiing quite quickly, and was hooked for life by the end of the week. Have skied at least one week every winter since then, barring one Covid shutdown.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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2004 Winter Park Colorado.
It was a school trip. I went to the local (at the time) dryslope in Brentwood where my English teacher from school taught me and a friend the first basics.
Around a week or so later everyone that was going on the school trip went to the dry slope and my mate and I said we knew what we were doing as we'd had lessons. I went too fast, couldn't control myself, fell over and broke my thumb.
Next morning in A&E the nurse told me there's absolutely no way i'd be skiing in 6 weeks time as she put my thumb and lower arm in a cast. Had the cast removed a few days before the trip and skied with a protective brace type thing on my left hand.
Don't really remember too much about the skiing except our final day was a champagne powder day.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| rob@rar wrote: |
| 1979, Maurach, Austria, on a school ski trip. Tiny resort, with just four or five lifts, but perfect as an introduction. Might be the passage of time magnifying fond memories, but we seemed to have fresh snow every night and blue skies during the day. Took to skiing quite quickly, and was hooked for life by the end of the week. Have skied at least one week every winter since then, barring one Covid shutdown. |
Maurach? As in Maurach Aben, near a large lake? Thats where I first went skiing, also on a school trip. We were there for the New Year but I can`t remember if it was '72 or 73. Cable car up to the runs? A rope tow on the nursery slope, leather lace up boots and frozen gloves are my main memories apart from the skiing which was fun. However, in hindsight it must have been a very poor start to the season snow wise.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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1988 a bunch of us went to ADH. Had a course of lessons at Bebington Oval beforehand.
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I'm hardly an old-timer around but I was hooked before I started. Summer 1985, aged 15¾ when my dad said he'd finally been persuaded to bring the family along to an extended group holiday that went to Niederau.
Against all the odds, the optimism was warranted and I found the first sport I wasn't rubbish at, even if my youngest sister broke her leg on her last* run of the last day.
* Obviously it was her last, but you know what I mean.
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| CaravanSkier wrote: |
| Maurach? As in Maurach Aben, near a large lake? Thats where I first went skiing, also on a school trip. We were there for the New Year but I can`t remember if it was '72 or 73. Cable car up to the runs? A rope tow on the nursery slope, leather lace up boots and frozen gloves are my main memories apart from the skiing which was fun. However, in hindsight it must have been a very poor start to the season snow wise. |
Yes, that's right, on shore of the Achensee. Leather boots and rope tows had been upgraded by the time I skied there.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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@CaravanSkier, @rob@rar, opposite the Zillertal. There's actually 3 little ski areas up there, Maurach, Pertisau and Achenkirch
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1991 kaprun Austria on church based skiing trip while at school. Was meant to be kitzbuhel but that was closed for some reason. Was about 13 at the time. Iwas a bit naive so didn't wear any sun lotion. Big mistake. Ended up for severe burns on my face, face was one big blister, had to go to hospital etc.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Scotland -
1980, when I was 12, Edinburgh Council owns Lagganlia Outdoors centre near Aviemore - had a week there alongside 2 other schools, first of a few trips there. Great fun and a time when Carngorm actually operated as a ski centre..............
Abroad -
1983, another school ski trip to Voss in Norway, aged 15.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@Ram80, ….yikes…adults should have been a bit more responsible….
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1972 school trip to Vinje (near Voss) in Norway, courtesy of Hourmont and Court Line. I was crap at it but loved it (nothing much has changed in that respect). Had leather boots and wire bindings. Had to use one of the instructor’s kit as I had very big feet - didn’t help. Didn’t go again until 1983 when I could just about to afford to pay for myself - Panticosa in Spain.
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You know it makes sense.
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1990 aged 13 on a school ski trip to Zell am See. I am the youngest of 4 and no one in my family has ever been skiing before so I didn’t have a clue what to expect. It was absolute carnage. One of us twigged that the legal drinking age in Austria was bizarrely young so we got rat arsed every night in the nightclub underneath the hotel.
Went the following year too and broke my leg. 
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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March 1991. St Wolfgang. Ingham learn to ski week with a mate. No snow anywhere but they had managed to keep the nursery slope going. Basically a shallow incline field with icy patches and holes and one button or t bar. I had my 30th birthday there. Had a great time.
@Ram80, I imagine Kitz had no snow as conditions were terrible. The other people in our hotel were bussed to Postalm and most didn't bother going after a few days.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Soll 1983 after having spent years thinking skiing was a bit ridiculous being dragged up a slope to slide down I loved it.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@Timmycb5, school trip to Zell am See for me too, a couple of years before.
I don’t remember much about the skiing other than I really enjoyed it and learned to hockey stop. And I had a grey and blue jacket from M&S with a lovely yellow stripe round the middle.
I’d prepped for the trip by having a session in the pouring rain on the Fairwater dry slope in Cardiff. My first and last dry slope ‘experience’.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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1980 Holzgau, Austria. https://www.bergfex.com/holzgau/panorama/
7 years old and we were there for 2 weeks in the hotel Neue Post. 1st week in Kindergarten and I loved playing in the snow and sledging etc. 2nd week it was decided I was big enough to go to ski school and learn to ski. I protested, by that I mean I cried and had a tantrum but absolutely loved it. Even after I think it was first day but may have been second day I was crashed into by a very large man in our class and his ski pole went into my mouth and bounced off my tooth. It was all my fault as I wasn't where I was supposed to be and he couldn't ski. No real harm done apart from another tantrum in the Doctors when I thought he wanted to put the tetanus injection in my mouth! Got a whole pint of Spezei that night though.
Also saw Charlie Brown the Ski Clown which was pretty damn cool too
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| halfhand wrote: |
| 1988 a bunch of us went to ADH. Had a course of lessons at Bebington Oval beforehand. |
Nice! I think I did my first skiing at Bebington as prep for a school trip to Ellmau and 1985ish
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Engleberg, 1972. Don't remember a thing about it, I was 3 1/2.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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First time on a snowboard was 1999, and reeked the place out with a near total lack of ability. Persevered, and first time on a mountain was 2001, Mammoth Mt in California. Came away from that trip with 2nd degree sunburn (forgot sunscreen, thought 'ah, it'll be alright'...nope - @Ram80 you are not alone), a board, boots, bindings, and an addiction that's still with me today.
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Ovronnaz 1984, I was 5. Don't remember a great deal about it other than my grandparents coming along.
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Le Mont Dore 1973, would love to go back.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Aged 21. A 5 day trip with a Swiss friend to his family's apartment in Klosters, so a bit of a privileged start in that sense!
I am embarrassed to admit, though, that I was entirely self-taught. My chum took me to the nursery slope for an hour or so and tried to show me basic snow plough, which I somehow sort of mastered. Next day he deposited me at a chairlift next to a blue slope and left me to it, so I lapped that. By sheer fluke (or maybe because I could ice skate quite well), I discovered how to hockey stop on that first morning (after falling down about 100 times), which surprised my friend when he came to collect me for lunch. Somehow survived the drag lift to lunch and the run back, basically a series of traverses, and hockey stops when I picked up too much speed. I enjoyed the trip and was hooked!
Followed that with many day trips with my then girlfriend (now wife) to the Lecht and Glenshee, and many very cheap last minute weeks abroad (several to Andorra). Mrs Z is a very good skier but not an instructor, she did her best and I could ski most pistes with reasonable control but a huge amount of effort.
First lesson was a private in Zermatt. Posh again I know! But the holiday was an award from the company I worked for so they paid for it all. What a revelation. I learnt what a terrible skier I was.
Cue years and years of lessons, training, and huge amounts of money spent on learning to ski properly. Made all the more difficult by the terrible habits picked up from the early years. One of the worst mistakes of my life was not getting lessons at the start and I would not wish it on my worst enemy! The biggest regret is I soon learnt I would never be as good a skier as I might have been with the right start, I can see in my kids skiing what a difference it made to start young with proper instruction.
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December 1980, a school trip to Madesimo, Italy. A dream since the 76 Olympics and the wonderful BBC coverage.
I took dry slope lessons at a tiny indoor place beforehand, I can still remember it, I was a natural  probably just because I was young and listened compared to the struggling others. I also bought one of the probably just two books on ski technique at the time, with terms such as parallel, stem, Christie and compression.
Fast forward to the trip and I was better than the other newbies, but then I spent the rest of it with my mates not skiing, being a delinquent, getting in trouble. What an idiot!
Then a huge gap to outdoor dry slope lessons at Bowles in 1996 with a friend, the instructor said I’d skied before and a fantastic week in Santa Catarina (First Choice, £250). Hooked for life.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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if we are talking abroad & not the local dry slope then I am a very new comer, February 2016, 4 months after we bought the apartment!!!!!
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@zikomo, nice.
Grom2 started at 2 and a half.
He gets grip on blue water ice. Don’t know how he does it. Like you I wish I’d addressed my faults by early and regular coaching. I should have had more than 2-3 days coaching a year.
I taught the Grom everything I knew. And now at 18 the Grom is teaching me SOME of the things he knows. Which is correcting some very long standing faults. I am trying to learn fast. And largely succeeding….thank goodness.
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Living in the NE Scotland and being in the BBs we used to go up to the Lecht most weekends from 76 onwards
Great intro to proper and I mean real snow skiing
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You know it makes sense.
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1981, Hinterglemm, 7 years old. My dad had work that had taken him to Munich so him, me and my mum had moved out there for what turned out to be a couple of years. I was in a pretty well to do international school, the school had arranged a ski weekend at Hinterglemm based in a posh hotel, we had a camping van and parked up in the hotel car park!
Don’t think I made it much further than the beginner slopes over that weekend. Fortunately one of my dad’s mates out there was an epic skier who took me under his wing and taught me the basics, we ended up using that camper van for many a weekend trip to the mountains.
After getting back to the Uk it took me all the way through secondary school, college and university before I hit the slopes again on anything that wasn’t Southampton dry slope. And when I finally decided to go back to it, it was snowboarding that I thought I’d give a go. Fairly quickly decided it wasn’t for me and stuck some skis on, have barely missed a year skiing then and managed to cram in a couple of working seasons and half a leisure season on a career break.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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1972 - School trip to Saas Fee aged 12. Stayed at Hotel Allalin.
By the end of the first week, just started to learn the Stem Christie.
10 Swiss Francs to the Pound. 
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Poster: A snowHead
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@valais2, It's a tough road. But also a pleasure to learn from your kids! My daughter is the same, she just carves ice up as if it is groomed snow. This year I have enjoyed pushing myself by skiing behind her, she is often on slalom skis so it is a real challenge to (try to) stay in her tracks but it is definitely forcing me to increase the edge angle and pressure.
The others still have some small respect for my knowledge, and will ask for tips/exercises sometimes. They do tease me about age related stuff though! Like why I am not as flexible as them, and why I avoid taking much air!
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I think it was 1999 (might be +/-1 year) in Les Gets
Skied at least once almost every year since, other than a couple of covid years.
I remember that I took up skiing and defected from road cycling to mountain biking at the same time, literally weeks before moving to the Netherlands with work.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@andy,
| Quote: |
I remember that I took up skiing and defected from road cycling to mountain biking at the same time, literally weeks before moving to the Netherlands with work.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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1984, Royal Air Force Winter Survival School, Bad Tolz in Bavaria. The sweetener for ruining aircrew lives was that skiing was the chosen 'get fit' aspect of the training; along with early morning and late afternoon lectures.
8/9 days skiing, 3/4 days cold and hiding from Booties, 12 hrs 'conditioning and chatting' whether you needed it or not.
We skied at Bad Kohlgrub (sp), with a day at Oberammergau.
Then had a break till 2015! 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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@Charliegolf,
Did they send the navy to Good Tolz?
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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2005 - passed final chartered accountancy exams (we were paid buttons as trainees back then - about £10k pa) and got paid a £1k bonus that meant we could afford to ski - two of us booked a trip to Andorra (Arinsal). Met a group of 3 English girls in ski school and had an absolute riot of a trip. Hotel food was rotten, mountain restaurant food wasn't great either, but the drinks were plentiful.
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1988, Mayrhofen. Aged 31. Once my professional studies were largely done.
But around 6 hours of lessons (and probably double that in free practice) at Bracknell dry slope beforehand.
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A relative newbie here. My first trip was 15 years ago. 2 x 3 hour lessons in MK fridge because we'd booked a trip to Alpe d'Huez over winter. My gf (at the time and currently!) had been pestering me for a couple of years to go skiing because she was an experienced skier. I wasn't keen on the idea because I thought I'd get injured. This changed when we went on a summer holiday to Alpe d'Huez to watch the Tour de France. I saw the mountains, went to the top of Pic Blanc, and the infrastructure of all the lifts so decided I'd like to give it a go.
Did lessons with ESF in the mornings, got terrified by the OH in the afternoons for taking me on pistes I wasn't capable of skiing (or I felt I wasn't but actually managed ok), but absolutely loved it.
Last edited by After all it is free  on Wed 6-03-24 12:42; edited 1 time in total
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Also Courmeyeur, with my school in December 1998 when I was 12. I had already learnt to ski for a year of Friday evening sessions with School at the SSV. Loved it, obvs. 
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You are all such newbies! 1963 (or might have been 1962), school trip to Geilo in Norway. It cost £40 and used ALL my National Savings account. I loved it, and sewed my "2 star" Norwegian skiing badge (not every body on the trip got one of those) to an anorak which I wore proudly for years. But I couldn't afford to go again till I was 40 and then I had 3 kids to pay for too. I think I have now retired from skiing but not from the mountains.
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FAQ
