skiing @ les 2 alpes

And so I went skiing today.

Ok so I lied. Actually I went to move heavy pieces of metal through vast distances of snow wearing heavy and clunky boots. Or so it seemed like what I was doing most of the time! =P Just read on to learn more about it..

Awoke today morning at 6am to meet the rest and to take the bus organised by the École de Glisse (EGUG), with whom a couple of us Singaporeans had signed up for a day ski class. Destination? Les 2 Alpes, a ski resort situated in the Oiseans area. The rendezvous point was already swarming with people when I got there and was made worse by the fact that there was little, if not at all, crowd control. I mean, people just haphazardly loading up and boarding buses! There was no indication of bus detail, number of buses, or even the destination. Little did I know at that point of time that this would be just the tip of the iceberg.

After the initial hysteria, the journey there was pretty uneventful and I managed to catch some much needed shuteye. However all that changed when we reached the resort..

As soon as the buses docked by the roadside, it was another unloading and changing into ski gear frenzy. Everybody seemed to be possessed at the speed they were changing at! Or was it due to the cold? Hmm.. Anyway, people left as soon as they got changed, and soon we were about the only people left. I remember the EGUG girl on our bus telling us to meet at the caisse centrale (central cashier) for those taking the ski lessons, but how the hell does she expect us first-timers to the resort to know where it was? So there we were, like stranded ducklings without mother duck feeling cold and lost and just about as pathetic as anyone can get at a ski resort.

first views of the resort

Luckily Andi took the initiative and the good thing was that after about like half an hour of wandering about, he found the caisse centrale. Bad thing was, the caisse centrale was like a kilometre away. If you have not worn ski boots before, let me tell you that they are about the most bitchiest things to walk in. Firstly they constrain your lower calf, so walking becomes a waddle (which later on becomes a shuffle). Secondly, they are the clunkiest and about the heaviest footwear you can get in the market; In fact, I think that it can be used as a torture device!!! Damn. Add these to the fact that we were all carrying our ski equipment and personal effects and you will see why I being a kilometre away from the rendezvous point was a bad thing.

Anyhow, we got to the rendezvous point but to our dismay our EGUG "Starting Glisse" group had already left! To be frank, I was rather disappointed with the handling of the entire affair. There was minimal communication over the conduct of ski lessons, an almost non-existent EGUG group to act as people herders, as well as insufficient dissemination of information. Not to say that I need somebody to mother over me, but having paid €21 for ski lessons, I expected at least a minimal level of control and organisation. The entire morning's proceedings really left a sour taste in my mouth.

Faced with this separation from the group, we had no choice but to head out to the ski slopes on our own, which was not really a good idea as none of us had any extensive experience with skiing. Haha. However after lugging around our freaking heavy ski stuff already for the better part of the day, we were all determined to have some ski action. So with absolutely no instruction and just a sense of foolish bravery and humour, we took to the pistes.

Heh but before we could ski, we had to clip in to our skis. The binding system is familiar to me as it is essentially the same system as SPDs, but with skis it is like 1000 times more difficult due to the slippery surface: Before you can clip in, you are already sliding down the slope!!! Haha. This caused alot of frustration in me as time and time again I had to balance whilst trying my best to become one with my skis. I still cannot figure out how to do it without looking like an utter idiot. =P

finally all geared up to ski

andi..

michelle as well

me skiing

In my earlier blog post I wrote that I would probably fall alot, and through this process I would learn how to ski. Well, I was wrong. Not that I didn't fall alot, but rather I was wrong about learning to ski even after falling numerous times! Even at negligible gradient type runs, I had trouble controlling my speed and direction. At times it was plain scary to say the least! Sometimes my skis would seem to take on lives of their own and decide to go in separate directions, ending in the inevitable ending of me crashing. Or they would just become speed demons and I would be hurtling through the snow, feeling both exhilarated from the surge of adrenalin and being terrified of not knowing how to stop/change direction (just ask June about this.. =P). In any case skiing was generally not very successful for me, and I was extremely lucky not to have broken anything or caused any serious casualties. Would have been awful otherwise.

Since I could not really ski, I decided to do something else starting with "s" after lunch. No its not snowboarding, but rather sightseeing! There were cable cars to bring skiers up to the top of the mountains (3650m) and so we used that to get up. Wow the views were simply out of this world! White white and more white.. Everything seemed so surreal up there. And then there were the skiers who were just moving gracefully through the snow: In our cable car they looked like little insects gliding through a white ocean! The pictures which I took really does injustice to the magnificent view up there.. =)

going up..

with Pieter, a pro snowboarder whom we met on the way up

me and June

the rest

at the top

simply white

the real ski runs

chairlifts

After about an hour of sightseeing, we headed back to our debutant slopes and I skied for about another 2 hours. It was literally a slippery slope for me as no matter how much I wanted to ski properly, I just could not do it without the proper knowledge in skiing. And that made me a very dangerous person to contend with on the slopes: I was a disaster waiting to happen on skis! Haha. But luckily there were zero KIA, MIA and WIA at the end of the day.

So that just about ended my first experience of skiing in France. Good or bad, I just can't say, since I pretty much have close to zero prior experience to compare it with. But one thing's for sure: I certainly won't be in a hurry to head back to the ski slopes!!! =D

at the end of the day..

dead tired