Ski
Trip 2002
School ski-trip Diary
17th
March
I
set my alarm for 7:20 the following day, as we had been told that
breakfast would be at eight; only to be woken at 7:15 by Robin
and Stokes. The thing was that none of us had locks on our doors
except for our bathroom, and when I asked Mr. McCrohan about this
he told me that we were the only people in the building and that
it was too dangerous to have locked doors. Apparently, we are
all raving, homicidal drug addicts. Besides, he said, the insurance
would have cost more. The disadvantage of this was staring me
in the face at "too early" in the morning, in the form
of Philip Stokes laughing his ass off at me.
I struggled out of bed and dressed, tried to flatten my hair,
failed and went downstairs. I wore what most of the others were
wearing, the bottom of my ski suit and my ski polo and T-Shirt
which would go underneath the top. You can imagine how cool I
felt struggling down half asleep with two braces from my ski bottoms
hanging over my shoulders and my hair sticking up like I had been
electrocuted. Still breakfast was good. We all sat in the dining
area and basically served ourselves from several trays that had
been left out for us. There was orange juice, a choice of cereals,
which you scooped out of this wooden divider thing, I always had
sugar puffs, and there were rolls which you could fill using honey,
butter. Jam, nutella, cheese or salami. I tried a salami roll
at 8:00 on the first day, felt sick, and decided to stick to the
orange juice and sugar puffs for the rest of the week.
After breakfast I took the groovy lift back up to my room and
brushed my teeth, put on sun cream and the rest of the ski stuff.
This for me was a hat, sunglasses, gloves and a ski gator, which
was this thing that wrapped around your neck, although you could
pull it up onto your head and tighten it to use as a hat. Then
everyone came back down to put on their ski boots, spending at
least ten minutes to tighten them enough and try to get used to
the stiffness. Shortly after nine we all trooped out down to the
bus stop next to the main hotel and waited for the Ski bus "Linie
3" direct to Ehrwald Alm Ski Resort. This getting ready period
of an hour and a half became routine after a while.
At 9:15 the bus arrived and we struggled up the two small steps
to sit or stand inside. It was quite awkward at the start to carry
your skis and poles. We were taught to press the two skis off
each other and they would sort of half hold together, enabling
you to carry them in one hand. The other hand could then carry
your two poles. We drove down through Ehrwald village, stopping
twice to pick up other skiers before climbing up to the down station
of the Ehwald Alm cable car, or the "Gondola" as we
would come to call it. We were really excited and talking a lot.
It really was great to be looking up at the Alps in beautiful
sunshine and I took loads more pictures. We got off the bus and
walked into the down station. The cable cars were attached on
a kind of wire conveyor circuit, which moved up the mountain to
the top station carrying the car with it before turning and going
back down on the opposite side. We used our ski passes for the
very first time to enter the down station and then moved into
each cable car as it came, in small groups. I jammed my skis into
this holder thing on the outside and got into one with my poles,
sitting down with some of the lads. Then we were off up the mountain.
The silence and smoothness of the way we travelled astounded me,
and I looked view around me. You could see from miles around,
the villages of Ehrwald and Lermoos getting smaller and smaller
below me; the mountains and the awesome Zugspitz glacier getting
closer and closer. Underneath I watched as people on skis rocketed
down the snowy slopes from side to side, and I felt a great thrill
of excitement and thought, I'll be doing that soon.
We reached the top of the line and got off. We were led down a
short slope to be greeted by the sight of the Ehrwald Skischule
which was a couple of small buildings and a few flags situated
on a nice area of flat to green slope. The sun was shining and
everywhere you looked you could see beautiful mountains of snow
and rock rising into the sky. There was also a fair-sized white
painted Gastof near the up station of the Gondola where you could
stop of at lunch and get food.
We were led across to the Skischule and introduced to our three
ski instructors of the week, Walter, Florian and Carsten. At this
stage, those who had skied before had split off into a separate
advanced group with their own instructor, Hubert, and I saw little
of them skiing for the rest of the week. The majority of the group
were, however, like me. Beginners. The ski instructors began by
showing us how to put on our skis, how to carry them and told
us all to get into a line. We then all tried getting one ski on
and moving around a bit. After about a million false starts and
falls I realised that skis could be quite awkward. The hardest
thing was getting up after you had fallen, as I quickly discovered,
because having two long heavy things strapped to your legs seriously
crippled your ability to move on the ground, and more than once
I found my self lying in embarrassingly helpless positions unable
to do anything.
Anyway
for the rest of the morning we stayed in one group, learning the
basics of snowploughing where you stick the fronts of your skis
together and push the backs out, moving, stopping and finally
turning. By the end of the morning we were using these things
called rope lifts, whereby you simply tried to get your skis parallel
while facing up the slope and then grabbing onto this rope belt
which pulled you up. The very simplest of lifts, I fell at least
five times trying to position myself and hang on. Still it was
brilliant to be up there having a laugh and learning how to ski,
throwing snowballs and dodging them only to be hit by other snowballs.
I helped Florian set up this kind of course called a slalom where
you have to turn around poles as you go down. I found that roller-blading
helped me to lean and turn and I had no problem with the slalom,
but at the end of the morning they were deciding, unknown to me
to split us into three groups of differing ability. They told
us all to get up the slope using the rope lift again and travel
down the slalom one by one. Had I known that I was being judged
I probably would not have done what I did next. As we were going
down I had a snowball in my hand and was aiming at Robin as I
passed him lying in the snow. I hit him "a peach". Right
in the back of the head. However this caused a problem when the
instructors yelled stop. I overbalanced and flew down face first,
my two skis coming off for the first time of the day. I was put
in Carsten's group.
Then
we all trooped off to lunch in the Gasthof. I was thirsty as hell
but they didn't seem to sell just normal water. I grabbed a bottle
of some stuff called "schwepps bitter lemon" hoping
it would be like Fanta Lemon back home. I was wrong. Schwepps
bitter lemon turned out to be, funnily enough, bitter. Not exactly
on a clever streak I bought some chips and put a bit too much
salt in them. This resulted in me feeling towards the end of lunch
like a parched whale in the Sahara. What saved me was the fact
that I was able to speak German. I went up to this bar in the
Gatshof and said, "Kann Ich bitte ein groB glaB wasser haben",
and ended up with having discovered a limitless free fresh water
source. Not bad. In the afternoon I had two hours with Carsten
and his weird hat, doing the same that we had done that morning.
But I loved the skiing and stayed on for two hours after lessons
broke up with some of the lads skiing down the green slope. The
great thing about after lessons was that Mr. Sutton simply said
to us that there was a "Linie 3" bus leaving from the
down station at five minutes past every hour, and that the last
gondola down was at 4:15. We were therefore left with a choice
as to how soon we could leave to return to the hotel. I really
enjoyed the bits between and after lessons where you could go
off with your friends and ski down the white powdery slopes, breathe
in the cool Alpen air and look at the stunning views around you.
It was thoroughly exhilarating to sail down that little green
slope on the first day and have the entire trip ahead of you.
That night, it being the 17th, we had a St. Patrick's Day party,
with green banners everywhere and everyone wearing tricolours
and stuff. Stokes was in his element, and brought all his rebel
songs C.D.s down. We had good fun and those who had been to Irish
college showed off all the jigs and dances that they knew, trying
to teach the rest of us. I ended up doing what some of the others
were doing, just kicking things, bumping into people and yelling
a lot! Still the night was ok. I went to bed late and excited
about getting back on the slopes tomorrow.
