The day has come. I'm off to the snow for some skiing. It will be the first time in about 20 years and I'm looking forward to it with a combination of excitement and nervousness. Will it all come back (just like falling off a horse), or will I be a gumby? Will I damage myself during a burst of over-confidence? Will I be too cold/hot? I'm looking forward to finding out!
My trip to the snow is arranged through a company I found on the internet called Santiago Adventures. Their website is well organised and I'd had good and efficient service via email. Yes, it was to be an expensive day, but for the first time in a country with a foreign language, I figured it was money well spent such that the day went smoothly.
There were certainly no problems with the first bit, with Juan, my driver and guide for the day turning up at 8AM, as promised. Yes, his English seems fluent, again, as promised. I climb into his van and we do the usual introductions type of thing. He is very friendly, efficient and organised in explaining the day for me, which is a great start. He is very easy to like, and I find myself doing so! He would be in his early 60's I guess, and it turns out (at some point in the day) that he used to be a flight attendent for LAN back in the day when they only had a fairly small number of plans flying internationally (perhaps 4?). Anyway, he learnt his English there, along with the music and movies of the day.
We make one brief stop at a supermarket for him to buy some stuff for his lunch, along with the opportunity for me to get something if I want to. I pass up the chance, and will happily have a snack at a cafe (or similar) on the mountain.
Off we go again, leaving the city and beginning the climb into the mountains. It is all very close - we're less than 30 minutes from my hotel and the snow is not too far away now at all - there is ice in some of the roadside culverts!
The road begins to become quite windy and Juan explains the situation to me. From 7AM to 3PM, the road is only available for traffic going UP, and from 3PM to ?7PM it is only available to traffic going down. The obvious exception is emergency vehicles...
There are also a significant number of hairpin corners, 40 in all, and each of them is numbered such that in the event of an emergency, it is easy to identify where the problem is. There is plenty of traffic, but nothing outrageous, and we move up the hill at a good pace. Suddenly there is a wailing siren behind us, and Juan expresses his pleasure that the person driving like an idiot a few cars behind us has been pulled over by the carabinieri. Overtaking while going up the mountain is OK, as long as you are driving sensibly, however this person has been a bit of a hoon, so all of a sudden, his/her day in the snow has suddenly got more expensive, not to mention the delay. It turns out that towards the top of the hill, there is a carabinieri observation point which overlooks much of the climb up the mountain, and they identify trouble makers from there. It is a very nice touch!
There are three resorts accessible by the route we are taking, and I'm being taken to Los Colorado, which is likely to be most suitable for my (now minimal) skills. We arrive, find a parking spot out the front of the ski hire place I am to use (how good is this?!), and in we go to get kitted out. I need to hire skis, boots, stocks, a jacket and some gloves will be useful. I thought I'd be able to use just my polar fleece jacket and gloves, but it's a little nippier than what they will cope with, so the choice is clear. My skis are an insultingly short 175cm (the skis I own in Victoria are 194's) and there is a real struggle to find THE pair of boots that will fit me. My German assistant who is getting everything for me battles manfully to find everything and at last, we have it all together and I'm ready to go.
In the lead-up to coming to Chile, I'd had a bit of an internal debate about whether to bring my ski gear from Australia, but had finally been 'convinced' by Mum and Dad that my gear was now so old, it would be way out of fashion and I'd be laughed off the slopes. I should have realised that while that may the case for the beautiful people with new ski equipment that they'd bought themselves, that from the hire shop is invariably old. So, I have news for you M&D, my gear would be no worse than the hire shop gives out, but more importantly, it would fit. As such, next time I visit you, I'll be taking the boots and skis with me! Worse case scenario, I can use them to try out scree skiing.
It's then off to get my lift ticket for the day. There seems to be a little office that is crowded with people and something to do with the ticket, and the efficient Juan disappears into it, leaving me outside. He returns before too long, then disappears again to another place to get the actual ticket. Not sure what the first office was about, but before too long, I have the ticket, I secure it to my zipper, and I'm ready to go.
The preparation side of things is coming back to me slowly, but it is fortunate that while busy, the area in front of the first lift is not packed with people. I have dim memories of their being an indicator somewhere on the ski bindings that indicates the left and right ski and after a moment of searching, there are the arrows. The only question is - should they point to the inside or the outside of the ski? I guess that it should be the inside, but also take the practical view that it probably won't matter too much for me at the moment.
I lock myself into my bindings, fasten my boots securely and surprise myself by not falling over in the process. I 'skate' forward to the lift queue (nervously), trying not to collide with anyone else and create a classic comedy domino fall in the queue type of situations. I also practice a little 'snowplough', just in case. Yep, it is all flooding back, and I'm feeling good about it all...
The lift is a triple chair and in the preparation for getting on, I make my first mistake. I'm watching intently the people getting on in front of me (to remind myself what to do), and forget to move forward as the little gate opens. As a consequence, when I realise I should be going, the gate has already been open for a second or two and I'm behind the schedule. I hurry, but get caught out by the rubber strips at the waiting point and nearly fall (stocks flailing dangerously, I'm sure) and the lift attendant catches my arm to steady me. Yep, gumby move number one complete! I've made sure I seat myself on the edge rather than the middle, in order to make getting off a little easier, as I'll have the edge of the seat to push off - I seem to remember that being a useful technique (I think). On reflection, I must have been fairly nervous about it all, as now I can't recall whether I sat on the left or right hand side.
I'm eventually seated, the safety bar is lowered and I'm locked in. I breathe a sigh of relief - the first bit is out of the way and I remember a bit of what I'm supposed to do. The skills in executing it are not there, which is to be expected, but I haven't forgotten everything, which is good. I look around and take in the view. Stunning, as expected. First impressions are that the mountains are obviously BIG, there isn't as much snow as I'd expected (although the runs look well groomed and there are no rocks sticking out of the middle of them), and there aren't any trees around. The sun is hidden behind some thin clouds, so it looks to be a perfect day to reacquaint myself with snow.
The top of the chairlift arrives and it is time to prepare for launching off the seat. The bar goes up, I keep the tips of the skis up, and I wiggle my bum to the front of the seat. Yeah, I remember all of this - no problems. Ski's down, I stand and let the seat push me forward until I accelerate down the slight slope away from the chair. Looking good - at least I'm not going to be wearing the chair in the back of my head, which is a good start to the first run.
My confidence is short-lived. After perhaps 5 metres, I overbalance. Arms and stocks again flail wildly in a windmilling kind of way, followed thereafter by my feet sliding out from underneath me and I'm down on my backside in the snow. I remember how cold snow actually is, because a small piece of it has worked its way up under my jacket and down the top of my pants during this little escapade. I feel like a goose, as this has been the classic fall of an absolute novice on his first trip up the chairlift. It might well be 20 years since I've been, but I reject the notion that I am back to being a novice!
I manage to stand up without taking my skis off, or falling over again, which pleases me no end. I take a moment or two to get myself organised, including trying to get rid of as much of that ice in my pants as I can! My, it's cold! I snowplough my way to the edge of the run, reassure myself that it is a beginners run and then off I go, a couple of gentle turns in snowplough manner, then I bring the skis together and try for a parallel turn. While I'm sure I'll never be mistaken for Alberto Tomba (he was big in the late 80's), I at least pull it off and don't fall again. I try another one, going the other way (of course) and that is successful as well. Down I go, parallel turning (I don't want to give the wrong impression about this - perhaps the best description is that the skis are at least semi-parallel most of the time) back and forth and no further falls. I make it to the bottom of the run, take a series of deep breaths, then join the queue for another go.
Getting on the lift this time around, I'm awake to what I need to do, and I'm successfully seated without a problem. Same goes for getting off this time around. No imitations of a windmill, and I slide cooly away. Off I go again, but this time, half way down, I decide to live a little. I point the skis straight downhill and rapidly pick up speed. Oh yeah! A few little flicks from side to side bleeds off a bit of speed as required, and I'm feeling like I've never been away!
After a few more runs on the beginner slope, I'm beginning to eye off the upper slopes where the intermediate and advanced runs are. Access is via either a pommel or a t-bar. I decide to experiment a little more with the lower slopes, including some alternatives off the main chairlift, and after a little while longer, I decide to brave the t-bar. I justify to myself that the main aim is getting some photo's from a higher elevation, but just quietly, I'd like to see whether I'm up for the challenge of an intermediate level run.
The queue to the t-bar is almost non-existent, so after waiting for the kids around me to go through, I line up by myself. For those who don't know, riding a t-bar with someone much shorter than you is a form of hell. Instead of having the bar pull you up the hill by sitting neatly under your butt, with someone shorter, it tends to end up in the middle of your thighs, which might not seem so bad until you have to do it for 10 minutes (particularly if you are unused to doing it, like I am). Anyway, on this occasion, no such problem.
I get to the top of the run and slide the bar out from behind my legs and strike a problem requiring urgent action. The bar has caught the bottom of my jack and is starting to pull me in a direction I do NOT want to go in. Some panicked tugging of the bar and my jacket frees me after what seems a reasonable time, but can't have been more than a second or so. My heart is pumping again, imagining the indignity of being dragged along by t-bar, but also smiling to myself that I'd managed to escape its evil clutches.
Off to the edge of the run I slide, then stop and out comes the camera for a few snaps of the mountains and the ski run overview. There's a whole bunch of clever clogs zooming all around me, so I let them all disappear and suddenly I'm almost alone, with only one or two others around. Perfect. I can make a fool of myself and no-one will notice! I get myself ready, but can't bring myself to drop over the edge and into the run. It's all looking a bit too steep from here. I dig out my map and convince myself that this is an advanced run, and that there is an intermediate one just ahead along the access track. I slide forward to that, but it is also pretty steep, so I again consult the map. It looks like I haven't gone far enough, so once more I slide along to the next corner and this time, it doesn't look so bad.
I commit myself to the run and almost immediately it gets steeper than I thought. Even better, there is a ski lesson going on for what are clearly some intermediate/advanced types. I slide slowly past them, skis perpendicular to the slope and then stop to take some more photo's while they head off on their runs.
I'm alone again, and I finally work up the courage to try some parallel turns down the run. It all looks so easy and elegant watching the experienced people do this, but for me, when I'm in the middle of it, the acceleration down the hill seems to happen very quickly and I find myself having to work very hard to stay upright and not moving at the speed of sound down the hill. I dig my edges in to try and bleed off some speed in the turns, but they catch and slip repeatedly, and I end up in a kind of "chattering" slide down the hill. My thighs are starting to burn already and I conclude that I'm not up to this level of run in terms of the physical and mental requirements just yet. I gently slide my way sideways down to the top of the beginners run (familiar territory) and resume my day in a much more civilised kind of way. Another series of deep breaths help to flush the adrenaline away...
I pause for lunch at about 1.30PM and head to the cafe/restaurant at the bottom of the beginners run. I settle in to my table, complete with a view of the slopes and order some pasta and chips. I've had a great morning, the weather has been perfect, and I'm having a good day. Even better is that the weather has turned a bit, with the top of the hill and sometimes the middle slopes now being covered periodically with cloud, so the restaurant is a good place to be.
By the time I've finished lunch, things have cleared up again weather-wise and I'm back on the slopes, however before too long, the weather has closed in again and I can't seem much more than perhaps 30m in front of myself and it's heading towards being a white-out. Not much fun to ski in, and I decide that if it is still like this when I get to the bottom of this run, then I'll pack it up, as the time is nearing 2.45PM and the window for leaving the mountain will open fairly soon. I've starting to feel a bit sore and a bit weary, so rather than end up in a world of pain tomorrow, it seems prudent to give it away earlier than later, especially if the weather is turning nasty.
By the time I get to the bottom, having picked my way through many people just sitting down until visibility improved, it is still very murky. That's it then, and I pack myself up and walk off to the hire place. Juan is there and somewhat surprised to see me already, but he helps to organise the return of everything and gets ready to go. We're underway pretty much at 3PM and the traffic flows straight off the mountain in the smoothest way possible.
I've had a great day, am feeling deliciously tired from it all and am back at my hotel by around 4PM. Brilliant. The drive down is again entertaining, including my chat with Juan. I learn a lot about the recent history of Chile, all of which sounds like it was a tough time for the locals here.
I am very pleased to find out that he is to be my guide for the wine-tasting again tomorrow.
After a shower and a rest, I'm off for some shopping before a late dinner at another fantastic restaurant at the Parque Arauco. All in all, I'm very pleased with my day - I've met some lovely people and I'm looking forward to tomorrow.
Hope everyone else is good too!
A
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