SKI SCHOOL
Right up near the top. The cactus at the bottom of the picture is Carol's hat.
The air was so thin that we saw several birds with nose bleeds walking down. Really!
Chic in my new coat and turtle neck with new skies. The red and yellow fencing is where new skiers stop when they can't turn.
To the right, out of the picture, is the banana tow rope.
Don't ask. It goes 1/4 of the way up this slope at about 1
mile per week. The first day, you go up and ski down observed by 80 other
students and a senior instructor who says, "Make many turns."
Neither many turns or making a fool of myself in front to the other students was
high on my mind. Not becoming a mural on the wall of the ski lodge was.
The yellow and red wigwam area at the left is the children's day care and ski
lesson area. Kids as young as three were beating me down the hills at the
end of the week...brats.
Based on your turns you are grouped with similarly unskilled skiers. Here is Carol's class. She is second from the right in the back row. I never saw anything except her eyes the whole week.
Here is Paul's group. Note who the Ski babe is holding. Paul!
Also note the snow on the trees. We had over a foot of new snow the first day. It was a winter wonderland populated by sprawling skiers who couldn't turn.
Ah, but I exaggerate, I would bet that I only fell four times in the whole week and never badly. Carol didn't fall until the last day, but her fall was rated a TEN by her class mates!
Each
class then heads for a different part of the resort. Generally, that means
going up higher. I am not one of those who skies down the complete
length of the slope at neck
breaking speed in one mad dash. One, I'm not that good and
two, I like to stop and enjoy the view.
The correct way to ski is with a group of friends. Ski a few hundred yards
down the slope, stop to talk and look at the scenery and then continue on down
to bottom. Every third run or so, you stop for a Schnapps (Austria) or a
Coffee Correcto (Italy. Espresso with a shot of Grappa in
it.).
As you can see, we got pretty high up and saw some tremendous scenery. Oh,... a Schnapps story. On the last day, one of my classmates brought a two shot bottle of peach schnapps for each of us. We all had one shot about an hour into the day. Then just before lunch, we stopped here, took the top off the bottle, squeezed it and stuck it to the tip of our nose, gripped the bottle between our teeth and tipped our head back to drink the last shot. No hands allowed. Pretty mature, eh?
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This piste map is only one third of the resort. Each straight black line is a lift. The ski runs are blue for easy, red for intermediate and black for go kill yourself. By the last day of the school, I was skiing down Dirty Reds and Easy Blacks. Runs that I would not have walked down on the first day. |
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You might wonder how I got the courage to ski down these aggressive
slopes. The Schnapps helped as did the fact that I got to follow
my ski instructor, "Kat" for four hours every day. A
real Pepsodent Girl. |
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Carol had her ski muffin too! Matt. If she trusted my driving as much as she did Matt's skiing, .... |
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