Himmi learns to Ski

Living in Munich, on a good day I can see the Alps from any place of even modest elevation. There they stretch in fifty shades of ice white across the southern horizon with that peculiar trompe-l’oeil quality of distant mountains. Not too distant, however, as from the summit of Olympiaberg in Munich’s Olympic Park the mountains seem touchable. On a sunny day I feel as though I could stretch out my hands and crumble the chalky masses between my fingertips. The mountains are beautiful and they beckon.

But I have little experience of mountains.

I grew up in the relative flatlands of the south of England. Yes, there were hills and rolling countryside but there was nothing comparable to the Alps. Philippe on the other hand, grew up near the quintessential peaks of the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland. Mountains are to him as concrete is to me, these being the typical offerings of our respective hometowns. With a lifelong knowledge of the Alps, as well as having a handy ski instructor qualification, he was the perfect person to conduct my first European skiing lesson.

We started our journey early on Saturday morning but then it seemed, so did the rest of Bavaria, as everyone tried trying to make the most of the rare occurence of clear skies coinciding with the weekend. These were seemingly perfect conditions for skiing, Philippe informed me, so it was little wonder that by the time we alighted the train at the Alpine town of Lenggries the slopes were crowded. From the foot of the pistes I could see what appeared to be a series of brightly coloured tally marks zig-zagging down the mountain. As they came nearer to the bottom these slashes differentiated into people, skiers in jackets of purple and green and black, for the most part upright and agile.

Before I could join them though, I needed gear. What followed was an uncomfortable half hour as I tried to put on what can only be described as a combination between armour and a spacesuit. Feeling very much like Cinderella’s Ugly Sister, I tried to cram my foot into the ski boot, wincing as my wide arches refused to squeeze past the plastic. In the end it fell to Philippe to apply his 80+kg of Swiss muscle onto my unyielding trotter to force it into the boot. After repeating this debacle for my other foot in front of the crowd in the hire shop, I was desperate to find the nearest avalanche to bury me and my fat feet entirely.

The embarrassment had its use though as flaming cheeks combated the blast of cold air that hit me as I walked out of the shop. I reached automatically for my asthma inhaler but then adjusted to the conditions. It was cold but it was also brilliant. Under blue skies and unadulterated sunshine the snow dazzled, inconceivably white. Every waddling step I took shifted my vision such that the snow glittered with miniscule, rainbow-coloured specks. My naive self could only compare it to the shifting twinkles of diamonds but how insufficient those small rocks seemed in comparison to the immensity of snow sparkling in the sunshine.

The wonder lasted only as long as it took me to reach the top of the slope. Suddenly there was no poetry in the piste, only terror.

Philippe zoomed a metre downslope, murmuring instructions in the same soothing tones one uses when encountering a scared animal. I was that scared animal. Despite standing stock still in the cold air, I was sweating and panicking under my thermal layers, my brain anxiously trying to find a way down that did not involve using the two strips of waxed plastic strapped to my feet. In my panic I shifted my weight backwards and then began to slide down the mountain gaining terrifying momentum.

“Do the V! Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!” Philippe shouted as I went careering past.

I angled my legs towards each other as Philippe had demonstrated, suddenly aware of just how many muscles in my legs I had never strained before. Now they were all in full use, clenching and ripping in an effort to save the whole being, Himmi, who without their sacrifice would have to be scraped off the side of a mountain. I began to brake.

Heart pumping, legs shaking, I repeated this for the next few hours. I was beyond achy, my body having progressed long past the point of muscle memory to muscle PTSD. I still became hysterical during steep sections, when I felt control of my movements starting to quite literally slip and I was envious of the children that zoomed past me with instinctive ease.

“Let’s take the gondola up to the top,” said Philippe, seeing my enthusiasm starting to flag. “We don’t have to ski down,” he said, upon seeing my petrified expression.

Detaching myself from the cursed skis, I bundled into the small, swinging cabin, suspicious as to whether a puny looking metal cable could really withstand the weight of me in my ski boots. With a jolting bump we became airborne, our metal cocoon then looping up the mountain side in a series of gentle curves as we were pulled from post to post. The ground fell away and soon we were above the tops of the pines looking down on the slope I had skied down for most of the day. It was not a short slope.

“I skied down that?” I asked Philippe, incredulous.

He nodded.

And then we crested the mountain and suddenly we were in the mountains. There they stretched, as wondrous and unreal as from Olympiaberg only this this time they were touchable, we were in the Alps. Tiny figures zipped down the steep pistes, this incredible environment their playground and backdrop. So this was why people skied. To be able to traverse this landscape was surely worth the pain and terror of learning to ski in the first place.

As we boarded the gondola to return to the bottom, I pulled on Philippe’s sleeve.

“So we’re coming again next weekend?” I asked.