Skiing - do you love it, loath it or simply not interested?

[swansonj]

Seems morally bankrupt to me

And, moral bankruptcy aside, I genuinely do not get the same pleasure from descending a hill when I haven't put the climbing in. I know, I've tried it.

(On reflection, that's not setting morality aside, that's just expressing morality a different way...)

 

[thom]

I disagree.
I would say cycling is.

But …. it is !
And it sounds like with only one day of lower slope instruction, you haven't skied in powder snow!

 

[BrumJim]

For 51 weeks a year I merely exist. For 1 week a year I go off ski-ing and live.
Although this year (2014) and last I have missed out due to the arrival of a bundle of joy.

Its not cold (I often have lunch outside in my shirt sleeves if the weather is good), and it does connect you with the environment (although I'm disappointed by the number of climate change deniers and don't care types on the slopes). I have a poor sense of balance, but can tackle any piste you could find with joy rather than terror.

There is an element of letting go with ski-ing that I guess cycling doesn't quite need. If you are intent on keeping in full control and following instructor's instructions at all times, you will struggle to progress. If you are happy to let go a bit and go for it, you will get on so much better.

But in the end, I can't explain it, or force anyone to share my joy. I just know that when I am flying down a relatively empty slope, fine and gentle movements in my feet and legs controlling my direction exactly as I want it to, legs snapping underneath my body from one side to another as the edges catch in the soft snow, that this is where I would like to spend much more of my life. Sadly it doesn't pay the mortgage.

 

[thom]

In trying to explain to my skiing wife why I love cycling but dislike skiing, I have developed the following theory.
…
And when we eat cake, we know we've earned it.

Skiing, as practised as a holiday pursuit, is, in pretty well every respect, the exact opposite.

Qualifications: cross-country skiing is closer to cycling than downhill. And if your cycling pleasure is built round sportifs, carbon bling, GPS, team-branded Lycra, strava and PBs, sag wagons, and throw-away inner tubes, your cycling will be more akin to skiing than mine is!

It all depends on the attitude of the person whether they have that romantic connection with place you talk about.
I think you're talking more about the typical demographic that goes downhill skiing rather than the activity itself.

The best desserts I ever had was atop an Austrian mountain after skiing - Kaiser-schmarm, Strudel, Germknodel are just fab. And I did earn them. Skiing in Canada, the US, Japan, France, Switzerland or Austria have all been slightly different experiences in terms of mountains, people and apres-ski. If you were lucky enough to live in the mountains, a season long pass would completely change the economics of it and many people's attitude towards it who are posting here in my opinion.

I love being in the wilds of the mountains be it in summer or winter, on foot, skis or bikes. Getting to the Col de l'Iseran in both seasons shows different aspects of place that you do not get just from a bicycle. Skiing certainly helps with your descending on a bike btw.

I can understand there is a goodly amount of fear involved in skiing that underlies much of the frustrations people have in learning how to ski. As with many things in life, if you stick at it and give it a chance, you can get a lot out of it.

I'd love to go ski-touring, getting from place to place through the mountains without ski-lifts and staying in mountain huts en route. Cycling will never give quite the same thrill of escape, danger and vulnerability as when you are off-piste in the wilds - it just gives something different and that is completely fine.

 

[ComedyPilot]

I like the fear aspect of skiing.

It is an adventure sport, and has been one of my passions since I was a young adult.

I find the way helmet use has been pushed in skiing to be quite unsettling. Yes it 'could help' prevent injury, but skiing within your limits and watching where the fark you're going are much better/cheaper options for you and people around you.

I think the Western 'rush' mentality has taken over skiing, where everyone wants to be Franz Klammer. Sure I can give it some if/when I need to, but I prefer the laid back, relaxed attitude to skiing - absorb the surroundings, flow with the piste/mountain and be at peace with the stunning scale of the mountains.

This 'rush' attitude mixed in with the H&S obsession does not make a good bed-fellow with adventure sports.

Adventure sports by their very nature are dangerous. We participate in them at our own risk. In every activity I have done the risk is greatest in two areas - beginners and show offs - Now this may grate with some people, but adventure sports/exteme sports are not a thing to be scoffed at and approached in a laissez-faire manner. Practiced without proper training and outside safe environments they can and do kill. Seasoned adventure sports people accept this risk, and mourn the loss and learn from the incidents. The more the mainstream do the sports (and get exposed to the dangers) the more likely someone is to getting seriously hurt or killed - they then get all hysterical about H&S and think putting a pudding bowl on the head will save them.

I have news for you it won't.

The last time I was skiing it was quite windy and the gondola was rocked quite a lot on the way up. The silence that gripped the normally (till then) vocal/chatty people in the car was a reminder to them that they were a good few hundred feet up off the ground and in quite a dangerous environment.

Seriously, the UK and the H&S bullshit brigade need to grow a pair.........

 

[ASC1951]

In trying to explain to my skiing wife why I love cycling but dislike skiing, I have developed the following theory. Cycling is about connectedness to the planet. .....
Skiing, as practised as a holiday pursuit, is, in pretty well every respect, the exact opposite.

That's exactly it, for me. I used to go to the Alps every spring in my 20s with some keen skiing friends, but spent the rest of the year caving, climbing and cycling. Skiing - resort skiing, as you say - just didn't come close. Even without the overheard ski instructor's quip "I wonder what all the Poor People are doing today?"

 

[Aperitif]

It all depends on the attitude of the person whether they have that romantic connection with place you talk about.

I'd love to go ski-touring, getting from place to place through the mountains without ski-lifts and staying in mountain huts en route. Cycling will never give quite the same thrill of escape, danger and vulnerability as when you are off-piste in the wilds - it just gives something different and that is completely fine.

Aw - Thom!
Herein lies the difference: with skiing, one can be off-piste and with cycling (often according to company ) - 'piste-off'!
A verbier response I can not muster.
Arthur Aski was a favourite of mine though. We're all playmates after all.

 

[ianrauk]

But …. it is !
And it sounds like with only one day of lower slope instruction, you haven't skied in powder snow!

Don't you get what I am saying Thom?
I hate snow - simple.

 

[ianrauk]

Not even close. A certain level of skill is a prerequisite of course.

In your life maybe... in mine cycling is.

 

[Aperitif]

In your life maybe... in mine cycling is.

I can't do either.
I'll buzz a snowball at Thom for you though, next time I see him.

 

[thom]

Don't you get what I am saying Thom?
I hate snow - simple.

Well sure, I can get that but powder snow is not to be compared lightly to normal snow….
Fresh powder has a dryness and lightness to it that make it different to what you find normally on groomed pistes or indeed the type of snow that falls in the UK.
Seriously, it makes you laugh uncontrollably as you bounce weightlessly down through it - sheer exhileration.

 

[thom]

Arthur Aski was a favourite of mine though. We're all playmates after all.

We are and just as there are a fair few shoot cyclists out there spoiling your ride on occasion, there are a fair few skiers of that ilk. But the climate of the UK is always going to mean you need to travel to ski, so the lack of ease of localness or normality is a big barrier to the experience.

 

[Aperitif]

We are and just as there are a fair few s*** cyclists out there spoiling your ride on occasion, there are a fair few skiers of that ilk. But the climate of the UK is always going to mean you need to travel to ski, so the lack of ease of localness or normality is a big barrier to the experience.

Sometimes I get a crampon after a bike ride - should I take up mountaineering, or just dig myself a big hole?
Some of the places I play, there's a mountain of snow in the gents...in the suburbs - let alone the 'big europe'. I last skied in 'Les Angles' I think, on a rugby tour to Narbonne - so the 'resort' (a true indictment of @vernon 's 'Last Resort' for sure). My friend Peter sat on one of those pole pully-uppy things and didn't budge. Remember, this was a rugby tour and he'd slept in a wardrobe the night before (1984 - when wardrobes were spacious) Anyway, the pole stretched...and stretched...and eventually, Pete got launched into a snowdrift to his right - accompanied by guffaws and uncontrollable urination by the assembled audience, who were, by now, rolling on the snowy wastes in fits of laughter. I'm sure things have improved since then, but hey? Who wants to trudge to the top of a slope and slide all the way to the bottom et seq?
(I did have a pair of 'Moon boots' at one point in my life. More a homage to David Niven than snow but 'chacun a son boot' eh?

 

[ianrauk]

Well sure, I can get that but powder snow is not to be compared lightly to normal snow….
Fresh powder has a dryness and lightness to it that make it different to what you find normally on groomed pistes or indeed the type of snow that falls in the UK.
Seriously, it makes you laugh uncontrollably as you bounce weightlessly down through it - sheer exhileration.

Snow is cold - therefore I do not like it.
To me snow is snow.

 

[vernon]

Seriously, it makes you laugh uncontrollably as you bounce weightlessly down through it - sheer exhileration.

Until you hit a rock with your head......