Skiing is not for the faint hearted if you take it up when you’re no longer in the full bloom of youth. I learned this when I spent my first winter in Geneva and participated in a group outing to a ski resort near Chamonix, the gateway to the French Alps.
Many Irish tourists are now discovering this for themselves in ski resorts across Europe, trying not to take the eye out of someone’s head with a ski pole once they have managed to insert themselves into their thermals, ski pants and jacket, and busted a gut putting on those heavy plastic boots. And not forgetting the sunblock, the helmet, the sunglasses and the gloves.
As your ski tourist bus climbs the motorway into the Chamonix valley, it is hard to believe that during the Little Ice Age – periods of extreme cold between 1650 and 1850 – local people lived in fear that they would be cut off completely from the outside world by the seemingly unstoppable advance of the glaciers which have made the valley’s reputation.
Villages and farmlands were swallowed up, and the peasantry called on local priests to perform rituals – “ice-orcisms” if you like – to ward off the approaching menace.
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The answer to their prayers came in the form of the industrial revolution which started to seed Europe’s glaciers with black soot and other pollutants which together with the slow steady warming of the earth’s atmosphere since 1850 put a stop to the glaciers’ gallop.
It was as though some alpine King Canute had stood in front of the valley’s Mer du Glace (sea of ice) and ordered it to turn around so that there would be adequate access to the valley for all the necessary infrastructure to be put in place for the very first Winter Olympic Games in 1924.
In 1816, the Mer du Glace so captured the imagination of 18-year-old Mary Shelley that it is where she set the first meeting between Victor Frankenstein and the sorry creature he created and then abandoned.
[ Europe’s deadly ski season: what’s driving the rise in avalanche deaths?Opens in new window ]
Today this much reduced sea of ice flows down from the Mont Blanc (altitude 4,008m) massif for 12km covering an area of 32sq km. One can only hope that most of it is still there for the scheduled return of the Winter Olympics in 2030.
But I digress.
En route to Chamonix there is a ski resort called Flaine, which promises that “in a playground to match your desires, you’ll finally discover the meaning of the word ‘happiness”.
Happiness was not on my radar as I hired skis there for the first time, strapped on my boots, and looked carefully at the downhill slope where we gathered for a pep talk from a member of the group who had skied before.
I got a bit bored with this as I watched all the young children taking to the slope without too much difficulty, so I inched my way closer to the edge of the precipice.
Before I knew it the skis were moving as of their own accord and, untutored as I was in the skill of slowing and turning (the snow plough manoeuvre), I took off at an alarming pace on a downward trajectory with the ski poles tucked under my arms.
I picked up so much speed that it would have meant instant death if I simply fell over. So on I went downhill, shouting ‘get out of the f***in’ way’ at anyone in my blurred line of vision (it was snowing slightly).
At the bottom, I shot across a Nordic ski track, dropped the ski poles and came to a halt against a wooden chalet, trembling like a leaf.
I had just travelled down what I later learned was a green slope, but it had felt to me like skiing down Mont Blanc and I congratulated myself on my success in arriving at the bottom in one piece.
I now struggled some distance to join a queue of people who were making their way back to the top via a strange, constantly circulating chain of suspended stools on which they half-sat.
So, I watched, carefully taking note of how to hold the ski poles in one hand while holding onto the bar of the stool with the other, keeping the skis firmly on the ground while allowing oneself to be gently hauled back up the slope.
It was all going very well until it fully dawned on me that the thing did not stop to allow a dignified disembarkation.
I panicked and only let the stool go as it threatened to take me back down the slope. I was launched in the most ungainly manner on to a mound of snow and collided with an emergency trip wire which brought the entire apparatus to a shuddering halt.
Bemused bystanders came to my rescue. I gathered my skis and poles, brushed off the snow and decided that, before making any inquiries about lessons, I needed some, how you say, après ski.
