Its all about the snow….

FANTABULOUS!!!!

Been doing a bit of the old sliding thru the white stuff in the last fortnight. A mate from Oz was visiting nz and so we hit the slopes (literally and figuratively)  And I think I might have rediscovered my long lost love of anything that goes fast and has an edge!

I invested in a lesson last week at Cardrona, and both myself and my poor long suffering (ok for the term of the private lesson anyway…) instructor were amazed at the improvement.  Basically I had a few ski lessons as a kid - just to beginner/snow-plow level.  Then took up ice skating, and returned to the ski field for a day trip after 3 years skating to find that my confidence on a pair of skis had grown exponentially.

Unfortunately my technique of course hadn’t and though my skiing was better simply because I knew where to put my weight, I didn’t know how to parallel turn properly and full of the high of being confident on skis, I never took a lesson to learn…. and so I taught myself the ‘Kim parallel turn’ which was actually more of a parallel skid stop than a turn.

So anyway this weekend – after a private critique at Cardrona – I call it a critique as that’s pretty much what it was – my dramatic improvement came more from correcting what I was doing wrong, than learning to do anything else more ‘right’.

I took to the powdery and ample snow at Mt Hutt.  Originally me and the aussie were going to explore the north of the sth island but we both decided we’d rather spend it on a ski field …me on skis him with his feet stuck to a board (and therefore to my skier opinion), handicapped big time!

Unfortunately my Australian friend has an old back injury which he managed to aggravate when he had to stop suddenly to avoid a learner less learned than himself and ended up landing directly on said old back injury.  This pretty much put an end to his boarding in NZ – at least for this trip, and a pity as he seemed to be picking it up rather quickly!

So Of the 3 days we planned to spend on the slopes in Canterbury I spent the 2^nd day by myself and will be heading up again tomorrow, sans mate…  However- as most skiers and boarders will know  - unless you are lucky enough to have a group of mates at the exact same level as yourself, you pretty much part ways at the first lift queue of the day, if lucky catch up in the pub/café at lunch and then see each other again on the bus!.

So anyway, I carried on, and it seems that the last few trips to the snow, for me, have been plagued with rental equipment issues – issues I never had in years gone by….

As an ice skater once I got to something beyond advanced beginner, I found that it was pretty much essential to have my own skates, and once my grandmother had (and I never found out till much later she forked up the $$ - thanks gran!) paid for me to have a proper pair of figure/freestyle boots and blades, I discovered it was simply not imaginable for me to skate in anything else.  This wasn’t due to snobbery, but to the simple fact that for ice skating at least, you became so used to your own skates that to put on any other pair, would impact your skating so much as to make skating in the other boots a complete waste of time.

I am starting to wonder if the same may be true for skiing (skiers feel free to email me and say…)

So anyway in terms of the rental issues….

The first one was about 4 or so years ago when I went up to Turau with a work mate and friends.  Id not been skiing for so long that carving skis were a new thing to me.  So they gave me these ‘carving skis’ .  They mentioned something about me being lucky to get premium as Id paid only for std hire.  I didn’t really know what that meant for me.  Anyway I went up the mountain and in the afternoon had a lesson – at level 4 which I estimated to be about my level -  but the instructor said he thought I should have been in level 5.  I felt that I was where I should be in 4 though…. Anyway – learnt that I needed to LEAN FORWARD! On my skis which helped a lot.

That was all good – cruised up and down a few more times practising my new found manoeuvres and speed then headed back to where were were staying at the end of the day.  The next day I marched up to the rental ppl and said ‘carving skis please’ thinking they were all the same!  Put them on, and headed up the chairlift to the same run id been cruising down the day before.  Got off the lift headed down the slope…only to discover that as much as it looked like snow, and obviously felt like snow to the other skiers/boarders…it was actually mud….sticky gluggy mud.  So much so I got stuck!  I couldn’t turn worth arse, and actually had to ask a passer by for advice on HTF to get down!

DisgustedI went back to rental at the end of the morning (we were there a half day only) and remembering the brand of carvers id had the day before asked how they differered from what I had this day.  They said only that the others were more rigid and therefore easier to turn on.

Fast forward to Cardrona last week and I made sure I repeatedly asked for ‘firm rigid carvers’ (I wont comment on how it feels as a female to ask a man over and over to make sure its ‘firm and rigid!’).

Anyway the chap ended up giving me their ‘premium’ carvers saying these are what you need for that and I wont charge you extra (I would have paid it and said so).  As my feet are super narrow and long with the bit between the heel and the top of the foot being wide I find it hard to find boots that fit well – my feet usually swim in them, so ended up with performance/premium boots too – which fit great but took about 15 minutes of sweating and grunting to get done up as the front was so tight

Anyway, its all good and I had a good day up at Cardrona, with my lesson and my skis.  So it turned out despite only every paying for standard rental – in the 3 times Id skied on carvers 2 id been on premium skis and the other time the skis had sucked

So At hutt this week I was asking whether there was a difference in performance or standard at my level and getting differing responses.  Finally a very helpful lady at the rental place (who did put me in performance boots thanks to my narrow feet) said she thought the standard rentals were pretty good…..

So I chucked them on, and as I was sliding towards the chairlift thought to myself – these feel yukky and no edges and soft & yuk.  Told myself I was being silly and didn’t know enough to think that about poor defenceless skis –especially ones Id not even skied in yet.

Got up the lift, headed down and my skiing was shit – way shittier than usual,  I tried to follow the lessons Id had the week prior but my body weight stubbornly refused to move forward to the proper position, my skis denied any knowledge of the existence of edges, and after a 5-10 floundering example of the worst skiing technique on earth I reached the bottom of the run and decided that even if I was being fussy and anal – I simply HAD to get some other skis!

Went & paid $10 for some performance skis – went to the performance ski hire people and did my  best to explain my reasons for hating the standard rentals and what I needed to have instead.

I was presented with some ‘light nice ones with fresh edges that all the women like’ and the moment I put them on – while queuing for the chair I could tell they were going to be better.

So that was all good – the snow and skiing was great.  The only thing that marred my Sunday skiing (apart from a million other skiers and boarders taking up all the space) was that I seemed to be absolutely buggered all day.  I was a bit wheezy (I get exercise induced asthma) but it felt like more than that – my muscles just felt so tired and knackered.  I put it down to be not being fit and the fact that I am currently magnesium deficient – which affects your muscles strength, tone, recoveryetc…

Still a good day though – so I asked them to hold the skis and boots for me thinking after trying about 5 pairs of boots which were all too wide I didn’t want to lose the ones Id found that finally were not too wide, and I liked the skis.

So today I rocked on up and got my boots and skis, then hopped on the chair…….

First thing I noticed going up the chair was how much my ankles and bottom of my legs were aching, aching like heck.  I figured it was my unfit muscles protesting at the exertions of the day before.  However when I got to the top and started to head down, almost immediately I was forced to stop for a rest by the screaming in my ankles….. now any skiers out there will go ‘harden up everyone gets bruised and sore ankles don’t be such a wuss’ – and they are right – everyone does and ive had that before.  However this pain was severe enough to take my breath away, and by the time I finally got to the bottom, I was almost hyperventilating from the pain – pain which didn’t go away when I stopped skiing, and was coming from deep inside my legs/ankle…not from bruising.

I stopped at the bottom and even after taking off my skis I had to actually stand there and pant in pain for a while before I could do anything else.  I knew this wasn’t right – so went down stairs and asked them if there was something that would make this happen.  The guy asked me about bruising and warned me that bruising would hurt… but I had no bruising.  Anyway he got me some more boots – I took off the ones I had on and straight away it was relief.  Those boots I think had been cutting off my blood supply. They were incredibly tight and hard to get on around the heel/instep area but one on seemed to fit and were the only narrow ones so Id stuck with them.  But on reflection I think they were actually cutting off my blood supply….  Years ago studying medical laboratory science we took each others blood pressure, and also inflated the cuff on a classmates arm and left it that way for a bit…. The result (of the cutting off of the bloody supply) is extreme pain.  Ironically the new boots did bruise my legs a little where the old ones had not – but that was nothing at all in comparison to the pain those first boots caused….!

So the rest of today was spent in a mixture of:

Blissful parallel turns

Doing a few ‘jumps’ on moguls (some planed some not!)

Getting into the thrill of some of my fastest skiing yet (and trying to minimise the panic!!)

Falling over for the first time in years and years – ironically not on the harder stuff, the high speed or the jumps, but on the beginner run down from the chair when for some reason that escapes me I decided to attempt to break guineas records for the sharpest turn ever by an intermediate skier – one that ended up with my outside edge/ski rapidly becoming my inside edge/ski, and me facing up the mountain… sort of.. I think my body also wondered if we’d gone back to figure skating and that’s why it tried to spin!  The end result was a very medium speed undignified dive into the snow… It was pretty much pain free, but when I tried to get up I realised that I have not fallen over since I was a young child doing snow ploughs!  One outcome of all the iceskating I think was a good…no excellent level of balance in comparison to my skiing ability – so my skiing had come a long way without me falling.  I fell an awful lot when skating so maybe ‘the god of falling over in ice and snow’ felt I was kinda in credit a little..?  Anyway I was almost proud of myself for finally doing the normal thing and falling over – though I wish the fall had been a bit more spectacular for story telling!  It did make me think later coming down another run – how bloody painful/likely to cause significant injury a collision with one of the skier boarders who come hurtling down at high speed would be.  Or even the impact between myself and the snow at speed…. There were a few times when my speed got ‘right up there’ and I thought ‘if I fell over now – something is going to be broken…’

Anyway – if anyone is still reading at this point!  I think the above has convinced me that if I intend to spend any reasonable amount of time on the slopes, that it might be worth investing in my own gear….  Im definitely starting to experience the same need for better gear as a skier that I did as a skater – simply because of the huge difference in my skiing when it’s the right gear.  Who wants to pay to be skiing at say ‘mediocre’ if they could pay another $10 and ski at ‘kinda good mediocre’?

So of course now I need to figure out in technical terms what I want/need – and of course what I want to spend!  Im told some shops will allow me to take a set up for a day or two to test – I thought that was rather trusting of them – but at the same time I cant see how Id get what I want/need without that – as the same ‘specs’ ive discovered can feel VERY different on the slope under ones feet!