What is good leisure skiing - what to aim for?

I learned to ski 13 years ago because we wanted to have a christmas holiday, and it was snow or sun and I did not like the idea of sitting on a beach christmas day, so we picked skiing. Mrs H had learned years before and been with school several times, and another mate who came was similar standard. The rest of us - myself, mates wife, and all 4 kids were total novices.

I have to say that first week was one of the worst of my life. I hated it. I was useless with the first 3 lessons, snowploughing - pain, aches, tantrums, etc. But then on day 4 we learned to parallel and I was away. It felt natural whereas snowplough felt wrong. Very wrong.

I continued with lessons all week, morning and afternoon, with lunchtime spent skiing about with Mrs H to practise, and by the end of the week I was comfortable going down blues and had been down a couple of reds but found them tough.

The weeks/years that have gone by since, I have tried to better myself, take on board tips and advice, copy good skiers, cut out bad habits, try new things. As time has gone by, I have found things I used to worry about I dont any more, slopes I used to dread I eat up, and now I am always looking for something off the edge which presents a challenge. But its only been my desire to improve and get better all the time that drove me on. The first4 or 5 trips I was doing a fair bit of falling over as I was pushing myself on slopes I probably couldnt handle, but going to a resort like Mayrhofen so many times early on really brought me on as it was towards the more difficult end of run classification.

Personally, I love speed and as Andy posted above, when its safe to do so I love to really open up and clock how fast we can push it. 88kph was the fastest recorded time 2 years ago in St Moritz, but I am sure I've been faster than that in the time since.

I've cut out the one bad habit I had, which was moving my shoulders too much, because friends and family kept telling me I was doing it so I really worked on that myself. Lessons probably would have helped, but I wanted to develop myself and with people I skied with, and I also couldnt really afford them even if I wanted to. But I certainly push newcomers to take a week of lessons.

It took me several years, something like 4 weeks skiing, before I felt I was able to go anywhere round the mountain on piste, apart from maybe some blacks or moguls. But these days I find it is nice not to have to think about where we can or cant ski, or worry about how we would cope on a certain run. Friends we ski with get hung up on the colour of a piste on map and convince themselves they wont be able to ski it because its a black or a red etc etc when they would probably develop quicker on harder runs. I certaianly found that helped me but everyones different.

Some people probably are quite happy to pootle about on blues and bob around from cafe to cafe, maybe for them thats enough. For me I wanted to ski everything and anything, and now can pretty much, so thats why we like to travel to somewhere with mileage and a variety of terrain.

But everyone is different. And the main thing has to be enjoying it. I now love skiing so much it has become something of an obsession, a compulsion, a desire.

andyhull wrote:... the best skier is the one that enjoys it the most.

:thumbup:

Tony_H wrote:....Friends we ski with get hung up on the colour of a piste on map and convince themselves they wont be able to ski it because its a black or a red etc etc ....

This was, and to some extent still is, me; but an Austrian friend I ski with always tells me: "don't worry about the colour: learn to assess the conditions". I'm sure he's right.

Billip - that's fine if you are an experienced skier.
With experience comes the confidence in your ability to judge what terrain is skiable for your ability.

A relative novice will hopefully underestimate their own abilities so they don't get themselves into the poop. The colour of the piste is the only indicator of difficulty available to most of us the first time we ski a run. The problem that many hit is a undergraded piste and the inconsistent grading both form resort to resort but also within the same resort.
To give an example one of the reds dropping down to Courcheval le Praz I ski'd last year. Nothing untoward for a red at all. However my friend and I both had a chuckle when we realized that for a part of it's course it merged with a green and the bit that was labelled green was the steepest part of the red! Not an issue for us but a beginner meandering down the green would reasonably have been spooked to say the least. It just goes to show how you can't trust piste colours.
It also goes to suggest that being comfortable on reds is the standard to aim for unless you want to really restrict where you ski and not be caught out resorts that manipulate gradings to imply they cater for all abilities. Similarly we all take a wrong turn (or more if I'm map reading) and don't want to end up leading people into difficulty. When skiing with relative beginners we have to be careful but I would argue that the standard to enjoy skiing is comfort on all reds otherwise there is that doubt in the skiers mind about "Is it OK for me to do this?" And for safety I don't think anyone should stop working on their technique if that question comes through their mind on reds although some that question will always be asked of themselves even if their technique is fine - but that's about confidence rather than ability.

I think assessing difficulty does only come with a bit of experience. It is even harder off piste because it can be difficult to impossible to assess snow quality just by appearance. I ski with an Austrian friend who has always assessed what I can handle, which is nice, albeit without regard to colour coding, and off piste she sometimes says 'we cannot safely go there without checking with a guide first.'

She said that local girls are told 'if you cannot ski well you will never get a man.' Another motivation for skiing! (reminds me of the funny ski scene in Bridget Jones Part II). Ironic that this Austrian girl found a middle-aged guy who started skiing by repeatedly falling off a kiddies' lift :-/