Skiing!

Hi everyone! This weeks blog is about what was probably my favorite experience on my trip to France: skiing!

If one thing is for sure, I took the best pictures on this day. The mountains in the Alps are so incredible, it felt like I was on top of the world!

The ski resort was about a 45 minute drive from gap, a lot of which was making zig zags to get up the mountain. I was a bit scared during that, because there was not a lot of restraint to keep cars from falling off the side of the mountain, especially during the winter when the roads can be icy. My step dad was driving, and while he is certainly the best driver of the four of us, it was still frightening. But, I kept my mind off of it by taking pictures all the way up the mountain.

When we got to the ski resort at the top, I was amazed. The resort looked like a small city up in the mountain. This resort was obviously meant for people who traveled to the alps to ski for days, but my family are amateur skiers to say the least, so we just stayed for the afternoon. If you are a more avid skier than I and want to travel, check out the top ten ski resorts in Europe. 

We rented our skis and our helmets (in France everyone wears helmets, unlike in America), then made our way to the bunny hill to get warmed up. They have really cool lifts that I had never seen before, and didn’t know how to use before I saw my sister wipe out on it and learned from her mistake. It is a little plastic disc like a frisbee, which is attached to a metal poll. You put the poll between your legs and let the plastic disc pull your butt, basically. But what you don’t do, as Emily quickly learned, is sit on the disc because it is not designed to hold your entire weight, just give you a boost to get you up the hill.

Once we made it to the top of the 50ish foot long bunny hill, I had to summon all my previous skiing skill from the last time I skied 8 or so years ago. I successfully made it down, but ran into the same issues I had when I was a kid. I couldn’t figure out how to slow down! It seemed everyone else could gracefully swerve side to side down the hill and keep a slow pace, but whenever I tried I just gained and gained speed! I was an unskilled missile flying past the 3 year old French kids who could ski like professionals. If you are a bad skier like I am, or have never done it at all and want to try it, check out these tips for beginner skiers. 

I never fell on the bunny hill, but my family decided that we were all warmed up and ready to take on an intermediate hill. We went up a real ski lift, which had an amazing view of the mountain, and disembarked at the end to figure out which hill was the easiest. We found a hill that didn’t look too bad, and went down. Soon after, there was a fork, my sister and step dad went down one side, and my mom and I went down the other. We didn’t mean to get separated, but we couldn’t exactly stop or yell loud enough for the others to hear. My mom and I didn’t know where they were, but we kept going and decided to try to find them at the bottom. We found them sooner than expected, at the top of a patch of moguls. There was no way down except through them, and I knew I was a goner. I don’t understand why anyone would purposefully add bumps to a ski slope for fun! I tried to watch the little ski school kids go through them to get a sense of the strategy. They all zoomed through them with ease, and none of them were older than 5 I guessed. As soon as I took on the moguls, I fell immediately and couldn’t get back up! My mom, who wasn’t doing too well herself, and step dad came to try to help me up. It is very difficult to pull someone up while 1. You are on skis yourself, and 2. trying to stand on a slippery hill. Eventually I got up and we all made it to the bottom in one piece.

After that experience, I decided to stay on the bunny hills for the rest of the afternoon. I am actually really glad I went on that hill because it is where I got my best picture! When we got home, I was quite sore and cold. We made amazing homemade hot chocolate that evening (this recipe is similar), and all went to bed very early. I was really sore for the next few days, but it was worth it. 

See you all next week!