I love my skiing so decided to make my first thread on new OA.
Anything to do with sliding about on snow (or ice, I suppose) goes here.
I’ll start- just bit the bullet and booked a week’s skiing in Italy for Xmas despite early season snow fears- looks good so far across the Alps though. Now addicted to webcams and have a severe case of gear acquisition syndrome.
Also enjoyed the first slalom race of the season a couple of weeks ago at Solden but for me things don’t start properly until the downhills arrive.
Poor Dennis, this thread got somewhat neglated, but not to worry, I’ll get the ball rolling
I really like the Winter sports. When it comes to the Olympics, I prefer the Winter one more than the Summer ones, as it tends to be more extreme, on the edge.
As for non Olympic times, I really enjoy Skiing, especially Super-G and Downhill like yourself @DennisTheGod . I wouldn’t say I watch all the races, more casually dip in and out, but absolute respect what they do.
Even the cross country skiing can be pretty fun sometimes, Biathlon etc. Skeleton and Luge all pretty mad.
I’ve been looking at getting into snowboarding since there’s a supposedly decent dry slope 15-20mins from me but don’t know if I want to take the plunge on a sport that’ll effectively turn into me going down the same slope every week forever. I’m worried it might get boring?
Love skiing. Only started around 4 years ago when we visited my wife’s parents for the fi4st time in Norway. Took to it like a duck to water. Now I ski every season as I live about an hours drive a2ay from two of the biggest ski resorts in South Western Norway. We had our first snowfall around the end of October and it’s currently at 40-80cm.
@Mysty - cheers for taking pity on my thread. It was pretty much the same story on the old site where it was named something like ‘Fans of the White Stuff’. In fairness I got a few replies, but only from members who rather liked charlie! Tells you everything you need to know about OA really! Then again I appreciate that skiing has a bit of an elitist reputation and concede that I’m proper posh- I once ate a doner kebab with a knife and fork- need I say more?
@Craigie - I am pretty biased, but I say do it without question. Or at least try a couple of lessons. Dry slopes are fine for what they are but they’re only really a first step. That’s not to say you can’t have fun on them (I spent many a school summer holiday on my local dry slope)…but it hurts when you fall, even at relatively low speed so most people get the very basics down and then move on to snow. (There’s always the fridge (snow dome) option as intermediary step before committing to a holiday in the mountians, but they’re quite short as well, and get expensive.) However, if you do get on with boarding on the dry slope (though IMO skiing is much better- yeah, I only fucking said it!), you’ll have a hobby for life, because it’s so much better on snow- faster, grippier and it flies up in the air when you turn and looks really cool. For me there’s no other sensation like it. Just being in such spectacular scenery and being able to go as fast as you want with the merest of leans. I’d take a winter holiday over a summer one every time. But as I say, the snow bug has me, so I’m properly biased.
Pretty jealous of being 2 hrs drive away from a resort. I’m on the South coast so annoyingly equidistant to the Alps and Scotland. Guess which one I go for!! I would love to try something different and have often thought about Norway, Finland etc but it works out very expensively compared to my cheap and cheerful Alps holidays.
As mentioned above, I’m off to Italy for Xmas- something like 140cm fell last week. Here’s a webcam image from yesterday of a cafe terrace at the mid station. Looks alright!
Wow that is a lot and I thought we were doing so well
It’s is expensive to come here as a tourist but as a person living here it’s quite inexpensive to get set up with ski gear and then a season ticket I’d around the £400 mark. I do intent to try skiing outside of Norway as whikst we get guaranteed snow every year most of the resorts are non where.near the size of the European ones so it can get a little tedious if you’re out all day. But we also do a lot of cross country (langrenn ski) skiing aswell which is fun and very good for fitness. Japan is at the top of my ski list but probably won’t be until 2018.
Since some tender child age of around 5 or 6 probably when, I am told, I skied - although all I remember is sliding on a sledge - I had totally neglected the idea of winter sports. Snowboarded for the first time last winter and decided it wasn’t all that bad after all, so invested and bought full equipment and now I am all set (well, minus the actual ability to board haha) to become a full-fledged snowboarder.
There is a ski resort about an hour drive away from me and the pass to the ski-lift is like 25 Euros per day. It’s really a crime not to take advantage.
Absolutely, get out there especially if you have the facilities locally even more so, if you plan on doing it often enough you may be better off buying a season ticket?
It’s almost February so there is little sense in buying a season ticket now, the winter season will be over come March and I will probably manage to get up there 2-3 times until then. Maybe I will consider the season ticket next year but I will definitely look into it when we are up there.
Good to hear we have another snow fan @Gladiator. I wish I lived closer to the mountains- does your local resort (interested to know which one btw) do a monthly pass? That said €25 for the day isn’t too bad at all.
I got back from my Christmas trip in Italy (again!) nursing broken ribs- having never really hurt myself before it has brought home how dangerous snowsports can be. And I wasn’t even being a dick, so stay safe. I still skiied every day afterwards like a fucking hero though.
My pics aren’t really worthy of the photography thread so here seems as good a place as any.
Yeah, the weather was fantastic- only had one cloudy day during the whole week. It was ridiculously warm though- over 6°c some days, so down in the resort it was icy in the mornings and slushy in the afternoons- not great but still fine up high. The worst bit was the snowboarders on the last runs of the day struggling with the sheet ice and scraping all the artificial snow into moguls- challenging to say the least!
Other than the twat who cut me up, and maybe gravity, I blame my phone for my broken (maybe just cracked, but broken sounds more impressive!) ribs. It was in my chest pocket and I’m pretty sure I landed on it since all the bruises lined up perfectly! Fair play to Huawei though- survived my bulk landing on it at what had to be somewhere between 40- 50 mph.
Sorry to hear about your injury, hope it’s not serious.
Bulgaria is a smallish country but we have a lot of winter resorts
The 3 major ones are Bansko, Pamporovo and Borovets and they are all within about 2 hours driving from from each other. The prices should be pretty much identical, Bansko might be a little bit pricier. Don’t think they offer monthly passes, maybe weekly or 2-weeks tops and then a season pass (should be priced around €500). Click the links if you want to investigate further.
We got talking to a couple who raved about Borovets-the only reason they didn’t go this year was the dodgy snow. From what I understand Bulgaria doesn’t have the highest mountains so its a bit of a risk early season. I certainly wouldn’t mind trying it as a last minute deal.
Talking of Eastern Europe, I went skiing in Czechoslovakia (as it was) in the very early 90’s. No fucking snow so no skiing, but did manage to see Prague in the immediate aftermath of communism- was an eye opener seeing queues a mile long for fruit and being able to afford pretty much anything with my pocket money. How things change!
