Hitting the red slopes in China

Well, this is what skiing looks like in china!


Got a call from one of the lads I was out with last weekend saying that Peter (the Austrian guy, the one wearing shades in this pic) and some friends of his were going skiing today, and did I want to tag along. So, I did! I had to get up at 6:30am to get across to the other side of town to meet up with them. This was a bit unfortunate as I'd been out fri night with Liam and his friend in an (in)famous Beijing bar called Maggie's in the embassy district!

Anyway, I got in the taxi about 7:30, and on the way rang my "liason officr" from work who said that he'd wanted to go too. Well, turns out he wasn't going 'cos when I rang him to find out where he was, 15mins before we were supposed to meet the others, I woke him up! Met the others in this huge hotel (the Kerpinsky hotel, if you're ever in town), and we headed up to the resort, which was about an hour and a half's drive north of beijing. On the way up, I got my first view of the Great Wall, from the window of the car!

We finally got there anyway, after a bit of confusion with directions, and I'm not sure what I was expecting but this wasn't it. Maybe my experience in Soll had spoiled me a bit, but I was expecting a bit more snow! There was only one real run, then there was the baby slopes for the beginners. Once we got there, we had over an hour of total chaos to get all our gear and get sorted - it's the first time I've understood the term "chinese fire drill"! All we had to do was to get our boots and skis, and two of us had to get suits, but it involved arguing with everyone involved - we were just lucky that one of the guy's girlfriends was chinese and could argue properly! Even then, at one stage one of us had to hop over the counter and go off searching for the gear which we could see on the far side of the counter but which the guy behind the counter insisted he didn't have. Even after that, I ended up with odd skis and two poles that were differnt sizes.

FInally, about 11am, we got skiing! We started off by going up to the very top of the slope, which looked OK from the ground but when you got up there, wsan't quite as appealing looking to someone with as little skiing experience as me! I managed it though, and so that began the pattern for the day. Afterwards, talking to one of the guys, he reckoned the slope we were doing would be about a red back in Austria, so I did fairly well for myself for the day! I only started falling on it later on in the evening when my legs started getting tired (and my hangover from the night before kicked on - no nice high austrian altitiudes and clear air to blow away the cobwebs!). The guys were actually surprised when I told them that I'd only done a week's skiing before, said I handled it pretty well under the circumstances.

We managed to get a fair bit of skiing in anyway, and left the place around maybe 4:30-5pm. By then the muscles I'd forgotten I had form last time skiing were definitely making themselves felt. Now I'm just waiting for the post-ski stiffness to set in! Anyway, here's me in my lovely lavender ski suit, and my "ski partner" for the day (Alex, who also got odd skis, but we couldn't swap 'cos the sizes were different)