It's all downhill from here

It started with a tiny snow white lie in the early 1990s.

“Sure I can ski”, I assured my vaguely Nordic-looking emerging love interest when he asked about my abilities and my willingness to accompany him on an overnight cross-country skiing expedition. What I meant to say was, “Well, I’ve done it once before, for an afternoon”. But I didn’t.

Truth is, I was so besotted with this enchanting adventurer that I would have said anything in order to spend a long weekend with him. He, bless his trusting soul, took me at my word and asked no further questions; he simply set about organising our expedition with his usual thoroughness and reassuring competence.

I remained the personification of Naïve Confidence flirting with Youthful Arrogance. Embarrassment was their inevitable lovechild. If I thought - as I did – that I should be able to ski, then I was certain that I could damn well ski. So that's what I told him.

It was therefore a complete mystery to find myself some weeks later, face down in the snow; an undignified flailing snow-turtle trapped beneath a bulging back-pack. I’d managed to ski barely twenty metres from our car, before spectacularly revealing that I may have exaggerated my skiing ability to some extent.

That was my first encounter with the Snow Monster, an unpredictable and cruel mountain adversary. The Snow Monster usually lies hidden from view, but from time to time he shrugs or reaches out to grab the ankle of a passing skier and flip them unceremoniously onto their back. Or front. Or side. Or head.

A look of exasperation, intrigue and amusement momentarily flashed across the face of the Nordic-looking love interest as he levered me out of my humiliating position and set me upright again.

It is to that man’s eternal credit that he did not even consider giving up on me or our planned adventure. Instead, with his trademark patience and good humour he coached me up the mountain, across the magnificent tops for three days, and back down to the carpark. Each night we slept in a tent pitched directly on the snow, beneath spectacular twisted snow gums and a star-strewn sky.

The flailing snow-turtle, seen in 1992

He seemed perfect, and so, dear reader, I married him.

That same man has, on many occasions since, levered me out of an uncomfortable position, set me upright again and coached me up and over mountains, both literal and metaphoric. He still takes me at my word, and he still organises great adventures, although interestingly, we have never been cross-country skiing since.

I have however developed a belated passion for downhill skiing. It started in New Zealand in 2011, by which time Ned Nederlander and I had been married for so long that attempts by him to teach me to ski could have been potentially life-threatening for him. Instead, a young Italian ski instructor called Marco led me around the slopes, and I am still secretly chuffed at the memory of him telling me that I had a beautiful body position. Coincidentally, Ned had made a similar comment in the tent under the snow gums many years earlier so I figured it must be true …

I have spent several days in each of the last six years trying to defeat the Snow Monster, and realising in the process how broad is his reach and how ruthless are his tactics. I have encountered him in resorts in Austria, Switzerland and Italy, but never have his attacks been as unrelenting and merciless as they were last week in Nendaz, Switzerland.

In hindsight, I made myself unnecessarily vulnerable to the Snow Monster by agreeing to spend the week in Nendaz with our Dutch friends, the de Swoosh family. It is a fundamental rule in life, or at least it should be, that one does not ski with people who have an additional forty years’ experience when it comes to strapping narrow planks to feet and pointing them down an icy slope. I ignored that rule.

Beware the innocuous-looking Snow Monster of Nendaz

Having earlier experienced the risks associated with overstating one’s abilities, I tried to manage the de Swoosh’s expectations by confessing my relatively limited skiing prowess early. I suggested that they might like to leave me and my dignity to the blue runs while they explored further afield. They dismissed my offer and in a gesture of horrifying kindness and patience, insisted that I join them every day.

I hastily arranged a one hour lesson with an instructor. Tom, a big English bear who looked like he should be in a rugby ruck rather than swivelling his ample hips down a mountainside, was not as impressed with my body position as Marco and Ned had been.

“Mmmm, there’re a few funky things going on there,” he observed wryly after I gingerly proceeded down what was literally my first run in a year. I confessed that my awkwardness was due to the knowledge that I faced certain ignominy and possible injury - if not death - as I brought up the distant rear behind seven competent skiers for the next week. I felt sure that black runs would be involved. I was fairly certain that teenage ridicule was also a risk.

Tom and I paused mid-slope to discuss a strategy for countering my dilemma. As if on cue, Grote Jongen appeared before us, inquiring about the progress of the lesson. His beautiful face was somewhat bloodied, giving the impression that he might have recently been in a rugby ruck himself. Apparently it was the result of poorly adjusted bindings coming unstuck on an icy slope. To my eternal shame, my own beloved first born generated the tiniest feeling of schadenfreude, by reminding me that others could become victims of the Snow Monster too.

My evil thoughts were interrupted by the realisation that Grote Jongen was not alone. Kleine Jongen, Ned Nederlander, Mr and Mrs de Swoosh and their two teenage boys were all watching from a nearby vantage point.

“Don’t move until they’ve gone!” I instructed Tom petulantly, while cheerily waving at them and politely gesturing for them  to keep moving down the slope in front of us. Tom and I watched as Mr de Swoosh performed an effortless triple back flip and Mrs de Swoosh redefined “elegance” before our eyes. All four teenagers demonstrated their belief in the power of speed over style, and were out of sight in seconds. Ned had the good grace to shoot me an encouraging glance before he too was gone with a flick of his Nordic-looking love interest hips.

Hearing me sigh despondently, Tom turned to me.

“I have time to stay for a second hour if you would like,” offered this most sensitive of nimble rugby skiers. Reasoning that the required mountain of Swiss francs could be justified by the maintenance of my dignity, I accepted.

A rather ragtag Snake of Shame

Together we made some marked improvements not only to my body position, but also to my confidence. Before long I had stopped snarling at the Snakes of Shame, those infuriating lines of lithe, high-achieving bloody toddlers in ski schools. Earlier I had fought a strange urge to poke them all with my ski poles and feed them to the Snow Monster, but suddenly they began to look rather cute as my sense of comparative inadequacy subsided.

The rest of the week brought some spectacular encounters between the Snow Monster and me. He stretched and shifted his dormant body unexpectedly on several occasions, causing me to sprawl in a most ungainly manner. He wrapped his invisible tentacles around my legs and tugged maliciously. He upended me and dragged me down Humiliation Hill on my backside, before taunting me with the realisation that one of my skis needed to be retrieved from thirty metres back up the slope. In one particularly nasty interaction, he tackled me while I was barely moving across the flattest piece of piste in the resort. However, he also reminded me of the benefit of being last in one's group; which is that there were seldom any witnesses to my inelegant misadventures. By the time the others realised that I might have fallen, I had generally managed to extract my head from the snow, brush off the Snow Monster’s fluffy excrement and regain an upright position.

But as well as battling the callous Snow Monster, I also experienced some rather exhilarating encounters way beyond the extremes of my comfort zone. The effects of altitude are quite possibly to blame for my decision to join the others in descending an ungroomed mogul-covered black run on our third day, just as the clouds swooped in, the lights went out and visibility decreased to about two metres.

Ten seconds into the run, so eleven seconds after I forfeited any chance of pursuing an alternative descent, a hot flush of hysteria and primal panic took hold of my legs. At least that’s what I assumed it was; it’s equally likely that it was the unfortunate result of my very weak pelvic floor muscles. There seemed little value in evaluating the real cause of my discomfort, so instead I dug my skis into the Snow Monster’s ornery back, plunged my ski poles into his shrugging shoulders and laughed at him. I have no doubt it was not at all pretty, and I will be forever grateful that Kleine Jongen and his confounded helmet-mounted video camera did not capture that particular battle. That camera is a thief of self-esteem. It repeatedly shatters my belief that I could be mistaken for Mrs de Swoosh when descending a slope and instead shows that I resemble a Telly Tubby on sticks. And that is on the easy slopes.

Some centuries later I arrived at the base of the ungroomed black run, my heart thumping, my pride soaring, my breathing rapid, my mask fogged by the tears of terror and frustration I had involuntarily shed half way down the slope. No, let’s not call it a slope; let’s call it a cliff, because I’m pretty sure that’s what it was.

A Telly Tubby on sticks?

I had fought the Snow Monster and won a significant battle, even if not the entire war. We sparred on and off over the following days, and finished pretty evenly poised, although I suspect my bruises will take longer to subside than his. Of course, such battles are not fought without strong support, and I am grateful to have wonderful friends like the de Swoosh family, whose company, generosity, good humour and encouragement underwrote my snowy skirmishes. I should definitely show more appreciation for my trusting, competent, Nordic-looking love interest, who shoots me encouraging glances when I most need them, murmurs beautiful lies about my on-slope ability and compliments my body position with a straight face.  And of course I am both grateful and relieved that the teenage ridicule did not eventuate. In fact, the undoubted highlight of my week occurred on our last day of skiing. Grote Jongen, skiing  just in front of me on our favourite run, stopped to wait for me. I braced for "You took your time", but instead he said simply, and without apparent irony, "Very elegant". There was nobody else in sight, so I choose to believe he was talking about me. I floated the rest of the way down.

So even though it might still not be entirely accurate, the next time Ned inquires about my skiing ability, I will say, with slightly more justification than I had when we first took to the snow together, “Ski? Sure I can ski.”