Brave New World Part II
Where were we? Yes, just about to duck behind a barrier and head off-piste… Come, come…
OFF-PISTE means pretty much any other route down the mountain but the groomed paths. Technically speaking this is an off-piste way down, but I wouldn't recommend it for your first run of the day. The main things to know about the world of possibilities that await you Off the Piste is that You. Will. Need. Insurance. [See RUPTURED ACL, below] And you will need a transceiver, shovel and probe. And ideally some idea how to use them. If I hear you saying, 'it's fine, I've got a [popular-brand-name-for-item-better-known-as-'Corpse-Finder'],' I will hunt you down and give you a slap. This is for your own good and also mine, should I happen to be one of the unfortunates who happen to be on the slope when you send down your first slab AVALANCHE (or, 'rapidly cascading tonnes of snow and ice, often set off by utter fuckwits' – see above video).
Avalanches are not the only perils you will encounter. Off-piste, you will find by far the widest range of ways to injure or kill yourself but also by far the most ways to have a blinding good time. Let's start with The PARK. Yes, I'm going to include the park as off-piste. Here you will find lots and lots of KICKERS – large ramps with even larger run-ins where skiers and boarders can launch themselves at great speed into brain-addling knots of limbs and hardware before untying it all at the last second and landing with ease. That's the idea anyway. You'll also spot RAILS here, which are perhaps the clearest possible practical demonstration of natural selection, and the PIPE which is a half-cylinder of rock-hard ice and doom, invented (probably) by a cynical shoulder surgeon having a bad year's business.
Ideally, in the park you should see lots and lots of people wearing HELMETS although most probably you will see them wearing ENORMOUS BOBBLE HATS, crotch-at-knee baggy SALOPETTES and the vacant expression of so many stoners (or people who have landed on their heads quite a number of times. It's actually pretty hard to tell.)
Doesn't sound like it is for you? No problem. Head for the POWDER instead. If you can find any, that is. Powder snow is that elusive dragon we all chase – once you have had a good taste, you're hooked for life. Bad timing, however – climate change and local environmental degradation in many mountain areas appear to be killing the dragon, if snow patterns of the last decade are anything to go by.* Still if you are lucky enough to be in a place that some hefty badass snowclouds have just sat on, you're in for a treat…if you're a snowboarder that is. If you are a skier, you are about to embark on the most intensely frustrating days of your life.
Skiing in powder is all about balance, bounce, leg strength and timing…and ideally a certain love for speed. When it is going well, you're basically flying on a bottomless pillow of air. You own the fucking world – hurtling through a wide, untracked and consequence-free world of euphoria. Nothing can stop you, the feeling must never end.
And then it does, with a crunch and a gutful of snow. At this point, or once you have regained the ability to breathe, you will realise that doing anything in powder snow but flying through its top twelve inches is essentially like swimming in hardening concrete with twenty pound weights attached to both feet while wearing every single tem of clothing you own. Bring along a few spare swear words, you'll need them.
Would it help if I reassure you that it will all be worth it eventually? When you get the hang of it? *Dodges flying shoe.* Seriously!
Better to stick to the shallow stuff? Heck, no. That way MOGULS lie. Not to be confused with the same term referring to the billionaire business magnates who are, confusingly, also rather prevalent in certain ski resorts…not naming any names (Verbier and Courchevel), moguls are hard lumps of icy snow arranging like dozens and dozens of the least fun eggs you have ever encountered. Can eggs be fun? Sure. Are moguls fun? Not if you like your knee joints.
Speaking of knee joints, if (when) things go seriously arse-over-tit and a little professional help is required to get you and the remnants of your Anterior Cruciate Ligament (or ACL as it is referred to lovingly/remembered fondly by skiers the world over) down to the nearest medical facility, dial the phone number on your piste map and like magic, the BLOOD WAGON will appear. The rather horrific concept is that you are strapped in tightly face-up and utterly immobilised in a curious banana-shaped contraption with one hardy and extreme-looking mountain man holding poles at each end and skiing you back down to civilisation. Your only task is to lie there, ignoring the rudely hopeful stares of morbidly curious fellow skiers as you watch the world fly overhead at an alarming rate and wish for all the world that they would stop bouncing you over the fucking moguls.
I haven't yet had the pleasure of the blood wagon, touch wood, but I am told that for all its grimness it is still better than the HELICOPTER. My good friend Poppy and her smashed wrist had the misfortune of being dangled below one of these and flown halfway across the Arlberg (it seemed) for fifteen frozen minutes, unable to look away from the vertigo-inducing panorama to the left or right because there was a rescue-person's crotch literally pressed against each cheek. They didn't even buy her dinner.
The moral of the story? Don't get hurt. For this reason, probably leave COULOIRS for a little while. A steep and narrow off-piste gully, or couloir, is a place where one has to mentally slap oneself in the face and commit to skiing it with short turns and a lot of speed, accepting that there are rock faces on either side and that smashing into them is a strong possibility, though is avoidable provided one does not lose one's cool. A mind game with very physical consequences, in other words. Other perils to avoid in the backcountry include CREVASSES (watch Touching the Void - I am still too residually traumatised by my personal experiences of crevasses to go into detail on this one), TREES (rather self-explanatory, I should think), ROCKS (ditto) and OMINOUS CLIFFS OF DEATH (likewise). Worst and most perilous of all, OTHER PEOPLE'S SKI TRACKS. Chances are you are inadvertently following a nutcase SICK/GNARLY SHREDDER who has just intentionally launched her/his gnarly self off a 60-foot cliff. Don't get me wrong, it probably looked cool. But that is definitely the sort of thing you should think through in advance.
You want to know for super sure what is down there first? What goes up must come down… Go TOURING. Ski touring is walking up a hill with special non-slide-backwards skins on the underside of your skis, whipping them off at the top and skiing down. Sounds bonkers when there are perfectly good lifts? Quite the contrary. Not only is this the most incredible feeling of earning every turn you make on your way down, you get to ski in amazing lift-less places like the astonishingly beautiful Lyngen. Touring is not to be knocked. However this does not apply if you spot someone touring up the middle of a piste. Then you can call them a twat.
Well, that's off-piste for you. I don't know about you but I need a drink after all that. Next time, 'après ski'…
* See what you can do to minimise your environmental impact here.
