Let me start by saying that I am not judging the sport itself nor the people who do it. I'm just sharing my first experience and the disaster it was. If you LOVE skiing, you may want to stop reading because realistically, I'm going to be doing some heavy whinging.
This weekend I visited Muju ski resort (South Korea.)
I left JeonJu with so much excitement, I knew I wasn't going to master the sport in a weekend but I looked forward to the image I had running around in my head; cabins, lodges, hot chocolates, romantic ski lifts, beautiful people laughing, cute ski bunnies, snow fights oh and of course a bit of skiing; which to be honest looked a lot like this:
Obviously that reference would have made a lot more sense if there were actually people skiing in that video. Don't question me! They were holding skis, that's enough for me.
This is what it really looks like.
I got there, its bloody cold obviously, and I ask some people where the beginners go, they point at a queue and I get in. I stand in line for what feels like forever before getting on the ski lift which takes me to the top of a massive mountain (not for beginners). I fall while getting off the ski lift; at this point I realize that there is a possibility I may have not been ready for what it is I was about to face. I panic when I see just how steep the slope really is and instantly head into the mountain-top cafe (lodge?) for the hot chocolate I had dreamed of.It turns out the lodge was actually a small dirty room filled with a few benches, a man who serves you an instant hot chocolate for twice the price and another man who after one sip comes over, tells you to throw away your drink and get off the mountain as they are closing the slope. Thanks for telling me this AFTER I buy the bloody thing.
I get my skis back on and look down the slope only to realize that I have absolutely no idea how to ski. No one has ever spoken to me or told me anything about skiing and here I am alone, looking down and thinking to myself;
"what the hell do I actually do???" More men come over and tell me to get off the mountain...
In their best English "GO! GO! SKI! NOW! SLOPE CLOSE! GO"
I make an attempt, I fall, I don't know how to get up, I remove a ski, get up, put the ski back on. I go, I fall, oh for god sake! All the while these men are still yelling at me to go. I manage to get going only to realize I don't know how to turn which leads me into a fence. Finally a man holds my hands and skis backwards in front of me down the mountain. He lets go, I fall. (This is starting to sound like a joke.) Finally after a long time of the man laughing to himself as to how the hell I ended up on that slope in the first place, he calls over some sort of embarrassing stretcher and throws me on it to be taken down the mountain to face my friends at the bottom. Humiliation at its finest.
The experience slightly improved in the evening when I actually found the beginner slope and practiced alongside all the other people just as bad as me... but here is my summary of skiing: I can't ski, it sucked, I sucked... even when I got the hang of it (at 9pm on the beginners slope) it still sucked. Its cold, frustrating, expensive, uncomfortable, scary and abusive.
Okay now I've gotten that off my chest. Honestly, its probably not that bad. I may have just had an exceptionally bad first experience. I'm assuming that if my day had gone the other way around, hitting the big slope AFTER learning how to turn or stop; I would be sitting here saying how absolutely amazing skiing is but it all kind of happened backwards for me. Never mind... I guess skiing just is not for everybody.
On a final note. ASR (a ski rant) may also refer to A.S Roma, Air-sea rescue, apple software restore, and Asian soybean rust. ^^*
