I’ve been in Canada for eight months.
From my living room window I can see three ski runs: Seymour, Grouse and Cypress.
A bus from pretty much from my front door to the cable car at the bottom of Grouse takes about 36 minutes.
Yet it took until 10 days ago, my 27th birthday, to finally go snowboarding.
After many months of “I really want to go snowboarding” I decided that if the weather was remotely suitable on my birthday, I was going up. I didn’t quite make it in time for snow school, which would have been the cheapest way to learn, so I decided to splurge on a private lesson because, let’s face it, I had no idea what I was doing. My only exposure to snowboarding had been an indoor slope in Shanghai at a cost of $25. So that doesn’t count. I was contemplating skiing, but I’m not a fan of anything where my legs can go in the opposite directions to each other. Bad images of doing the splits (and I am NOT flexible) fill my head at the thought of it. So snowboarding it is.
My instructor was James, an Aussie. He’s been working the ski seasons in Canada and back home for about five years, but this may be his last. After spending about 30 minutes teaching me to stand up, slide and stop, I realised how boring this must be for him as I tried over and over again to stop after a little slide down a slight slope.
I lost track of time during the lesson, but far too quickly we were riding the lift up to one of the runs. I managed to get off the lift smoothly, despite fearing a Bridget Jones-style finish. To be honest, this happened just the once. The rest of the time I forgot to stand up. I’d expected to spend most of the two hours either on my butt or trying to get off it. However, I spent a surprising amount of time upright. This didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous when we moved to the big slope. OK so it was the smallest of the runs, but damn huge compared to what I’d just been practicing on. James was a great teacher who put up me with me crashing into him, complaining how sore my legs were, and deciding that practicing turns, which is usually not covered in beginner lessons but I was doing well and we had time, were just too hard.
We managed about four runs before our time was up. Part of me wanted to keep going for hours. But I was tiring and fearing my luck of keeping my butt out of the snow was running out. Also the weather turned rather unfavourable, so a bowl of soup inside the Chalet seemed like a much better option.
The season at Grouse is coming to an end – before my visit they were predicting another few weeks left. But unexpected snow, which started towards the end of my lesson, could mean it will be open for a little bit longer.
A few days later I was still paying the price for my adventure. Although I hardly fell over at all (much to the annoyance of my friend Craig who was armed with a camera to capture any embarrassing moments), my arms were killing me from pushing myself up out of the snow. But at least I can leave Canada having snowboarded at least once.
