Fall Down 137 Times, Get Up 138 Times-Day 13-January 21st, 2018

My alarm went off at 6:30 AM and I woke up feeling extremely sore and tired. It didn’t matter because I was going skiing today. Why go learn to ski on a small mountain in Pennsylvania when I had the entire French alps?

I finally got out of bed and doubled checked that I had all my warm clothes, snacks, and gear. After eating a quick breakfast, I picked up my very cumbersome skis, poles, helmet and boots and poorly attempted to exit the house quietly. The lift ticket I bought came with bus tickets to and from the resort. Two buses later, I arrived at the Grenoble bus station two minutes before my bus to the mountain left.

Today I was skiing Les 7 Laux. I joined the rest of our little BU ski group on the bus and everyone was excited for the day of skiing despite it being so early in the morning.

Whats cool about winter in Grenoble is that there really isn’t snow in the city, or at least since I’ve been here. But drive for 30 minutes up into the mountains, and suddenly everything is covered in snow. These are some super scenic drives as you go up super windy roads covered in snow. It’s like a slightly less scary version of Ice Road Truckers on the Discovery Channel.

We got to the resort, and after a bit of confusion, we finally found where to pick up lift tickets. It was already snowing hard and the area was expecting more than a foot. After throwing on a few more layers, I was ready to ski. Fortunately, two of my other friends were also new to skiing and our more experienced friends were happy to teach us. After learning how to put on my skis, we all headed up to the bunny slope. After figuring out the T-bar, I was ready for success. This dream went away quickly as I realized I didn’t know how to turn or brake. This led me to falling many many times.

For those unfamiliar, this is what the T-bar looks like. The one I was using could only hold one person though.

After some more coaching, I was slowly starting to figure it out. I was able to go down the bunny slope, only falling down five times. Just when I was feeling okay, I hit a new low by falling off the T-bar halfway up it. I tried to laugh it off and skied back down for another attempt. I finally felt alright on the bunny slope, but was still falling frequently.

My beloved bunny slope in the middle.

I didn’t feel ready yet, but my friends peer pressured into doing a green trail. This ended up being a great decision as it forced me to improve. The trail was super scenic and featured cool parts like tunnels and little bumps.

Here’s a picture of me acting stupid on the green trail.

After this trail, I was ready for another challenge and we headed up the mountain to find a food lodge. To get there, we would have to do two blue trails, which was the difficulty above green. The first blue was steeper but manageable. I fell a bunch of times, but mainly to avoid tumbling off the edge of the steep cliffs. We had to take another lift even higher after the first trail, and had to take another blue trail down to the food place. This trail was significantly steeper, but had a few feet of powder. As expected, I fell a bunch of times. This wasn’t as bad because falling into the deep powder was like falling into marshmallows, just with added element of getting a face full of sow.

After an exhausting ride down, we realized that we had gone too far down and missed the turn for food. We would have to go up the lift and down the blue again. My two other beginner friends were discouraged and decided to take off their skis and hike up it. I opted for skiing down again with my friend/excellent ski instructor Tiffany. We made a point to figure out exactly where the turn for the food lodge while riding up the lift. After another trip down the blue and 25 falls later(myself not Tiffany), we finally were at the lodge. Our whole group was there and we ate a literal truckload of food.

I treated myself to a beer, dessert, and fries. All tasted excellent. especially after how exhausted I was.

My beer and dessert.

After finishing our food and relaxing, the beginners and I made an alarming discovery. The only way to get down the mountain was via a red trail that was clearly way above our level. My other friends got pretty panicked, but I was ready for it (I actually wasn’t at all, but was hoping I could trick my mind to think I was). For reference, red trails in Europe are similar to black diamonds in America, double blacks are single black here. After a brief pep talk, we were ready.

I did the usual ski for a bit, then fall violently routine. I’m not kidding when I say violent, I did somersaults multiple times and had my skis pop off. Fortunately, French skiers are very nice and always asked if I was alright or asked if I needed help up. My friend Sydney and I got bit ahead of everyone and were managing somehow. Then we got to a part that was so steep that I justifiably feared for my life. I had no idea how I could get down this part.

I took a deep breath, put some hype music on my headphones, and just went for it. My technique was to ski parallel to the mountain and do huge zig zags. It was so steep that I knew if I tried to switch directions I would go too fast in the straight position and wouldn’t be able to stop myself. To circumvent this, every time I had to switch directions, I would fall on my butt, lean back and turn my legs, and get back up. After some big falls, I finally got to the bottom of the steep portion. Everything after this felt very manageable.

Despite my pain and soreness, I stopped midway on a flatter part to take some pictures while waiting for others to catch up.

I made it all way down to the mountain and regrouped with the others. I found out that two of my friends took off their skis for the super steep part and slid down. The beginner crew and I decided to end on a high note and did a green trail again. After suffering so much on the red and blue, I had a new confidence in my skills. I was feeling really good and decided to do the green trail two more times before the lifts closed for the day. By my last runs, I wasn’t falling anymore and the green was feeling too easy for me.

I finished up and headed to the locker rooms. I never realized how good it feels to take off ski boots. Pure ecstasy.

We all dragged our sore and beaten up bodies to the bus to go home. Everyone was telling me how impressed they were with how quickly I picked up skiing. Whether or not they were just being nice, I knew one thing for sure: I was hooked on skiing.

The bus ride went quickly and we were back in snow-less Grenoble. After an exhausting process of carrying all my gear on two more buses, I was finally home and took a much needed shower. Afterwards, I relaxed for a bit and facetimed my parents.

My body was extremely sore from falling and my left butt cheek felt as if someone had spanked me with a wooden paddle about 137 times. Despite this pain, I eventually got up to meet my friends Nick, Jonathon, Sebastian and Harry at the Shakesbeer pub to watch the Patriots’ game. Sebastian had called a bunch of places to find a bar that was playing the game.

At the bar were some of Sebastian’s other American friends who took French classes with him at the university. They were all very nice and invited us to a pub crawl on Tuesday night. I also took advantage of this pub to have two pints of their super good house beer. It was also conveniently the cheapest pint so my wallet was happy as well. Around midnight, I walked home with some of my new American friends who lived nearby to me.

I crept upstairs and promptly passed out in bed.

Today was a great day and an important one as well because I get cross off my first goal from the list on my introduction post. I technically wrote, “go snowboarding in the alps” but I’ll count it. I definitely plan on going skiing a few more times while I am in France.

Here’s one last Selfie with my friends who went skiing.