Moose on the Move!

I forgot to mention at the end of the last entry that after a long day skiing (which may only be a coule of hours if you are a beginner like us) there is little better than a soak in a hot tub (spa). I think we mentioned that our hostel had one. It was fabulous, largely because it is outside and so you sit amid the snow, steam rising slowly around you and feel yourself relax. Yum. Actually - if you stay in for a little while and get good and warm, then you steam too when you get out!!

The next day we had a bit of a later start. Elke was not feeling good at all (head and tummy aches), and we were considering giving the skiing a miss. However, after a light breakfast and a little walk around, she started to feel a lot better. We went into the ski school and signed up for another lesson. This time....we went for skiing level 2 ! Basically this means that you no longer confine yourself to the kiddies magic carpet ride, but instead, you take off and hit the slopes (the basic green runs). We figured we deserved to be able to step it up a level as we were both now spending more time on our skis than on our bums :)

Our instructor John turned out to be a great bloke. We arrived for our lesson, and found out there was only going to be one other person in our group. What's even better, is that the other guy never showed up, so it ended up being Elke and I with the instructor. He was happy for us to take things at our own pace (which happened to be a lot faster than I expected, due to the steepness of a couple sections on those green runs).

We headed off down the first green run which took us direct to a chair lift that takes you to the top of Silver Star where you can pick and choose which runs to go down. The run that we took to the bottom of the mountain was called 'Easy Street' - it wasn't as easy as we might have hoped. After several little crashes on the way down we made it to the big ski lift (known as 'Six Pack') and had our first experience of getting onto a chairlift. Not quiet true - we rode one in Threadbo a couple of years ago but we didn't have skis on. Getting on is not too bad, you just kind of ski up to a certain point and then sit down when the chair comes around behind you. Getting off again is not as easy. You have to not just stand up, off a moving seat but you immediately start to slide when you put your wait on your feet. We`both managed to pull it off... the first time. The next one we both fell over and although Chris was alright again after that, I continued to fall every time for the rest of the day. It got a bit embarassing.

Our instructor, John, was execellent and gave us each lots of very specific feedback on what to fix with our technique - bend your knees in the turns, hands low, hands wide, look forward etc etc. It was about forty five minutes into the lesson, carefully practicing turns, when I got cleaned up by a snowboarder. The little bugger was going way too fast for a green run. He came shooting down the hill and ran across the front of my skis. I think I put my left arm up to shield myself and got knocked around and down and out of one of my skis. Poo-bum-head snowboarder tumbled down the hill a little. John (my hero) after checking to make sure I was ok took off after the kid and after checking to make sure he was ok, laid into him. He told poo-bum that he had been irresponsible and took his name and number and promised to call poo-bum's dad and tell him what young poo had done. Despite my best efforts I cried a little and I think that scared Chris as much as the collision...

I thought I was ok, so we carried on with the lesson but I could tell I had lost my nerve a little, I wasn't being as brave as I had been before and everytime someone came down from above I got nervous. I kept falling over and after a bit I noticed that my left wrist had got quite stiff and it was hurting a lot to push down with my ski pole. We ended the lesson a little early - one more advantage to have a personal lesson - and Chris and I went down to the village clinic to see if there was anything we could do for my arm.

Basically the diagnosis (by our Australian medic) was that it was just a sprain and nothing life threatening. He strapped it and we went to have a very late lunch at the village pub 'Long John's'.

Sunday morning the wrist was quite swollen - my knuckles had all disappeared under a layer of fluid - and very stiff. We returned our ski gear, luckily we were able to postpone the third day of our renting, and then bummed a lift into the nearest town of Vernon to try and find a pharmacy for some anti-inflamatory medication. Vernon is a very small town (I think I offended a local by asking where the centre of town was "this is the centre of town")with lots of cool murals, and not much open on a Sunday. We did find a pharmacy though and got what we were after. Then we just wandered. The shuttle back to the village left at three thirty so we made it back quite early. We made dinner, Chris beat me at Chess several times and we went to bed early.

The next day was even slower. We decided to rest the wrist for another day so we spent our time playing a new game on our Gameboy Advance, reading, blogging, plaing chess - oh and we slept in for the first time in a while which was also really nice.

Photos here

That night after dinner I looked out the window and saw what we had been hoping for - falling snow!! We both raced upstairs from the common room to get our warm gear on and grab the camera - Chris was so excited that he almost ran out of the hostel in his t-shirt, beanie and gloves, forgetting his jacket altogether. It didn't last very long but it was lovely while it did.

Tuesday, come hell or high water, we were going skiing. I took an pill with breakfast and we headed down the hill to get our gear back. By this time I had two of my knuckles back and my hand was starting to look less like a bloated frog and more like a hand. Skiing that day was brilliant. We started on the Magic Carpet again until they kicked us off to bring in some more snow. Brown patches were starting to show through all over the hill and I guess they thought it was getting a little dangerous for the kiddies (and us). So we headed over to a green run that we hadn't been on before but that was nice and even and wide. We practiced our skills there for a hour or so and then after luch we decided to go back to the scene of the crime... back to the runs we had done a couple of days before.

It was AWESOME!! We had such a good time! Even though we only had a couple of hours until the slopes closed we were able to do the really long run called 'Far Out' twice and a couple of other little bits and pieces. It really was great. We practised turning and stopping and going fast. Going fast is fun. Chris got a little tired of staying on the flatter bits that I was aiming for and started trying jumps and weaving in and out of the trees. He ended up on his bottom quite often and spent much of the afternoon giggling. It really was great - he even got air at one point. A little bit. I took it a little easy on the wrist and it held up fine!! Yay! We ended the night with dinner and some beer at Long John's. Yay!

It was a really great day to end a mostly excellent week. We both love skiing and are hoping that we will get much more opportunity to do it again in the next couple of years. (We are sure to get more of a chance in Europe than if we were still in Perth!!)

(We have had a few issues getting photos uploaded so there are still none from Silver Star, but they will be there soon. Sorry guys.)