Sport

9 Things No One Tells You About Doing A Ski Season

Five months sounds like a long time, but it will all be over before you know it....

Doing a season in the mountains in an experience like no other.

How many chances will you have in life to go snowboarding everyday, party every night, work a job you couldn’t give a damn about and live in a dorm with your best mates?

There’s no doubt moving to the mountains for a winter is one of the best decisions you will ever make.

However, there are a few things they probably didn’t tell you before you arrived…

You Won’t Make It Up The Mountain Everyday

You’ll start out with good intentions. You’ll be catching first lifts or a squeezing a quick run in between work shifts.

A month later? You’ll be too hungover and knackered to make it onto the chairlift everyday.

Yes, you love riding more than ever. But by the end of the season, if the snow isn’t absolutely perfect, you’ll just sack skiing off altogether.

Your Season Friends Are For Life

You bonded over a mutual love of hiking to reach untouched powder fields, ice cold beers and bad American TV shows.

You eat, work, drink and sleep together. You spend every waking moment for five months in each other’s company – crammed into a tiny dorm and you didn’t kill each other.

That’s the kind of frienship that will last a long time.

If you carry on doing seasons, these people will pop up everywhere. Literally everywhere. Train stations on the other side of the world, bars on remote islands.

The Hangovers Don’t Get Easier

You might think with you’ll become well accustomed to drinking on your season. The more beer you drink, the less it affects you, right?

Well, no. In fact, as you get older, the hangovers just get steadily worse.

A couple of years ago, a few beers wouldn’t have left the slightest effect on you the next day.

Forget riding. Now you cannot physically move after a night out – you will remain festering on the sofa in a pile of crisp crumbs and Coke cans watching Frozen until it passes.

You May Well Fall In Love

People say that ski resorts are full of scruffy layabout bums with commitment issues and borderline drinking problems.

Well, these people are wrong.

Have you noticed how many couples there are in ski resorts? Fast forward ten years – how many of these one night stands turned into three kids, a dog and a full blown chalet company business in the Alps?

Lots. Welcome to the mountains people.

You Won’t Have A Clue What’s Going On In The Outside World

You won’t read the news for five months. Easily.

The whole of the western world could have collapsed and you wouldn’t know because you were too busy hiking up snowy ridges in the Alps. Which is a highly legitimate excuse.

Whispers about what’s going on in the ‘real world’ come from guests milling in and out of the resort.

The only news that really concerns you is when it’s going to snow again.

You Will Finish With Absolutely No Money

You arrived with high expectations. You would carefully put away a sum of money into your savings account each week, like the responsible human being you are.

Instead, all of your money has gone on toffee vodka shots, late night cheese pizzas and those ski boots you just couldn’t do without.

By the end of the season, you’ll be paying for drinks out of your overdraft and maybe a casual trip to errrr….. Vietnam as well. ‘Cause that’s what overdrafts are for, right?

You’re Never Too Old To Do A Season

Plenty of folk think seasons are for 18 year old gap year kids who’ve just escaped the clutches of mum and dad and want to drink lots and run riot.

Those seasonaires exist, but there are also plenty of people who are in their 30s, 40s and 50s doing a season for the first time.

They’ve done the years toiling away at a desk job – and they’ve realised the best things in life involve snow, mountains and lots of time in the outdoors.

It Will Be Over Before You Know It

One minute your excitedly waiting for the first dump of snow. The next minute, the sun is out, the snow is gone and you’re packing up your bags to leave again.

You will never be able to anticipate how quickly a season ends. It genuinely feels like you skipped winter. Well, at least the sort of grim, grey, drizzly winters that you used to know in the UK.