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Skiing is serious business in France. Ira Mukhoty Jayal recounts the challenges she faced while hurtling down the slippery slopes of the French Alps.
A childhood spent in a huge, landlocked city on the edge of a desert can only nourish dreams of one climatic phenomenon - snow. It is, after all, the stuff of Bollywood fantasies and Dubai malls. So, one winter, I decided that my family must experience this miracle of nature before the survival instinct of my pre-teen daughters made it impossible for me to drag them along.
So, after several winters spent lolling in the warm waters of the South China Sea, I announced to my dubious but loyal family that we were going skiing in the French Alps.
Skiing in France is not just a hobby. It is a very serious business. It has now become one of the most popular and glamorous holiday activities and the French ski resorts are among the finest in the world. The number of resorts available is baffling for an outsider - be it the luxurious Courchevel, the traditional, family-oriented Les Gets ski resort or the world-class Val d'Isere which has some of the most challenging ski slopes in the world, both on and off piste.
Our choice was Serre Chevalier (Serre-Che to the aficionados), a collection of villages in a valley in the Southern Alps, leading off from the garrison town of Briancon. Interestingly, Briancon is one of the birthplaces of French skiing, adopted and developed at the turn of the last century by the French alpine military when the Briancon skiing school was established. The village we lodged in was Monetier les Bains (aka Monetier Baths), named after its hot springs which won it some notoriety in Victorian times. Today Monetier is a charming, laid-back and a very French skiing village which means that the food in all the restaurants - including the ski slope with self-service - is outstanding. What is not typically French is the consistently friendly service at all tourist shops, equipment rental places, restaurants and even the concierge. Accustomed as we are to often indifferent French service, we had practised our look of "froideur" and pinched exasperation but were taken aback by the boisterous bonhomie of all the residents. Their patience and humour when dealing with children was downright bizarre!
As with many Gallic sports, expertise and fashion go hand-in-hand and skiing is no exception. Toddlers are sent to ski school (l'ecole de ski) from two years onwards. Parents teach their infants to ski by holding them between their legs and hurtling down slopes, chiding them if they show a hint of fear - all this while managing to look effortlessly elegant. Ski clothes today are high-tech and lightweight to keep you warm and make you look slim at the same time. There's plenty to choose from - fur-lined hats, outsized and predatory-looking ski goggles, skin-tight yet waterproof salopettes (overalls), fitted jackets and duffel coats.
Once we were properly kitted out and sweltering in our bewildering layers of thermals and outer-wear, ski-boots and skis, we got down to the serious business of "apprentissage" (learning). It was rather galling to realise that we were the only adult beginners; all the other skiers on the nursery slopes were possibly five-year-olds! Our moniteur (ski instructor) told us that we had perfect skiing conditions - bright sunshine and beautiful, powdery snow (freshly-fallen, untouched snow formed by tiny snowflakes). Skiing on powdery snow is good for beginners because it allows the skis to sink in ever-so-slightly so that you don't gain too much speed. Nor does it hurt as much when you fall.
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After two days of powdery snow, the snow had become uneven in some places. This snow is called crud, and is formed when skiers and snowboarders trample down the powdery snow into uneven patches and areas of slipperiness, throwing up greater challenges to stay upright. Moreover, after two days of sunshine, the pristine white patches of snow had now turned into a brown mess of melted snow, water and dirt called slush.
On the third day, it rained overnight and we woke up to a different world. We now had to contend with a surface that was smooth and hard. This is crust, and forms when cold rain freezes on top of powdery snow and hardens into an outer crust. The moniteur reassured us that just below this crust were still piles of powdery snow but this was of little comfort as we flew at breakneck speed down the slippery slopes. How was I to slow down, I wailed into the whipping wind, turning in my skis to form the plough shape which is meant to act as a brake. But my heartless children catapulted by, skis aerodynamically parallel, leaning into the slope to go as fast as possible. This, according to them and the moniteur, was the advantage of crusty snow: you could go really fast since the crust offers minimum friction to the skis.
Another jarring aspect of skiing on crust is the noise. Whereas skiing on powder is a silent experience, skiing on crust for anyone but an expert generates alarming amounts of shattering sounds as the skis slice into the icy surface.
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On our last day of skiing, the sun came out again after it had snowed overnight. The slopes became smooth and I marvelled at the fine, even ridges on the surface of the snow. These are called corduroy. They are not a naturally-occurring phenomenon, the moniteur explained, but a result of the grooming of the snow at night by snowcats. Every night, after the slopes close down to skiers, the snowmobiles come out to shape and smooth over the tracks to improve skiing conditions. While the nursery slopes and the green slopes are well-groomed, the harder red, blue and black slopes in Serre-Chevalier are often left relatively untouched, so that the bumps offer challenges to an experienced skier.
The holy grail of skiing in France is off-piste skiing which is done on freshly-fallen, untouched powdery snow zones which are not demarcated. They could be seen in the distance, these off-piste skiers, hurtling off the tops of the peaks, slaloming between the pine trees and veering away as they came down into the valley into untouched snow banks. They made it look impossibly easy and glamorous but there were two things I learnt on this trip. One, though there are many types of snow, the Inuit do not in fact have a hundred different words for snow. This was an urban legend perpetuated by a certain Phil James when he compiled a hundred supposedly Inuit words for snow including the dubious "Hiryla" (snow in beards) and "Mac-tla" (snow burgers).
Two, skiing expertly is much harder than it looks. But with my skis now resolutely parallel, I pushed myself off the green slope in pursuit of my fast-disappearing children with philosopher Seneca Roman cheering me on: "It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
A WEEK OF SKIING IN THE SOUTHERN ALPS
- Concierge (for storing skis, boots): euro 100 for a group of four for five days
- Equipment rental (skis, ski boots, ski poles): euro 300
- Chalet apartment: between euro 800 and euro 1500 a week in a high-end resort for four-six people
- Ski gear (thermal innerwear, ski pants, vests, jackets, ski gloves, ski glasses, hats): above euro 150 for an adult
- Ski passes: Between euro 75-euro 100 per day for a family of four
