Hello everyone, my wife and I started skiing very recently in our 30’s and we have skied four times since we started almost a month ago, taking it slowly. Before starting, we watched countless YouTube videos and gathered every inch of information we could about beginner skiing, hyping ourselves up more and more. We took a whole day group lesson for our first time and learned the “pizza” stance, how to stop and a little bit of turning.
The second and third time we went on our own (another lesson is outside of our budget working blue collar jobs here in Japan). We rode a 120 meter belt conveyor countless times up a beginner green hill and practiced our turning and by our own standards got very good and confident at it. By the end of our third time we could turn and stop whenever we wanted and safely avoid people below us, slowly transitioning our “pizza” to a “french fry/parallel” after turning.
We are now confident (over our heads) that we can easily go down a green “course/run” since we have been doing very “good” at a 120 meter green hill. Then comes our fourth time, we went to a bigger ski resort called “Dynaland” to try their 3800 meter “green” course. First we warmed up by trying to go down a 600 meter green run and at first glance it was obviously steeper than what we are used to but nothing we can’t tackle.
We comfortably went down that run until halfway through where the run was divided into two. There was no sign or anything saying which is which, but everyone way ahead of our level was speeding down the right side so we went up and chose the left side thinking it was the green run; it was not. It was a red run and it is “very steep”, a little narrow and the snow was very hard “icy?” It definitely was our first time going through something that steep, narrow and “icy.” We fell down two or three times just trying to turn or stop. We gained too much speed and the “pizza” stop won’t work so we have to turn up the mountain to stop; a skill we are just starting to learn by the end of our third time.
We were traumatized by the red run but to keep our spirits up we figured it is just because we were not ready for the red run yet. We decided practicing on a beginner hill again for a few times and got “good” on turning up the mountain to stop and also on parallel traversing after a slight pizza turn. After that we rode the lift to the top of the mountain where the 3800 meter “green” course begins.
The first 500 meters of the course was easier than even the beginner hill, but then after a turn comes a slope way steeper and way narrower than the red run that traumatized us earlier. The middle part has a lot of dirt on it too and worse, the right side of that narrow steep slope was a cliff! We stopped and moved out of the way and not single skier/snowboarder went straight down that slope after turning. Every single one stopped and “planned” their way down.
Once again we were way out of our league with this one. What’s getting on our head the most more than the steepness is the narrowness and the cliff that follows after, and also the snowboarders sitting in the middle of the slope, stressing ourselves out on how to avoid them. We stood there for like 15 minutes mustering up the courage and waiting for the sitting crowd to clear. I went down first doing very wide “S” turns barely in control of my speed, falling down a few times especially on the part where a lot of dirt is in. In the end we were able to go down the whole course safely but stressed out at how hard that green course was!
We spent the rest of the day practicing and sharpening our current skills and to finish the day we challenged ourselves to go down the same red run that traumatized us earlier and to our surprise we were able to go down that red run easily in control without falling even once! The steep narrow slope on top of the “green” course was way more harder and scarier than the whole of the red run that we successfully went down.
TL;DR The photo above is part of the green course we went down safely but not comfortably and also not the steepest and narrowest part of that course. You could also see on the slope map that sometimes “red” and “black” runs are right along side the “green” runs. Do ski resorts in Japan list their snow/slope information inaccurately or are we just not good enough for a green run yet?
Edit: paragraphs 😅