There’s nordic skiing, without fixed heels, which allows the experienced to go off-piste, cross-country, but you need to either be ultrafit or have grown up in ski country … for most, it’s going to be Alpine … going up on a ski lift or poma on learner slopes and skiing back down, mainly traversing across the hill, turning, repeating.

For most, it’s going to essentially mean a ski resort and that ain’t cheap … not for the gear, nor for the day or week passes, nor for the food and drink … it’s also for a younger age group (in the middle). The first video is worthwhile imho for two core reasons … though he bangs on, repeating himself in order to pad it out:

• The footage behind the words is stunning
• There’s no horribly distracting “music”

Guess what! Build em up and they let you down!

(It’s embedded, the link.) It goes into the obstacles placed in the way of new resorts, most of them leftist bureaucratic Wokery and greed.

The second video is not good, being overdubbed with awful, distracting music, plus a gauche front picture … so naturally I’d expect it to load perfectly. Just a warning … you only need see the first few minutes and you’ll get the idea … the crowds are horrific. There are some panels with things like day pass prices if you can stick it out with the sound muted.

If you take both vids together, you get first the stranglehold on not allowing any new resorts and then what that does to people’s ability to be able to ski without waiting for hours for lifts or at bars or restaurants, at exorbitant cost … for me, apart from age, knees and ankles, plus money, plus vaxx mandates etc. etc. … skiing, which I loved from the 70s till the early noughties, is alas no more.

Some of the resorts included Valmorel in France, Falls and Buller downunder, plus my last two:

If you look at the top map, you’ll see a red ggl pointer … it’s pointing at The Hahnenkamm, down which I skiied some metres only, but did ski down the mountain via another route later. This is the actual course below by one of the best Brit skiiers ever, although obviously he’s taking it fairly easy by his standards.

Do I miss the skiing? Yes, very much but I’m resigned to it … one needs to adjust to one’s age and circumstances. Every time I go downstairs to the yard, I gaze at the track from wall to bins and that single morning in winter when I turned a chair upside down and tobogganned those few yards.