Waygook Travels: Skiing at High 1 resort

At the end of last year when it was snowing quite heavily we all decided to join this tour group that was going up to High one ski resort to do some skiing and snowboarding. Now besides for the 2/3 days I spent in Switzerland,

Korea

has been my first snow experience. We went sleighing in Switzerland but it wasn’t exactly hard as all you pretty much had to do was sit on a sleigh, fly down a mountain, steer with your feet and pray you don’t fly off the side. Skiing on the other hand involves a whole lot more skill. I am pretty sure that you all know my athletic abilities are pretty much non-existent so I was a tad scared but most of all just so excited to be able to be in the snow! We arrived on the Saturday afternoon, had lunch and spent some time getting all our equipment and then hit the slopes. Included in the tour package was a beginner’s ski lesson, which I was very happy about seeing as I was so inexperienced. This lesson turned out to be a Korean guy showing us how to put on our ski’s and then standing up and leaning to the right while saying “this, how turn left”, then leaning to the left and saying “this, how turn right”, he then brought his knees inward and slanted the front of his ski’s together into a triangle shape and said “this, stop” and then “ok, go!”. Ya so as you can imagine I was scared shitless, and since I fell about 2 seconds after he said go it really didn’t make me feel better. I didn’t fall much after that though so I was pretty proud of myself, but that could also be that I was probably the slowest person on the whole slope, 5year olds were zooming past me (no lies). I absolutely hate speed that I cannot control and as much as he showed us how to stop, when you are going straight down gaining momentum the whole way, that doesn’t always work! So I spent a lot of time flying down the mountain screaming and hoping my knees would stop shaking long enough to get me to the bottom before I bail and break a leg. Only when one of the foreigners stopped and showed me that if I go down the slope in a zigzag I go much slower (you’d think I’d have gathered this by then) anyways once I followed her advice it was much better but I still couldn’t stop my legs shaking and by the end of the afternoon every muscle in my body hurt!

The best thing about this resort though, after all this nerve wrecking skiing was that you could go and relax in the outdoor hotsprings sitting in boiling water in your bikini while the snow falls all around you, truly magical! After soaking our muscles we went to a ‘all you can drink beer and all you can eat fried chicken’ party that was arranged in the tour package, was a lot of fun! So we ended off the night with way too many rounds of ‘Flip cup’ and all passed out in our hotel room at the end. The next morning we all got in a few more rounds on the slopes before taking the long 4-5 hour bus ride home, An exhausting weekend but one I hope I do again soon as I really need to work on my skiing skills!!