Sat
The interminable wait at Munich Terminal 1C is broken, but in an unwelcome manner : "Hello Liz" - a Yorkshire accent, from behind. I stiffen and force a welcoming smile to my face before I turn round. My friends will appreciate why I am not overjoyed to see Northern Steve (for it is indeed he). However, up-bringing wins, I resist shouting "oh *****, why are you here?" and politely ask about work, life etc. before conversation stalls and we resort to wary sideways looks, whilst I surreptitiously text my stalwart friend Other Steve to prepare him for the stream of reports he will receive over the next few days. Having established that NS will be doing the same All Terrain course as me, I spend the next half hour considering various possibilities, from the outrageous "perhaps he will fall into a crevasse" to the extremely unlikely "perhaps we will be friends".
More people arrive at the meeting point - Yvonne, Andrea, Philip, and we wait another hour as a London flight is delayed. At last, at 5pm, Michelle races out from the baggage hall, apologising profusely, and we can start the 2.5 hour transfer.
We are here with Telemark Ski Co to ski on Hintertux Glacier - Austria's all-year-round ski resort at over 3000m. It is the first time I have skiied before Christmas - I am overjoyed.
At the hotel, there is a great tugging out of bags, skis, boots, and rucksacks and John plus a 3 month old tabby kitten is there to welcome us.
We go down the road to another hotel where the early arrivers are waiting for us at dinner. The food is really good - six courses. I am really pleased to find Katherine, who taught me to XC ski in Norway, is here instructing. The group of 14 skiers is an equal mix of men and women and equally divided between All Terrain and Advanced courses.
Sun
I find my new Skins top a battle to get in to, but once it's on it reminds me of 1980s rubber dresses, which is really pleasing. Cashmere over rubber underwear with flip-flops is my essential breakfast attire.
Outside, it is not fantastic weather, it is disappointingly grey and warm. We've agreed to meet at 08:20 to take the ski bus the short ride to the bottom gondola station.
Three lifts up and we're at the top - Gefrorene Wand at 3250m. the view would probably be good if we could see it. Lots off faffing with boots and commenting on each others skis and finally we're wobbling off down the red run. This is scary on the first morning. I notice more than half the skiers are wearing helmets now, which is a depressing trend.
On the second run down, NS falls in cloud of snow on the piste, which is a bit unusual. He wrestles with one of his NTN pre-production version bindings, before giving up and deciding they need the attentions of a serious engineer, which means he disappears for the rest of the day, takes them to bits, cadges a suitable screw from somewhere, spends a couple of hours reassembling the bits into a binding that sort of does the job; but it is too late, as he has now been re-named one-ski Steve, the first of several re-namings. This also distinguishes him from Green Steve and Brummy Steve.
Instructor Neil makes us start from scratch and work through a lot of exercises to remind ourselves of the basics of stance core stability, forward flexing, upper body stillness, pressing and extending etc. (and we teach Neil about pelvic tilt and crunch, which is better visualised as trying to hook your bra to your pants). Muscle memory is a myth, I decide.
Alone in the bar after dinner, I play with the excitable kitten for half an hour.
It snows (good).
Mon
Sunny and the view is incredible. There's a temperature inversion to the left as we come out of the Gletscher bus 3, and the peaks look like tiny points in a white desert.
The theme today is mini-skirts / micro-teles - in the interests of style and stability we have to learn to shorten our telemark stance from a lunge to a mince - by pretending to wear a mini-skirt. I do not get this at all until Neil suggests imagining standing on a tube train without holding on. So if I can do that, why can't I do tele turns? Well, I could if I were prepared to commit weight to my back foot - which at the moment I am not.
The sartorial theme continues with lots of advice to the men on how to select matching ski wear and why it matters. They look completely baffled and say things like "but these are fine, I've had them for years" whilst appreciating Michelle's 100% monochrome kit and Yvonne's perfectly matched blues.
Most of us go to the Hohenhaus bar for the apres ski gluwein - I cannot resist dancing to every tune no matter how naff. I decide I have found my metier and long to be a barmaid in such a place. Tux, Tux, Hintertux......the packed bus back to the hotel is a party bus - the driver has the music on and flashes the bus lights in time to it.
Tue
Sunny
Theme of the day is foot pressure and being perfectly centred and equally weighted on both skis. I try to cooperate. We go over to do a bumpy red run. Neil and NS disappear off to go down a bit of dangerous off-piste. The piste is like the M25, so survival seems more important than foot pressure at this point, except that the former depends on the latter. It is fast and it is bumpy. John races past doing perfect tele turns to the envy of the small crowd of trainee Alpine instructors being made to ski like children in crocodile at the edge of the piste.
We stop for a cheesecake at a cafe with a very large outdoor oven - as if a gigantic Aga had been dumped there. It has a plate of pickled chillis on it, and snow banked up against its rusting sides. Philip and I discuss supermarket wine buying and mutual acquaintances.
Hohenhaus bar again for a couple of gluweins before dinner and then to a rather staid and faux-stylish bar after dinner, where they have a noisy tiled floor and too many TVs.
Wed
Sunny
For a change, we tried skiing on and off a berm (which is a small bank at the side of the piste) and around the piste poles (badly). Everyone else in the group can now do lovely tele turns, but I can do off piste bumpy snow quite well.
I have still failed to put enough pressure on my back foot and duck out of nearly every attempt at a left turn, so after lunch I have a remedial lesson with Neil - who utters the memorable words "let me just put my pole between your legs" - entirely appropriate in the context. Then he pulls me around by my rucksack waist belt which is meant to illustrate initiating a turn with a thrust of the hip towards the direction in which I want my skis to go. I understand eventually that he is not going to keep spinning me round - I am supposed to be doing some work.
I get Neil to photograph me at the top of the Grosse Kaserer piste. The glacier ice is illuminated by the late afternoon sun.
The interminable wait at Munich Terminal 1C is broken, but in an unwelcome manner : "Hello Liz" - a Yorkshire accent, from behind. I stiffen and force a welcoming smile to my face before I turn round. My friends will appreciate why I am not overjoyed to see Northern Steve (for it is indeed he). However, up-bringing wins, I resist shouting "oh *****, why are you here?" and politely ask about work, life etc. before conversation stalls and we resort to wary sideways looks, whilst I surreptitiously text my stalwart friend Other Steve to prepare him for the stream of reports he will receive over the next few days. Having established that NS will be doing the same All Terrain course as me, I spend the next half hour considering various possibilities, from the outrageous "perhaps he will fall into a crevasse" to the extremely unlikely "perhaps we will be friends".
More people arrive at the meeting point - Yvonne, Andrea, Philip, and we wait another hour as a London flight is delayed. At last, at 5pm, Michelle races out from the baggage hall, apologising profusely, and we can start the 2.5 hour transfer.
We are here with Telemark Ski Co to ski on Hintertux Glacier - Austria's all-year-round ski resort at over 3000m. It is the first time I have skiied before Christmas - I am overjoyed.
At the hotel, there is a great tugging out of bags, skis, boots, and rucksacks and John plus a 3 month old tabby kitten is there to welcome us.
We go down the road to another hotel where the early arrivers are waiting for us at dinner. The food is really good - six courses. I am really pleased to find Katherine, who taught me to XC ski in Norway, is here instructing. The group of 14 skiers is an equal mix of men and women and equally divided between All Terrain and Advanced courses.
Sun
I find my new Skins top a battle to get in to, but once it's on it reminds me of 1980s rubber dresses, which is really pleasing. Cashmere over rubber underwear with flip-flops is my essential breakfast attire.
Outside, it is not fantastic weather, it is disappointingly grey and warm. We've agreed to meet at 08:20 to take the ski bus the short ride to the bottom gondola station.
Three lifts up and we're at the top - Gefrorene Wand at 3250m. the view would probably be good if we could see it. Lots off faffing with boots and commenting on each others skis and finally we're wobbling off down the red run. This is scary on the first morning. I notice more than half the skiers are wearing helmets now, which is a depressing trend.
On the second run down, NS falls in cloud of snow on the piste, which is a bit unusual. He wrestles with one of his NTN pre-production version bindings, before giving up and deciding they need the attentions of a serious engineer, which means he disappears for the rest of the day, takes them to bits, cadges a suitable screw from somewhere, spends a couple of hours reassembling the bits into a binding that sort of does the job; but it is too late, as he has now been re-named one-ski Steve, the first of several re-namings. This also distinguishes him from Green Steve and Brummy Steve.
Instructor Neil makes us start from scratch and work through a lot of exercises to remind ourselves of the basics of stance core stability, forward flexing, upper body stillness, pressing and extending etc. (and we teach Neil about pelvic tilt and crunch, which is better visualised as trying to hook your bra to your pants). Muscle memory is a myth, I decide.
Alone in the bar after dinner, I play with the excitable kitten for half an hour.
It snows (good).
Mon
Sunny and the view is incredible. There's a temperature inversion to the left as we come out of the Gletscher bus 3, and the peaks look like tiny points in a white desert.The theme today is mini-skirts / micro-teles - in the interests of style and stability we have to learn to shorten our telemark stance from a lunge to a mince - by pretending to wear a mini-skirt. I do not get this at all until Neil suggests imagining standing on a tube train without holding on. So if I can do that, why can't I do tele turns? Well, I could if I were prepared to commit weight to my back foot - which at the moment I am not.
The sartorial theme continues with lots of advice to the men on how to select matching ski wear and why it matters. They look completely baffled and say things like "but these are fine, I've had them for years" whilst appreciating Michelle's 100% monochrome kit and Yvonne's perfectly matched blues.
Most of us go to the Hohenhaus bar for the apres ski gluwein - I cannot resist dancing to every tune no matter how naff. I decide I have found my metier and long to be a barmaid in such a place. Tux, Tux, Hintertux......the packed bus back to the hotel is a party bus - the driver has the music on and flashes the bus lights in time to it.
Tue
Sunny
Theme of the day is foot pressure and being perfectly centred and equally weighted on both skis. I try to cooperate. We go over to do a bumpy red run. Neil and NS disappear off to go down a bit of dangerous off-piste. The piste is like the M25, so survival seems more important than foot pressure at this point, except that the former depends on the latter. It is fast and it is bumpy. John races past doing perfect tele turns to the envy of the small crowd of trainee Alpine instructors being made to ski like children in crocodile at the edge of the piste.
We stop for a cheesecake at a cafe with a very large outdoor oven - as if a gigantic Aga had been dumped there. It has a plate of pickled chillis on it, and snow banked up against its rusting sides. Philip and I discuss supermarket wine buying and mutual acquaintances.
Hohenhaus bar again for a couple of gluweins before dinner and then to a rather staid and faux-stylish bar after dinner, where they have a noisy tiled floor and too many TVs.
Wed
Sunny
For a change, we tried skiing on and off a berm (which is a small bank at the side of the piste) and around the piste poles (badly). Everyone else in the group can now do lovely tele turns, but I can do off piste bumpy snow quite well.
I have still failed to put enough pressure on my back foot and duck out of nearly every attempt at a left turn, so after lunch I have a remedial lesson with Neil - who utters the memorable words "let me just put my pole between your legs" - entirely appropriate in the context. Then he pulls me around by my rucksack waist belt which is meant to illustrate initiating a turn with a thrust of the hip towards the direction in which I want my skis to go. I understand eventually that he is not going to keep spinning me round - I am supposed to be doing some work.
I get Neil to photograph me at the top of the Grosse Kaserer piste. The glacier ice is illuminated by the late afternoon sun.
Then we head off down for some fun in the off-piste, well, Neil teles fast and gracefully down/along/wherever he wants to go, and I try a bit of traversing, and although pleased to deal with the bumps, I end up higher up the slope instead of lower, which is not at all good. Eventually I accept that there's no alternative to just parallelling straight down the fall line. This works! it works really well! It doesn't work so well on the cobblestone ice of the next run.
Celebrate survival by sneaking in to the Hohenhaus with Neil just for a couple of drinks - most people went to the hotel sauna as we'd tacitly agreed to save ourselves for the big night - Thursday - when Helmut aus Mallorca would be DJing. I try to photograph the strobe lights.
Dinner tonight is a Western Buffet - I must have eaten half a pig.
Thur
Sunny again!
Michelle and I try the stir fry for lunch. It is agreed that the ladies are telebabes.
Remedial skiing with Neil again - he finally gets me to link a few turns and decides that will do. I gaze at him gratefully.
Tux, Tux, Hintertux.......the big night in the bouncy Hohenhaus for Helmut aus Mallorca's appearance - an extended session during which Michelle wins the air guitar competition, Neil looks a bit hot and has some clothes forcibly removed, David dances even more manically than he has at previous apres sessions, NS looks as if he wishes he was somewhere else, Lisa unties her hair and magically also emerges wearing a white T-shirt, we make a lot of noise with our ski boots. We miss the last bus and have to walk back to the hotel dangling various skis/garments/helmets.
Sometime later, whilst the rest of us have done hair and makeup and sat down to dinner, Brian appears, still wearing his rucksack, and surfs the pudding area and cheeseboard before reaching the dinner table. This causes a mixture of amusement and consternation - will he be thrown out by one of the generously proportioned serving wenches? will he actually fill his rucksack with cheese? No, instead he sits down and throws some NLP bombs into the conversation - which a few of us pick up on and uncross arms, sit with hands open etc. Afterwards in the bar he talks to me about going to learn Tango in Argentina.
Fri
A wind howls through the gondola cables and snow streams across the pistes - I begin to wish I hadn't swapped my thick fleece for a thin one, but at the top, it is very sunny - a glorious day, which would have been even better without the face-scouring snow blowing across the top of the slope.
Telebabes do the bumpy run again - Lisa dares herself to tele all the way down, and does just that - a great achievement, as it's steep, bumpy and very busy. At the bottom we eye a lovely tall and slender female boarder who's wearing one of the new Gortex all in one suits in purple and decide that she looks like a grape.
Short pitstop for hot chocolate at the cafe with the interesting outdoor oven (apart from Lisa who's determined to make the most of every skiing moment). We do a couple more runs - I do not practice my teles as I ought, I practice skiing parallels as gracefully and as perfectly as possible and pretend to be Diana Rigg.
At lunch a lot of crockery and glasses get smashed - nothing to do with us. I almost fall asleep on the pile of rucksacks and someone's leopard print ski jacket.
We've decided to meet at 2.15 to visit the Ice Cave. We trudge off through the snow wearing blue plastic helmets.
Inside the Ice Cave we scramble up and down ladders under the glacier, and are grateful not to be wearing Alpine ski boots. The Ice Cave is a series of tunnels and caves under the glacier which are full of ice stalactites and lit with LEDs.
This evening, only four make it to the Hohenhaus - NS, Michelle, Bryan and myself. Unusually, we find the quietest corner and inspect the agricultural implements, gigantic wooden box planes and skis with ancient cable bindings, and look aghast at the drinking capacity of the small group nearby who have three trayloads of empty schnapps glasses stacked up on their table by 5 o'clock.
Back at the hotel bar before dinner, Neil has his clothes taken off in public AGAIN. Katherine hangs a large gold-wrapped chocolate medallion round his neck and gives him a "hug". Seven other women stand ready to help Neil if the chocolate melts. Soft porn shots are taken on iPhones. Everyone agrees that it's been a fantastic week and a great group and yes we'd definitely be coming here next year.
A conversation at dinner about taking a wheelbarrow round to Majestic Wine whilst wearing green wellies gets completely out of hand.
Sat
The kitten is in trouble for pulling the frilly skirt off the breakfast buffet. It is caught and taken away somewhere.
I kick a day old bagel down the hill and miraculously it rolls all the way to the main road. Snow melt is rushing through the drain as if it were Spring.
We have to leave for the airport in a few minutes, I feel desolate.
Neil continues his melting chocolate fantasy in the Munich Airport departure lounge shop where they are selling more of his medallions. I escape to read a book of Bavarian recipes and a design magazine, whilst he tries to interest me in a mountain touring magazine. I admire the orange snowsuits, but in fact am drawn to the 100 best sports cars of the last 20 years magazine.
At Heathrow, I donate my two extra bottles of British Airways Champagne to Neil and to Michelle - as I feel they will be most in need of these.
In the taxi home I stare at a rainy field full of white geese - who are unaware that it will soon be Christmas.
