The nights are getting shorter and it is looking increasingly depressing outside. For many this simply signifies the beginning of another dreary English winter, but there are those who refuse to accept this bitter season and instead decide to flock tout suite to the Alps until spring comes around.
If you are among these hoards of “seasonaires,” you are almost certainly feeling very pleased with yourself, and as I write you will probably be posting some obnoxious Facebook status about how you are heading to party it up on the slopes in Meribel.
However, amongst the nervous anticipation and giddy excitement about all those forthcoming powder days and après parties, it is easy to forget that many seasonaires don’t actually make it past the first few weeks of the season. From my two previous ski seasons, here are some valuable tips on how to survive the first couple of weeks of the season.
1.Work Hard. Any good season starts with a very large dosing of hard work. It is so important that you focus upon your work, whatever your job is, in the opening couple of weeks of the season, even if this means you are neglecting other duties, such as skiing and drinking.
If you are a chalet host you will find that you are working crazy hours in the opening couple of weeks of the season, and you are finding that it takes an age to do even the smallest of jobs, a prime example is peeling potatoes. However as the season progresses you will find that you will be speeding through jobs that before took hours to do, and your skiing time will increase dramatically.
2.Make a good impression. It is normal that ski resort and chalet managers have very little previous managerial experience. If you manage to make them think that you are an awesome chalet host in the first few weeks, they will probably ignore you and let you get on with it for the rest of the season.
But if you fail to make a good impression, they will almost certainly be checking up on you and calling you back from mountain on regular occasions asking why plates aren’t laid out for afternoon tea on.
3.Don’t overdo it, the partying that is. This could be applied to any new social setting, starting university for example, but it is vital that you don’t get too drunk at the start of the season. While it is very important that you go out with everyone, just don’t end up being the most drunk.
There are always tales of someone embarrassing themselves on the opening night of the season and it inevitably leads to a swarm of gossip. Make sure it is not you that everyone is gossiping about.
4.Don’t get injured. This is probably quite self-explanatory, but every year countless seasonaires make the long forlorn journey home with their legs wrapped in a cast. If this unfortunate accident happens before you’ve even made it to Christmas, the pain of that broken bone will feel an awful lot worse. Take it easy trying those 360s in the park or skiing that tree line you saw on the first day, there will be plenty of time for those things as the season goes along.
5.Be realistic. If you are currently cramped onto a bus heading to a ski resort for the season, you are probably expecting everything to be a dream of powder and chalet wine. The reality is that you are going to have to work very hard over the next few months, and this is something that many people don’t appreciate at the start of the season.
If you realise that your ski season is not quite meeting the high expectations you had, don’t become despondent. If you stick with it and put your all into it then you will get the rewards as the weeks go along. The first few weeks of the season are always a manic mess, when things are constantly going wrong, but if you make it through them, things will get a whole lot better as the weeks go by.