Ansó, 11 March
by Isabel Isherwood - 12:44 on 11 March 2017
We are just home after a week of alpine skiing at Candanchú with the six local schools (except for Jake who is in Congo/Cameroon….). Candanchu is almost an hour and a half from here, so we stayed over in a hostel – it has felt like a week’s skiing holiday. The schools get a very good deal on ski classes and gear hire, and parents can sign up for it too, so I took classes along with the girls. The week has been quite extraordinary weatherwise (by our standards, anyway). Last weekend it snowed heavily, Monday was cold, Tuesday we had rain and wind, then Wednesday to Friday were gloriously sunny and bizarrely hot – 20 degrees by the end of the day.
We have had a fantastic week. We’ve all learnt masses and none of us are broken (even me, despite my best efforts; I descended about 100 m on my back the other day in front of my class of 6 year olds; the only through in my head was ‘I mustn’t break my leg!’. I didn’t, fortunately!). When it works however, it is exhilarating - and we have loved the access to high snowy mountains that skiing gives you; magnificent peaks and wheeling choughs and chamois picking their way across vertiginous slopes.
The girls and I both started in the not-quite beginners level, but in different groups; my group was mainly very small boys and I quickly became class Mum, warming hands and cleaning goggles and picking them up when they fell over. Iona and Rowan were in a group of slightly older and more gung-ho kids. Their teacher Patricia was ex-Spanish ski-team, and is into extreme ski-mountaineering – the kind where you trek up some impossibly steep mountain on skis and them crampons, and then ski back down again. Rowan is deeply inspired by her and has decided she would like to be a professional skier when she grows up…..
I don’t know what the opportunities for becoming a professional skier will be like when we go back to Scotland; but she certainly has the right attitude. She is not exactly fearless, but she’s brave and seems to be very natural on the skis. Iona and I are both more fearful – we’ve learnt enough to have a lot of fun on the easier slopes, but peering down steep icy descents fills us both with terror and drives every technique we’ve learnt straight out of our heads. Rowan barely pauses before swooping competently down.
The tricky thing about Candanchú is that is on two different ‘levels’ – the lower part has all the beginners’ slopes and is mostly very easy, with a few more interesting bits. The upper level has a much greater range of pistes from relatively easy to phenomenally scary. Being up there is wonderful - however once you are up there, there is no easy way back down again…..
On the Thursday I got moved into Iona and Rowan’s class – this was not a promotion, this was a deal done with one of the other adults who was terrified out of his wits and wanted to move down a level. I was feeling rather competent at that point and foolishly agreed; and shortly afterwards found myself at the top of La Tuca, the highest point of the ski station. I loved being up there, and the sense that I was pushing myself and overcoming my fear….. Oh how naïve! Because of course at the end of the session we had to get back down to the valley. At this point the fear won. The descents looked precipitous and the distances huge, my legs no longer felt under my control and I couldn’t even remember how to corner properly or slow down. I made it down, though quite frankly I have no idea how. We got to the bottom, Patricia looked at her watch and announced that we still had half an hour to spare – would we like to go back up and do the descent again? ‘YES!!’ yelled all the children. …… I could see my own horror reflected in Iona’s face. We excused ourselves and sloped off furtively to the café for restorative hot chocolate.
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