Don’t ski with salomon skis!

Lucy and Michael roped us in to a last-minute trip to Hunter Mountain for a “spot of Sunday skiing” last weekend. Of course, all it takes to rope me is mumbling, “wanna go skiing?” – so they didn’t exactly have their work cut out for them. And, having had a decent time the last time we went to Hunter, we were happy enough to be going back.

When we arrived bright and early that Sunday morning, the mountain guide warned us that the temperatures would be sub-zero with windchill, – and he was talking in Fahrenheit degrees! Brr! In fact he went so far as to say, “keep an eye out for frostbite setting in amongst your friends. If you see little white dots developing somewhere on their skin, tell them to go inside to warm up, or they’ll lose that part of their body”. Double brr!

The freezing cold weather wasn’t the only thing working against us either. A big dump of rain had hit the mountain earlier in the work, which turned most of the snow to ice. Stay away from shiney spots in the snow, kids! Worse still, they ran a lot of the snow cannons all day, which meant we get coated in tiny globules of man-made snow each time we went through them – which was fairly unavoidable. (FYI: Man made snow is nothing like real snow – it’s small and icey instead of big and fluffy.)

Worst of all, Michael and I were both given dodgy Salomon skis. Being one of the bigger names in the industry, I was surprised at how terrible they were. The back-end of the skis just wouldn’t hold during turns, and the problem was only amplified by the abundance of ice. At first I thought it was just me, but when Michael complained about having the exact same problems that I did, yet the girls said nothing – we knew we were onto something. Michael had experienced the same problems in the past with Salomon skis, too! I’ll never ski on Salomon’s again; I’ll be asking for Rossignols instead.

So, not the best day skiing that I’ve ever had; but hey, a day of skiing is still a day of skiing, the company was spectacular, and we walked away uninjured – so I can’t really complain too much.