So last weekend, I went “skiing” for the first time in my life in beautiful Colorado. (“Skiing” in quotation marks because honestly, I’m not sure what I did could technically constitute as “skied”…) The experience was… well, educational to say the least. So hopefully this blog will help you prepare for your own very first ski trip!
- If you’ve never done any sport that requires some balancing skills, skiing will be very hard for you. (Take it from someone who can’t even ride a bike… ) To combat this, I recommend watching all the popular ski lesson videos (for beginners) on youtube, as well as how to put on boots, carry skis, etc. Nothing came natural for me and those videos helped immensely.
- If you are not in shape, do the ski workouts at least 4 weeks before your trip. My favorite ski workout video is this one: https://youtu.be/x1f2Cyq4CcY Trust me, you don’t want to have paid all this money to go ski, only to realize you aren’t even fit enough to actually ski…
- Rent the skis (and poles, boots, helmets) on site where you are skiing! Sure it’ll be more expensive than offsite, but it’ll be well worth it. First time skiers aren’t familiar with the fit of the boots so you may have to make a few trips back to the shop to get everything right. You don’t want to spend most of the day carrying skis back to the shop and back to the slopes. Those skis aren’t light, and walking in those ski boots isn’t easy!
- Get up early! Ski resorts are very busy, especially on the weekend. Be prepared to wait over an hour to get your rental, and be prepared to take a while to find a parking spot. (Parking lot can be completely full on the weekends.) Then you’ll have to likely take a shuttle to get to where you need to go. So if you want to ski before lunch, you’ll have to get up early. (Did I mention it also takes a long time just to get the boots on?)
- Shop online for an instructor with good reviews so when you sign up for lessons you can specifically ask for them by name. I didn’t do my homework and ended up with a terrible instructor who really didn’t teach me how to ski. He seemed to enjoy talking about his kids and grandkids a lot more than teaching me how to actually ski… Fortunately he told us that he’s retiring in 2 weeks.
- Don’t buy the all day lift pass until you know you can actually ski and put it to use! I completely overestimated my “skills” and bought my lift pass online. Turns out, I couldn’t even “ski” down the bunny slopes without repeatedly falling, so I never used my lift pass once. If you have never skied, snowboarded, skated, etc, then I recommend to take things easy and start with the learner’s pass, which is about 5 times cheaper than the regular lift pass at most ski resorts. If you do progress quickly, you may buy a half day pass on-site and the total would come out about the same.
- Another reason to start early for beginners – skiing is a lot easier when the sun is out and the slopes are clear! A lot of ski resorts advertise night ski at a discount. Not a good idea for beginners because well, you can’t see the slopes as well. There are some lights, but you still won’t see every bump on the route.
- Skiing is a very tiring sport. Even if you are a beginner and have no clue what you are doing. So bring painkillers with you as your muscle will be sore. Bring money with you too because you will need to eat onsite. Drink plenty of water because high elevation always means more dehydration. Also more UV rays, so sunblock is a must! Beer is easy to find but keep in mind high elevation also gives you more intoxication!
- Be aware of the difficulty ratings! Green is the easiest slopes, but since I was so bad, I realized that there’s actually something easier than Green! Not all ski resorts would have them, but some do, and they are called bunny slopes. They will often have different types of lifts, such as magic carpet, or other surface lifts. In fact, it seems getting on and off the lift is harder than skiing down a Green slope. So I strongly recommend beginners to test their skills on the easier lift systems in the learning area before getting on a real lift.
- Stay at a ski-in/ski-out resort if budget allows. This will eliminate the following issues: where to park; where to store skis; the need of a car; travel time to hit the slopes early; the time it takes to clean snow off the car in the morning before driving; coordinate a meeting spot; childcare (lots of them have childcare on-site). It may also get you discount lift tickets, discount lessons and discount/free child stays/lifts. A ski-in/ski-out resort does not mean you have to know how to ski. You can often ride the gondola, shuttle or bus to the resort and hit the slopes from there.