Today is slope day! Woo hoo! The climax of our whole trip! The whole reason we’ve been travelling for a week, enduring rabid dogs and police chases and multiple cases of mistranslation.
We were on the bus for two hours, making a stop to get those people without snowsuits a rental. Thank goodness for my funky new suit – there is something off-putting about sharing a suit with possibly hundreds of sweaty people exerting themselves, running up and down hills carrying skis or a board the whole time.
So we finally pull into the parking lot and this is the hill we’re supposed to ski/board down:
Umm… I’m pretty sure I made hills to toboggan down bigger than that in my backyard. How is this the best slope in China? Thank goodness I already know how to board so I’ll only have to spend a short while on this teensy little pimple of a hill.
Not so.
There’s no snowboarding here.
Whaaaat?
They offered us lessons on how to ski, I declined their kind offer because A) I’m feeling a little vengeful for being lied to about snowboarding, so I don’t want to give any more money to this outrage. B) they don’t speak English and I don’t speak Chinese. How were they expecting that to work? C) I’m Canadian. It’ll come naturally to me in a few minutes. Snow sports are inbred in Canadians.
Not so.
I fell my way down the hill a ridiculously high number of times, losing my stick thing in the process and managing to unlock my ski from my boot.
The only upside is that the hill was so small I could easily walk up to the top in a few minutes and fall back down in a few seconds.
When we asked the guide about the bigger hills and when would we get to go to them, he peered at us through his coke-bottle glasses and said that this was it, no more. When we pointed to the mountain directly beside us that had obvious ski slopes on them:
He said they were closed, the conditions weren’t suitable. And besides which, the package we signed up for didn’t offer alternate slopes.
So we resigned ourselves to the puny hill and enjoyed ourselves regardless of the disappointments.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
On the bus ride up we were offered a ride up the mountain to take pictures of the view. Of course we said no - we were going up to ski/snowboard, not look at the landscape and take pictures. Sigh. If only we’d known.
In the end, though, we ended up having a helluva lotta fun ourselves while the rest of the tour group took pictures. There wasn’t a single soul on the slope so the four of us rented a sled and a GT racer and had ourselves some races and contests for several hours. We got creative and tied the two together to see how far down the hill all four of us could make it before wiping out. Not very far, let me tell you. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures as I didn’t want to break my camera.
The rest of the tour group got back and they invited us to join them on a walk up towards the mountain, where after a 20 minute walk we saw this:
A real live slope!?
Whaaaat?
And with a half-pipe?!
Whaaaat?
We weren’t impressed, to say the least.
1 comment:
So was that real slope at another ski 'resort'? or was that the hill that was unsuitable conditions?
And why was there no snowboarding? that makes no sense.
and you should have taken the lessons JUST so someone else could make a video of you trying to understand the teacher, and the teacher tryyying to understand you to then eventually give up and push you sliding down the hill. Good video material lol
....
And the ice city looked really nice. Was that a whole path with flowers over it? or flower looking things? did you lick any of the ice? lol
AND
I still want an ice bike!! LOL
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