Ben Lomond Cross Country Skiing (for the first time)

For the last few years a friend has been offering me an intro to cross country skiing thinking I would like it and we could go cross country camping if conditions allowed. His family, myself and Sharon arrived at the ski village at Ben Lomond with a ute tub full of their gear. We managed to squeeze our feet into some ill fitting ski boots and loaded up all the gear on our shoulders and off we went. Sharon was particular excited as she has wanted to try skiing for ages. We started at the beginners area below the ski lifts with some basic tuition and practice. By 12:30 we had some how managed to get up below the bottom of the ski runs. It was not pretty!

An old guy went past at a great rate of knots out past Giblin Peak showing us how it should be done. About 45 minutes latter he came back and I called out to him about how he obviously knew what he was doing. We found out he was 71 years old and had been doing it all his life. After about 10 minutes of him showing us the correct techniques we suddenly knew what to do and we were off covering much greater distances much easier.

We started to get more adventurous and that made us come unstuck on more than one occasion. Some down hill was in order now we were experts. After mastering the herringbone walk up slopes we came thundering down totally out of control but we kept going higher each time. Awesome fun only because we did not break anything! We stopped for some lunch and had some epic crashes on the was back to the car. I even got a clap from the crowd on the hill for my big one.

Back for another go after lunch and we decided this would be great fun to do again. We never did manage the stopping technique and resorted to my mates method of throwing ones self on the ground and starting again in the direction required. Sharon was looking at ski holidays for a few days after that weekend. A lot more practice needed but lots of fun.