Snowboarding

Bobrovy Log opened about two weeks ago. That’s the name of the biggest ski resort in Krasnoyarsk, about forty minutes from my flat by bus. Danil invited me and Zuzana to go and try out the slopes, and we figured we could squeeze in a couple of hours of skiing and snowboarding before work.  The only problem was that I’d never snowboarded or skied before. So there’s that. I told Danil, but he seemed confident I’d be fine, and I took his word for it.

In an optimistic attempt to save money, I borrowed Max’s snowboard. And boots. And back protector. And goggles. And so I set off to the bus stop, slightly hunched under the weight of all my kit.

Bobrovy Log looked pretty splendid in the sunshine, its slopes covered with untouched snow. We’d chosen the perfect day for it – not too cold (only about -3 degrees Celsius), with bright, clear skies, and very little wind. But other people had had the same idea, and there was a massive cue for kit rental. Danil had a look at Max’s snowboard and said ‘this is left-footed. Are you left-footed?’ I didn’t know whether I was left-footed. Danil walked around me and gave me a hard shove in the back. I caught myself with my left foot. ‘You are left-footed!’ he announced, proudly. So while Danil and Zuzana queued to rent a snowboard and skis, I just sat down and tried to work out how to put all my gear on. Then we went out to the training slope.

To celebrate the opening of the winter season at Bobrovy Log, access to the slopes and lift passes were free for the whole morning. That meant that my entire snowboarding experience that morning only cost the price of my bus fare – about £0.60. Let it never be said that Siberia is an expensive place!

The training slope was just a little gently sloping mound at the foot of the real slope. Danil showed me how to clip my boots into my snowboard, then told me to get up. I stood up, fell over forwards, faceplanted, and slid a couple of metres down the slope on my front. Then Danil told me to get up again. I stood up, fell over forwards, faceplanted, and slid a couple of metres down the slope on my front. This repeated about five times, and then I found myself at the bottom of the slope, and unclipped my boots.

‘Well, how do you feel?’ asked Danil.

‘Uh, my head hurts a bit, but that was fun!’

‘Great!’ Said Danil. ‘So let’s go up onto the main slope shall we?’

In the interests of not dying, I demanded one more set of falls down the training slope, which I executed with maximum drama and minimum grace. Then we queued for the ski lifts. Turns out there’s a knack to them too. You have to kind of twist your legs so they’re at a ninety degree angle from your hips, otherwise the snowboard will be in a battle for space with the skis of the people on either side of you. It’s deeply uncomfortable. And then when you stand up at the end of the lift, don’t stand up too early. I may or may not have been run over by the ski lift. But now the hard bit was over…

Oh no, no wait, now it was the massive slope. It was here that, out of necessity, I mastered the art of slowing down. If you stand up facing forwards and then lean back lots (until you’re juuuuust about to fall over), keeping your board perpendicular with the slope, you kind of skid down the slope at a manageable speed. I was considering doing this all the way down the slope, but then a little girl who can’t have been more than about six years old weaved past me and did a 360 spin, and I wondered if maybe I ought to be a little bit more adventurous. It was a good idea!

I’m joking, it was a really bad idea. Because at this point, as I was gathering speed and pointing my board directly down the slope, I realised that I definitely was NOT left-footed. Every time I tried to bring my right foot in front of my left and go in a straight line down the mountain, my body would pull my left foot round, I’d brake suddenly, leave the ground, do a forward flip, and land on my back. And riding right-footed was out of the question, because my board was fixed ‘goofy-footed’. Ach well. I took this as an excuse to take the rest of the slope in my favourite stance, facing down the mountain, my board perpendicular to the slope, leaning as far back as I could, and going as slowly as possible. By the end of the morning, I was an expert at braking.

 

To celebrate an awesome (and spectacularly cheap) morning of skiing and snowboarding, we all went to the café and got mountains of pancakes. The snowboarding was amazing, and I’m absolutely going to do it again as soon as I can, but the highlight was definitely the pancakes.