My rookie era: on my first ski trip, I felt like a natural – then I was rapidly humbled by the mountain

‘The ski jammed on top of my knee. Pain across my tendons – tendons I didn’t know I had and certainly shouldn’t feel.’ Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

Twenty hot lesbians in a cabin in the snow. It sounds like a budget porn plot from the 70s, but it was the pitch my sister gave when she convinced me to try out skiing for the first time.

I am not a sports dyke. I am a like-to-read-books-and-sit-in-saunas dyke.